By John Merwin

It was 23 degrees below zero here this morning. I quickly fired up the wood stove, which was just as quickly taken over by our old cat. Too cold for chasing mice, I guess. Too cold for fishing, too. At least as far as I’m concerned, although I know some hardy souls who will go ice-fishing no matter how cold it is.

So I did the next best thing, which was to go online and order a new rod. This was made at least somewhat easy by the price: less than $100. And that in turn is indicative of a relatively new trend in tackle that seems to be peaking for the 2011 season. There’s more good, inexpensive fishing gear available than ever before.

Whether you flyfish for trout, throw a Jitterbug for bass, or troll for walleyes, you can get into the game this year for less. And that doesn’t mean with the crummy, budget fall-apart tackle you might remember from a decade ago. Although prices are down, quality in general is up.

By Joe Cermele

Yesterday, in my blog regarding catching your first fish of 2011, reader King Fisher called me out for lipping the smallmouth in this photo. He wrote:

“I get so sick and upset with photos from so called "veteran fisherman?" showing that it is somehow cool to try to rip the bottom of fishes mouth back to their tails! Cracking jaws like that is a selfish pose and offers nothing to support our resources. Come on, lets show some" veteran" understanding about handling fish correctly.”

I read every comment I receive whether positive or negative, and I thought this was a good opportunity to open the floor to the issue of lipping. I found it very surprising that so many readers gave King Fisher a negative comment review.

By John Merwin

Once in a while, we as anglers hit the mother lode. Instead of catching nothing, we are catching everything, seemingly all at once. Non-stop fish, one after another, big ones and little ones. Which brings up this question: How many fish are enough?

I was once flyfishing for northern pike in far northern Saskatchewan (photo). There were lots of pike, big ones to 40 inches and more, and they were very easy to catch. At one point, I caught nine large pike on nine consecutive casts to a particular spot. This was from no particular skill on my part. The big, dumb fish were just that willing.

After a while, the novelty of this fishing wore off. There was no challenge to it, and it got kind of boring. So we quit pike fishing for a while and started flyfishing for lake trout instead. The lakers were much harder to catch, and when we did get one it was that much more of a thrill.