Texas: Brazos River guide Shane Davies hooked a 10-lb. bass on a live rattlesnake. Here’s the story—with the pictures to prove it.
Trip Report: Smallmouth on Pennsylvania's Upper...Jay Cassell fights dirty water and extreme summer heat to put the... |
![]() | Wrap Bait Fillets on Flatfish Plugs to Catch More...A quick recipe for "bait-wrapping" flatfish lures with meat in the fall. |
![]() | Three Ways to Customize Your Flipping Rod For Bass...Catch more bass with a lighter, balanced rod |
![]() | Show-Me SmalliesWhat's better than spending a summer day catching smallmouth bass... |
![]() | Late-Summer Bass Fishing Tips: Where and How to...By late summer, bass fishing is not for the faint of heart. Largemouths are often deep... |
![]() | An Interview with Kim Bain-Moore, First Woman to...How I Fish: An interview with the first woman to compete in the Bassmaster Classic. |
![]() | John Merwin's Secrets For Casting FartherHas there ever been a fisherman who didn’t want to cast farther at one time or... |
Now about those sex ads. You know, the ads in the back of our print edition that tout various male-enhancement products. Some people complain about them. Others just smirk. But what if some of those things turned out to be great fishing products?
Here’s an example. Suppose you’re fishing a headwater creek for little brook trout and keep a few for dinner. The minimum legal size is 6 inches, but you’ve inadvertently kept a 5-incher. Uh-oh, here comes the game warden. Quick! Slip that little brookie into the pocket-size vacuum device and with a few fast pumps you’ve turned that trout into a legal fish!
The potential here is just wonderful. Need some bigger plastic worms or maybe a few larger dry flies? No problem. There are some pills that supposedly increase the size of certain things. So maybe you could dissolve a couple of tablets in water and then soak your size 14 Light Cahills overnight. By morning, they’d be size 12s or maybe even 10s!
Other products have a different application. There’s an aftershave lotion that supposedly will make females more affectionate. Well, hey....my steelhead flies could use a little more love. There are lots of female steelhead in the river,... [ Read Full Post ]

I think the Field & Stream website has reached its traffic-driving zenith with their photo essay, led by an attractive, topless Euro chick hugging a giant catfish ... Realizing that I simply cannot crash through that ceiling, I bring you the next best thing... one of the world's most notable pro bass anglers happily engaged with a fly rod...
You know the drill... write the caption, win a prize. This time the winner gets...
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So I’ve recently become a pick-up truck owner. I've only had SUVs in the past, but given the nature of my hobbies, I finally decided that a pick-up was more practical in many ways. I only had one problem: I couldn’t stand laying rods in the bed with them hanging over the tailgate. I’ve just seen too many sticks get snapped or lose guides that way. So I began to tinker.

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Staying alive. Personal safety is high on my fall fishing list. The water temperature this morning on one of the big lakes I often fish is 51 degrees. Normally dressed, if I fall out of the boat there’s a good chance of death by hypothermia.

So a couple of years ago, I bought one of the Mustang Survival Jackets shown here. It’s a floatation coat/PFD with enough foam inside to also protect my body’s core temperature in the water. I figure that’ll be enough so I can either make it to shore or somehow struggle back into or on the boat on my own. The jacket is also plenty warm and comfortable while fishing.
This was not some free sample, by the way, but cost somewhere well north of $200. When I explained it to my wife, she who otherwise tends to parsimony immediately bought one too.
I have similar thoughts about river fishing. Neoprene chest waders aren’t as comfortable as the new breathables I most often wear, but unlike breathables the neoprene will act as a wetsuit if I take an inadvertent dive. So there would be some warmth during and after any... [ Read Full Post ]
Wanna talk to other anglers in your geographical area or perhaps for an upcoming trip somewhere else? Get info, share stories, pictures, meet fishing buddies or get the low-down on guides? Check out GoFISHn...
GoFISHn is "where anglers connect,". It's a place where anglers can easily share stories and information, and small businesses who serve anglers can discover new customers and stay in touch with existing ones.
GoFISHn is distinctive in this realm (at least I think so) by bringing in a very clean and open design that's easy to use, and it makes the creation of new content -- whether it's a quick status update or a photo gallery or a custom map -- easy to create and publish.
They've created a way to review gear and ask/answer questions, both of which are integrated...
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That’s a tough question, and some of the answers I’ve gotten over the years might surprise you.
There’s no question that all the media buzz around pro-bass anglers and their tournaments has made them hugely visible. Put really big bucks into a fishing contest, and the television cameras will roll. But is it the fish that count? Or is it the money?
A few weeks ago I had a long talk with Denny Brauer, a true gentleman and one of the best-known of all the pro-bass guys. I asked him about the question-and-answer sessions he sometimes gets into with regular fisherman, including young ones.
So what kind of questions does he get? “People want to know how to get sponsors,” he told, rolling his eyes a little. “Or, where do I get a shirt like that?” Notably, questions about how to fish more successfully or which lures to use under what conditions aren’t at the top of the list.
It seems to me that people are buying into the marketing. And marketing is not fishing. But what do you think? [ Read Full Post ]
Sometimes you read something that - to be perfectly honest - leaves you feeling hopeless and doomed. Something so depressing it makes you want to throw up your hands, shout "to hell with it all!" and head straight to the nearest bar. Something like this, from the LA Times.
The latest figures from Nielsen have children's TV usage at an eight-year high. Children's health advocates warn of adverse effects.
More than an entire day -- that's how long children sit in front of the television in an average week, according to new findings released Monday by Nielsen.
The amount of television usage by children reached an eight-year high, with kids ages 2 to 5 watching the screen for more than 32 hours a week on average and those ages 6 to 11 watching more than 28 hours. The analysis, based on the fourth quarter of 2008, measured children's consumption of live and recorded TV, as well as VCR and game console usage.
"They're using all the technology available in their households," said Patricia McDonough, Nielsen's senior vice president of insights, analysis and policy. "They're using the DVD, they're on the Internet. They're not giving up any media --... [ Read Full Post ]
I clearly remember my first taste of cannibalism in the fish world. I was maybe 7 and reeling in a small bluefish when all of a sudden a bluefish five times the size of the one on my hook pounced on my catch and severed my line. This happens all the time. Big pike eat little pike. Giant brown trout eat little browns. So how big is a great white shark that cuts a 10-foot great white in half in two bites?

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Just yesterday, Merwin posted a blog on essential items you should never forget to bring out on a boat. I might have a new essential item if the Bheestie Bags I received the other day do what they're supposed to.
I have a terrible history of ruining electronic devices on fishing trips. I've burned I don't know how many phones, a hand-held GPS, and most recently, $2,000 worth of video and still-camera equipent when some high-salinity water found its way into my dry bag. I baked all the gear on the dashboard of a fellow angler's truck, but it didn't matter. It was trashed. That was in Texas, and I had to waste a whole fishing day driving 67 miles in the lodge truck to the closest Best Buy. What can I say? I'm dedicated to my craft and wasn't going home without a video.
Though there are all sorts of tricks for saving wet electronics (salt, bag of rice, etc.), Bheestie Bags weigh nothing, travel easily, and are loaded with beads that are supposed to draw water out like no other and hold it there without re-wetting the... [ Read Full Post ]

The most impressive--and useful--new fishing product I’ve seen for the coming year is a GPS-based trolling-motor control system from the folks at Minn Kota. A small navigation unit in the bow-mount motor head combined with a hand-held remote will automatically operate the motor so you can “hover” in place, for example, or precisely follow a pre-recorded track as you fish.
I’ll be writing about this at greater length in a forthcoming print edition, but the news is getting out there already, so here’s a quick look. A feature called “spot lock” uses GPS to record your position. The motor will then self-adjust its own speed and direction to hold your boat in that position, even as wind or current tend to push you away. That means you’ll no longer have to fight to stay in one spot while jigging a deep hump for walleyes, for example.
‘Record A Track,” meanwhile, uses the internal GPS to record your path as you use the motor to fish along the outside of a weedline, for example. The recorded track can be as long as two miles. If you want to fish the same path... [ Read Full Post ]
I know this is a little off-topic for the blog, but it's too good. I had to share it. While looking at a few news sites this morning, I stumbled across this headline: "Woman Fries And Eats Pet Goldfish After Fight With Ex-Husband." Here's the story.

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With striper season just beginning to take shape in the Northeast, I'm starting to get in that mode where I check tackle shops reports 3,000 times a day. My stomach knots up a bit every time I get a cell phone call from a friend who is more than likely on the beach while I'm at work. I go to bed at night wondering if I should have gone fishing and if the morning reports will tell me working all day on a couple hours sleep would have been justified.

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I struggled how to work this image into a blog post about fly fishing for the past couple of weeks. Then it hit me...The caption contest. I mean, how could I not post this gem of a restroom sign? I found it while shooting a web story for F&S about stocking the high altitude lakes with airplanes (story forthcoming). I figure the bathroom was in a Department of Wildlife airplane hanger, and the pilot was stocking fish, so yeah - I can post it on a fly fishing blog. Right?

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Sunday afternoon I got a call from my friend Dieter Scheel, who is a local Delaware River guide stationed in Lambertville, NJ. "The smallmouth bite is on fire," he said. "Want to come out this afternoon?" Of course I did, so I quickly pulled together boxes of poppers, stickbaits, Senkos, tubes, streamers, bunny flies...you name it. I was going armed to the teeth. When I get to the boat, Dieter says, "Just leave all that stuff in the car. It won't do you any good."

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One of the most perplexing things in all of angling is how fish see and respond to color. And the more one learns about fish vision, the greater the puzzle becomes. That’s because fish apparently do not see color the same way that humans do. You might logically think that a beautifully finished frog-pattern lure is eaten by a bass because the fish thinks it looks like a frog. But that’s not necessarily so.

As most people know, the spectrum of visible light is composed of a variety of colors ranging from reds to deep violets. That spectrum includes ultraviolet light invisible to humans but visible to fish. There are some new soft-plastic baits out now [photo] with additives that fluoresce under UV or so-called black light. The color difference is striking.
Tightlines Lure Company in Missouri introduced these baits last summer. I have fished with some and can report that they do indeed work on largemouth bass. I have not yet fished them enough to say they work better than more conventional baits.
Even though the baits glow brightly under UV light, that glow is what humans see and is not necessarily what fish see... [ Read Full Post ]
So how about the new biodegradable fishing lines and flyfishing-tippet materials? A little-known company called Bioline has for the past few years been marketing a corn-based polymer fishing line that is clear and that the company claims will biodegrade naturally within 5 years. This in contrast to common nylon monofilament that can persist in nature for as long as 600 years.

Wright-McGill has recently bought Bioline (or so I’ve been told) and is newly marketing the product as spools of flyfishing tippet. I guess they figure fly anglers will be most willing to pay a premium for an environmentally friendly fishing product. This is all so new that it doesn’t yet appear on Wright-McGill’s website. But when Bioline was selling 30-yard tippet spools, retail was about $10 each or roughly twice the cost of premium nylon.
So how does this stuff measure up? I obtained a size 4X sample tippet spool from some Wright-McGill reps at a recent trade show. The spool is labeled as .009-inch diameter and 6-pound test. On my own micrometer and line-testing machine, the 4X Bioline measured .011-inch and slightly more than 7-pound-test (dry).
A “normal” 4X nylon tippet will be .007-inch... [ Read Full Post ]
Not long ago I was wading a local river for smallmouth and mixed in with the day's catch were a bunch of chunky rock bass (a.k.a. redeye, goggle-eye and rock perch). I've been catching these fish since I was old enough to cast and enjoy them very much. If you ask me, they fight a hell of a lot harder than crappies and bluegills, and they might just be prettier. So I wonder, does anyone else target or care about them?

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From NorthJersey.com:
The state Division of Fish and Wildlife has announced that John Viglione of Ringwood made his way onto the state record fish list recently by landing a new state record northern pike. Viglione was fishing in Pompton Lake when he reeled in the 30-pound, 8.5-ounce fish, eclipsing the old record caught 32 years ago in Spruce Run Reservoir in Hunterton County's Clinton Township by 6.5 ounces. . . .
Viglione was using. . . a Blue Fox Vibrax spinner.
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Without question, a large part of what makes fishing so appealing is the chance for the unexpected. Well, this Sunday, something incredibly unexpected happened...and my camera was rolling. Chad Love, who many of you know from our Field Notes blog, flew out from Oklahoma for a shot at his dream fish: tuna. He never caught one, but instead ended up boating a near 600-pound blue marlin, which in my opinion trumps any tuna in the ocean.
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While rummaging through a box of old books not long ago, I found a marble notebook that served as my fishing log. It was from 2003, and the first 10 pages had 5 trips logged, all with meticulous info ranging from water temperature, to wind, tide, hatches, and air temperature. The rest of the notebook was blank.
You would think that since I'm a writer, I'd stick with a fishing log, but I guess on trip number 6 I came home dead tired and just said "eh, I'll skip it tonight." I never went back to it. But without question, I'd be a far better angler if I had kept it up.
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From an IGFA press release:
Documentation for a much talked about 22 lb 4 oz largemouth bass, caught [by Manabu Kurita] from Japan’s largest lake in July, has arrived into the International Game Fish Association (IGFA) headquarters for world record recognition. . . .
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This past Sunday morning was rare. I wasn't fishing. That doesn't happen often, but prior obligations found me in the quaint river town of Lambertville, NJ. On my way home, I happened past the Golden Nugget Flea Market, which I haven't visited in years, and just like that I decided to rekindle my love of hunting for fishing treasures at the dirt mall. I confess, I'm a closet flea market and yard sale addict.

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Though I'd love to tell you the reel below is the latest from Orvis inspired by the likes of Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer, I don't think they've recognized the marketability of punk-inspired reels...yet. Yes, it is an Orvis reel -- my old 7/8 Rocky Mountain to be exact -- but the zebra finish with red brushed-aluminum spool is pure custom. How did such a thing of beauty come to be? Here's the scoop.

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Writing about fishing for Field & Stream tends to make me a lightning rod for new and often odd fishing gadgets and gizmos. Here’s the latest: A fish hook that requires no knot for attaching to your line. Simply double your line, place the resulting loop over a tiny post on the hook shank, then wrap the doubled line around the hook shank four times. The Easy2Hook is going to revolutionize fishing--or so the maker tells me. Here’s a short video to show you how it works.
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I can remember extreme excitement at the prospect of eating trout I caught on opening day when I was little. But the truth is that it was all fun up until the actual eating part, where I'd take two bites and opt for the french fries on the side. To be honest I'm still not a huge fan of trout, especially the stocked variety. One day when I have kids, I can only hope they're as into eating fish as the lad in the video below.
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