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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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 ]

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 ]

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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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 ]

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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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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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 ]

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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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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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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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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