By Phil Surratt
BDN Staff Writer
psurratt@bransondailynews.com
A year ago, Shepherd of the Hills fish hatchery took on a new look with the addition of a state-of-the-art brown trout rearing facility.
The operation now allows the Missouri Department of Conservation to raise thousands of brown trout annually. But in the first year of operation, the facility hit a few bumps in the road.
Coldwater Hatcheries Supervisor James Civiello said high water in the spring and elevated water temperatures caused some problems.
“This year, water temperatures got up to 66 degrees and that increases the number of parasites in the water. That, in turn, causes fish loss,” Civiello said.
About eight thousand gallons of water a minute comes into the new facility from Shepherd of the Hills rainbow trout hatchery via Table Rock Lake.
“We had a bit of a struggle dealing with the warm water but we got around it,” he said.
Civiello said the new facility is a step up in the department’s effort to grow more quality trout, not only for Lake Taneycomo but the region’s other cold water fisheries.
“The design is great. We put in 12 new rearing raceways and several intermediate raceways as fish get larger,” he said.
A big addition to the new rearing facility is a fish ladder — a concrete stair-step from the river to the hatchery — and big browns are finding their way home.
Civiello said it is natural for brown trout to return to where they were hatched and the ladder makes it easier for them to get back.
“Over the years, I’ve found that a fish ladder is very important to good production,” Civiello said.
“We got a very good return of 3-year-old broodstock. In three egg-takes, we got 300,000 eggs. It worked just the way we designed it,” he said.
The early life-stage of a brown trout can be touch and go. At a critical time, fish need to be protected from disease.
Civiello said incubation goes well, but when the fish hatch, they go through a life-stage called the sack fry.
“That’s when they have the embryonic sack they absorb. In that life-stage we cannot treat for parasites because you kill the production,” he said.
Civiello said they lucked out and had more fish available during this past year’s spawn.
“We took another spawn and moved those eggs to another building, which is protected from high concentrations of parasites,” he said.
Systemwide, the conservation department wants to increase brown trout volume by 20 percent.
Approximately 700,000 rainbow trout are released into Lake Taneycomo each year. The number of brown trout is around 10,000.
Other hatcheries in the state are being renovated to increase production capabilities, as well.
Renovations include the addition of liquid oxygen to help trout grow faster.
The new Branson facility has allowed Civiello to spread out production and create better fish quality. Other state hatcheries will also benefit during times of drought and poor water quality.
Shepherd of the Hills will be able to provide fish to keep their production numbers up.
The last renovation at Shepherd of the Hills Fish Hatchery was back in the 1970s.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
A Fine Trout Steam
Things are quiet on the Big Thompson these days, or at least as quiet as the winter weather can make one of the most popular trout streams on the Front Range. With U.S. 34 snaking along just yards away and lots of public access, from Estes Park to Loveland, the Big T is about as accessible as a trout stream can get. Rarely is the river completely empty of anglers. Flows out of Olympus Dam keep at least a little water open year round, and if it's humanly possible to fish, there will be a truck in the parking lot of Wapiti Park, and at least one angler will be working the water that glides behind the go-cart tracks, batting cages and miniature golf courses that crowd along the north bank. It's as heavily fished as a trout stream can get. Names get attached to stretches of trout streams. Downstream, there is Cottonwood, Caddis Flats, Sleepy Hollow. The water right below the dam is a run of river some call The Petting Zoo.
Rainbow trout may or may not be the most caught of the trouts, but they are almost certainly the most killed of the trouts. Easy to rear in hatcheries, 'bows are the backbone of put-and-take trout fisheries in and on the fringes of trout country.
But rearing trout for the masses to catch and eat is an expensive proposition. It costs the Colorado Division of Wildlife (DOW) $1.10 to produce and deliver a 10-inch rainbow, the size of stocked fish. In 2008 alone, the DOW dumped 27,000 “catchables” into Lake Estes.
Meanwhile, wild rainbows, as has been well documented, have been decimated across the country in the past 20 years as whirling disease has taken hold. Wild populations have crashed, and brown trout — predatory, wilier and, in the opinion of many anglers, harder to catch — have moved into the void. Most of the trout streams on the Front Range — which were, between the time the natives (greenback cutthroats) were effectively wiped out and the time whirling disease moved in, primarily rainbow fisheries — are now loaded with brown trout.
Ben Swigle is a fish biologist keeping tabs on the Big Thompson for the DOW, putting him in position to quantify aspects of the river fishermen experience mainly subjectively.
“It's right near its top,” Swigle said when asked how close the river is to its potential as a trout fishery. “I don't think we can push it any further.”
From the dam to Waltonia, the river is managed as a catch-and-release fishery, and it has become well-known not just for the quality of the fishing, but the health of the wild rainbow trout population.
“The St. Vrain, the Poudre, even the South Platte down lower — those are all brown trout streams,” Swigle said. He reports that while the population of brown trout is healthy, especially as you move downriver and out of the catch-and-release water, the proportion of rainbows to browns is unprecedented in the region. “The Big Thompson is very unique in the fact that whirling disease hasn't taken its toll.”
For that, you can credit the government, even if a wild rainbow fishery is an accident of management of the river rather than a goal: the Bureau of Reclamation pushes a lot of water down the river, for the Colorado-Big Thompson (C-BT) water project and for other water users, and these big flows have the effect of flushing sediments out of the riverbed. As a result, the host of the parasite that causes whirling disease (WD) for part of its lifecycle, the tubifex worm, has less available habitat, and does not thrive in the upper river. The parasite that causes WD originated in the Old World; so did brown trout, which have some resistance to the deforming disease. But WD hammers rainbow trout in their first year. Blow out the tubifex worm and, other factors being favorable, rainbow trout thrive.
And they do appear to be thriving in the Big T. Swigle samples trout populations at five sites on the Big Thompson around the same time and same flow rate every year, when the river is running around 50 cubic feet per second (cfs) within a two-week timeframe annually, and the DOW has compiled 20 years of data on the river. (High flows in the fall of 2007 precluded sampling.)
Swigle said the quarter mile of water below the dam — the Petting Zoo — is not the best rearing habitat for rainbows but, with some in-stream improvements that have been done, it is very good holding habitat for bigger fish. His numbers bear that out. On the sample site below the dam, Swigle and volunteers counted 185 rainbow trout averaging 11.0 inches long in 2006. This year, the count rose to 188 and the average length to 11.7 inches.
“That is quite astounding, given the sample is only 593 feet of river and it receives enormous pressure,” he said.
You can guess where this is going: The effects of catch-and-release management are also clearly a major factor in the quality of the fishery. Swigle's numbers show that below Waltonia, where the general creel limit of four trout in any length take over, the average trout is smaller, and the total biomass drops.
“The differences are quite obvious,” he said.
Below Waltonia, the balance between rainbows and browns swings toward the latter, though the proportions have been stable for years, Swigle said.
“My guess is that the rainbows are often kept below Waltonia, allowing the browns to dominate,” he said.
Fishermen will find some other things Swigle can tell you about the river to be interesting as well. Sampling, he said, never turns up any brook trout or greenback cutts, but many of the rainbows are rainbow-cutthroat hybrids, known as cuttbows. The river holds native populations of long nose dace and suckers, which provide a forage base for brown trout.
He outlined growth rates on the river. For both rainbow trout and browns, in August to October, a six-inch fish with be two years old; a 10-inch fish will be three years old; a 14-inch fish will be four years old. Fish over 20 inches are likely six years old.
Those are pretty rare in the Big T, he noted. But they are out there.
The fall of 2006 and the summer of 2008 were big water years on the Big T below Olympus. Releases out of Estes Lake typically climb in the fall, and last fall maintenance in the C-BT system put a larger volume of water than usual down the Big T. This summer, the river ran well above the historical averages through September. In June, when the typical flow is 276 cfs, the average was 458. In July, it was 350, against an average of 149. In August, it was 191, compared to 138. The typical September flow is 75. This year it was 248.
Swigle calls those 12 months the “big flush.” What will the effects of the Big Flush be on trout in the river?
Swigle cautions that between the nature of the fish and the nature of the habitat, trout under six inches are hard to count. But his numbers do show that young of the year rainbows were depressed this fall as you move down the river, potentially indicating a reduction caused by a combination of the big water and an increase in predation pressure from brown trout.
“Big flows, late in the season, (are) not helpful for reproduction,” he said. “Obviously, the redds get pretty beat up. The adults get pretty beat up, as well, as they try to nest while battling higher flows. When browns and rainbows emerge from the redds (in May and June, respectively) they struggle to withstand enormous flows.”
“That is the cloudy bad news for this year's class of rainbow trout, but the fact remains we did find a new crop,” he said. “To better understand the strength of the class we will need to look at next year's crop of six-inchers, which are more susceptible to our sampling methods.”
But Swigle draws a picture of trout populations healthy enough to withstand the effects of the Big Flush. Sampling points to a solid year-class of fish that hatched in the spring of 2006, with no discernible difference in the number of two-year-olds counted in 2006, before the Big Flush, and in 2008, after it.
“This indicates that the two-year old rainbows survived the big flows this year and are poised to spawn next year,” he observed.
And, post-flush, the bigger fish were, on average about an inch larger in 2008 than they had been in 2006, a difference Swigle thinks is attributable to reduced angling pressure during the high flows, and the associated reduction in hooking mortality trout enjoyed during it.
“The numbers of adults in the river has not changed since 2006, and a solid population is poised to produce a 2009 year-class,” he said
Rainbow trout may or may not be the most caught of the trouts, but they are almost certainly the most killed of the trouts. Easy to rear in hatcheries, 'bows are the backbone of put-and-take trout fisheries in and on the fringes of trout country.
But rearing trout for the masses to catch and eat is an expensive proposition. It costs the Colorado Division of Wildlife (DOW) $1.10 to produce and deliver a 10-inch rainbow, the size of stocked fish. In 2008 alone, the DOW dumped 27,000 “catchables” into Lake Estes.
Meanwhile, wild rainbows, as has been well documented, have been decimated across the country in the past 20 years as whirling disease has taken hold. Wild populations have crashed, and brown trout — predatory, wilier and, in the opinion of many anglers, harder to catch — have moved into the void. Most of the trout streams on the Front Range — which were, between the time the natives (greenback cutthroats) were effectively wiped out and the time whirling disease moved in, primarily rainbow fisheries — are now loaded with brown trout.
Ben Swigle is a fish biologist keeping tabs on the Big Thompson for the DOW, putting him in position to quantify aspects of the river fishermen experience mainly subjectively.
“It's right near its top,” Swigle said when asked how close the river is to its potential as a trout fishery. “I don't think we can push it any further.”
From the dam to Waltonia, the river is managed as a catch-and-release fishery, and it has become well-known not just for the quality of the fishing, but the health of the wild rainbow trout population.
“The St. Vrain, the Poudre, even the South Platte down lower — those are all brown trout streams,” Swigle said. He reports that while the population of brown trout is healthy, especially as you move downriver and out of the catch-and-release water, the proportion of rainbows to browns is unprecedented in the region. “The Big Thompson is very unique in the fact that whirling disease hasn't taken its toll.”
For that, you can credit the government, even if a wild rainbow fishery is an accident of management of the river rather than a goal: the Bureau of Reclamation pushes a lot of water down the river, for the Colorado-Big Thompson (C-BT) water project and for other water users, and these big flows have the effect of flushing sediments out of the riverbed. As a result, the host of the parasite that causes whirling disease (WD) for part of its lifecycle, the tubifex worm, has less available habitat, and does not thrive in the upper river. The parasite that causes WD originated in the Old World; so did brown trout, which have some resistance to the deforming disease. But WD hammers rainbow trout in their first year. Blow out the tubifex worm and, other factors being favorable, rainbow trout thrive.
And they do appear to be thriving in the Big T. Swigle samples trout populations at five sites on the Big Thompson around the same time and same flow rate every year, when the river is running around 50 cubic feet per second (cfs) within a two-week timeframe annually, and the DOW has compiled 20 years of data on the river. (High flows in the fall of 2007 precluded sampling.)
Swigle said the quarter mile of water below the dam — the Petting Zoo — is not the best rearing habitat for rainbows but, with some in-stream improvements that have been done, it is very good holding habitat for bigger fish. His numbers bear that out. On the sample site below the dam, Swigle and volunteers counted 185 rainbow trout averaging 11.0 inches long in 2006. This year, the count rose to 188 and the average length to 11.7 inches.
“That is quite astounding, given the sample is only 593 feet of river and it receives enormous pressure,” he said.
You can guess where this is going: The effects of catch-and-release management are also clearly a major factor in the quality of the fishery. Swigle's numbers show that below Waltonia, where the general creel limit of four trout in any length take over, the average trout is smaller, and the total biomass drops.
“The differences are quite obvious,” he said.
Below Waltonia, the balance between rainbows and browns swings toward the latter, though the proportions have been stable for years, Swigle said.
“My guess is that the rainbows are often kept below Waltonia, allowing the browns to dominate,” he said.
Fishermen will find some other things Swigle can tell you about the river to be interesting as well. Sampling, he said, never turns up any brook trout or greenback cutts, but many of the rainbows are rainbow-cutthroat hybrids, known as cuttbows. The river holds native populations of long nose dace and suckers, which provide a forage base for brown trout.
He outlined growth rates on the river. For both rainbow trout and browns, in August to October, a six-inch fish with be two years old; a 10-inch fish will be three years old; a 14-inch fish will be four years old. Fish over 20 inches are likely six years old.
Those are pretty rare in the Big T, he noted. But they are out there.
The fall of 2006 and the summer of 2008 were big water years on the Big T below Olympus. Releases out of Estes Lake typically climb in the fall, and last fall maintenance in the C-BT system put a larger volume of water than usual down the Big T. This summer, the river ran well above the historical averages through September. In June, when the typical flow is 276 cfs, the average was 458. In July, it was 350, against an average of 149. In August, it was 191, compared to 138. The typical September flow is 75. This year it was 248.
Swigle calls those 12 months the “big flush.” What will the effects of the Big Flush be on trout in the river?
Swigle cautions that between the nature of the fish and the nature of the habitat, trout under six inches are hard to count. But his numbers do show that young of the year rainbows were depressed this fall as you move down the river, potentially indicating a reduction caused by a combination of the big water and an increase in predation pressure from brown trout.
“Big flows, late in the season, (are) not helpful for reproduction,” he said. “Obviously, the redds get pretty beat up. The adults get pretty beat up, as well, as they try to nest while battling higher flows. When browns and rainbows emerge from the redds (in May and June, respectively) they struggle to withstand enormous flows.”
“That is the cloudy bad news for this year's class of rainbow trout, but the fact remains we did find a new crop,” he said. “To better understand the strength of the class we will need to look at next year's crop of six-inchers, which are more susceptible to our sampling methods.”
But Swigle draws a picture of trout populations healthy enough to withstand the effects of the Big Flush. Sampling points to a solid year-class of fish that hatched in the spring of 2006, with no discernible difference in the number of two-year-olds counted in 2006, before the Big Flush, and in 2008, after it.
“This indicates that the two-year old rainbows survived the big flows this year and are poised to spawn next year,” he observed.
And, post-flush, the bigger fish were, on average about an inch larger in 2008 than they had been in 2006, a difference Swigle thinks is attributable to reduced angling pressure during the high flows, and the associated reduction in hooking mortality trout enjoyed during it.
“The numbers of adults in the river has not changed since 2006, and a solid population is poised to produce a 2009 year-class,” he said
Friday, December 26, 2008
Big Winter Trout Have Arrived
The Tampa Tribune
Published: December 26, 2008
GO FISHING is a look at the area fishing scene through the eyes of local charter boat captains and fishing guides. Today: Mel Berman.
That brief shot of cold air this week has motivated the larger seatrout to move into local waters. One of my forum members, "InshoreSlammer," earlier in the week launched at sunrise.
"It was a foggy morning, no wind and I could see the sun starting to come through the clouds. I was able to get the last hour of the falling tide and things were just looking really fishy," he said.
Throwing an Exude RT Slug, he hooked a 301/2-inch trout on his first cast.
"This fish jumped completely out of the water and then gave me a head shaking tail walk that I will always remember," he said.
He also ended up catching a few upper-slot reds as well.
This holiday weekend looks like a winner, with mild temperatures, light winds and good moving tides. Though you may not score a 30-inch gator trout, you most certainly should be able to catch and release some beauties.
The north Pinellas area is not the only place where one can catch lunker trout. Many are also being landed in the flats off the Gandy/Weedon Island area, Pinellas Point, Fort Desoto and all along the Tampa Bay south shore.
Long Boat Key's Rusty Chinnis also reports landing some fat trout and several bluefish on flies. "We were amazed at the numbers we saw, including a few that looked to be pushing 30 inches," he said.
Captain Tim Whitfield, fishing around the Anclote area, caught trout on just about every cast using scented jigs. He said the best way to work them - or any jig - would be to cast out, let it drop down and slowly twitch it in across the grasses.
Hear "The Captain Mel Show" Saturdays from 6-9 a.m. on
970 AM. Also, visit "Fishing
Florida OnLine Magazine"
Published: December 26, 2008
GO FISHING is a look at the area fishing scene through the eyes of local charter boat captains and fishing guides. Today: Mel Berman.
That brief shot of cold air this week has motivated the larger seatrout to move into local waters. One of my forum members, "InshoreSlammer," earlier in the week launched at sunrise.
"It was a foggy morning, no wind and I could see the sun starting to come through the clouds. I was able to get the last hour of the falling tide and things were just looking really fishy," he said.
Throwing an Exude RT Slug, he hooked a 301/2-inch trout on his first cast.
"This fish jumped completely out of the water and then gave me a head shaking tail walk that I will always remember," he said.
He also ended up catching a few upper-slot reds as well.
This holiday weekend looks like a winner, with mild temperatures, light winds and good moving tides. Though you may not score a 30-inch gator trout, you most certainly should be able to catch and release some beauties.
The north Pinellas area is not the only place where one can catch lunker trout. Many are also being landed in the flats off the Gandy/Weedon Island area, Pinellas Point, Fort Desoto and all along the Tampa Bay south shore.
Long Boat Key's Rusty Chinnis also reports landing some fat trout and several bluefish on flies. "We were amazed at the numbers we saw, including a few that looked to be pushing 30 inches," he said.
Captain Tim Whitfield, fishing around the Anclote area, caught trout on just about every cast using scented jigs. He said the best way to work them - or any jig - would be to cast out, let it drop down and slowly twitch it in across the grasses.
Hear "The Captain Mel Show" Saturdays from 6-9 a.m. on
970 AM. Also, visit "Fishing
Florida OnLine Magazine"
Summer Flooding allows Trout to go Free
Summer flooding that allowed some of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, or DNR, trout stock to swim away will cut the number of fish releases at Scott County’s West Lake from three to two.
The first release was in November and a second will be in the spring, after the ice clears. A release in January will not be held because of the West Lake ice quality.
“We opted to do that because we don’t get good ice there,” said Chad Dolan, a DNR fisheries biologist. “A lot of times you just have an ice shelf.”
To ensure that trout releases would happen, Iowa received stock from natural resources departments in Illinois, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and West Virginia as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The West Lake releases have been popular since they began in 2006, drawing 80 to 350 anglers, depending on the weather, said Marc Miller, deputy director of the Scott County Conservation Department.
“Since we started doing the trout fishing, the number of anglers in the fall and spring has increased,” he said. “The number of ice fishermen has increased dramatically.”
When flooding was predicted, DNR workers took steps to try to prevent the loss of trout stock at the Manchester, Iowa, fish hatchery by blocking entry points with chicken wire and moving some of the stock to unaffected fisheries. That did not prevent the loss, though.
Some of the trout were contained to a pond and recaptured, Dolan said.
“Trout fishing’s pretty good on the Turkey River,” he said. “We may have lost them from the hatchery, but we are still providing a fishing opportunity for somebody, so it isn’t a total loss.”
In the past, 3,000 trout were released each time, but the next release will be 1,800. The good news, Dolan said, is that the fish are bigger because there are fewer and there is more food available to them.
Miller says trout, a cold-water fish, continue to be caught well after the early summer release at West Lake.
“We haven’t had the die-off,” he said. “We’ve had the trout going from 10-12 inches and about three pounds up to six-seven pounds.”
Dolan suspects a spring must feed into the lake to provide the cold water source the trout need.
Kurt Allemeier can be contacted at (563) 383-2360 or kallemeier@qctimes.com.
The first release was in November and a second will be in the spring, after the ice clears. A release in January will not be held because of the West Lake ice quality.
“We opted to do that because we don’t get good ice there,” said Chad Dolan, a DNR fisheries biologist. “A lot of times you just have an ice shelf.”
To ensure that trout releases would happen, Iowa received stock from natural resources departments in Illinois, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and West Virginia as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The West Lake releases have been popular since they began in 2006, drawing 80 to 350 anglers, depending on the weather, said Marc Miller, deputy director of the Scott County Conservation Department.
“Since we started doing the trout fishing, the number of anglers in the fall and spring has increased,” he said. “The number of ice fishermen has increased dramatically.”
When flooding was predicted, DNR workers took steps to try to prevent the loss of trout stock at the Manchester, Iowa, fish hatchery by blocking entry points with chicken wire and moving some of the stock to unaffected fisheries. That did not prevent the loss, though.
Some of the trout were contained to a pond and recaptured, Dolan said.
“Trout fishing’s pretty good on the Turkey River,” he said. “We may have lost them from the hatchery, but we are still providing a fishing opportunity for somebody, so it isn’t a total loss.”
In the past, 3,000 trout were released each time, but the next release will be 1,800. The good news, Dolan said, is that the fish are bigger because there are fewer and there is more food available to them.
Miller says trout, a cold-water fish, continue to be caught well after the early summer release at West Lake.
“We haven’t had the die-off,” he said. “We’ve had the trout going from 10-12 inches and about three pounds up to six-seven pounds.”
Dolan suspects a spring must feed into the lake to provide the cold water source the trout need.
Kurt Allemeier can be contacted at (563) 383-2360 or kallemeier@qctimes.com.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
New Lures Making a Splash
By RAY MARKHAM
Published: December 23, 2008
Temperatures are on the rise and periods of extended warm weather are kicking finny appetites into gear.
Water temperatures in the low 70s are credited for the increased action. Some excellent action for specks has been taking place from the Bulkhead at the mouth of the Manatee River north to Mariposa Key.
Potholes with 3 to 4 feet of water over a sandy green hole are producing trout while using the DOA Shrimp in some new colors like Copper Crush and Night Glow with Gold holographic glitter. On a recent half-day trip, we caught and released more than 50 trout, with the largest speck measuring 22 inches.
Ladyfish are making it difficult to get a jig to the bottom, but when we have, flounder have been in our catch. We usually get several legal flatties for the cooler. CAL Jigs with Shad tails have been my top producer for flounder.
The MirrOlip, a new lipped crank bait from MirrOlure has worked well. At 4 to 5 inches in length, the hard bait works well around the rough mouths ladyfish have. We're able to toss the bait out without sacrificing 6 inches of leader every cast, but are still catching some nice trout. When twitched and allowed to float back to the surface, we're even catching some nice redfish on the plug.
Another new lure I'm throwing is the Money Minnow, a custom hand-carved cedar lure from Dunnellon captain David Jefford (www.lureman.com). The bait suspends or sinks very slowly and has a tight wobbling vibration that reds, snook, and trout have found irresistible.
The small lure with a single treble casts like a bullet and works well when big trout and reds get shallow.
Ray Markham co-hosts "Florida Sportsman Magazine Radio Live," Saturdays from 8-9 a.m. on 820 AM, and can be reached for charter at (941) 723-2655.
Published: December 23, 2008
Temperatures are on the rise and periods of extended warm weather are kicking finny appetites into gear.
Water temperatures in the low 70s are credited for the increased action. Some excellent action for specks has been taking place from the Bulkhead at the mouth of the Manatee River north to Mariposa Key.
Potholes with 3 to 4 feet of water over a sandy green hole are producing trout while using the DOA Shrimp in some new colors like Copper Crush and Night Glow with Gold holographic glitter. On a recent half-day trip, we caught and released more than 50 trout, with the largest speck measuring 22 inches.
Ladyfish are making it difficult to get a jig to the bottom, but when we have, flounder have been in our catch. We usually get several legal flatties for the cooler. CAL Jigs with Shad tails have been my top producer for flounder.
The MirrOlip, a new lipped crank bait from MirrOlure has worked well. At 4 to 5 inches in length, the hard bait works well around the rough mouths ladyfish have. We're able to toss the bait out without sacrificing 6 inches of leader every cast, but are still catching some nice trout. When twitched and allowed to float back to the surface, we're even catching some nice redfish on the plug.
Another new lure I'm throwing is the Money Minnow, a custom hand-carved cedar lure from Dunnellon captain David Jefford (www.lureman.com). The bait suspends or sinks very slowly and has a tight wobbling vibration that reds, snook, and trout have found irresistible.
The small lure with a single treble casts like a bullet and works well when big trout and reds get shallow.
Ray Markham co-hosts "Florida Sportsman Magazine Radio Live," Saturdays from 8-9 a.m. on 820 AM, and can be reached for charter at (941) 723-2655.
FIshing Holes will be Revealed in Low Water
The Tampa Tribune
Published: December 24, 2008
Winter fishing conditions have been in effect for the past few weeks with lots of wind, some rain and fickle temperatures. It will be hard to plan a fishing trip in advance for the next few months because of regular cold fronts.
Wind is the culprit, and when it blows harder than 15 knots out of the north with extreme low tides, it really limits where you can fish. On the bright side, it's a good time to explore, even if the fishing is slow. Clear water and low tides show you holes that are invisible the rest of the year, and the safest way to look for them is at idle speed. Also be aware that tides can be much lower than forecast, when the wind is out of the north. It pushes water out of the bay, and getting caught inside a sandbar on a cold windy day is no fun.
Another result of extremely low tides is that it puts manatees in harms way. In December and January, I see many manatees just outside the six-foot line between the E.G. Simmons Park boat ramp and Apollo Beach. If you run on plane here, it is advisable to stay 100 yards or so off the poles that mark the manatee zone. I saw several manatees there earlier this month, just outside the poles; so take care. Even if they could read the signs, there is not enough water for manatees inside the zone on spring tides in the winter months.
I was surprised to see several pods of bait on the flats in front of Sand Key last week. The big sardines were in tight clusters but scattered. It's surprising to see bait in shallow water in December.
The sheepshead bite is still on in the Little Manatee River. We've been catching fish by casting live shrimp at the dock pilings around the mouth of the river, and some of the fish have been good-sized. A few flounder, also caught on live shrimp, have also found their way into the frying pan.
Trout season reopens New Year's Day, and there appears to be plenty of big trout on the flats in front of Cockroach Bay. Limit stays the same as it was - four fish between 15 and 20 inches, with one fish over the 20-inch limit allowed. Trout are not particularly sturdy, so handle them with wet hands and use a hook remover to release the fish.
When fishing for a trout dinner, I like to have a cooler half full of ice on board. Trout flesh is delicate and will quickly turn to mush unless it's iced. For the best-eating fish, ice them as soon as they are caught, gut the fish as soon as they're dead and return them to the ice.
My last trip was south of the Little Manatee River, and I caught a single redfish on the flats on a high-falling tide. I couldn't get anything to hit a variety of artificial lures, so I finally put the anchor out and rigged a chunk of frozen ladyfish on a jig. I caught one oversized redfish and a couple of hard head catfish on the cut bait.
Fred Everson is a Ruskin fishing guide. All South Shore fishermen and guides may submit information and photographs to be included in this column by calling (813) 830-8890 or sending an e-mail to ihuntsnook@aol.com.
Published: December 24, 2008
Winter fishing conditions have been in effect for the past few weeks with lots of wind, some rain and fickle temperatures. It will be hard to plan a fishing trip in advance for the next few months because of regular cold fronts.
Wind is the culprit, and when it blows harder than 15 knots out of the north with extreme low tides, it really limits where you can fish. On the bright side, it's a good time to explore, even if the fishing is slow. Clear water and low tides show you holes that are invisible the rest of the year, and the safest way to look for them is at idle speed. Also be aware that tides can be much lower than forecast, when the wind is out of the north. It pushes water out of the bay, and getting caught inside a sandbar on a cold windy day is no fun.
Another result of extremely low tides is that it puts manatees in harms way. In December and January, I see many manatees just outside the six-foot line between the E.G. Simmons Park boat ramp and Apollo Beach. If you run on plane here, it is advisable to stay 100 yards or so off the poles that mark the manatee zone. I saw several manatees there earlier this month, just outside the poles; so take care. Even if they could read the signs, there is not enough water for manatees inside the zone on spring tides in the winter months.
I was surprised to see several pods of bait on the flats in front of Sand Key last week. The big sardines were in tight clusters but scattered. It's surprising to see bait in shallow water in December.
The sheepshead bite is still on in the Little Manatee River. We've been catching fish by casting live shrimp at the dock pilings around the mouth of the river, and some of the fish have been good-sized. A few flounder, also caught on live shrimp, have also found their way into the frying pan.
Trout season reopens New Year's Day, and there appears to be plenty of big trout on the flats in front of Cockroach Bay. Limit stays the same as it was - four fish between 15 and 20 inches, with one fish over the 20-inch limit allowed. Trout are not particularly sturdy, so handle them with wet hands and use a hook remover to release the fish.
When fishing for a trout dinner, I like to have a cooler half full of ice on board. Trout flesh is delicate and will quickly turn to mush unless it's iced. For the best-eating fish, ice them as soon as they are caught, gut the fish as soon as they're dead and return them to the ice.
My last trip was south of the Little Manatee River, and I caught a single redfish on the flats on a high-falling tide. I couldn't get anything to hit a variety of artificial lures, so I finally put the anchor out and rigged a chunk of frozen ladyfish on a jig. I caught one oversized redfish and a couple of hard head catfish on the cut bait.
Fred Everson is a Ruskin fishing guide. All South Shore fishermen and guides may submit information and photographs to be included in this column by calling (813) 830-8890 or sending an e-mail to ihuntsnook@aol.com.
Striper Fishing is Hot in Cold Weather
Chesapeake Sportsman: Striper fishing is hot in cold weather
Courtesy of Joe Evans
Striper fishing is hot in cold weather&bodytext=Striper fishing has become a year-round affair, and you won’t hear any complaints from me. The 2008 fall, and now winter, fishing has been nothing short of spectacular so I hope you got in your fair share of trips."
Striper fishing has become a year-round affair, and you won’t hear any complaints from me. The 2008 fall, and now winter, fishing has been nothing short of spectacular so I hope you got in your fair share of trips.
But to overlook the excellent tidal fishing within an hour’s drive or so would be a big mistake. Even when the winds howl you can always find a quiet stretch of water to wet a line. One of my favorite winter-time quarries is the chain pickerel, an elongated fish with a broad, spatula-like snout and very sharp teeth.
It was roughly around this time last year when Annapolis resident Joe Evans, editor of PropTalk magazine, and I snuck off for a few hours to chase pickerel and yellow perch in the Severn River. We weren’t disappointed.
Chain pickerel are voracious feeders that lurk in shallow cover like grass beds and fallen timer, and then ambush unsuspecting prey. Pike are found in brackish and freshwater creeks, farm ponds and lakes throughout Maryland. Even when the temperature drops like a stone, anglers who brave the elements can expect several good tussles with a hard-fighting, rod bending gamefish that offer and give no quarter. Last season was a banner one for chain pickerel in our part of the Bay.
The Severn River and its many finger tributaries such as Rays Pond, Brewer Creek, and Chase Creek are great pike waters. The pickerel stocks in the Magothy River are also fairly strong. Work the river’s feeder arteries inside Sillery Bay, Cypress Creek, Cattail Creek, and Blackhole Creek, all of which held good numbers of pike last year.
The South River has its own potential gems, like Duvall, Broad and Warehouse creeks. Don’t overlook the Patapsco River tributaries, such as Bodkin Creek, Stoney Creek, and Curtis Creek that can produce reliable catches of pike.
While these above mentioned waters have held good numbers of pickerel, part of the fun of fishing small water is exploring the cuts and inlets that make the Chesapeake so special.
Tactics and tackle
For the most part, the solitary pike is not a picky eater. They will eat killifish, various other minnows, crayfish, and even fish up to half their own size. Both spin and fly gear are ideal for chasing pickerel.
A five- or six-weight fly rod loaded with an intermediate or sink tip line works well. A balanced leader of about 7-8 feet long using 10-pound test is usually sufficient. Remember that pike have sharp teeth, so a shock leader of 15- or 20-pound test at times may be a wise move.
A money fly is a yellow over white Clouser tied on a long shank hook (#1 to 2/0). Years ago expert fly angler Joe Bruce suggested tying these flies heavier than normal. This may be accomplished two ways; option one is to use heavier eyes, and option two is to bulk up the fly’s body with more feathers and/or flash material. Don’t be scared to experiment with variations of proven standards like the Clouser or Deceiver, or create your own pike magnet.
For spin casters, lightweight to medium rods load with 4- or 6-pound test are plenty stout. Again, a shock leader is prudent insurance against the mouth pike. Fish the drop-offs and fallen timber with a spinnerbait, enticing the pike out of the cover to attack your lure.
In addition to spinners from Mepps and Panther Martin, a two-inch, black/chartreuse tube jig on a 1/16-1/8 oz. jig head, attached to a gold #1 jig spinner, is a killer. Fish it slow and steady. Few are the fish that can resist a bull minnow, and pike love live bait. Lip-hook a bull minnow onto a 1/8 to 1/4-ounce leadhead jig (white, black, or purple are good colors) and then retrieve it slowly along the shoreline edges.
As winter sets in the thunderous strikes become more subtle, and patience pays. Pike may mouth the bait for nearly half a minute. Resist the urge to set the hook immediately – all you’ll do is pull the hook from its mouth.
Wait until the pike turns to swim away to set the hook, then set it with a crisp, sharp tug. Winter can offer good, albeit different, fishing from the warmer months but can be just as satisfying. Lastly, take all safety precautions and fish with a friend, there’s comfort in having another angler aboard.
Courtesy of Joe Evans
Striper fishing is hot in cold weather&bodytext=Striper fishing has become a year-round affair, and you won’t hear any complaints from me. The 2008 fall, and now winter, fishing has been nothing short of spectacular so I hope you got in your fair share of trips."
Striper fishing has become a year-round affair, and you won’t hear any complaints from me. The 2008 fall, and now winter, fishing has been nothing short of spectacular so I hope you got in your fair share of trips.
But to overlook the excellent tidal fishing within an hour’s drive or so would be a big mistake. Even when the winds howl you can always find a quiet stretch of water to wet a line. One of my favorite winter-time quarries is the chain pickerel, an elongated fish with a broad, spatula-like snout and very sharp teeth.
It was roughly around this time last year when Annapolis resident Joe Evans, editor of PropTalk magazine, and I snuck off for a few hours to chase pickerel and yellow perch in the Severn River. We weren’t disappointed.
Chain pickerel are voracious feeders that lurk in shallow cover like grass beds and fallen timer, and then ambush unsuspecting prey. Pike are found in brackish and freshwater creeks, farm ponds and lakes throughout Maryland. Even when the temperature drops like a stone, anglers who brave the elements can expect several good tussles with a hard-fighting, rod bending gamefish that offer and give no quarter. Last season was a banner one for chain pickerel in our part of the Bay.
The Severn River and its many finger tributaries such as Rays Pond, Brewer Creek, and Chase Creek are great pike waters. The pickerel stocks in the Magothy River are also fairly strong. Work the river’s feeder arteries inside Sillery Bay, Cypress Creek, Cattail Creek, and Blackhole Creek, all of which held good numbers of pike last year.
The South River has its own potential gems, like Duvall, Broad and Warehouse creeks. Don’t overlook the Patapsco River tributaries, such as Bodkin Creek, Stoney Creek, and Curtis Creek that can produce reliable catches of pike.
While these above mentioned waters have held good numbers of pickerel, part of the fun of fishing small water is exploring the cuts and inlets that make the Chesapeake so special.
Tactics and tackle
For the most part, the solitary pike is not a picky eater. They will eat killifish, various other minnows, crayfish, and even fish up to half their own size. Both spin and fly gear are ideal for chasing pickerel.
A five- or six-weight fly rod loaded with an intermediate or sink tip line works well. A balanced leader of about 7-8 feet long using 10-pound test is usually sufficient. Remember that pike have sharp teeth, so a shock leader of 15- or 20-pound test at times may be a wise move.
A money fly is a yellow over white Clouser tied on a long shank hook (#1 to 2/0). Years ago expert fly angler Joe Bruce suggested tying these flies heavier than normal. This may be accomplished two ways; option one is to use heavier eyes, and option two is to bulk up the fly’s body with more feathers and/or flash material. Don’t be scared to experiment with variations of proven standards like the Clouser or Deceiver, or create your own pike magnet.
For spin casters, lightweight to medium rods load with 4- or 6-pound test are plenty stout. Again, a shock leader is prudent insurance against the mouth pike. Fish the drop-offs and fallen timber with a spinnerbait, enticing the pike out of the cover to attack your lure.
In addition to spinners from Mepps and Panther Martin, a two-inch, black/chartreuse tube jig on a 1/16-1/8 oz. jig head, attached to a gold #1 jig spinner, is a killer. Fish it slow and steady. Few are the fish that can resist a bull minnow, and pike love live bait. Lip-hook a bull minnow onto a 1/8 to 1/4-ounce leadhead jig (white, black, or purple are good colors) and then retrieve it slowly along the shoreline edges.
As winter sets in the thunderous strikes become more subtle, and patience pays. Pike may mouth the bait for nearly half a minute. Resist the urge to set the hook immediately – all you’ll do is pull the hook from its mouth.
Wait until the pike turns to swim away to set the hook, then set it with a crisp, sharp tug. Winter can offer good, albeit different, fishing from the warmer months but can be just as satisfying. Lastly, take all safety precautions and fish with a friend, there’s comfort in having another angler aboard.
Native Trout Protection
UM Research Tackles Native Trout Protection
By Kim Todd, UM University Relations, Guest Writer, 12-24-08
Graduate Student Aubree Benson and a bull trout near a Clearwater River dam. Photo by Jason Blakney.
Editor’s Note: This story was provided courtesy of the University of Montana. It’s based on research being performed by the UM College of Forestry and Conservation.
A 1929 issue of Montana Wild Life, the magazine of the State Fish and Game Commission, included a picture of a bull trout under the caption “The Cannibal of Montana’s Streams.” The photo shows a trout sliced open to display 103 fingerlings that were in its belly when it was caught near the mouth of Rattlesnake Creek. Another article declared bull trout “the enemy of game fish” and described efforts to scoop them out of Flathead Lake to give smaller fish a chance.
Times have changed.
Now the bull trout is listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. In most Montana lakes and streams, anglers are required to carefully release them back into the water. And Lisa Eby, associate professor of aquatic vertebrate ecology in UM’s College of Forestry and Conservation, is looking at ways to help bull trout and other native fish thrive.
Eby said fisheries science has come a long way from its beginnings when hatcheries viewed rivers as empty channels that could hold some ideal assemblage of fish, a view she characterizes as “the Walt Disney World approach.”
“Our perceptions and our values have changed,” Eby said, adding that the new emphasis is on “an appreciation of the native systems and the native trout.” Arctic grayling. Northern pikeminnow. Pallid sturgeon. All have risen in esteem, as have other native species, such as the frogs and toads of Montana showcased in a color poster on Eby’s office door.
Many threats to Montana’s wildlife are large and well-known – climate change, habitat fragmentation, polluted waters. But small changes to the landscape – an earthen dam built for irrigation, a newly closed road, a beaver pond – can have large ramifications, too, and Eby and her graduate students have set out to quantify them.
One study in Eby’s lab looks at effects of small dams. Many of the more than 2,000 small dams in Montana no longer serve their original purpose or are showing their age. Built to last 50 or 100 years, many are reaching the end of their life spans, forcing the state to decide whether to repair or remove them.
Outside Seeley Lake, graduate student Aubree Benson tracks bull trout near two dams on the Clearwater River, a tributary of the Blackfoot. Migratory bull trout are born in creeks and streams, move to lakes where they bulk up, then return to their birthplace to spawn. Benson has radio-tagged bull trout, surgically injecting tiny transmitters that put out unique signals every two seconds. This way she can track individual fish and see whether the dams thwart migration.
Benson also snorkels the river bottom to see if bull trout gather below the dams, and she set up a fish ladder that leads to a tank where she can monitor which fish are trying to get over. The goal of the project, done in collaboration with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, is to determine if the dam has a negative effect on the survival of bull trout populations.
Conventional wisdom said that removing dams helps fish, but Eby suspects that may not always be the case.
Just as attitudes toward bull trout have swung 180 degrees, so have attitudes about non-native fish. Eighty years ago, Montana Wild Life articles described heroic rescues of exotic sunfish from pools that dried up in the summer and schemes to increase numbers of non-native bass and northern pike. In the 21st century, as these newcomers have disrupted ecosystems and battered native trout populations, the question is how to stop their spread.
Some dams have kept northern pike – voracious predators of young trout – downstream. At Hungry Horse Dam near Glacier National Park, the barrier has prevented lake trout (native to the Missouri River but not the Flathead River) from reaching the reservoir.
“It’s one of the places the bull trout are thriving; the cutthroat are thriving,” Eby said. “If your dam is holding back a lot of exotics ... it might not play out that all dams are always bad.”
The study on the Clearwater will outline the trade-offs of taking down the barriers or leaving them in place.
Another of Eby’s graduate students examines different kinds of small-scale dams – those made by beavers. When beavers fell trees and build a dam, they create pools that are warmer and more biologically productive than surrounding, free-flowing waters. Because of this, beavers will sometimes be transplanted to help restore a damaged watershed.
But there is a downside. “A lot of people have noticed that brook trout will move into an area where beavers have established,” Eby said.
Brook trout, native to eastern North America but not Montana, out-compete native westslope cutthroat at lower elevations. Westslope cutthroat are stuck at the top of drainages, where the water is colder and there are fewer insects to eat.
In Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest in Southwest Montana, Magnus McCaffrey compares watersheds with beavers to watersheds without. He captures brook trout and cutthroat at the start of the summer, marking them with tags – 8 mm transponders with individual codes. He then recaptures them several months later, scans the tags to determine the identity of the fish, and tallies growth and survival rates.
McCaffrey’s study is designed to see whether beaver dams let brook trout gain a finhold higher in the watershed and if there is anything managers can do about it.
A third project looks at westslope cutthroat in the Jocko River, just north of Arlee. As if westslope cutthroat didn’t have enough problems with brook trout, they also have trouble with rainbows. Before stocking, rainbows and cutthroat only co-existed in a few watersheds in Western Montana and their breeding schedules kept them from mating. But rainbow trout that have been stocked in traditional cutthroat areas interbreed with them and produce fertile offspring.
Right now small dams along the river keep the hybrids from entering some streams. Working with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, graduate student Matthew Corsi mapped the location of hybrids along the Jocko. He’s now comparing hybrids to pure westslope cutthroats, looking at the timing of migration, measuring how large they are as 1-year-olds and counting eggs to measure fecundity.
“Are they less fit? Do they respond differently? It’s an unknown now,” said Eby. Answers to these questions might point to whether hybrids should be kept out or let pass as if they were pure cutthroats. “If you pass fish that look like cutthroats, what is the long-term sustainability versus what are the genetic consequences?” Eby asks.
These studies center on questions raised with increasing frequency in Montana and throughout the West. How do you conserve native species in the face of constant competition for water and the influx of invasive species?
“Everyone in the lab, whether they are working on amphibians or fish, are looking at how landscapes or riverscapes affect fish populations and communities to give us more information to solve some of these contemporary problems,” Eby said.
Wildlife managers are as eager to know the answers as the scientists. As Eby said, “They’re interesting questions not only from a biological point of view, but they’re useful, too.”
By Kim Todd, UM University Relations, Guest Writer, 12-24-08
Graduate Student Aubree Benson and a bull trout near a Clearwater River dam. Photo by Jason Blakney.
Editor’s Note: This story was provided courtesy of the University of Montana. It’s based on research being performed by the UM College of Forestry and Conservation.
A 1929 issue of Montana Wild Life, the magazine of the State Fish and Game Commission, included a picture of a bull trout under the caption “The Cannibal of Montana’s Streams.” The photo shows a trout sliced open to display 103 fingerlings that were in its belly when it was caught near the mouth of Rattlesnake Creek. Another article declared bull trout “the enemy of game fish” and described efforts to scoop them out of Flathead Lake to give smaller fish a chance.
Times have changed.
Now the bull trout is listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. In most Montana lakes and streams, anglers are required to carefully release them back into the water. And Lisa Eby, associate professor of aquatic vertebrate ecology in UM’s College of Forestry and Conservation, is looking at ways to help bull trout and other native fish thrive.
Eby said fisheries science has come a long way from its beginnings when hatcheries viewed rivers as empty channels that could hold some ideal assemblage of fish, a view she characterizes as “the Walt Disney World approach.”
“Our perceptions and our values have changed,” Eby said, adding that the new emphasis is on “an appreciation of the native systems and the native trout.” Arctic grayling. Northern pikeminnow. Pallid sturgeon. All have risen in esteem, as have other native species, such as the frogs and toads of Montana showcased in a color poster on Eby’s office door.
Many threats to Montana’s wildlife are large and well-known – climate change, habitat fragmentation, polluted waters. But small changes to the landscape – an earthen dam built for irrigation, a newly closed road, a beaver pond – can have large ramifications, too, and Eby and her graduate students have set out to quantify them.
One study in Eby’s lab looks at effects of small dams. Many of the more than 2,000 small dams in Montana no longer serve their original purpose or are showing their age. Built to last 50 or 100 years, many are reaching the end of their life spans, forcing the state to decide whether to repair or remove them.
Outside Seeley Lake, graduate student Aubree Benson tracks bull trout near two dams on the Clearwater River, a tributary of the Blackfoot. Migratory bull trout are born in creeks and streams, move to lakes where they bulk up, then return to their birthplace to spawn. Benson has radio-tagged bull trout, surgically injecting tiny transmitters that put out unique signals every two seconds. This way she can track individual fish and see whether the dams thwart migration.
Benson also snorkels the river bottom to see if bull trout gather below the dams, and she set up a fish ladder that leads to a tank where she can monitor which fish are trying to get over. The goal of the project, done in collaboration with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, is to determine if the dam has a negative effect on the survival of bull trout populations.
Conventional wisdom said that removing dams helps fish, but Eby suspects that may not always be the case.
Just as attitudes toward bull trout have swung 180 degrees, so have attitudes about non-native fish. Eighty years ago, Montana Wild Life articles described heroic rescues of exotic sunfish from pools that dried up in the summer and schemes to increase numbers of non-native bass and northern pike. In the 21st century, as these newcomers have disrupted ecosystems and battered native trout populations, the question is how to stop their spread.
Some dams have kept northern pike – voracious predators of young trout – downstream. At Hungry Horse Dam near Glacier National Park, the barrier has prevented lake trout (native to the Missouri River but not the Flathead River) from reaching the reservoir.
“It’s one of the places the bull trout are thriving; the cutthroat are thriving,” Eby said. “If your dam is holding back a lot of exotics ... it might not play out that all dams are always bad.”
The study on the Clearwater will outline the trade-offs of taking down the barriers or leaving them in place.
Another of Eby’s graduate students examines different kinds of small-scale dams – those made by beavers. When beavers fell trees and build a dam, they create pools that are warmer and more biologically productive than surrounding, free-flowing waters. Because of this, beavers will sometimes be transplanted to help restore a damaged watershed.
But there is a downside. “A lot of people have noticed that brook trout will move into an area where beavers have established,” Eby said.
Brook trout, native to eastern North America but not Montana, out-compete native westslope cutthroat at lower elevations. Westslope cutthroat are stuck at the top of drainages, where the water is colder and there are fewer insects to eat.
In Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest in Southwest Montana, Magnus McCaffrey compares watersheds with beavers to watersheds without. He captures brook trout and cutthroat at the start of the summer, marking them with tags – 8 mm transponders with individual codes. He then recaptures them several months later, scans the tags to determine the identity of the fish, and tallies growth and survival rates.
McCaffrey’s study is designed to see whether beaver dams let brook trout gain a finhold higher in the watershed and if there is anything managers can do about it.
A third project looks at westslope cutthroat in the Jocko River, just north of Arlee. As if westslope cutthroat didn’t have enough problems with brook trout, they also have trouble with rainbows. Before stocking, rainbows and cutthroat only co-existed in a few watersheds in Western Montana and their breeding schedules kept them from mating. But rainbow trout that have been stocked in traditional cutthroat areas interbreed with them and produce fertile offspring.
Right now small dams along the river keep the hybrids from entering some streams. Working with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, graduate student Matthew Corsi mapped the location of hybrids along the Jocko. He’s now comparing hybrids to pure westslope cutthroats, looking at the timing of migration, measuring how large they are as 1-year-olds and counting eggs to measure fecundity.
“Are they less fit? Do they respond differently? It’s an unknown now,” said Eby. Answers to these questions might point to whether hybrids should be kept out or let pass as if they were pure cutthroats. “If you pass fish that look like cutthroats, what is the long-term sustainability versus what are the genetic consequences?” Eby asks.
These studies center on questions raised with increasing frequency in Montana and throughout the West. How do you conserve native species in the face of constant competition for water and the influx of invasive species?
“Everyone in the lab, whether they are working on amphibians or fish, are looking at how landscapes or riverscapes affect fish populations and communities to give us more information to solve some of these contemporary problems,” Eby said.
Wildlife managers are as eager to know the answers as the scientists. As Eby said, “They’re interesting questions not only from a biological point of view, but they’re useful, too.”
On The Hook
When the water temps here in Southwest Florida head into the frig, your chances of bringing home a big fish narrow to a single species.
Easy answer: It’s grouper! The delectable resident of deep water caves, ledges and rocky bottom that thrills the angler with it’s bullish struggle before succumbing and later gracing the dinner table with mouth watering filets.
Bet you can’t wait to get out there; to go deep with gas prices down, and bring some of those great red and gag grouper to the cleaning table. Well you better make January count because that’s all you going to get this winter!
The bad news is “badder” than last year’s closure of red grouper for one month. This year you can add to that red grouper one month closure (from Feb. 15 to March 15), a gag grouper closure from Feb. 1 to March 31 — that’s two full months with no-take of the grouper species most prevalent here during the winter months.
Hate to do it, but here’s another grenade. The closures will be total (i.e. effective) in both federal and state waters. The independent position of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission on not shadowing the federal rules is over. We have the authorities in lockstep; there’s a good chance that will be the operational posture from now on.
It would be easy to get into the arguments and laments of these actions that are riddled with factors of questionable data, a terribly negative blow in the face of the national economic situation or, the classic grievance, of the allocation between commercial and recreational sectors, but we’re not going there.
Rather, I would like to take the issue of gross closures like these right down to the individual level and demonstrate, up close and personal, how they effect the recreational angler.
It was about this time of year, chilly and right before Christmas, a couple of years back, when I booked a charter for a fellow from the U.K., who was here for the holidays, bored stiff with the wife’s shopping and yearned for a nice filet or two of fresh fish.
Simon was very cordial and low key as we set out on a chilly morning filled with brilliant sunshine. His goals for the trip were quite modest; a morning on the pristine waters; a photo or two of some curious and cooperating dolphin and a nice size fish or two for the evening’s supper.
Easy enough, I thought. Wrong!
We set up early on a traditional sheepshead spot — maybe two of these guys would do the trick. With baits in the water, we experienced “taps and takes” right off the bat. The sheepies were hard at work doing what they do best; nudging and swiping your bait long before you react. I tried everything including having Simon put his baited rod in the rodholder. The sheepshead even did their thing before Simon could wrench the rod out of the holder.
Enough. We went off to try for snapper.
Simon did well on the snapper. He was landing them left and right. All of them were barely bigger than the shrimp we were using. He called them “wee” fish, certainly not what he or I had in mind.
Enough. We went off to try for spotted seatrout.
We worked the pass with tipped jigs and sure enough, Simon latched onto a hefty trout on a drift that gave him quite a struggle as he worked hard in the retrieval.
“Now, that’s more like it” he exclaimed as a 18” keeper trout squirmed on the hook.
“Nice fish, Simon, but the trout season is closed and we’re going to have to put him back,” was my timid response.
“Well I’ve heard that snook is a sizeable fish and great table fare. Can we fish for those” was Simons follow up response. I told Simon it would be my pleasure, but the season was also closed on snook. Even if we landed one, we would have to release.
Simon wasn’t too easy going after that. It took me a while to explain the closure. He listened but wasn’t buying, at all.
“I’m in the travel business and send people here to Southwest Florida all the time” Simon spewed. ”Many of them come to fish and pour lots of dollars into your economy and here you blokes have these fishing absolutes of none of these and none of those and that’s too small and that’s too big. It’s maddening!”
Trying to change the banter and move on I suggested that we move out onto the nearshore reefs for the possibility of a grouper. Simon’s caustic inquiry was anticipated “is the season closed on grouper, too”.
I assured him it wasn’t on the grouper we were after, but there were significant size restrictions.
“Figures, but we might as well go try” was Simon’s dejected response.
We set up on structure and gold hooked a dozen or so pinfish and set major rigs with live bait a turn or two off the bottom. We were catching grouper on just about every drop but, you guessed it, all too small.
Then all of the sudden the rod doubled over and was pushed to breaking. Simon grabbed the rod and the struggle was on. He shouted “this is a major fish. This is it.” Simon pulled up and the fish pulled down, time and time again. Finally after what seemed the longest 15 minutes ever, Simon surfaced his mammoth fish, a goliath grouper.
The boat was much too small for me to find a place to hide. But I knew I had to tell him.
“Simon that’s a goliath grouper, not one of the types we were after and, I’m sorry to say, they are permanently out of season.”
The look on Simon’s face was a show stopper as we released the goliath grouper and tried to go back fishing. But he was done.
We talked on the way home.
“Tell me, Captain, how many of those fish we were after today can one keep” asked Simon.
“You can keep five grouper and four sea trout per person” was the response.
“Well there’s the problem. Five or even four sizeable fish are much too many for any one day’s keep for one person. Most would be satisfied with one or at the most two on such a trip. If your authorities, limited the number taken, they could at least lessen this nonsense of closed seasons.”
Think of this little story, come February and you’re releasing keeper grouper and hoping to come home with a handful of 14” snapper.
Capt. Bill Walsh owns an established Marco Island charter fishing business and holds a current U.S. Coast Guard license. Send comments or questions to dawnpatrolcharters@compuserve.com.
Easy answer: It’s grouper! The delectable resident of deep water caves, ledges and rocky bottom that thrills the angler with it’s bullish struggle before succumbing and later gracing the dinner table with mouth watering filets.
Bet you can’t wait to get out there; to go deep with gas prices down, and bring some of those great red and gag grouper to the cleaning table. Well you better make January count because that’s all you going to get this winter!
The bad news is “badder” than last year’s closure of red grouper for one month. This year you can add to that red grouper one month closure (from Feb. 15 to March 15), a gag grouper closure from Feb. 1 to March 31 — that’s two full months with no-take of the grouper species most prevalent here during the winter months.
Hate to do it, but here’s another grenade. The closures will be total (i.e. effective) in both federal and state waters. The independent position of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission on not shadowing the federal rules is over. We have the authorities in lockstep; there’s a good chance that will be the operational posture from now on.
It would be easy to get into the arguments and laments of these actions that are riddled with factors of questionable data, a terribly negative blow in the face of the national economic situation or, the classic grievance, of the allocation between commercial and recreational sectors, but we’re not going there.
Rather, I would like to take the issue of gross closures like these right down to the individual level and demonstrate, up close and personal, how they effect the recreational angler.
It was about this time of year, chilly and right before Christmas, a couple of years back, when I booked a charter for a fellow from the U.K., who was here for the holidays, bored stiff with the wife’s shopping and yearned for a nice filet or two of fresh fish.
Simon was very cordial and low key as we set out on a chilly morning filled with brilliant sunshine. His goals for the trip were quite modest; a morning on the pristine waters; a photo or two of some curious and cooperating dolphin and a nice size fish or two for the evening’s supper.
Easy enough, I thought. Wrong!
We set up early on a traditional sheepshead spot — maybe two of these guys would do the trick. With baits in the water, we experienced “taps and takes” right off the bat. The sheepies were hard at work doing what they do best; nudging and swiping your bait long before you react. I tried everything including having Simon put his baited rod in the rodholder. The sheepshead even did their thing before Simon could wrench the rod out of the holder.
Enough. We went off to try for snapper.
Simon did well on the snapper. He was landing them left and right. All of them were barely bigger than the shrimp we were using. He called them “wee” fish, certainly not what he or I had in mind.
Enough. We went off to try for spotted seatrout.
We worked the pass with tipped jigs and sure enough, Simon latched onto a hefty trout on a drift that gave him quite a struggle as he worked hard in the retrieval.
“Now, that’s more like it” he exclaimed as a 18” keeper trout squirmed on the hook.
“Nice fish, Simon, but the trout season is closed and we’re going to have to put him back,” was my timid response.
“Well I’ve heard that snook is a sizeable fish and great table fare. Can we fish for those” was Simons follow up response. I told Simon it would be my pleasure, but the season was also closed on snook. Even if we landed one, we would have to release.
Simon wasn’t too easy going after that. It took me a while to explain the closure. He listened but wasn’t buying, at all.
“I’m in the travel business and send people here to Southwest Florida all the time” Simon spewed. ”Many of them come to fish and pour lots of dollars into your economy and here you blokes have these fishing absolutes of none of these and none of those and that’s too small and that’s too big. It’s maddening!”
Trying to change the banter and move on I suggested that we move out onto the nearshore reefs for the possibility of a grouper. Simon’s caustic inquiry was anticipated “is the season closed on grouper, too”.
I assured him it wasn’t on the grouper we were after, but there were significant size restrictions.
“Figures, but we might as well go try” was Simon’s dejected response.
We set up on structure and gold hooked a dozen or so pinfish and set major rigs with live bait a turn or two off the bottom. We were catching grouper on just about every drop but, you guessed it, all too small.
Then all of the sudden the rod doubled over and was pushed to breaking. Simon grabbed the rod and the struggle was on. He shouted “this is a major fish. This is it.” Simon pulled up and the fish pulled down, time and time again. Finally after what seemed the longest 15 minutes ever, Simon surfaced his mammoth fish, a goliath grouper.
The boat was much too small for me to find a place to hide. But I knew I had to tell him.
“Simon that’s a goliath grouper, not one of the types we were after and, I’m sorry to say, they are permanently out of season.”
The look on Simon’s face was a show stopper as we released the goliath grouper and tried to go back fishing. But he was done.
We talked on the way home.
“Tell me, Captain, how many of those fish we were after today can one keep” asked Simon.
“You can keep five grouper and four sea trout per person” was the response.
“Well there’s the problem. Five or even four sizeable fish are much too many for any one day’s keep for one person. Most would be satisfied with one or at the most two on such a trip. If your authorities, limited the number taken, they could at least lessen this nonsense of closed seasons.”
Think of this little story, come February and you’re releasing keeper grouper and hoping to come home with a handful of 14” snapper.
Capt. Bill Walsh owns an established Marco Island charter fishing business and holds a current U.S. Coast Guard license. Send comments or questions to dawnpatrolcharters@compuserve.com.
Trout Season Draws Closer
By FRED EVERSON
Published: December 24, 2008
One more week until the opening day of trout season and I can't wait.
Earlier this week Mike Strickland and I caught a couple of very big trout in front of Sand Key. Mike's fish was 27½ inches and he said it is the biggest trout he's ever caught in Tampa Bay. The last four trout I caught were all over 20 inches, and that's unusual.
They catch a lot of big trout in the Gulf, but our fish are generally smaller. These fish have come a long way back from the devastating outbreak of red tide several years ago. Trout grow fast, and it would appear that we now have more fish and bigger fish than I've seen in 15 years.
The down side is that we caught these trout while fishing for reds. Mike did catch two redfish, but both were short. Thus far I have not seen nearly the number of redfish I did last winter. I've been looking for them on the flats between Apollo Beach and Simmons Park, and they just haven't been there.
Captain Mark Thomas told me he found some fish in the mangrove backcountry of Little Cockroach Bay, but you need an airboat to get in there this time of year because of the extreme low tides.
The water temperature is about 70 degrees in the Gulf, and that means there will be some snook on the flats. We hooked a good snook on cut bait on the flats south of Apollo Beach last week. It ate a chunk of jack crevalle on a jig hook. Snook seem to savor jack crevalle and that's a good thing. It freezes well, and stays firm when thawed out. Redfish also eat it.
I'm seeing plenty of bonnethead sharks on the flats, and these fish are great winter targets. They fight like redfish, and no wire leader is required. I throw free lined live shrimp and strips of frozen squid at them.
For charter information, visit Fred Everson's Web site, tampabayfishingguide.com, or call him at (813) 830-8890.
Published: December 24, 2008
One more week until the opening day of trout season and I can't wait.
Earlier this week Mike Strickland and I caught a couple of very big trout in front of Sand Key. Mike's fish was 27½ inches and he said it is the biggest trout he's ever caught in Tampa Bay. The last four trout I caught were all over 20 inches, and that's unusual.
They catch a lot of big trout in the Gulf, but our fish are generally smaller. These fish have come a long way back from the devastating outbreak of red tide several years ago. Trout grow fast, and it would appear that we now have more fish and bigger fish than I've seen in 15 years.
The down side is that we caught these trout while fishing for reds. Mike did catch two redfish, but both were short. Thus far I have not seen nearly the number of redfish I did last winter. I've been looking for them on the flats between Apollo Beach and Simmons Park, and they just haven't been there.
Captain Mark Thomas told me he found some fish in the mangrove backcountry of Little Cockroach Bay, but you need an airboat to get in there this time of year because of the extreme low tides.
The water temperature is about 70 degrees in the Gulf, and that means there will be some snook on the flats. We hooked a good snook on cut bait on the flats south of Apollo Beach last week. It ate a chunk of jack crevalle on a jig hook. Snook seem to savor jack crevalle and that's a good thing. It freezes well, and stays firm when thawed out. Redfish also eat it.
I'm seeing plenty of bonnethead sharks on the flats, and these fish are great winter targets. They fight like redfish, and no wire leader is required. I throw free lined live shrimp and strips of frozen squid at them.
For charter information, visit Fred Everson's Web site, tampabayfishingguide.com, or call him at (813) 830-8890.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Idaho’s St. Joe River made for fall fishing
Idaho’s St. Joe River made for fall fishing
December 22, 2008
By Dallas Cross
I left Issaquah in mid-September four days earlier than needed to meet my brother-in-law to fly fish near Dillon, Mont. This allowed me time to visit family in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and to fish the nearby St. Joe River. I packed my vintage VW camper bus, put on a hippie headband, practiced the V-hand sign and headed east, arriving at Coeur d’Alene late in the afternoon.
The next day, I drove to Avery on the St. Joe River. There, I was advised that the road up ahead on the river was closed due to a landslide. Driving up the river five miles, I found that indeed a huge mound of earth and rocks had buried the road just above where Prospector Creek dashingly joins the river.
The only road to the catch-and-release stretch of the river I had planned to fish was now blocked by about a quarter-mile of debris.
Uncertain of the rules applying to fishing the river below the catch-and-release area, I drove back down the road until I observed a woman fishing next to a rocky cliff. She was beautifully casting a tight-looped line with a Parachute Adams fly on it. After two fish jumped off her hook, she paused to inform me that the fishing season on this portion of the river was still open but cutthroat trout had to be released.
Now confident that I would not be hauled in for poaching, I returned to the slide area and planned to fish above and below it by walking and wading for the next two days. In this stretch, the river drops rapidly and runs fast in chutes between holes. With the water level down, some of the runs below the deep holes were waist high, offering opportunities to wade the river.
At Avery, I had been advised that cutthroat prefer the rapids, so I concentrated my casting in shallow, fast water where I could see rocks.
From a visit two years earlier, I knew what to expect in mid-September. The bug hatch starts after the sun warms the canyon and is soon followed by surface-feeding trout.
The canyon is so deep that the sun hits the river around three in the afternoon, warming it until the shadows fall at five, making a short window of fishing time. Having arrived in early afternoon, I hurried and managed to catch and release two cutthroat using an all-purpose, orange stimulator dry fly.
Shortly thereafter, the shadows, temperature and fish interest all fell at once and I headed back.
On the way back to the camper I paused to look at a huge boulder overhanging the river. Beneath it, I had, two years earlier, tried to catch a large trout working the surface for floating bugs.
At that time, I had cast to the area without success from across the river and then waded back and climbed on top of the boulder. From there, I had stealthily dappled a hair wing Adams fly on the surface of the water 10 feet below, bouncing the fly several times before it attracted attention.
As I was lifting the fly off the surface, two large cutthroat trout with mouths agape leaped at it. They cleared the water at the same time from opposite directions and collided in midair with an audible slap. They startled each other and me as well, causing me to yank the fly well out of their reach and lose my balance on the boulder.
Under full steam, the two fish took off in opposite directions and mirthfully I had to hold on to the boulder to keep from falling. Knowing I could not improve on the memory of this delightful past event, I continued walking on to the camper.
There were many roadside camping sites along the river, some with no occupants. So, I chose a site near the landslide area, but prudently far enough away not to get caught by an encore. Finding any vacant site a couple of weeks earlier, during the throes of last-minute vacations, would have been a chore.
A mac-and-cheese supper in the tattered poptop camper was accompanied by river music and a rather sudden lights out when the sun disappeared behind the mountain ridge. After I went to bed, the music included a shrill whistle followed by a series of bass-cleft grunts.
A bull elk, intent on procreation, but also thirsty, was moving nearby in the night on the way to the river. Half expecting to feel the camper being rocked by his passage, I passed quickly through the anxiety of vulnerability I always feel when camping in the woods. Soothed in pine air and with quiet reflection on sounds of river and slapping fish, I slept soundly.
Reach Dallas Cross at FishJournal@aol.com.
Written by Dallas Cross · Filed Under Sports, Sports News
December 22, 2008
By Dallas Cross
I left Issaquah in mid-September four days earlier than needed to meet my brother-in-law to fly fish near Dillon, Mont. This allowed me time to visit family in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and to fish the nearby St. Joe River. I packed my vintage VW camper bus, put on a hippie headband, practiced the V-hand sign and headed east, arriving at Coeur d’Alene late in the afternoon.
The next day, I drove to Avery on the St. Joe River. There, I was advised that the road up ahead on the river was closed due to a landslide. Driving up the river five miles, I found that indeed a huge mound of earth and rocks had buried the road just above where Prospector Creek dashingly joins the river.
The only road to the catch-and-release stretch of the river I had planned to fish was now blocked by about a quarter-mile of debris.
Uncertain of the rules applying to fishing the river below the catch-and-release area, I drove back down the road until I observed a woman fishing next to a rocky cliff. She was beautifully casting a tight-looped line with a Parachute Adams fly on it. After two fish jumped off her hook, she paused to inform me that the fishing season on this portion of the river was still open but cutthroat trout had to be released.
Now confident that I would not be hauled in for poaching, I returned to the slide area and planned to fish above and below it by walking and wading for the next two days. In this stretch, the river drops rapidly and runs fast in chutes between holes. With the water level down, some of the runs below the deep holes were waist high, offering opportunities to wade the river.
At Avery, I had been advised that cutthroat prefer the rapids, so I concentrated my casting in shallow, fast water where I could see rocks.
From a visit two years earlier, I knew what to expect in mid-September. The bug hatch starts after the sun warms the canyon and is soon followed by surface-feeding trout.
The canyon is so deep that the sun hits the river around three in the afternoon, warming it until the shadows fall at five, making a short window of fishing time. Having arrived in early afternoon, I hurried and managed to catch and release two cutthroat using an all-purpose, orange stimulator dry fly.
Shortly thereafter, the shadows, temperature and fish interest all fell at once and I headed back.
On the way back to the camper I paused to look at a huge boulder overhanging the river. Beneath it, I had, two years earlier, tried to catch a large trout working the surface for floating bugs.
At that time, I had cast to the area without success from across the river and then waded back and climbed on top of the boulder. From there, I had stealthily dappled a hair wing Adams fly on the surface of the water 10 feet below, bouncing the fly several times before it attracted attention.
As I was lifting the fly off the surface, two large cutthroat trout with mouths agape leaped at it. They cleared the water at the same time from opposite directions and collided in midair with an audible slap. They startled each other and me as well, causing me to yank the fly well out of their reach and lose my balance on the boulder.
Under full steam, the two fish took off in opposite directions and mirthfully I had to hold on to the boulder to keep from falling. Knowing I could not improve on the memory of this delightful past event, I continued walking on to the camper.
There were many roadside camping sites along the river, some with no occupants. So, I chose a site near the landslide area, but prudently far enough away not to get caught by an encore. Finding any vacant site a couple of weeks earlier, during the throes of last-minute vacations, would have been a chore.
A mac-and-cheese supper in the tattered poptop camper was accompanied by river music and a rather sudden lights out when the sun disappeared behind the mountain ridge. After I went to bed, the music included a shrill whistle followed by a series of bass-cleft grunts.
A bull elk, intent on procreation, but also thirsty, was moving nearby in the night on the way to the river. Half expecting to feel the camper being rocked by his passage, I passed quickly through the anxiety of vulnerability I always feel when camping in the woods. Soothed in pine air and with quiet reflection on sounds of river and slapping fish, I slept soundly.
Reach Dallas Cross at FishJournal@aol.com.
Written by Dallas Cross · Filed Under Sports, Sports News
Denis Peirce: The big one that didn't get away at Lake Pyramid
We have just passed the winter solstice and these are the shortest days of the year. With all of the recent foul weather there have been a shortage of fishing reports coming across my desk.Many of my sources have been indoors, staying warm and dry. I have been keeping in contact with my sources for Pyramid Lake, Nev. waiting for the action to pick up. A rule of thumb is that the shore fishing will be poor until there are 10 consecutive nights of freezing temperatures. That’s what it takes to get the water temps down and bring the larger trout in to the shallows to feed. Last week, Dave Stull made plans to be at Pyramid Lake early Saturday morning.
Many members of the Gold Country Fly Fishers Club might remember Dave as a past club president during the late 1990s. He went north up the west shore beyond the end of the pavement to “Monument.” Dave had his gear set up and was casting from on top of his ladder by 7:45 a.m. The air was a brisk 28 degrees with an overcast sky. On his first few casts Dave noticed that after beginning his retrieve, the water on his fly line was turning to ice in his rod guides. Occasionally, he would have to hit the rod with the palm of his gloved hand to knock the ice off. This is the recipe for a good-sized fish at Pyramid Lake, winter, low-light conditions and stormy weather.
Dave ties his own bugger style flies for Pyramid and on Sunday he was fishing a two-fly rig. The top fly was white followed by a black point fly both in size No. 4. The technique is to cast his sinking “shooting head” fly line as far as possible and begin the retrieve after it had reached the bottom.Fifteen minutes into his day he had a solid hit but the hook did not stick. Dave immediately cast back out to the same area hoping for another shot at this fish. Retrieve ... retrieve ... retrieve ... nothing ... nothing ... nothing, his line is almost completely back in. Suddenly, he gets the take not more than 15 feet from his rod tip. Before he knows it, the fish has him all the way into his backing, a run of almost 100 feet. This was the first of three runs. Each successive run was shorter and less powerful than the first. Dave had planted his ladder at the limit of his chest high waders. He got off the ladder and began working his way back to the beach. The danger at this time is that the fish will seek refuge at any available structure. On a beach at Pyramid Lake, ladders are the only option and bigger fish have been lost after getting wrapped up in a ladder and breaking off. Dave successfully navigated the fish inside of the ladders and headed for the shore.It took 12 minutes to beach the beast. The best way to land a fish of this proportion is to back up to the beach well above the water’s edge and slide it onto the sand. Attempting to hoist a fish this large is a good way to break your line or a rod.
For those who are not familiar with Pyramid Lake cutthroat trout, the big February Derby at Crosby Lodge has frequently been won with a 12- to 13-pound fish with the 25th place fish coming in at the 8-pound range. Dave Stull’s 15-pound, 32.5 inch trout is truly the fish of a lifetime at Pyramid Lake. Dave’s strategy was to present a black fly chasing a white minnow in the shallows. He was hoping to target big trout chasing minnows in the shallows. This was a winning combination. Maybe the only thing he could have done to improve his odds would have been to increase the size of his fly. His trophy cutthroat had a freshly caught 8-inch tui chub in his stomach.Maybe there is a lot to the saying “big fish, big fly.” Merry Christmas Dave, and many happy returns.
Denis Peirce writes a weekly fishing column for The Union and is host of “The KNCO Fishing & Outdoor Report,” which airs 6-7 p.m. Fridays and 5-6 a.m. Saturdays on 830-AM radio. Contact him via e-mail at dpeirce@theunion.com.
Many members of the Gold Country Fly Fishers Club might remember Dave as a past club president during the late 1990s. He went north up the west shore beyond the end of the pavement to “Monument.” Dave had his gear set up and was casting from on top of his ladder by 7:45 a.m. The air was a brisk 28 degrees with an overcast sky. On his first few casts Dave noticed that after beginning his retrieve, the water on his fly line was turning to ice in his rod guides. Occasionally, he would have to hit the rod with the palm of his gloved hand to knock the ice off. This is the recipe for a good-sized fish at Pyramid Lake, winter, low-light conditions and stormy weather.
Dave ties his own bugger style flies for Pyramid and on Sunday he was fishing a two-fly rig. The top fly was white followed by a black point fly both in size No. 4. The technique is to cast his sinking “shooting head” fly line as far as possible and begin the retrieve after it had reached the bottom.Fifteen minutes into his day he had a solid hit but the hook did not stick. Dave immediately cast back out to the same area hoping for another shot at this fish. Retrieve ... retrieve ... retrieve ... nothing ... nothing ... nothing, his line is almost completely back in. Suddenly, he gets the take not more than 15 feet from his rod tip. Before he knows it, the fish has him all the way into his backing, a run of almost 100 feet. This was the first of three runs. Each successive run was shorter and less powerful than the first. Dave had planted his ladder at the limit of his chest high waders. He got off the ladder and began working his way back to the beach. The danger at this time is that the fish will seek refuge at any available structure. On a beach at Pyramid Lake, ladders are the only option and bigger fish have been lost after getting wrapped up in a ladder and breaking off. Dave successfully navigated the fish inside of the ladders and headed for the shore.It took 12 minutes to beach the beast. The best way to land a fish of this proportion is to back up to the beach well above the water’s edge and slide it onto the sand. Attempting to hoist a fish this large is a good way to break your line or a rod.
For those who are not familiar with Pyramid Lake cutthroat trout, the big February Derby at Crosby Lodge has frequently been won with a 12- to 13-pound fish with the 25th place fish coming in at the 8-pound range. Dave Stull’s 15-pound, 32.5 inch trout is truly the fish of a lifetime at Pyramid Lake. Dave’s strategy was to present a black fly chasing a white minnow in the shallows. He was hoping to target big trout chasing minnows in the shallows. This was a winning combination. Maybe the only thing he could have done to improve his odds would have been to increase the size of his fly. His trophy cutthroat had a freshly caught 8-inch tui chub in his stomach.Maybe there is a lot to the saying “big fish, big fly.” Merry Christmas Dave, and many happy returns.
Denis Peirce writes a weekly fishing column for The Union and is host of “The KNCO Fishing & Outdoor Report,” which airs 6-7 p.m. Fridays and 5-6 a.m. Saturdays on 830-AM radio. Contact him via e-mail at dpeirce@theunion.com.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Trout can be Found Everywhere
Trout can be found everywhere
By CAPT. SHAWN CRAWFORD - Special to The Herald
Trout are coming back in season on Jan. 1, and there are plenty out there in the slot. We have been catching a bunch of these fish on every trip, and they are hitting everything from shiners to Berkley Gulps.
The snook are closed right now but we are getting 15 to 20 fish a trip with some 30-inch fish mixed in. But if this warming trend continues, they could go crazy to say the least. It happens almost every year around this time, when the weather gets nice for a couple of weeks and the water temperature gets up into the mid 60s, these bigger fish will come out looking for a mid-winter snack. I can tell you some of the best snook fishing I have ever seen has been in the dead of winter when we have a warm spell.
The reds are abundant in the river as well in Sarasota Bay and they are in real skinny water trying to stay warm. We have been catching them on live bait as well as cut bait and jigs. The lower the tide the better.
Sheepshead are also out there in plentiful numbers but the bite isn’t quite as fast for these bait stealers. But if you stick it out you can have a great day fishing for these convict fish.
The grouper and snapper have been in 30-55 feet of water on the days we can get out there and there is plenty of action out there as well with short redfish, and gags while waiting for the bigger ones to come along.
All in all it has been a very productive winter to fish, but remember that if the weather continues on this warming trend we should have an explosive few days for the snook action.
n Capt. Shawn Crawford can be reached at (941) 747-3856. Web site is www.captainshawn.com.
By CAPT. SHAWN CRAWFORD - Special to The Herald
Trout are coming back in season on Jan. 1, and there are plenty out there in the slot. We have been catching a bunch of these fish on every trip, and they are hitting everything from shiners to Berkley Gulps.
The snook are closed right now but we are getting 15 to 20 fish a trip with some 30-inch fish mixed in. But if this warming trend continues, they could go crazy to say the least. It happens almost every year around this time, when the weather gets nice for a couple of weeks and the water temperature gets up into the mid 60s, these bigger fish will come out looking for a mid-winter snack. I can tell you some of the best snook fishing I have ever seen has been in the dead of winter when we have a warm spell.
The reds are abundant in the river as well in Sarasota Bay and they are in real skinny water trying to stay warm. We have been catching them on live bait as well as cut bait and jigs. The lower the tide the better.
Sheepshead are also out there in plentiful numbers but the bite isn’t quite as fast for these bait stealers. But if you stick it out you can have a great day fishing for these convict fish.
The grouper and snapper have been in 30-55 feet of water on the days we can get out there and there is plenty of action out there as well with short redfish, and gags while waiting for the bigger ones to come along.
All in all it has been a very productive winter to fish, but remember that if the weather continues on this warming trend we should have an explosive few days for the snook action.
n Capt. Shawn Crawford can be reached at (941) 747-3856. Web site is www.captainshawn.com.
Muskie Maniac Knows the Tricks
Muskie maniac knows the tricks
Kathy Etling
SPECIAL TO THE POST-DISPATCH
12/20/2008
With the holidays rapidly approaching, I sometimes wonder where 2008 went. But then I recall the fun and adventure experienced during the spring and fall turkey seasons, winter trout fishing, on several great float trips, while boating plenty of crappie and bass on numerous day trips, the dawning of each day hunted during archery and firearms deer seasons, and then topped by a whirlwind Florida fishing expedition, and suddenly it was very clear where the last 12 months had gone.The past four weeks passed in a flash, partly because we spent several days pursuing two very different species of big game fish.
During November, we joined renowned muskie guide Earle Hammond on a freshwater muskie safari. A few weeks later we were in a canoe preparing to rendezvous with a redfish expert to see if we might be able to hook up with trophy redfish using just the ordinary bass fishing tackle a Midwest angler might bring along on a trip to Florida. More on that adventure in a future column.
Make no mistake, guides are great, particularly when it comes to helping neophyte anglers hone their skills, or for anyone eager to learn how to fish for an unfamiliar — to them — species. Rest assured, however, you don't need a guide to fish for muskie in Missouri or Illinois, or for redfish on the coastal flats. What hiring a guide can do is help you find productive water and learn good techniques, fast. A guide can help one dispense with rookie mistakes, such as using the wrong line or leader. And a guide will help smooth out a new angler's rougher edges by providing tips on casting, bait selection, fighting and handling fish, all invaluable information.
Muskie, a fish closely associated with more northerly climes, made their Missouri debut in 1966. That was the year fisheries biologists with the Missouri Department of Conservation stocked the toothy predators in Pomme de Terre Lake, not far from the small town of Hermitage. Since then, MDC has also stocked muskies at Pony Express Lake, just west of Cameron; Hazel Creek Lake near Kirksville; Fellows Lake just north of Springfield; Henry Sever Lake near Newark; and Lake 35 at the August A. Busch Conservation Area in Weldon Spring. All but Pony Express are still managed for muskies.
Each year anglers report catching muskie that weigh 25 to 30 pounds and occasionally even more. The state record muskie, which weighed 41 pounds, 2 ounces, was caught in 1981 from Lake of the Ozarks. This fish, which was estimated by biologists at 14 years, was probably one of 249 stocked in the lake in 1967 and 1968.Hammond and other members of the Pomme Chapter of Muskies Inc. have made it their mission to break the muskie code in their home waters. On the organization's website, www.missourimuskies.org, club members last year logged in 94 big muskies caught despite being hampered by many weeks of high water when muskies refused to bite. The largest Missouri muskie taken was a 45.5-inch behemoth boated on Pomme by none other than Hammond, a retired Kansas City police officer who spent 20 years as the force's K-9 Unit trainer. A wonderful fish, yet still 4 inches shorter and quite a few pounds lighter than the state's longstanding record.As we joined Hammond on that cool November morning, wispy clouds streamed overhead while the air felt wildly unsettled. With a forecast calling for severe thunderstorms accompanied by high winds later that night, we were anticipating great things that day.
This was muskie weather!If anyone could lead us to a trophy muskie, it was Hammond — or one of his Muskies Inc. cohorts. These folks aren't normal; not when it comes to muskie fishing. One glance in their tackle boxes proves it. Where we'd had luck in years past catching a few good-sized Pomme muskies on bass lures like the Husky Jerk, Wiggle Wart or Rat-L-Trap, Hammond prefers larger baits. His tackle boxes are crammed full of lures the size of 10-inch shad or bass, lures like the Eddie, Grandma, Jointed Grandma, Glide Bait, Super Stalker and the Jake.After a speedy run up the lake during which Hammond's was the only boat on the water, the guide reached into his bag of muskie tricks and withdrew several huge bucktail spinners. "Try these," he said, giving one to Bob and fastening the other, an oversized #5 Blue Fox in flashy colors of green, orange and black, onto the end of my line. Once he'd finished rigging our rods, Hammond stepped to the bow of the boat, where he would be manning the trolling motor. In minutes, we were back in the furthest and shallowest reaches of a long, narrow, muskie-looking cove, one of three in the immediate area."Caught some good fish here," he confided, expertly easing the boat into position so we could cast to a series of partially submerged logs and bushes. Hammond's cast to a shallow flat resulted in a serious hit as the water swirled, boiled and all but exploded above a muskie that had been moving about in water scarcely 8 inches deep. "That looked like a good fish," Hammond remarked. "Maybe we'll get lucky today."Early on, while hopes were still soaring, Hammond trolled around a favorite point and spotted a trophy-class muskie cruising the shallows not far away. "Look at that fish," Hammond exclaimed, as three rod tips almost instantaneously pointed in its direction and a barrage of lures then descended on the spot where the hapless fish had rather foolishly revealed itself.All day long we fished, using rods the equal of the heavy, $30 and $40 lures that Hammond kept snapping onto our lines and then, just as quickly, discarding.
PowerPro microfilament, from 40- to 80-pound test depending on the lure being used, sometimes with a fluorocarbon leader through which muskies are unable to bite, had been spooled onto our standard-sized spinning reels. The muskies seemed somewhat interested, grabbing at our lures rather half-heartedly on several occasions, but interested would be as good as it got that day. After seven hours of casting big lures on heavy rods, Bob and I felt it, especially in our backs and shoulders."Use your forearm and wrists," Hammond suggested. "Like this." We watched as with barely a flick of his arm his lure soared far from the boat. "It's easy if you cast like this." After a few aborted efforts, we discovered he was right. This was one tip that would serve us well in all of our future fishing.Of course, a muskie maniac like Hammond has to be prepared to do a lot of casting. And to teach casting, too. "I'll get folks out here who can't do a thing right, casting-wise," he said. "With a few lessons, by day's end they're casting like pros." And catching fish like pros, too. That is, if the muskies are biting.
Kathy Etling
SPECIAL TO THE POST-DISPATCH
12/20/2008
With the holidays rapidly approaching, I sometimes wonder where 2008 went. But then I recall the fun and adventure experienced during the spring and fall turkey seasons, winter trout fishing, on several great float trips, while boating plenty of crappie and bass on numerous day trips, the dawning of each day hunted during archery and firearms deer seasons, and then topped by a whirlwind Florida fishing expedition, and suddenly it was very clear where the last 12 months had gone.The past four weeks passed in a flash, partly because we spent several days pursuing two very different species of big game fish.
During November, we joined renowned muskie guide Earle Hammond on a freshwater muskie safari. A few weeks later we were in a canoe preparing to rendezvous with a redfish expert to see if we might be able to hook up with trophy redfish using just the ordinary bass fishing tackle a Midwest angler might bring along on a trip to Florida. More on that adventure in a future column.
Make no mistake, guides are great, particularly when it comes to helping neophyte anglers hone their skills, or for anyone eager to learn how to fish for an unfamiliar — to them — species. Rest assured, however, you don't need a guide to fish for muskie in Missouri or Illinois, or for redfish on the coastal flats. What hiring a guide can do is help you find productive water and learn good techniques, fast. A guide can help one dispense with rookie mistakes, such as using the wrong line or leader. And a guide will help smooth out a new angler's rougher edges by providing tips on casting, bait selection, fighting and handling fish, all invaluable information.
Muskie, a fish closely associated with more northerly climes, made their Missouri debut in 1966. That was the year fisheries biologists with the Missouri Department of Conservation stocked the toothy predators in Pomme de Terre Lake, not far from the small town of Hermitage. Since then, MDC has also stocked muskies at Pony Express Lake, just west of Cameron; Hazel Creek Lake near Kirksville; Fellows Lake just north of Springfield; Henry Sever Lake near Newark; and Lake 35 at the August A. Busch Conservation Area in Weldon Spring. All but Pony Express are still managed for muskies.
Each year anglers report catching muskie that weigh 25 to 30 pounds and occasionally even more. The state record muskie, which weighed 41 pounds, 2 ounces, was caught in 1981 from Lake of the Ozarks. This fish, which was estimated by biologists at 14 years, was probably one of 249 stocked in the lake in 1967 and 1968.Hammond and other members of the Pomme Chapter of Muskies Inc. have made it their mission to break the muskie code in their home waters. On the organization's website, www.missourimuskies.org, club members last year logged in 94 big muskies caught despite being hampered by many weeks of high water when muskies refused to bite. The largest Missouri muskie taken was a 45.5-inch behemoth boated on Pomme by none other than Hammond, a retired Kansas City police officer who spent 20 years as the force's K-9 Unit trainer. A wonderful fish, yet still 4 inches shorter and quite a few pounds lighter than the state's longstanding record.As we joined Hammond on that cool November morning, wispy clouds streamed overhead while the air felt wildly unsettled. With a forecast calling for severe thunderstorms accompanied by high winds later that night, we were anticipating great things that day.
This was muskie weather!If anyone could lead us to a trophy muskie, it was Hammond — or one of his Muskies Inc. cohorts. These folks aren't normal; not when it comes to muskie fishing. One glance in their tackle boxes proves it. Where we'd had luck in years past catching a few good-sized Pomme muskies on bass lures like the Husky Jerk, Wiggle Wart or Rat-L-Trap, Hammond prefers larger baits. His tackle boxes are crammed full of lures the size of 10-inch shad or bass, lures like the Eddie, Grandma, Jointed Grandma, Glide Bait, Super Stalker and the Jake.After a speedy run up the lake during which Hammond's was the only boat on the water, the guide reached into his bag of muskie tricks and withdrew several huge bucktail spinners. "Try these," he said, giving one to Bob and fastening the other, an oversized #5 Blue Fox in flashy colors of green, orange and black, onto the end of my line. Once he'd finished rigging our rods, Hammond stepped to the bow of the boat, where he would be manning the trolling motor. In minutes, we were back in the furthest and shallowest reaches of a long, narrow, muskie-looking cove, one of three in the immediate area."Caught some good fish here," he confided, expertly easing the boat into position so we could cast to a series of partially submerged logs and bushes. Hammond's cast to a shallow flat resulted in a serious hit as the water swirled, boiled and all but exploded above a muskie that had been moving about in water scarcely 8 inches deep. "That looked like a good fish," Hammond remarked. "Maybe we'll get lucky today."Early on, while hopes were still soaring, Hammond trolled around a favorite point and spotted a trophy-class muskie cruising the shallows not far away. "Look at that fish," Hammond exclaimed, as three rod tips almost instantaneously pointed in its direction and a barrage of lures then descended on the spot where the hapless fish had rather foolishly revealed itself.All day long we fished, using rods the equal of the heavy, $30 and $40 lures that Hammond kept snapping onto our lines and then, just as quickly, discarding.
PowerPro microfilament, from 40- to 80-pound test depending on the lure being used, sometimes with a fluorocarbon leader through which muskies are unable to bite, had been spooled onto our standard-sized spinning reels. The muskies seemed somewhat interested, grabbing at our lures rather half-heartedly on several occasions, but interested would be as good as it got that day. After seven hours of casting big lures on heavy rods, Bob and I felt it, especially in our backs and shoulders."Use your forearm and wrists," Hammond suggested. "Like this." We watched as with barely a flick of his arm his lure soared far from the boat. "It's easy if you cast like this." After a few aborted efforts, we discovered he was right. This was one tip that would serve us well in all of our future fishing.Of course, a muskie maniac like Hammond has to be prepared to do a lot of casting. And to teach casting, too. "I'll get folks out here who can't do a thing right, casting-wise," he said. "With a few lessons, by day's end they're casting like pros." And catching fish like pros, too. That is, if the muskies are biting.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Look for Trout Cover
Improve your angling know-how by learning to identify and fish different types of cover.
Cover Fishing Basics
In dense populations, emergent vegetation will hold a variety of species. Thick growth can be difficult to fish beyond the short-cast tactics of pitching and flipping.
Learning to effectively fish cover is a fundamental angling skill. In this article, I’ll overview some common types of cover found in lakes and river systems and share tips on how to fish them for a variety of species.
Cover versus Structure
These two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but they are not the same. When you get down to it, structure refers to the physical characteristics of the water body, such as points, reefs and islands. Cover, on the other hand, is the add-on features, such as docks, fallen trees and vegetation. A good way to remember the distinction is that if you were to drain all the water from a lake, the structures would not move.
Why Cover is Important
Fish relate to cover for shelter and security from the sun and predators. At the same time, cover provides predators with hiding and ambush areas. Elaborate and large areas of cover are like “aquatic neighborhoods” with each stage of the food chain present. From insects, to pumpkinseeds, to largemouth, cover serves as a place where fish come to feed, or hide-out in an effort to avoid being eaten.
Three Types of Aquatic Vegetation
As noted in the above example, aquatic vegetation is prime fishing cover. A good way to talk about weeds is by classifying them into floating, emergent and submerged categories as each has slightly different features for fish.
Floating Vegetation: Many anglers affectionately refer to floating vegetation as “slop”. Slop is often sought-out by largemouth bass enthusiasts. Slop is a combination of thin, strand-like algae and other floating vegetation that is mixed with emergent plants (like lily pads and coontail). In bays with limited water movement, slop sticks to other types of weeds, forming a large, floating mat that attracts largemouth. In deeper bays, slop will also hold pike and muskie.
Fishing slop is extremely fun when the fish are on and you have the right tools. Wander into a slop-filled bay with a spinning rod and eight-pound test and, to loosely quote the movie The Untouchables, “You’ve brought a knife to a gun fight”. Slop requires heavy-action rods and heavy line (with 17-pound test monofilament or fluorocarbon and 30-pound test braid being recommended minimums). Lure choices include weedless soft-plastics or surface baits. Some of my favorite lures to use to fish slop are lizards or paddletail worms teamed with heavy sinkers to punch through the thick mats. Floating frogs such as Bass Pro Shops’ Tender Toad or Snag Proof Bobby’s Perfect Frog or toads such as Mann’s HardNose Swim Toad and Gamber’s Cane Toad are also great slop baits. When a bass explodes on one of these, its sends both weeds and your heart rate soaring.
Emergent Vegetation: An emergent plant grows in the water with some of its top extending beyond the surface. Reeds or bulrushes are an example of emergent vegetation. In dense populations these plants will hold a variety of species. Thick growth can be difficult to fish beyond the short-cast tactics of pitching and flipping.
Reeds and bulrushes are a prime largemouth spots in certain conditions. My favorite time to fish reeds and bulrushes is when they are being pounded with a warm, summer wind and waves. This pattern has held for me on numerous outings, and tossing Colorado-bladed spinnerbaits or Texas-rigged plastics have taken several largemouth aggressively feeding among the reeds.
Reeds are also a regular haunt for northern pike early in the season. Weedless swimming spoons can excel in average growth areas. These baits let you to quickly cover a lot of water in search for roaming northerns. Examples include Bass Pro Shops’ XPS Lazer Eye Weedless Spoon, Northland’s Jaw Breaker and Johnson’s Original Silver Minnow.
Lastly, reeds will hold panfish, like crappies and bluegills, in early spring. Slip bobbers and small micro jigs will easily take these pint-sized fish.
Submerged Vegetation: Submerged weeds make up a large percentage of fishing cover and will attract a variety of fish species. Weedflats and weedlines are two common examples. Walleye, bass, pike, muskie, trout and panfish are all drawn to weedflats and weedlines.
To work the edges of weeds, you can use lures like crankbaits, spinnerbaits or swimbaits. To fish the thick stuff, you need gear that’s fairly weedless. For walleye, consider a Lindy Veg-E-Jig. Largemouth and smallmouth can be fooled using soft jerkbaits or topwater baits. When it comes to pike and muskie, it’s tough to beat an inline spinner or a bucktail spinnerbait on a fast retrieve over the top of weeds.
If targeting trout in weeds, my best success has come when trolling wet flies over their tops. It’s a simple approach, but it’s fooled many rainbows for me over the years.
The Wonder of Wood
Wood is a relatively broad category when it comes to fishing cover. It can include sunken logs, standing timber, fallen trees (laydowns), beaver dams, docks and more. The point is, when you locate wood — fish it.
Fishing Cover BasicsWood is less forgiving than weeds when you get snagged and it can be frustrating to fish if you aren’t used to it. Snags will happen if you’re not paying attention. Here are some tips for fishing the various types of wood cover.
Standing Timber: Timber can attract all types of bass and other game fish as well. Often common in reservoirs, working these trees calls for heavy duty gear and precision fishing. Straight retrieve topwater baits can shine during low-light and overcast conditions, some examples include Bass Pro Shops’ Sputter Ace Hardbait, buzzbaits, Heddon’s Wounded Zara Spook or Rapala’s Skitter Pop. Spinnerbaits will also work when the timber isn’t too dense. Flipping jigs or Texas-rigged plastics may be better to fish the thick stuff.
Fallen Trees and Beaver Dams: There are dozens of methods to fish fallen trees (also called laydowns). Most often associated with bass and panfish, I’ve also hooked muskie and pike from laydowns. Topwaters or big jigs with brush guards are two good options to fish these trees. These tactics will also work to fish beaver dams.
Fallen trees can also be phenomenal for brook trout as well as other trout species. Small inline spinners, spoons and flies will take trout around wood. Find a beaver dam on a trout lake and approach it with respect as it may hold a trophy speckled trout.
Docks: Docks are a beacon to many anglers, symbolizing a trophy’s fortress. To give yourself an edge, learn to approach and fish docks quietly. This ensures you won’t spook fish. If you can, work docks first with long casts, then move in and use short pitch and flip casts. Use snag-resistant lures to lessen your chances of snags, which dock owners will appreciate.
Other Types of Cover
Weeds and wood are the two main categories when it comes to fishing cover, but you may stumble on other fish-holding stuff during your adventures. For example, you may not initially think of tires as a good piece of cover, but these sunken circles will sometimes hold big largemouth bass.
When you find a new piece of cover, look at it in the context of the surrounding water features. Being inquisitive will result in you learning to differentiate between good versus bad types of cover and answer questions like: Why does this bay of lily pads hold bass but the other one doesn’t? Or why are all the rainbow trout relating to sunken logs on this side of the lake?
Consider cover in the larger context of the water body you’re fishing, and you’ll improve your angling know-how over the seasons.
Improve Your Sight with Polarized Glasses
What’s the one constant for shallow-water fishing around cover? Wear polarized glasses. They reduce the glare off the surface, letting you see easier through the water. Being able to see cover is critical to being able to fish it properly. Invest in a quality pair of sunglasses if you don’t already own polarized shades. They’ll make you a much better angler when fishing cover.
written by Tim Allard
Cover Fishing Basics
In dense populations, emergent vegetation will hold a variety of species. Thick growth can be difficult to fish beyond the short-cast tactics of pitching and flipping.
Learning to effectively fish cover is a fundamental angling skill. In this article, I’ll overview some common types of cover found in lakes and river systems and share tips on how to fish them for a variety of species.
Cover versus Structure
These two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but they are not the same. When you get down to it, structure refers to the physical characteristics of the water body, such as points, reefs and islands. Cover, on the other hand, is the add-on features, such as docks, fallen trees and vegetation. A good way to remember the distinction is that if you were to drain all the water from a lake, the structures would not move.
Why Cover is Important
Fish relate to cover for shelter and security from the sun and predators. At the same time, cover provides predators with hiding and ambush areas. Elaborate and large areas of cover are like “aquatic neighborhoods” with each stage of the food chain present. From insects, to pumpkinseeds, to largemouth, cover serves as a place where fish come to feed, or hide-out in an effort to avoid being eaten.
Three Types of Aquatic Vegetation
As noted in the above example, aquatic vegetation is prime fishing cover. A good way to talk about weeds is by classifying them into floating, emergent and submerged categories as each has slightly different features for fish.
Floating Vegetation: Many anglers affectionately refer to floating vegetation as “slop”. Slop is often sought-out by largemouth bass enthusiasts. Slop is a combination of thin, strand-like algae and other floating vegetation that is mixed with emergent plants (like lily pads and coontail). In bays with limited water movement, slop sticks to other types of weeds, forming a large, floating mat that attracts largemouth. In deeper bays, slop will also hold pike and muskie.
Fishing slop is extremely fun when the fish are on and you have the right tools. Wander into a slop-filled bay with a spinning rod and eight-pound test and, to loosely quote the movie The Untouchables, “You’ve brought a knife to a gun fight”. Slop requires heavy-action rods and heavy line (with 17-pound test monofilament or fluorocarbon and 30-pound test braid being recommended minimums). Lure choices include weedless soft-plastics or surface baits. Some of my favorite lures to use to fish slop are lizards or paddletail worms teamed with heavy sinkers to punch through the thick mats. Floating frogs such as Bass Pro Shops’ Tender Toad or Snag Proof Bobby’s Perfect Frog or toads such as Mann’s HardNose Swim Toad and Gamber’s Cane Toad are also great slop baits. When a bass explodes on one of these, its sends both weeds and your heart rate soaring.
Emergent Vegetation: An emergent plant grows in the water with some of its top extending beyond the surface. Reeds or bulrushes are an example of emergent vegetation. In dense populations these plants will hold a variety of species. Thick growth can be difficult to fish beyond the short-cast tactics of pitching and flipping.
Reeds and bulrushes are a prime largemouth spots in certain conditions. My favorite time to fish reeds and bulrushes is when they are being pounded with a warm, summer wind and waves. This pattern has held for me on numerous outings, and tossing Colorado-bladed spinnerbaits or Texas-rigged plastics have taken several largemouth aggressively feeding among the reeds.
Reeds are also a regular haunt for northern pike early in the season. Weedless swimming spoons can excel in average growth areas. These baits let you to quickly cover a lot of water in search for roaming northerns. Examples include Bass Pro Shops’ XPS Lazer Eye Weedless Spoon, Northland’s Jaw Breaker and Johnson’s Original Silver Minnow.
Lastly, reeds will hold panfish, like crappies and bluegills, in early spring. Slip bobbers and small micro jigs will easily take these pint-sized fish.
Submerged Vegetation: Submerged weeds make up a large percentage of fishing cover and will attract a variety of fish species. Weedflats and weedlines are two common examples. Walleye, bass, pike, muskie, trout and panfish are all drawn to weedflats and weedlines.
To work the edges of weeds, you can use lures like crankbaits, spinnerbaits or swimbaits. To fish the thick stuff, you need gear that’s fairly weedless. For walleye, consider a Lindy Veg-E-Jig. Largemouth and smallmouth can be fooled using soft jerkbaits or topwater baits. When it comes to pike and muskie, it’s tough to beat an inline spinner or a bucktail spinnerbait on a fast retrieve over the top of weeds.
If targeting trout in weeds, my best success has come when trolling wet flies over their tops. It’s a simple approach, but it’s fooled many rainbows for me over the years.
The Wonder of Wood
Wood is a relatively broad category when it comes to fishing cover. It can include sunken logs, standing timber, fallen trees (laydowns), beaver dams, docks and more. The point is, when you locate wood — fish it.
Fishing Cover BasicsWood is less forgiving than weeds when you get snagged and it can be frustrating to fish if you aren’t used to it. Snags will happen if you’re not paying attention. Here are some tips for fishing the various types of wood cover.
Standing Timber: Timber can attract all types of bass and other game fish as well. Often common in reservoirs, working these trees calls for heavy duty gear and precision fishing. Straight retrieve topwater baits can shine during low-light and overcast conditions, some examples include Bass Pro Shops’ Sputter Ace Hardbait, buzzbaits, Heddon’s Wounded Zara Spook or Rapala’s Skitter Pop. Spinnerbaits will also work when the timber isn’t too dense. Flipping jigs or Texas-rigged plastics may be better to fish the thick stuff.
Fallen Trees and Beaver Dams: There are dozens of methods to fish fallen trees (also called laydowns). Most often associated with bass and panfish, I’ve also hooked muskie and pike from laydowns. Topwaters or big jigs with brush guards are two good options to fish these trees. These tactics will also work to fish beaver dams.
Fallen trees can also be phenomenal for brook trout as well as other trout species. Small inline spinners, spoons and flies will take trout around wood. Find a beaver dam on a trout lake and approach it with respect as it may hold a trophy speckled trout.
Docks: Docks are a beacon to many anglers, symbolizing a trophy’s fortress. To give yourself an edge, learn to approach and fish docks quietly. This ensures you won’t spook fish. If you can, work docks first with long casts, then move in and use short pitch and flip casts. Use snag-resistant lures to lessen your chances of snags, which dock owners will appreciate.
Other Types of Cover
Weeds and wood are the two main categories when it comes to fishing cover, but you may stumble on other fish-holding stuff during your adventures. For example, you may not initially think of tires as a good piece of cover, but these sunken circles will sometimes hold big largemouth bass.
When you find a new piece of cover, look at it in the context of the surrounding water features. Being inquisitive will result in you learning to differentiate between good versus bad types of cover and answer questions like: Why does this bay of lily pads hold bass but the other one doesn’t? Or why are all the rainbow trout relating to sunken logs on this side of the lake?
Consider cover in the larger context of the water body you’re fishing, and you’ll improve your angling know-how over the seasons.
Improve Your Sight with Polarized Glasses
What’s the one constant for shallow-water fishing around cover? Wear polarized glasses. They reduce the glare off the surface, letting you see easier through the water. Being able to see cover is critical to being able to fish it properly. Invest in a quality pair of sunglasses if you don’t already own polarized shades. They’ll make you a much better angler when fishing cover.
written by Tim Allard
Fly Fishing for Panfish
Fly fishing is an incredible pastime, but sometimes it can get a little too serious. When you’re worn out from hatch-matching for highly selective fish, panfish are there to remind you why you got into the sport in the first place — because it’s fun.
Panfish on the fly
“Panfish offer excellent opportunities for fly anglers — especially those new to the sport — to make the most of their fly-fishing gear and gain invaluable fish-catching experience.”Some things go hand in hand — largemouth bass and spinner baits, northern pike and red and white spoons, walleyes and jigs, and panfish and flies. Yes, panfish and flies.
Okay, I’ll concede that more anglers associate panfish with cane poles and floats than five-weights and dry flies. But I believe that’s only because they’ve never had the opportunity to try what has to be the most stress free, productive and fun fishing out there — fly fishing for panfish.
In fact, there are so many reasons to take your trout rig to the bluegill pond, perch grounds, rock bass shores that I’m not sure I’ll be able to do them justice in the space of this article.
An Embarrassment of Riches
Let’s first acknowledge the fishing opportunities that panfish provide. They are arguably the most prolific and widespread gamefish in southern Canada and the continental United States, especially east of the Rockies.
Depending on where you live, the dominant panfish could be yellow perch, bluegill, pumpkinseed, rock bass, black or white crappie, or any of the other sunfishes.
Whatever your local species, they’re probably plentiful. In fact, most jurisdictions have extremely generous limits on panfish, if they have any at all. And most of us live within an easy drive of good panfish water too.
In other words, they offer excellent opportunities for fly anglers — especially those new to the sport — to make the most of their fly-fishing gear and gain invaluable fish-catching experience.
Going to School
In fact, I’ve always thought that immediately after learning the basics, every new fly angler ought to be directed straight to a body of water that holds panfish. And if you’re trying to teach a child about fly fishing, there’s no better classroom.
Panfish on the Fly
“A float tube or canoe will help you get close to spooky fish and are ideal for smaller lakes and ponds.”Want to learn how to detect a subtle take? Try dead drifting a pheasant tail nymph through a school of Pumpkinseeds. Want to improve your hook up rate with streamers? Cast along a rock bass inhabited shoreline with a Woolly bugger. And, if you need to refine your dry fly techniques, bluegills are only too happy to help — especially if you’re offering a foam spider.
The point is simple: panfish, because of their numbers and aggressive nature, give an experienced fly fisher plenty of opportunities to experiment — something that few of us want to do on a trout stream — and a new fly angler some much needed insights on casting, presentation, fly selection and a whole lot more. These lessons come in handy when chasing trout, bass or any other less-forgiving fish.
The Gear
Some fly anglers downsize their gear when targeting panfish. Three- and four-weight (or even lighter) fly rods can make each fish more challenging and help when tiny, delicate flies are the order of the day. They’re also a whole lot of fun and can do double duty on the trout stream.
But a decent 5- or 6-weight rod will do just fine for panfish and most other species too. Add a balanced reel and a quality floating line and you pretty well have all the bases covered.
I like a 6-weight rod because it provides a fighting chance when the occasional bass enters into the fray — a common occurrence when panfishing. Heavier lines are also easier to cast on windy days or to spooky fish that are less approachable. Additionally, if you’re prospecting a lake looking to find the schools, sometimes the additional casting ranges of heavier rods can be helpful. the other fly fishing accessories, including a good vest, can make an excursion more pleasant; but the one that ranks highest, in my opinion, is a pair of quality polarized fishing glasses. The eye protection (from the sun and from hooks) and the sight-fishing advantages they offer are simply indispensable. They’re a must, especially for those new to casting.
Lastly, a float tube or canoe will help you get close to spooky fish and are ideal for smaller lakes and ponds.
The Flies
Fly selection is really a matter of personal preference. I generally carry an assortment of flies that will cover the water column.
Having said that, I almost always start out fishing with streamers. They’re simple, efficient and productive, if the fish are on the hunt.
Panfish on the Fly
Targeting panfish allows new fly anglers time to practice newfound skills such as casting, presentation, fly selection and a whole lot more.I have found size 10 bead-head Woolly buggers in white, olive, and black to be deadly on perch, crappie, and rock bass — the fish I encounter within my region. I’ll go with white on bright days and, if fish aren’t hitting soon, try olive, and then black. White, by the way, is an excellent and instructive color when streamer fishing because an angler can often see a white fly even when deeply submersed. If this is the case, set the hook as soon as the fly is bumped or disappears — this often signals a strike.
I’ve also had exceptional success with Muddler minnows, Silver outcasts, Black-nosed daces, and a slew of other well-known streamers. I prefer bucktails simply because they are more durable.
It should also be noted that Bluegills, Pumpkinseeds and the like can be taken on top water — a classic warm-water fly fishing scenario. If they’re willing to play, my go-to flies are small cricket and hopper patterns, foam spiders, balsa poppers or floating ants. Standard dries such as an elk-hair caddis or parachute Adam’s are also effective. Your best chance to encounter this type of action is early in the morning. As the sun or wind comes up they’ll go deeper and, as a rule, be less surface oriented.
When this is the case, I scale down to small woolly worms or, more often, go to a size 12 or 14 nymph under a strike indicator. Smaller streamers will work, but I have found that nothing beats a nymph set at the right depth (at the school’s level or slightly higher) if they are in a less aggressive mood.
I was reminded of this once again just two days prior to writing this article when nothing, it seemed, would work except a size 12 bead-head Pheasant tail nymph. But work it did. My catch rate went from two Pumpkinseeds in a half hour to a dozen in less than10 minutes. It was like flipping a switch. I’d have the same faith in a Gold-ribbed hare’s ear as well as a Prince nymph or Zug bug, just to name a few.
When it comes to wet flies, I like the simplicity of the Partridge and Orange or Partridge and Green patterns as well as Light Cahills, Alder flies and Black gnats. As long as they are size 10 or smaller and buggy looking, they’re worth a try and often very effective.
Finally, though panfish are generally easy to catch, there are times when the fuss factor is high. If that’s the case, don’t be afraid to try something new. A good panfish angler has a full bag of tricks.
Slow Things Down
With the right fly and the school located, it’s time to slow things down. Most panfish stalk flies deliberately and will almost always examine a fly before striking. Sudden movement often spooks them.
Panfish on the Fly
“Depending on where you live, the dominant panfish could be yellow perch, bluegill, pumpkinseed, rock bass, black or white crappie, or any of the other sunfishes.”That’s why slow-hand twist retrieves work well with streamers, wet flies, and nymphs. Poppers, foam spiders, and dry flies, on the other hand, should be activated after being allowed to sit for a while after hitting the surface. It’s in those long pauses, when the ripples have almost died down, that you’ll hear the plop sound of a surfacing sunfish sucking in your lure.
Also, remember that panfish are cautious by nature, and you’ll do better using fine tippets of 4 pounds or less. Also, try not to cast over your target fish — nothing will spook a school like the shadow and splash of a line.
When a fish does take the fly, raise the rod deliberately and tug on the line. This isn’t bass fishing; huge hook sets aren’t required, but being alert and quick to respond is.
And It’s Okay To Keep Some Too…
If you need one more good reason to consider panfish, shore lunch just might be it.
While many fly fishers feel pressured to practice catch-and-release with trout — even when it isn’t regulated — with panfish, a fish fry is almost tradition. They are, as their name implies, tailor-made for the fry pan and their numbers are such that, in most places, they can sustain heavy fishing pressure. No one need feel guilty about having a feed of these tasty fish. If anything, thinning out numbers keeps a lake’s population from getting stunted.
It’s All About Fun
Fly fishing is an incredible pastime — but sometimes it can get a little too serious. So, when you’re worn out from hatch-matching or from trying to figure out what highly selective fish are taking, panfish are there to remind you why you got into the sport in the first place — because it’s fun.
Give it a try. I think you’ll see that panfish and flies really do go together.
written by Steve Galea
Panfish on the fly
“Panfish offer excellent opportunities for fly anglers — especially those new to the sport — to make the most of their fly-fishing gear and gain invaluable fish-catching experience.”Some things go hand in hand — largemouth bass and spinner baits, northern pike and red and white spoons, walleyes and jigs, and panfish and flies. Yes, panfish and flies.
Okay, I’ll concede that more anglers associate panfish with cane poles and floats than five-weights and dry flies. But I believe that’s only because they’ve never had the opportunity to try what has to be the most stress free, productive and fun fishing out there — fly fishing for panfish.
In fact, there are so many reasons to take your trout rig to the bluegill pond, perch grounds, rock bass shores that I’m not sure I’ll be able to do them justice in the space of this article.
An Embarrassment of Riches
Let’s first acknowledge the fishing opportunities that panfish provide. They are arguably the most prolific and widespread gamefish in southern Canada and the continental United States, especially east of the Rockies.
Depending on where you live, the dominant panfish could be yellow perch, bluegill, pumpkinseed, rock bass, black or white crappie, or any of the other sunfishes.
Whatever your local species, they’re probably plentiful. In fact, most jurisdictions have extremely generous limits on panfish, if they have any at all. And most of us live within an easy drive of good panfish water too.
In other words, they offer excellent opportunities for fly anglers — especially those new to the sport — to make the most of their fly-fishing gear and gain invaluable fish-catching experience.
Going to School
In fact, I’ve always thought that immediately after learning the basics, every new fly angler ought to be directed straight to a body of water that holds panfish. And if you’re trying to teach a child about fly fishing, there’s no better classroom.
Panfish on the Fly
“A float tube or canoe will help you get close to spooky fish and are ideal for smaller lakes and ponds.”Want to learn how to detect a subtle take? Try dead drifting a pheasant tail nymph through a school of Pumpkinseeds. Want to improve your hook up rate with streamers? Cast along a rock bass inhabited shoreline with a Woolly bugger. And, if you need to refine your dry fly techniques, bluegills are only too happy to help — especially if you’re offering a foam spider.
The point is simple: panfish, because of their numbers and aggressive nature, give an experienced fly fisher plenty of opportunities to experiment — something that few of us want to do on a trout stream — and a new fly angler some much needed insights on casting, presentation, fly selection and a whole lot more. These lessons come in handy when chasing trout, bass or any other less-forgiving fish.
The Gear
Some fly anglers downsize their gear when targeting panfish. Three- and four-weight (or even lighter) fly rods can make each fish more challenging and help when tiny, delicate flies are the order of the day. They’re also a whole lot of fun and can do double duty on the trout stream.
But a decent 5- or 6-weight rod will do just fine for panfish and most other species too. Add a balanced reel and a quality floating line and you pretty well have all the bases covered.
I like a 6-weight rod because it provides a fighting chance when the occasional bass enters into the fray — a common occurrence when panfishing. Heavier lines are also easier to cast on windy days or to spooky fish that are less approachable. Additionally, if you’re prospecting a lake looking to find the schools, sometimes the additional casting ranges of heavier rods can be helpful. the other fly fishing accessories, including a good vest, can make an excursion more pleasant; but the one that ranks highest, in my opinion, is a pair of quality polarized fishing glasses. The eye protection (from the sun and from hooks) and the sight-fishing advantages they offer are simply indispensable. They’re a must, especially for those new to casting.
Lastly, a float tube or canoe will help you get close to spooky fish and are ideal for smaller lakes and ponds.
The Flies
Fly selection is really a matter of personal preference. I generally carry an assortment of flies that will cover the water column.
Having said that, I almost always start out fishing with streamers. They’re simple, efficient and productive, if the fish are on the hunt.
Panfish on the Fly
Targeting panfish allows new fly anglers time to practice newfound skills such as casting, presentation, fly selection and a whole lot more.I have found size 10 bead-head Woolly buggers in white, olive, and black to be deadly on perch, crappie, and rock bass — the fish I encounter within my region. I’ll go with white on bright days and, if fish aren’t hitting soon, try olive, and then black. White, by the way, is an excellent and instructive color when streamer fishing because an angler can often see a white fly even when deeply submersed. If this is the case, set the hook as soon as the fly is bumped or disappears — this often signals a strike.
I’ve also had exceptional success with Muddler minnows, Silver outcasts, Black-nosed daces, and a slew of other well-known streamers. I prefer bucktails simply because they are more durable.
It should also be noted that Bluegills, Pumpkinseeds and the like can be taken on top water — a classic warm-water fly fishing scenario. If they’re willing to play, my go-to flies are small cricket and hopper patterns, foam spiders, balsa poppers or floating ants. Standard dries such as an elk-hair caddis or parachute Adam’s are also effective. Your best chance to encounter this type of action is early in the morning. As the sun or wind comes up they’ll go deeper and, as a rule, be less surface oriented.
When this is the case, I scale down to small woolly worms or, more often, go to a size 12 or 14 nymph under a strike indicator. Smaller streamers will work, but I have found that nothing beats a nymph set at the right depth (at the school’s level or slightly higher) if they are in a less aggressive mood.
I was reminded of this once again just two days prior to writing this article when nothing, it seemed, would work except a size 12 bead-head Pheasant tail nymph. But work it did. My catch rate went from two Pumpkinseeds in a half hour to a dozen in less than10 minutes. It was like flipping a switch. I’d have the same faith in a Gold-ribbed hare’s ear as well as a Prince nymph or Zug bug, just to name a few.
When it comes to wet flies, I like the simplicity of the Partridge and Orange or Partridge and Green patterns as well as Light Cahills, Alder flies and Black gnats. As long as they are size 10 or smaller and buggy looking, they’re worth a try and often very effective.
Finally, though panfish are generally easy to catch, there are times when the fuss factor is high. If that’s the case, don’t be afraid to try something new. A good panfish angler has a full bag of tricks.
Slow Things Down
With the right fly and the school located, it’s time to slow things down. Most panfish stalk flies deliberately and will almost always examine a fly before striking. Sudden movement often spooks them.
Panfish on the Fly
“Depending on where you live, the dominant panfish could be yellow perch, bluegill, pumpkinseed, rock bass, black or white crappie, or any of the other sunfishes.”That’s why slow-hand twist retrieves work well with streamers, wet flies, and nymphs. Poppers, foam spiders, and dry flies, on the other hand, should be activated after being allowed to sit for a while after hitting the surface. It’s in those long pauses, when the ripples have almost died down, that you’ll hear the plop sound of a surfacing sunfish sucking in your lure.
Also, remember that panfish are cautious by nature, and you’ll do better using fine tippets of 4 pounds or less. Also, try not to cast over your target fish — nothing will spook a school like the shadow and splash of a line.
When a fish does take the fly, raise the rod deliberately and tug on the line. This isn’t bass fishing; huge hook sets aren’t required, but being alert and quick to respond is.
And It’s Okay To Keep Some Too…
If you need one more good reason to consider panfish, shore lunch just might be it.
While many fly fishers feel pressured to practice catch-and-release with trout — even when it isn’t regulated — with panfish, a fish fry is almost tradition. They are, as their name implies, tailor-made for the fry pan and their numbers are such that, in most places, they can sustain heavy fishing pressure. No one need feel guilty about having a feed of these tasty fish. If anything, thinning out numbers keeps a lake’s population from getting stunted.
It’s All About Fun
Fly fishing is an incredible pastime — but sometimes it can get a little too serious. So, when you’re worn out from hatch-matching or from trying to figure out what highly selective fish are taking, panfish are there to remind you why you got into the sport in the first place — because it’s fun.
Give it a try. I think you’ll see that panfish and flies really do go together.
written by Steve Galea
Shepherd of the Hills Fish Hatchery - Fly Tying
Local anglers learn the ropes of fly tying at a recent clinic at the Shepherd of the Hills Fish Hatchery visitors center.
By Phil SurrattBDN Staff Writerpsurratt@bransondailynews.com
Gather a hook, some thread, wire, feathers and hair and you’ve got yourself some pretty good makings of a trout fly.It’s part of the sport of fly fishing that many anglers have gotten into and many have given up on.It’s a passion to many and a frustration to others, but patience and determination may get you over the hump.
Recently, the Shepherd of the Hills trout hatchery hosted a fly-tying clinic at its visitors center.Local fly-fishing guide Jeremy Hunt was on hand to pass on his tying tips and talk about fly fishing on Lake Taneycomo and the White River in Arkansas. Hunt has tied flies commercially, cranking out big numbers of many different patterns, for fly shops across the country.Hunt said more and more people are getting into the art of fly tying.“It’s really not that hard,” he said. “Learning how to control your thread is the key to a good pattern.”Overdressing, or putting too much material on the hook, is a common problem with new hobbyists.“Your first three might not be that great, but look out for number four, that’s when you start to get the hang of it,” Hunt said.
During the clinic, Hunt showed the group how to tie a dead scud.“Our rivers are full of scuds, especially the White,” he said. “The dead scud pattern has been producing 50 to 60 hookups a day for us.”On the White River, anglers have been casting smaller sized patterns in Nos. 16, 20 and 22, and have been catching big trout.“The key is to find slower water. That’s where you will find fish stacked up in pools,” Hunt said.
This past season, high water has kept anglers away from the region’s trout fisheries.That translates into not as many fish being caught, which means there are now bigger fish in the rivers.“I think we are going to have one of our best years coming up. Scuds and worms are abundant in our rivers and I think we will see consistently larger trout in the 20-inch range,” Hunt said.
By Phil SurrattBDN Staff Writerpsurratt@bransondailynews.com
Gather a hook, some thread, wire, feathers and hair and you’ve got yourself some pretty good makings of a trout fly.It’s part of the sport of fly fishing that many anglers have gotten into and many have given up on.It’s a passion to many and a frustration to others, but patience and determination may get you over the hump.
Recently, the Shepherd of the Hills trout hatchery hosted a fly-tying clinic at its visitors center.Local fly-fishing guide Jeremy Hunt was on hand to pass on his tying tips and talk about fly fishing on Lake Taneycomo and the White River in Arkansas. Hunt has tied flies commercially, cranking out big numbers of many different patterns, for fly shops across the country.Hunt said more and more people are getting into the art of fly tying.“It’s really not that hard,” he said. “Learning how to control your thread is the key to a good pattern.”Overdressing, or putting too much material on the hook, is a common problem with new hobbyists.“Your first three might not be that great, but look out for number four, that’s when you start to get the hang of it,” Hunt said.
During the clinic, Hunt showed the group how to tie a dead scud.“Our rivers are full of scuds, especially the White,” he said. “The dead scud pattern has been producing 50 to 60 hookups a day for us.”On the White River, anglers have been casting smaller sized patterns in Nos. 16, 20 and 22, and have been catching big trout.“The key is to find slower water. That’s where you will find fish stacked up in pools,” Hunt said.
This past season, high water has kept anglers away from the region’s trout fisheries.That translates into not as many fish being caught, which means there are now bigger fish in the rivers.“I think we are going to have one of our best years coming up. Scuds and worms are abundant in our rivers and I think we will see consistently larger trout in the 20-inch range,” Hunt said.
Trout in the Classroom
FISHERSVILLE —
When Courtney Rodgers turns off the lights in her classroom and leaves Wilson Middle School for winter break this afternoon, she can only hope that what happened last year doesn't happen again this year.
"It's gonna go great," she said to her seventh-grade science class on Thursday afternoon. "We're all praying that the fish are gonna be okay."
Last year, the first year Rodgers was working with Trout in the Classroom, the power went out at the school over the break, cutting off the cooling and filtration system in her trout tank at the back of the room.
Of the dozens of fish there before she left in December, only 30 remained. In the coming weeks, that number was whittled down to about 10.
It was a small tragedy for the class, but with every downside comes a learning opportunity, and in that instance, students learned that above a certain temperature, the brown trout they studied cannot thrive. The 30 that did demonstrated their strength; survival of the fittest as explored through a fish tank.
The students are keen, Rodgers said. They observe the checks and balances nature puts in place during the life cycle.
"The kids will say 'Hey, Miss Rodgers, for everything bad, there's also something good that happens,'" Rodgers said. "They just gather that through discussion."
On Thursday, students continued with Trout in the Classroom, removing fish from the tank for the first time in weeks as they have entered their fry stage. As Rodgers' net dipped into the water, the tiny fish zipped through the water, the gold flecks on their back shining brightly under the tank's lamp.
Students examined the trout with a microscope, answering questions about their body parts and coloring in a picture based on their observations.
"I was like in fourth grade, and we did something on fish," said Cameron Eavey. "But we never got to see them, and now we do. It's easier."
Dustin Turner said he enjoyed observing the fish this time, and was interested to see the difference in the fry from the alevins.
"Their stomach sacs are going away," he said.
"And they're swimming," added Natalie Moser.
Rodgers will leave her students' beloved trout this afternoon, but just in case something should happen while school's out, 2-liter bottles filled with water are waiting in the freezer for the moment that water starts to warm.
"We've got ice on hand," she said, laughing.
When Courtney Rodgers turns off the lights in her classroom and leaves Wilson Middle School for winter break this afternoon, she can only hope that what happened last year doesn't happen again this year.
"It's gonna go great," she said to her seventh-grade science class on Thursday afternoon. "We're all praying that the fish are gonna be okay."
Last year, the first year Rodgers was working with Trout in the Classroom, the power went out at the school over the break, cutting off the cooling and filtration system in her trout tank at the back of the room.
Of the dozens of fish there before she left in December, only 30 remained. In the coming weeks, that number was whittled down to about 10.
It was a small tragedy for the class, but with every downside comes a learning opportunity, and in that instance, students learned that above a certain temperature, the brown trout they studied cannot thrive. The 30 that did demonstrated their strength; survival of the fittest as explored through a fish tank.
The students are keen, Rodgers said. They observe the checks and balances nature puts in place during the life cycle.
"The kids will say 'Hey, Miss Rodgers, for everything bad, there's also something good that happens,'" Rodgers said. "They just gather that through discussion."
On Thursday, students continued with Trout in the Classroom, removing fish from the tank for the first time in weeks as they have entered their fry stage. As Rodgers' net dipped into the water, the tiny fish zipped through the water, the gold flecks on their back shining brightly under the tank's lamp.
Students examined the trout with a microscope, answering questions about their body parts and coloring in a picture based on their observations.
"I was like in fourth grade, and we did something on fish," said Cameron Eavey. "But we never got to see them, and now we do. It's easier."
Dustin Turner said he enjoyed observing the fish this time, and was interested to see the difference in the fry from the alevins.
"Their stomach sacs are going away," he said.
"And they're swimming," added Natalie Moser.
Rodgers will leave her students' beloved trout this afternoon, but just in case something should happen while school's out, 2-liter bottles filled with water are waiting in the freezer for the moment that water starts to warm.
"We've got ice on hand," she said, laughing.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Rising waters in moutain lakes equals good trout fishing
Rising waters in mountain lakes good news for trout fishing
19/12/2008 1:00:00 AM
Anglers have been watching with interest rising water levels in the mountain lakes following recent snowfalls and rain in the catchment.
Lake Jindabyne has come back up to 55 per cent of capacity and Eucumbene to 24 per cent and both are still rising as water flows in from the Thredbo and Eucumbene rivers.
Water rising over new ground floods food items such as beetles, worms, grubs, spiders and ants from the soil and this in turn attracts cruising trout into the shallows where they are more easily contacted by anglers.
Although much of the close-in feeding occurs at night some fish will venture into the shallows during the day, especially in overcast conditions, and they are fair game for lure, bait and fly fishers. As a consequence, some good sport can be expected over the next few weeks, especially for fly fishers, before levels start to fall again as water is drawn off for hydro-electric power production and downstream irrigation and domestic use.
The only downside to this is the large masses of weeds and algal growth that make it difficult to fish bait and lures in the shallows.
Fly fishers have an advantage because they can fish wet flies just below the surface or dries on the surface and thus avoid the constant snagging up that bait and lure fishers endure.
A good example of this occurred recently at Buckenderra on Lake Eucumbene where trout came into the shallows to feed on a hatch of white moths.
Lure and bait anglers were unable to fish effectively because of all the rubbish on the bottom but fly anglers were able to target the fish with great success.
This is a good reason to learn to fly fish if you haven't already done so.
Looking good off shore
Coastal fishing has picked up nicely and prospects for the coming Christmas holidays are looking good.
Pleasing numbers of flathead are returning to beaches following the cessation of professional trawling in the Bateman Bay Marine Park.
One young angler at Surfside Beach recently declared confidently that he would ''catch tea'' and returned 30 minutes later with two excellent flathead taken on pilchard.
Another angler fishing from the shore at Murramarang landed a big flathead, plus a snapper and an octopus, using striped tuna for bait.
Further north, off Durras, a boat angler landed a good bag of flathead, together with one big morwong and a nice double header of a snapper and a large trevally.
Most offshore boat anglers reported finding plenty of tiger flathead, with a few big sandies mixed in with them, in 45-50m of water.
Salmon are feeding
Mark Rose at the Ocean Hut at Bermagui also reports some large salmon feeding on the southern beaches. Many of the fish are in the 3-4kg range and are taking pilchards and other baits readily.
Kingfish slow to emerge
Kingfish are still slow in areas but are gradually showing some activity. The hot spot is still Mowarry Point at Eden, where fish in excess of 1m have been taken on jigs and live bait.
A few kings have already been taken at Montague Island and this area should be fishing well by Christmas. Small kings showing in Horseshoe Bay at Bermagui could provide sport when southerlies prevent boats from fishing out wide.
Tip of the week
The other good news for Christmas is that the warm water and fish up north are moving south. Off Jervis Bay recently the temperature was 19 degrees and angler catches included a 140kg marlin, yellowfin to 24kg, kingfish to 82cm, a lot of makos and plenty of tasty squid in close.
Dr Bryan Pratt is a Canberra-based ecologist
19/12/2008 1:00:00 AM
Anglers have been watching with interest rising water levels in the mountain lakes following recent snowfalls and rain in the catchment.
Lake Jindabyne has come back up to 55 per cent of capacity and Eucumbene to 24 per cent and both are still rising as water flows in from the Thredbo and Eucumbene rivers.
Water rising over new ground floods food items such as beetles, worms, grubs, spiders and ants from the soil and this in turn attracts cruising trout into the shallows where they are more easily contacted by anglers.
Although much of the close-in feeding occurs at night some fish will venture into the shallows during the day, especially in overcast conditions, and they are fair game for lure, bait and fly fishers. As a consequence, some good sport can be expected over the next few weeks, especially for fly fishers, before levels start to fall again as water is drawn off for hydro-electric power production and downstream irrigation and domestic use.
The only downside to this is the large masses of weeds and algal growth that make it difficult to fish bait and lures in the shallows.
Fly fishers have an advantage because they can fish wet flies just below the surface or dries on the surface and thus avoid the constant snagging up that bait and lure fishers endure.
A good example of this occurred recently at Buckenderra on Lake Eucumbene where trout came into the shallows to feed on a hatch of white moths.
Lure and bait anglers were unable to fish effectively because of all the rubbish on the bottom but fly anglers were able to target the fish with great success.
This is a good reason to learn to fly fish if you haven't already done so.
Looking good off shore
Coastal fishing has picked up nicely and prospects for the coming Christmas holidays are looking good.
Pleasing numbers of flathead are returning to beaches following the cessation of professional trawling in the Bateman Bay Marine Park.
One young angler at Surfside Beach recently declared confidently that he would ''catch tea'' and returned 30 minutes later with two excellent flathead taken on pilchard.
Another angler fishing from the shore at Murramarang landed a big flathead, plus a snapper and an octopus, using striped tuna for bait.
Further north, off Durras, a boat angler landed a good bag of flathead, together with one big morwong and a nice double header of a snapper and a large trevally.
Most offshore boat anglers reported finding plenty of tiger flathead, with a few big sandies mixed in with them, in 45-50m of water.
Salmon are feeding
Mark Rose at the Ocean Hut at Bermagui also reports some large salmon feeding on the southern beaches. Many of the fish are in the 3-4kg range and are taking pilchards and other baits readily.
Kingfish slow to emerge
Kingfish are still slow in areas but are gradually showing some activity. The hot spot is still Mowarry Point at Eden, where fish in excess of 1m have been taken on jigs and live bait.
A few kings have already been taken at Montague Island and this area should be fishing well by Christmas. Small kings showing in Horseshoe Bay at Bermagui could provide sport when southerlies prevent boats from fishing out wide.
Tip of the week
The other good news for Christmas is that the warm water and fish up north are moving south. Off Jervis Bay recently the temperature was 19 degrees and angler catches included a 140kg marlin, yellowfin to 24kg, kingfish to 82cm, a lot of makos and plenty of tasty squid in close.
Dr Bryan Pratt is a Canberra-based ecologist
Gator Trout!
Dispelling the myths about 'gator' trout
By Terry Tomalin, Times Outdoors Editor In print: Friday, December 19, 2008
Spotted seatrout are the most popular sportfish in Florida. This member of the drum family can be caught on a variety of live and artificial baits by anglers of all skill levels. But catching big, or "gator," trout isn't as easy as it seems. That is why outdoors writer and fishing guide Mike Holliday set out to write the definitive book on Cynoscion nebulosus. "For being such a popular species, there wasn't much information available," said Holliday, editor of Jupiter-based Florida Fishing Weekly. "But there are so many myths and misconceptions about spotted seatrout. I had to set the record straight."
Holliday's new book, Secrets for Catching Seatrout ($19.95, Frank Amato Publications Inc.), covers everything from tackle to tactics.
With spotted seatrout season set to reopen Jan. 1 in the south zone (south of Tarpon Springs' Fred Howard Park), here are a few tips from a pro to help you catch a big one:
Fish early and late: Seatrout have a layer of tissue behind the retina in their eyes called a tapetum lucidum, which allows them to see well in low-light conditions, much like a deer or cat. Most baitfish species don't have this type of vision, and are thus more susceptible to predation during those times. Seatrout grow up learning that they are more effective hunters in low light, and it becomes a habit to feed at those times.
Make the longest casts possible: Seatrout have good vision and hearing, and once you put a fish on guard, it's not likely to eat. By making the longest casts possible, you increase your chance of getting a strike from a fish that has no idea you are in the area. One of the best ways to increase your casting distance is to use a light, braided line that has a thinner diameter than monofilament.
Use artificial lures that resemble baitfish: As juveniles, 80 percent of a seatrout's diet is composed of shrimp, the other 20 percent is made up of fish. As a trout reaches maturity (around 15 inches in length) that equation flip flops. By using bait that trout feed on the majority of the time, you increase your chances of getting fish to bite.
Use shrimp or shrimp lures when the shrimp are running: When the shrimp are running (primarily March through May in Tampa Bay) a trout will focus on these crustaceans as the main source of its diet. That's when you have the best chance of getting them to eat.
Big baits catch big fish: Gator trout don't feed as frequently as the smaller fish because they eat larger food items. A large mullet or pinfish is a meal to a big fish. The same goes for lures. Use a topwater plug that represents a larger meal.
During cold weather, look for the largest fish to be in the shallows: It's commonly thought that trout move to deeper water during the height of winter. At night, larger trout move to the deeper water because it retains an average temperature longer. But during the day, when the sun is out, big trout move into shallow water, particularly over dark mud bottom to warm up and feed.
Look for grass flats with sandy potholes: Flats with dense grass and few potholes generally hold juvenile trout, which need the cover to hide from their greatest predator, adult seatrout. Gator trout have lighter colored backs, and tend to frequent the edges of sandy potholes where they can lunge out and grab any hapless baitfish that moves through the open area.
Use sound to your advantage: Most noise will scare trout and put them on guard, but the sound of fish feeding will actually attract trout from a distance. Use a popping cork — which mimics the sound of a predator eating a baitfish — to attract trout. Topwater lures that pop or splash like feeding fish work best.
When you catch a big trout, keep fishing: A common misconception about large trout is that they travel alone. That's usually not the case. When you catch a gator trout, it often makes enough noise to put the other fish on guard. But stick around and let the fish settle down. You will probably catch another big one. Whatever attracted that first trout (comfort, abundance of food or spawning behavior) will likely attract other large trout as well.
To order a copy of Secrets for Catching Seatrout, go to www.amatobooks.com. The book is also available at www.amazon.com and many local tackle shops.
By Terry Tomalin, Times Outdoors Editor In print: Friday, December 19, 2008
Spotted seatrout are the most popular sportfish in Florida. This member of the drum family can be caught on a variety of live and artificial baits by anglers of all skill levels. But catching big, or "gator," trout isn't as easy as it seems. That is why outdoors writer and fishing guide Mike Holliday set out to write the definitive book on Cynoscion nebulosus. "For being such a popular species, there wasn't much information available," said Holliday, editor of Jupiter-based Florida Fishing Weekly. "But there are so many myths and misconceptions about spotted seatrout. I had to set the record straight."
Holliday's new book, Secrets for Catching Seatrout ($19.95, Frank Amato Publications Inc.), covers everything from tackle to tactics.
With spotted seatrout season set to reopen Jan. 1 in the south zone (south of Tarpon Springs' Fred Howard Park), here are a few tips from a pro to help you catch a big one:
Fish early and late: Seatrout have a layer of tissue behind the retina in their eyes called a tapetum lucidum, which allows them to see well in low-light conditions, much like a deer or cat. Most baitfish species don't have this type of vision, and are thus more susceptible to predation during those times. Seatrout grow up learning that they are more effective hunters in low light, and it becomes a habit to feed at those times.
Make the longest casts possible: Seatrout have good vision and hearing, and once you put a fish on guard, it's not likely to eat. By making the longest casts possible, you increase your chance of getting a strike from a fish that has no idea you are in the area. One of the best ways to increase your casting distance is to use a light, braided line that has a thinner diameter than monofilament.
Use artificial lures that resemble baitfish: As juveniles, 80 percent of a seatrout's diet is composed of shrimp, the other 20 percent is made up of fish. As a trout reaches maturity (around 15 inches in length) that equation flip flops. By using bait that trout feed on the majority of the time, you increase your chances of getting fish to bite.
Use shrimp or shrimp lures when the shrimp are running: When the shrimp are running (primarily March through May in Tampa Bay) a trout will focus on these crustaceans as the main source of its diet. That's when you have the best chance of getting them to eat.
Big baits catch big fish: Gator trout don't feed as frequently as the smaller fish because they eat larger food items. A large mullet or pinfish is a meal to a big fish. The same goes for lures. Use a topwater plug that represents a larger meal.
During cold weather, look for the largest fish to be in the shallows: It's commonly thought that trout move to deeper water during the height of winter. At night, larger trout move to the deeper water because it retains an average temperature longer. But during the day, when the sun is out, big trout move into shallow water, particularly over dark mud bottom to warm up and feed.
Look for grass flats with sandy potholes: Flats with dense grass and few potholes generally hold juvenile trout, which need the cover to hide from their greatest predator, adult seatrout. Gator trout have lighter colored backs, and tend to frequent the edges of sandy potholes where they can lunge out and grab any hapless baitfish that moves through the open area.
Use sound to your advantage: Most noise will scare trout and put them on guard, but the sound of fish feeding will actually attract trout from a distance. Use a popping cork — which mimics the sound of a predator eating a baitfish — to attract trout. Topwater lures that pop or splash like feeding fish work best.
When you catch a big trout, keep fishing: A common misconception about large trout is that they travel alone. That's usually not the case. When you catch a gator trout, it often makes enough noise to put the other fish on guard. But stick around and let the fish settle down. You will probably catch another big one. Whatever attracted that first trout (comfort, abundance of food or spawning behavior) will likely attract other large trout as well.
To order a copy of Secrets for Catching Seatrout, go to www.amatobooks.com. The book is also available at www.amazon.com and many local tackle shops.
Start Slow For Fly-Fishing Success
Start slow for fly-fishing success
Susan Cocking - The Miami Herald
Published: Thu, Dec. 18, 2008 12:30AM
Modified Thu, Dec. 18, 2008 07:17AM
PUNTA GORDA, Fla. - His methods might be a little unorthodox, but his students love it. Jack Montague, founder of Wolfglen Fly Fishing School in Punta Gorda, is a full-service instructor. He supplies the rods and reels and demonstrates casting, then turns students loose on a small pond on his property to practice on fish.
Montague finds customers for Wolfglen by offering daylong fly-casting classes, fly-tying instruction, rod-building clinics and even wood-carving lessons. He can empty a reel in a single cast and make an accurate throw lying down. But that mostly is for show; he impresses upon his students to learn to walk before they run.
"When you are learning to cast, or practicing, don't keep trying to see how far you can throw the fly," Montague told five students during a recent Wolfglen session. "That's like teaching a person to drive by giving them a few quick lessons and then saying, 'OK, now let's see how fast you can make the car go!' "
The basics
Before going for distance, Montague gets down to basics: stance (stand square with the target) and grip (make a "V" between the thumb and forefinger on top of the rod grip so that it is an extension of your forearm).
"You can make a cast in any direction you want without shifting your weight," he said, adding that sudden weight shifts on a small boat send out a pressure wave that spooks game fish, such as snook and bonefish.
After circulating among the group and checking each person's grip and stance, Montague presented what he calls the "five basic axioms" of fly casting:
* The fly will not move until all the slack is out of the line.
* Wherever the rod tip goes when power is stored in the bend of the rod, the fly will surely follow.
* When line is cast, it goes out in an unrolling loop, and when it stops unrolling, the fly will hit the water.
* The efficiency of the cast depends on the size of the loop, and the size of the loop depends on where the rod tip stops.
* If you are getting tired when casting, then you are doing something wrong.
Montague directed each student to practice casting with 30 to 35 feet of fly line extending from the rod. First came the backcast -- making the rod move from the 10 o'clock position to 1 o'clock; then the "drift" -- allowing the rod tip to travel slightly backward to enable a full draw for the forward cast; next, the forward cast -- snapping the wrist forward when the forearm is at a 45-degree angle; then putting backcast and forward cast together; and, finally, shooting some line by releasing it through the fingers while lowering the rod tip.
The students practiced with varying degrees of success. Then Montague went inside to his fly-tying bench and quickly made some small tan-colored patterns out of deer hair that resemble the fish-feed pellets he tosses in the pond. Each student got one and began casting into the pond.
Success
"Woo! I've got one!" Sheryl May said, stripping in a feisty tilapia, one of several she caught.
Howard Hecht, a retired police officer from Palm Harbor, also caught several tilapia.
Hecht said he has taken several classes with Montague but likes to come back for refreshers.
"He's already contradicted 90 percent of what you hear at these fly-fishing clubs," Hecht said. "Nobody teaches it as well as him."
Susan Cocking - The Miami Herald
Published: Thu, Dec. 18, 2008 12:30AM
Modified Thu, Dec. 18, 2008 07:17AM
PUNTA GORDA, Fla. - His methods might be a little unorthodox, but his students love it. Jack Montague, founder of Wolfglen Fly Fishing School in Punta Gorda, is a full-service instructor. He supplies the rods and reels and demonstrates casting, then turns students loose on a small pond on his property to practice on fish.
Montague finds customers for Wolfglen by offering daylong fly-casting classes, fly-tying instruction, rod-building clinics and even wood-carving lessons. He can empty a reel in a single cast and make an accurate throw lying down. But that mostly is for show; he impresses upon his students to learn to walk before they run.
"When you are learning to cast, or practicing, don't keep trying to see how far you can throw the fly," Montague told five students during a recent Wolfglen session. "That's like teaching a person to drive by giving them a few quick lessons and then saying, 'OK, now let's see how fast you can make the car go!' "
The basics
Before going for distance, Montague gets down to basics: stance (stand square with the target) and grip (make a "V" between the thumb and forefinger on top of the rod grip so that it is an extension of your forearm).
"You can make a cast in any direction you want without shifting your weight," he said, adding that sudden weight shifts on a small boat send out a pressure wave that spooks game fish, such as snook and bonefish.
After circulating among the group and checking each person's grip and stance, Montague presented what he calls the "five basic axioms" of fly casting:
* The fly will not move until all the slack is out of the line.
* Wherever the rod tip goes when power is stored in the bend of the rod, the fly will surely follow.
* When line is cast, it goes out in an unrolling loop, and when it stops unrolling, the fly will hit the water.
* The efficiency of the cast depends on the size of the loop, and the size of the loop depends on where the rod tip stops.
* If you are getting tired when casting, then you are doing something wrong.
Montague directed each student to practice casting with 30 to 35 feet of fly line extending from the rod. First came the backcast -- making the rod move from the 10 o'clock position to 1 o'clock; then the "drift" -- allowing the rod tip to travel slightly backward to enable a full draw for the forward cast; next, the forward cast -- snapping the wrist forward when the forearm is at a 45-degree angle; then putting backcast and forward cast together; and, finally, shooting some line by releasing it through the fingers while lowering the rod tip.
The students practiced with varying degrees of success. Then Montague went inside to his fly-tying bench and quickly made some small tan-colored patterns out of deer hair that resemble the fish-feed pellets he tosses in the pond. Each student got one and began casting into the pond.
Success
"Woo! I've got one!" Sheryl May said, stripping in a feisty tilapia, one of several she caught.
Howard Hecht, a retired police officer from Palm Harbor, also caught several tilapia.
Hecht said he has taken several classes with Montague but likes to come back for refreshers.
"He's already contradicted 90 percent of what you hear at these fly-fishing clubs," Hecht said. "Nobody teaches it as well as him."
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