Category: freshwater fishing

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Freshwater Fishing in NY – Licensing Changes

If you live in or near the state of New York and like to freshwater fish there, you should have a look at the new and proposed regulation changes that the state is considering.

Quick reference: http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/51001.html

These changes are not set in stone yet, the state is allowing you to give them some input prior to enacting the new regulations.

So while the weather is still cold and you’re looking for something to do, peruse through the proposals and send off a quick e-mail to them letting them know what you think of them.

Here’s that link again:
http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/51001.html

Get involved and make a difference – one person can change the world!

Catch you later.

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Freshwater Fishermen vs Saltwater Fishing License

Freshwater fishing is my favorite, but once in a while I may go saltwater fishing.

It’s not a common occurence, but when I do go, it’s usually in Townsend’s Inlet, NJ or Cape Cod for stripers. But it looks like there’ll soon be no more unlicensed saltwater fishing for me and anyone else living in the USA!

Tough times and all the mess that the economy is in are being used as the latest excuse to grab more of our money. What do you think about that? I’m not real happy about it.

I was reading a post about the subject in the Times of Trenton Sports News section. You can check it out here: http://www.nj.com/sports/times/index.ssf?/base/sports-1/1233464727155740.xml&coll=5

Unfortunately, it looks inevitable for a saltwater fishing license, but it’s still not too late to write your state representatives and let them know your thoughts!

Catch you later.

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Snow and Ice – Freshwater Fishing Spots

My 2 sons and I took a hike through our local trail system yesterday and visited some of our freshwater fishing spots. The creek was partially iced over and it was easy to get to places that are unpassable in the summer when the bushes and weeds are just too thick.

My younger son loves to talk and in spite of my efforts to try and quiet him, he kept on talking. I explained that they’d see more wildlife if they kept quiet … but he gets excited about almost everything he sees! Oh to be five years old again!

So we were blazing our own trail along the creek bank (hoping to keep it open once spring and summer comes) and finding good spots to go fishing once the ice and snow melt off. Much to my surprise, my older son spotted something and asked me what it was. Turns out it was a muskrat. We had apparently blocked off his return top the creek and he seemed a little lost. I happened to have my camera with me and snapped a photo:

 

I told the boys how I used to trap muskrats in my younger days and used the money for Christmas presents. We walked for another 20 minutes and actually saw another muskrat! This one was able to get to the water and swam away as we watched. So we followed his tracks in the snow to see where he came from. And of course as we walked my younger son and I both got our feet wet! So we decided it was a good time to head home and grab some lunch.

It was snowing lightly through most of our walk through the creek and as we headed home we talked about fishing during the cold weather… and decided that it was more fun when it was warmer.  Hopefully we’ll have some more snowy walks before the spring returns and we’re back fishing in our favorite spots!

Catch you later.

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Pennsylvania Smallmouth Bass

Calling all freshwater smallmouth bass fishermen.

I found this article posted on the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission’s website. If you live in or near Pennsylvania and fish on the Susquehanna river, you’ll probably be interested in reading this. Here’s an excerpt:

Harrisburg, PA - The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission (PFBC) is inviting anglers
and others with an interest in the management and protection of smallmouth bass in the
Susquehanna River to a free public meeting on Saturday, January 31, at the River Rescue
Building in Harrisburg. The meeting will touch upon subjects such as fish disease, fish
population monitoring results, trends in consumptive water use and water quality
trends. A question and answer session will follow...

If you’d like to read the rest of the article, you’ll find it here:


http://www.fish.state.pa.us/newsreleases/2009/smb_symposium.htm

Hey – almost forgot ….. here’s wishing you all a very happy and prosperous New Year!
May your lines be tight and your creels be full!

Catch you later.

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The Twelfth Day Of Christmas – Fresh Water Fishing Style

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me twelve tackle boxes, eleven snap swivels, ten spinners spinning, nine jigs a jigging, eight bobbers bobbing, seven sinkers sinking, six kits for rigging, … five purple worms … four rebel lures, three weedless hooks, two spools of line and a fishing pole complete with a reel.

Merry Christmas to you all! While twelve tackle boxes may seem like a lot of tackleboxes – it’s not really! I like to keep my things organized and this includes my fishing gear. So I have 2 huge tackle boxes – one for salt water fishing and the other for fresh water fishing!

I further divide my tackle by the type of fish I’m going to be fishing for. I have small compartmented plastic tackle boxes which I place in or next to the big tackle boxes. The rubber worms in one box, the spinners in another, the spoons in another … you get the idea! Then in the individual tackle boxes, I have separate compartments for the different colored lures. I hate it when the red colored worms are sitting with the green worms and their color bleeds into each other! Makes for some real weird colored worms! 😉

So keeping things organized can get to be quite a chore. But if you have a box like this one shown below, it’s not very hard at all.

Notice that you can pull out one of the trays and just take that for the day’s fishing trip. Very cool idea! Of course, if you’re not sure what you’ll find when you go to a new lake or stream, then you can take the whole box. What do you think? Cool eh?

Well this concludes my twelve days of Christmas for freshwater fishing. Hope you enjoyed it and that you all have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. If you don’t happen to celebrate Christmas, then I hope you have a happy holiday – whichever one you celebrate!

Catch you later.

-Mark

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The Eleventh Day Of Christmas – Freshwater Fishing Style

On the eleventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me eleven snap swivels, ten spinners spinning, nine jigs a jigging, eight bobbers bobbing, seven sinkers sinking, six kits for rigging, … five purple worms … four rebel lures, three weedless hooks, two spools of line and a fishing pole complete with a reel.

In this day and age, when everything is green, snap swivels are a perfect fit! You know that monofilament fishing line stays around forever and creates quite a bad litter problem. So rather than constantly cutting the line and re-tying a knot every time you change your lure/hook – use a snap swivel instead!

I’m your typical fisherman. I enjoy taking it easy and spending as much time fishing as possible. And having to cut the line and re-tie a knot just takes up too much time and keeps my lures out of the water too long! 🙂 So I almost always use snap swivels when fishing. Just push the latch open, pull off your old lure and put on a new one, push the snap closed and away you go. Very easy!

You can get snap swivels in all sizes to suit your fishing needs too! I use the heavy ones for salt water fishing (on the rare occasion that I do that!) and the smaller ones for freshwater fishing. I like ultra-lite fishing, so I usually use the smallest ones I can find. That way, they don’t weigh down the lure I’m using and the additional flash or reflection that they provide helps attract more fish. It’s a win – win situation!

Never tried sanp swivels? They’re cheap and available just about every fishing store you go to. Look at this – even amazon has some available!

So do yourself and the environment a favor and get some snap swivels today!

Catch you later.

-Mark

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The Ninth Day of Christmas

On the ninth day of Christmas my true love gave to me nine jigs a jigging, eight bobbers bobbing, seven sinkers sinking, six kits for rigging, … five purple worms … four rebel lures, three weedless hooks, two spools of line and a fishing pole complete with a reel.

I’ve always read about how effective jigs are. But most of the water near my home is too shallow for those lead headed jigs. The ones that look like this:

Lead Head Jig

Though I will admit that once when I fished at the Tuckahoe-Corbin City Fish and Game Preserve in Cape May County, New Jersey, I did actually use lead headed jigs with moderate success. It was also the first time I ever caught a yellow perch. It seemed that the jig I used was exactly what they were looking for! It was a lead head jig with an inch and a half of deer hair tied to it.

That was back in the 1970’s and time has marched on. Now there are smaller jigs that are weedless and have rattles built right into them. Very nice! Berkley makes some real nice jigs with great color variations. If you’re interested, you can read about them here:

My older son was using a jig this past summer and caught some bass in our local creek. So jigs are effective if used properly. (Even here in our shallow East Coast freshwater creeks and lakes.)

What about your area? Have any of you ever fished with jigs and had success?

Here’s to a succeful day of freshwater fishing for each one of us!

Catch you later.

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The Eighth Day Of Christmas

On the eighth day of Christmas my true love gave to me eight bobbers bobbing, seven sinkers sinking, six kits for rigging, … five purple worms … four rebel lures, three weedless hooks, two spools of line and a fishing pole complete with a reel.

Do you use bobbers? Which ones do you use? Think they’re all the same?

I use bobbers occasionally. Mostly when I take my younger son freshwater fishing. He likes to use live bait and it’s easy to tell when you’ve got a fish on if there’s a bobber on your line. But my younger son aside, I’ve been known to use bobbers as a weight when fishing flies on a spinning system. Yep, you read that right! I’ll tie a fly (wet fly – one that sinks) on the end of my 4 pound test and put a bobber 2 feet above it. The bobber gives you enough weight to be able to cast the fly and also acts as a strike indicator! I’ll usually use a small tear-drop shaped bobber to do this type of fishing. And yes – it works! I’ve used this technique to catch bass when they weren’t hitting anything else. That’s your bass fishing tip for the day! 🙂

I used to think bobbers were all the same – with variations in their size and shape. But I recently read about a new bobber “with a brain”. I was thinking “yeah… right” but when I read the write up, it actually looks interesting. Check this out:

Notice the product’s description – “This Smart Fishing Bobber is a slip & lock system without a Line Stopper. Simply: Just cast the Bobber with a Brain out and it will allow the line to slip thru until the sinker finds the bottom, then it fills with water, LOCKS THE LINE, and holds your baits inches to feet off the bottom with the sinker as the “anchor.” The hook held above the bottom can be “danced” or jigged by slightly pulling on your rod, makes dead or plastic baits ‘come alive!'”

Sounds very interesting – but come on – does it really do all this? Any of you readers ever try this thing? Would you mind writing a comment about it here please? They say they’ve been selling for over 8 years now but this is the first I’ve heard of it. If it really does work, I’d love to hear your opinions and maybe I’ll actually buy and try one! (I’m used to getting a 6 or 10 pack of bobbers for a couple bucks, and this is 2 bobbers for 9 dollars. Kind of pricey for a bobber!)

Well, I’d really love to hear any of your experiences with any type of bobbers, so please write a comment to share with everyone!

Catch you later.

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The Seventh Day Of Christmas

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me, seven sinkers sinking, six kits for rigging, … five purple worms … four rebel lures, three weedless hooks, two spools of line and a fishing pole complete with a reel.

Woo hoo, man am I getting a lot of great fishing gear! Sinkers – wait a minute, what are they for? Well I have to confess, there are times when i go cat fishing and carp fishing in our local creek and I need a weight to hold the bait down on the bottom of the creek bed. Not a lot of weight but enough to keep in down there where the bottom feeders can find it!

It’s amazing how many various types of fish our local creek has! Every June, the big carp come up from the Delaware River and spawn in our creek. How big you ask? Well I had 25 pound test line on my reel and the carp broke it like it was thread. The carp actually can get as big as in the 30 plus pound range. Not bad for a creek that’s only 20 – 30 feet wide most of the time!

I actually use whatever weight is available when I’m bottom feeder fishing. I still have some of those old teardrop shaped real lead weights in my tackle box! But mostly I’ll use a couple of split-shot weights if the current isn’t too strong. Here’s some pictures of the two:

lead sinker

splitshot weight

OK – that’s it for now – have a great day!

Catch you later.

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The Sixth Day Of Christmas

On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me six kits for rigging, … five purple worms … four rebel lures, three weedless hooks, two spools of line and a fishing pole complete with a reel.

Have you bought any of those “bass fishing kits? You know like this:

I’ve bought a few of these and they usually are a good deal! I look for the kits that have good colored worms in them. As I’ve posted previously, I don’t really use the weights that come in these kits. I rig the worms my own special way. But if I find a kit that has weedless hooks and has good colored worms, I’ll buy it in a heartbeat!

Playing with your rubber worm bassing kit will help you experiment and try different ways to rig your worms. It will also keep your mind off the winter and the snow that we sometimes get this time of year! I can hardly wait for the warmer weather and catching some more good bass!

Catch you later.