Springtime Sunnies

Happy Spring!

If you live in the northern hemisphere, you’re well into your spring season. And if you’re like me, you’ve been too busy to get outside much, let alone go fresh water fishing!

But I did have some free time this past Sunday. So I hopped online and bought my resident fishing license and finally got to go fishing with my sons. We went to our local creek and had some fun catching lots of sunfish or “sunnies” as we call them. Most of the fish looked like a cross between a redbreast sunfish and a pumpkinseed sunfish. They all had very brilliant orange bellies and their upper coloring varied but was usually a bluish-gray color.

I didn’t get a picture of one (I’ll include one next time we go) but they were fiesty and very hungry!

I used my trusty old Hildebrandt spinner and caught a fish on my 3rd cast! I’m not sure why the fish like spinners in the spring – but I do know that the spinners work best this time of year! Here’s a picture of my spinner:

Best Springtime Freshwater Fishing Lure
My favorite springtime spinner

So we had a fun, successful and wet trip (I got my feet wet trying to save my younger son’s tackle box!) to start off the new freshwater fishing season.

Hopefully all of your trips will be successful throughout the year!

Catch you later!

FRESHWATER FISHING TIPS & TECHNIQUES – Paperback

FRESHWATER FISHING TIPS & TECHNIQUES - Paperback

FRESHWATER FISHING TIPS & TECHNIQUES is a 222 page book designed to teach everything from Ice fishing to fly fishing. There is an excellent knot tying section along with facts about various game fish species. Expert angler Gene Kugach offers hundreds of tips and techniques for catching all types of freshwater fish based on his years of onstream experience. Filled with easy-to-understand illustrations, and geared for both the novice and the more experienced angler, Freshwater Fishing Tips and Techniques covers every aspect of freshwater fishing! 300 drawings throughout the book.

For fresh water fishing, what are the best times to go at?

Is their even a certian time fish tend to feed, or just any time during the day?

If you are fishing a lake, it really depends on A: the type of fish (catfish, nighttime; trout; morning or evening; etc.) B: is it raining or sunny? (if it is raining, any time is a good time for trout) and C: how long ago were they planted, if applicable (you usually want to wait anywhere from an hour to a day to let them get acquainted with their new homes).

If you are fishing a river, you will want to monitor your tides. High, outgoing tide is the best time for fishing on the river in my opinion, however, there are a lot of swing moments where the water is not moving at all, this may be a good time for certain types of fish.

Good luck out there.

powered by Yahoo Answers

Father’s Day Freshwater Fishing

Wow – it seems its been a long time since I was able to go fishing. Too many things going on lately and just too much rain! I can’t remember the last time 24 hours passed without some type of precipitation!

So on my time at home yesterday, and since it was Father’s Day, the boys and I decided to go fishing! With all the rain, it was very easy to find worms. Two minutes and the worm box was full of large squiggling worms …. let’s go!

We went to the local creek since the last time we went to one of the lakes nearby. It was lightly drizzling and the tide was high and starting to go out. The water was murky from all the rain. So I advised my sons that lure selection should be on the bright side. My younger son kept getting snagged and tangled and I spent more time helping him than fishing. So we switched him back to bait and using the worms. My older son changed to worms as well.

Soon after, they started catching sun fish or sunnies as we call them. A couple of pumpkinseed sunnies and a few bluegills. We didn’t catch any bass, pickerel or other game fish. But we had a nice time getting out and finally casting the lines again! Since it was raining, I didn’t take any pictures of the boy’s conquests, much to my younger son’s chagrin! (He likes to brag to Mom!)

Hopefully the rain will stop at some point in the future and we’ll get out again – it’s summer after all! So enough with the April showers already!

On another note, I just read that the In-Fisherman has created a new website – they have lots of good information and I thought you all might like to check it out. So here’s a link for you. Let me know what you think of their new site?

http://www.In-Fisherman.com

Catch you later.

-Mark

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.


Freshwater 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:


Freshwater Roach

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.

Best Freshwater Fishing Lure For Spring?

I’ve seen this question being asked in some of the forums I’m in. So I was wondering what I would say is the best lure for springtime freshwater fishing?

If you’ve read some of my earlier posts, you know I like spinners for spring fishing. I also like floating minnow imitation lures like the ones that Rapala and Rebel make. And of course, being the rubber worm lover that I am, I’ll always try one no matter what the time of year. But overall, I think I get the most success and action with spinners in the spring.

In my previous post, I talked about a spinning lure that I use to catch catfish. And in the post before that, you can see part of the actual spinning lure I was using to catch that unknown fish! Both of those were the same lure. So what is this lure that I use? It’s an old Hildebrandt flicker spinner lure! Here’s a picture:


Hildebrandt flicker spinner

Sorry about the quality of the picture – it was taken with my cell phone! You probably can’t tell, but I have a number 1 and a number 2 weight lure that I use. They are very light, which goes along with my ultra-light spinning outfit. I use 4 lb test monofilament and I can cast these a good 50 – 70 feet. (You can always add a little split shot if you need a little more weight.)

So here’s a better “store” picture of the lure:


Hildebrandt flicker spinner

Are these good lures? Well remember, I bought mine back around 1970 and I’m still using it! And as you can see, the fish still love it!

So if I had to pick just one lure for freshwater fishing in the spring, it would have to be the Hildebrandt flicker spinner lure!

How about you? What’s you’re “best” lure for springtime freshwater fishing? Please post a comment and share with us?

Catch you later!

Freshwater Fishing Tips – Topwater Lures

I saw this video on you tube about the proper way to fish freshwater fishing topwater lures and thought you all might like to check it out! So here it is:

So what do you think? Are you fishing your topwater lures too slowly?

I’m starting to get back into the swing of things and getting the fishing equipment ready. I’ll share some more news with you tomorrow.

Catch you later!

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

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

The Tenth Day Of Christmas

On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me, 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.

Are you a fan of spinning lures? I am! When I was younger, my family and I travelled all over the USA as well as Canada. Every place we went, I looked at the fishing lures and usually bought a couple. So I have many spinning lures that don’t really produce for me in my current area in which I live (Southern NJ, USA), but I still like to look at them and dream about going back to where I bought them and catching a huge lunker with them!

Fishing in the shallower waters of New Jersey means that you’ll need a lighter spinner – one that doesn’t sink too much or run too deep. I have two favorite spinners that I like to use. When I’m looking to catch bass, I’ll pull out one of my panther-martin spinners. They’re small but boy do they attract the bass! Never heard of a panther-martin? Well check them out here:

I caught a very nice 5 pound bass on my favorite panther-martin in our local creek. It has a feather tied to the treble hook at the back of it. I’m always amazed that such a large fish would be attracted to such a small lure!

So what do you use if you want a trout or some other game fish besides bass? Well I like to use rooster tail spinners. Here’s what a rooster tail spinner looks like:

When we were in Banff National Park in Canada, we rented a boat and went fishing for trout in one of the local lakes. My brother and I both were using a rooster tail. Mine was black and his was red. Other than the colors, the lures were identical. The result? I outfished my brother 3 to 1! And I caught the largest fish that day – a beautiful 3-4 pound Kamloop trout. So do yourself a favor and get a black rooster tail spinner! 😉

Any other spinners that you may know of that deserve mentioning here? Please write and let me know.

Catch you later.

-Mark