These 20 fishing secrets will help you catch trout, bass, bluegills, cats, walleyes, and more—and have the time of your life—all season long.

When rivers heat up in late summer, smallmouths can get downright lazy. The same fish that charged fast-moving streamers and poppers earlier in the season often take to feeding at night, and if your river is loaded with late-summer shad or herring fry, getting bass to eat fur and feathers becomes even harder.

Delaware River smallmouth guide Joe Demalderis (cross​current​guide​service.com) gets around this by leaning on bugs tied with synthetic fur and fiber for the salt, such as a Mushmouth. Flies tied with Angel Hair or Puglisi Fiber retain more buoyancy and a wider profile when wet compared with flies using feathers, bucktail, and rabbit fur, which take on water and sink faster.

Demalderis casts those artificials on the outside of bait schools or in the deeper, slower runs summer smallmouths frequent, and lets them fall broadside with the current. Whereas a Zonker or Clouser would sink away quickly, these synthetic baitfish imitators flutter down slowly, presenting a more accurate representation of a dying baitfish—and an easier target for... [ Read Full Post ]

By Kirk Deeter

I will say this on writing about fly fishing for a living: It won't make you rich in the material sense, but it definitely affords a wealth of adventure. And I'd never trade the latter for the former.

I've now lost count of the number of times I've found myself in a surreal setting: Sitting at a table and drinking Coca-Cola in a sweltering conference room with a Bolivian army colonel; Grilling fish over a fire on a desolate beach in the Baja with a retired member of the "Hollywood by the Sea" gang; Casting in downtown Ballina, Ireland, as the nearby church bells chimed; Climbing out of a bush plane to stare at a Kodiak bear fishing the other side of the river; Riding a dugout canoe at night amidst an array of glowing red caiman eyes after an evening of chasing giant arapaima in the jungle in Guyana—the list goes on, and on...

So here I am in Helsinki, Finland (pictured here, several hours ago on my walk to dinner). It's 3 a.m. Last I heard, my luggage was still in Amsterdam. I will meet my friend Chris Santella in a couple hours, and we'll join a group to take a charter flight to Murmansk, Russia. From there, we'll board a Soviet era Mi-8 helicopter to fly two more hours down the Kola Peninsula to reach the preeminent Atlantic Salmon fishing camp in the world: Ryabaga, on the banks of the Ponoi River. 

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By Nate Matthews

Jeff Thompson started fishing with his father on Indiana's Kentucky Lake when he was six years old. In 1969 he joined the Marine Corps and bought his first bass boat in 1975. Thompson served a full tour with the Marines as a pilot, flight instructor, squadron leader, and eventually as a test pilot for the Harrier jet program. By the time he retired as a major in 1993, he had a master's degree in wing design and jet engines, and a degenerative disc disease in his spine exacerbated by years of high-G maneuvers and hard landings to the point where he could barely walk.

Despite the pain, Thompson never stopped fishing. "For almost three years I had to crawl to get up and down the deck," he said, and had to work the pedals of his trolling motors with his hands. He needed something for his bass boat that would let him pull himself to a standing position, as well as stabilize him as he moved around the boat while casting. "That's when I decided to sit down and draw up something myself," he said.

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By Joe Cermele

This past Monday, fellow blogger Dave Wolak gave us some pretty solid advice for catching bass amidst the chaos that will ensue on many lakes and rivers across the U.S. during this holiday weekend. Though there aren't any largemouth in the Atlantic Ocean, I'll be out there fighting crowds myself, trying to score some stripers before the rip-roaring cigarette boaters and swarms of jet skiers shake off their hangovers and get on the water. 

I have to admit that while holiday crowds are annoying, they are always entertaining. I always see something that makes me either chuckle, shake my head, or gasp in horror. Last Memorial Day weekend I watched a 24-foot boat overloaded with drunken college kids trying to dock at the local harbor-side watering hole. Several of them were sitting with their legs hanging over the gunwales. It was a windy afternoon, and as the pulled into the transient slip, a gust nudged it sideways. Luckily, all we heard was a few painful shrieks as several legs got smashed between the boat and the dock. Had the boat gotten pushed in much faster, there would have been some broken bones for sure.

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By CJ Lotz

The best fishing on the Cumberland River in Tennessee and Kentucky will remain accessible to boaters and anglers thanks to the Freedom to Fish Act passed by Congress this week. The bill prohibits the Army Corps of Engineers from installing physical barriers that bar boats from entering tailwaters of ten dams along the waterway.

On May 21, Congress voted in favor of the bill, which places a two-year moratorium on the Army Corps’ plans. The Senate approved the bill, spearheaded by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and introduced by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), last week. The Freedom to Fish Act wil also require the Army Corps to take down physical barriers, like buoys, already in place at several dams on the river. [ Read Full Post ]

By Ben Romans

On April 28, 2013, Michael Eisele of Heiligenhafen, Germany was enjoying a beautiful, albeit slow day off an island in Norway, fishing for Atlantic cod. Just before calling it quits, Eisele felt a tug on his line, set the hook and endured a 30 minute battle with a 103.6-pound cod—a fish currently poised to eclipse the International Game Fish Association’s (IGFA) 44-year-old world record by nearly five pounds.

News of Eisele’s catch spread fast and the ensuing days have brought him newfound fame, especially in European fishing circles. He’s no stranger to fishing or the possibility of catching a big one on any outing. Thirty years ago, his father, Dieter Eisele, started a fishing tackle firm, Dieter Eisele Sea-Fishing, in Bruchweg, Oldenburg Germany. Even at a young age, Eisele began accompanying his father on big-fish quests.

“I felt like I was involved in my father’s company from the beginning. He took me to the sea, often to the Baltic or north of Norway to fish for Atlantic species,” Eisele says. “When I finished school 25 years ago, I started working with him, and it was great to mix my passion with a professional job. Now, our... [ Read Full Post ]