bait fishing – The Fresh Water Fishing Blog

September 8, 2011

Another Labor Day Fishing Trip!

I haven’t posted much lately – guess you may know I’ve been very busy.

I did get to go fishing with my younger son a couple times this summer and the last trip was on Labor Day!

Did we catch anything? Sure we did!

I caught a nice largemouth bass! Check it out:

I caught the bass using my “Bass Krusher Rig”! Check out how to make this on my video:

So did my young son catch anything? Sure he did! He was using real worms for bait. He caught some very large sunnies!

Here are a couple pictures:

I hope your Labor Day was filled with fun and relaxation. And I hope you got to do more fishing than I did! 😉

Catch you later!

April 18, 2011

First Freshwater Fishing Trip – 2011

Finally had a chance to go fishing last weekend!

First trip this year, so it was important that my 7 year old son had a successful trip!

We stocked up on some worms and took a few lures as well. Checked over the rods and reels and everything looked good!

We were ready to go. So we headed over to our local stream and began fishing. Since there is a current in the stream, I gave my son a few pointers about fishing with a bobber and live bait and letting it drift while keeping the line fairly tight. After a few casts, he had his first fish! Caught a “roach” fish.

A few worms and casts later and he had his second roach. It was late in the day so we didn’t stay real long, but it was still fun for both of us.

Yeah … Dad caught a small roach and a sunny as well. 🙂 But most of all, Dad got to spend some quality time with his son!

I’ll post some pictures of the fish next post.

Hope you all have successful fishing trips this year!

Catch you later.

August 5, 2009

Freshwater Fishing For Carp

Freshwater Fishing For Carp

I live close to the Mantua Creek in southern NJ and each year in early summer the carp would migrate up the creek from the Delaware river to spawn.

As a child and teenager, I lived right next to the creek. In fact, the creek ran through our property. I remember going out at night and hearing the carp splashing about having fun in their spawning rituals. This would last for a few weeks and then they’d go back down the creek and back to the river. A local reporter lived a few blocks away from us. His name was Ralph Knissel and he wrote a fishing column for the Gloucester County Times. Ralph had reported carp being caught a few hundred yards downstream from where we fished that went over thirty pounds!

We used to bottom fish as teenagers and would catch eels, catfish and occasionally a carp.

One particular instance stands out in my carp fishing times. We were using some homemade cornbread (and other sweet smelling additives) doughballs. I was using a medium action rod with 25 lb test on it. (I knew the carp were big!) As my friends and I were talking, my bait was taken and after waiting a few seconds, I set the hook.
The fish was big and my rod bent. After fighting to get him up to the surface and onto the creek bank, the fish broke my line and fell back into the creek. Talk about disappointed! We never saw the whole fish before the line broke, but boy was it large! Of course the stories and arguments began between the 4 of us fishing about just how large the fish was. Bottom line … the fish broke my 25 lb test line!

So why am I posting about large carp? Funny you should ask! 🙂 I was just reading an article from the UK about how they lost a local favorite carp. They even have names for their carp! You can check out the article here:

Benson the giant carp.

Hope you enjoy it!

I’ll catch you later.

May 3, 2009May 3, 2009

Springtime Freshwater Fishing Success

After working some OT yesterday, I came home to my younger son asking to go fishing! So of course I was only too happy to oblige!

I decided that we would go to our local lake and try fishing there for a change – rather than going to the creek which is right around the corner.

The usual access to the lake was blocked as the folks who own property adjacent to the lake were doing some construction, so we took the long way around and fished in the coves. My son was using worms for bait and he had his first success using the worms. He caught a nice pumpkin seed sunfish.

After a while, he tried a grub for bait. (We had dug up some worms before we left home and also found three grubs which we threw in for the heck of it.) It was like throwing steak into the middle of a hungry pack of wolves! The bait hardly hit the water before he hooked a nice Roach! (picture below) Another grub on the hook and bam – a nice sun fish. He had a bad cast over some bushes and lost his last grub, but my son’s really excited about using grubs for bait now. Here’s his Roach.

Being the curious 5 year old that he is, he asked me why the fish liked the grubs so much. I showed him how the grubs oozed some of their insides when they went on the hook and explained that the fish could smell that. I asked him if he liked the smell of a nice fresh grilled hamburger? He said “sure Dad”. And I explained that the grub’s oozings smelled like that to the fish! He seemed OK with that explanation and talked about getting more grubs for our next trip. 🙂

After a while, he got tired of fishing and decided he’d sit and watch Dad fish for a bit. So I tried on my old trusty rubber worm and caught a nice Calico Bass – or as southerners call them – a “Crappie”. Here’s a picture:

I tried another cove and had a couple of hits from a large pickerel, but was unsuccessful in setting the hook. (It can very very hard setting a hook with all those teeth in a pickerel!) It was dinner time by then and we headed back home after having a nice successful time freshwater fishing at the lake!

Hope your fishing trip was successful as well!

Catch you later.

April 28, 2009

Freshwater Fishermen Pollute The Water?

I like to think that I’m environmentally concscious. But this report I just read is making me re-think my favorite lure!

You can read the reort here:

Study: Soft plastic lures harm trout, salmon

I ocassionally lose a rubber worm in the water, but I’ll try everything I can to get it back. (I hate to lose lures!) Still, there are times that I lose them. I’ve never given much thought to what happens with those lost lures, but this report has made me re-think how and whether I’ll continue to use them.

It certainly makes a stronger case for using natural bait as opposed to rubber/plastic lures!

My hope is that with today’s technology, the lure manufacturers can come up with a new improved rubber worm that will dissolve in the fish’s stomach after coming into contact with the fish’s stomach acid.

I know that may sound a little utopic in light of all the problems our world faces today, but hey … I’m an optomist at heart!

So what do you think about this latest revelation? Still think we should use rubber/plastic worms for fishing?

Catch you later.

April 22, 2009

Fresh Water Fishing – Lures vs Bait

It seems that wherever fishermen are, there will always be a debate as to which is better for consistently catching fish – lures or bait.

My brother and I used to fish together very frequently when we were younger. He was a bait fisherman much more so than I. We found a great little freshwater fishing stream close to our house which was crammed full of catfish. We enjoyed fishing there and would even get up early on Sunday mornings, before Sunday School, and go fishing for an hour or more.

He would use a bobber and live worms and I would use my secret spinner (the one I used to catch that mysterious fish in my last post!) Being true Americans, we would always be competing to see who could catch the most fish! It was always very close. Some days he would win, other days I would. We would always catch more than 1 too – never kept them – strictly catch and release.

No one I talked to ever used a spinner to catch catfish and they all looked at me as if I was a little crazy for even thinking about it! 😉 In our area, catfish were considered bait only fish! But trust me, my spinner was deadly for catfishing! I would cast it out, let it sink to the bottom and then slowly reel it in, twitching it every once in a while. The catfish loved it!

So which was better? Our conclusion was that neither was better. It came down to a preference on the fisherman’s part. I still prefer lures over bait. But I’ll use bait when I don’t have what I consider to be an appropriate lure for the type of fish I’m after.

How about you? Which do you prefer, lure or bait? Leave a comment and let me know?

Catch you later!

April 7, 2009

Freshwater Fishing and The Environment

The NSF (National Science Foundation) just released an article about how we freshwater fishermen are helping to spread viruses to amphibians! You can read it here:
Spring Fishing Season Arrives … And With It, Amphibian Diseases

I’m not sure about you, but I can safely say that I’m NOT helping to spread viruses to amphibians! I rarely use live bait when I fish, and I’ve never used a live or dead waterdog as bait. I prefer to use the plastic or rubber worm type lures whenever I fish. However, this article makes a good point that I was talking about with my sons as we came back from our first fishing excusion this past weekend.

We are responsible for our environment. As a boy scout, I was taught to leave a place just as clean or better than it was when I found it. I’ve tried to always accomplish this in my life and fishing is no exception. I hate seeing trash on the ground when I’m fishing. So I’ll usually pick it up and make certain that I don’t add more pollution to the environment, no matter what I’m doing.

Along that same point – we saw 2 young girls walking towards the creek with a catfish in a plastic bag. It looked like one from a “pet store” and I asked them if they had caught it. One girl replied “No – it’s my pet”. I could only guess why she was carrying it toward the creek! So I explained to my sons how important it was to NOT introduce fish into waters where they don’t belong. I used the snakehead fish as an example. I explained how it came from China and was introduced into the Potomac and is now killing off our native fish species – all because of some careless human beings.

Which brings me to another thing – when I was a child back in the late fifties and sixties, every morning I’d go outside and there would be dead toads in the street. Fresh road kill from the automobiles passing during the night. We used to catch toads and frogs all the time – every day! But now, I’m lucky if I see one toad the whole summer season. Scientists aren’t sure why the frog and toad populations are dying off, but their numbers are declining and here’s one possible explanation:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96282292
So for the sake of having a few less weeds on our properties, we’re causing the extinction of frogs and toads?!? If you’d like more info on frogs in general, here’s a great resource site I found: http://allaboutfrogs.org/info/resources/leaping/science.html

OK – this post is getting too long, but as freshwater fishermen, let’s be more conscious of our actions and the effect they will have on nature and the environment. And for goodness sake, stop using virus infected waterdogs!

Catch you later.