8-29-07

Taming the Beast

As much as I hate to think about it, we are quickly approaching weather that will be setting ice on out ponds. This will also bring about the use of some different tackle and ploys. One of those changes will be the way we lean towards the use of glow jigs.

Glow jigs are great and have proven themselves times over in their ability to trick fish. They can show one draw-back though, in that they can actually glow too much. The perceived size of a glow jig can turn fish away and when that happens, the unknowing angler will be fishing with a beast of mega proportions. There is a way to tame this animal though.

I carry a couple of matchbook covers in my tackle bag and both have a couple of small, but different sized, holes punched in them. Once the holes are punched, I paint both sides of the cardboard cover with nail polish and allow it to dry well. Then I go back and re-clean the holes. When I find the need to limit the amount of glow being offered to the fish, I place one of the holes over the center portion of the jig to be charged and then hit the high-beams. This puts a very small, but focused, point of light on the jig. The fish will still get to see the glow, only in a tiny area as compared to the whole jig.

More often than not, fish can be turned from reluctant biters to true feeders by changing something we are dropping down the hole. Profile, color, action, presentation whether vertical or horizontal….all of these offer a specific change that can trigger fish, but the one thing so often over-looked is the amount of glow that we offer. The new paints that glow in color are a real benefit to the sport, but they can be over-done. Try limiting how much of a bait you charge. Sometimes less is better when it comes to these high-powered paints. A little can go a long way.

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7-30-07

Micro Locations

Summer fishing can be down-right frustrating at times especially when angling for crappies in seemingly structure-less water. Reservoirs can serve this scenario up when the have steep, fast dropping shorelines with quite deep water.

Crappies during the summer months are thought to become denizens of the wide open spaces and in some aspects they are. In many instances fishing will be far better for crappies when done in locations that provided the angling opportunities six months before. An example of this can be seen when crappies have pulled away from the close proximity of the steep shorelines in February and have begun to favor the deep water at mid channel. In August this could very well be the area to concentrate on, at least in part, in your search for these often phantom fish. Another consideration is that crappies can find and stay in micro-zones in numbers at times.

So, what might one call a micro-zone? The best example of this is a current seam. These seams stay fairly constant and move little. During periods of very stable water levels and flow, this can be especially true. These eddy/main current intersections are evident at deep points and the downstream edges of bays. Natural structure as well as that which is man-made can offer these locations. Finding them is relatively easy….just look for a slick carrying obvious debris on the water that seems to circulate from a channel area back into a bay or behind a corner.

When I locate such a spot, the first place I start to fish is on the eddy side of the seam. This is where the slower moving water meets the faster flowing main current. The slower water is better able to afford the crappies a place to dart out and grab food as it gets pulled toward the faster water. Pin minnows and insect life can find the main stream a challenge and struggle to stay in the quieter water of the eddy area. Daily conditions can determine at what depth the fish are at, so one has to do some tinkering with depth and perhaps the best way to approach these spots is with a free line and counting down.

The deeper water of the main flow can harbor these crappies too. This is the second of the area I approach. Because the flow at the seam grabs hold of some of the eddy water, this spot can be lengthy. The fish can be found well away from the obvious seam and demands that to fish it properly the time has to be invested. Again, the fish can be anywhere in the water column and a free line is the most consistent approach. [In either instance, if the fish are high in the water column and a float gets the job done, by all means use one.] The beauty of current seams comes from the consistency of the flow. The fish can tend to be depth specific at one area along the seam and maybe a foot or more either way away from that point. Thoroughly fishing the current side of a seam is the key to productivity while fishing this side.

Occasionally we will find a phantom seam pop up from out of nowhere. These are products of temperature conflicts with the water itself. Underwater springs can fuels these. Bright sun on water passing a large shaded dock can create these areas. In many instances, extremely small seams will show themselves along deep sunken wood if the wood is large enough diameter. Coupled with the availability of some shade and refuge and maybe a bit of temperature change, these spots can be dynamite.

Crappie fishing during the doldrums of the summer months can be tough if one is looking at traditional water haunts these fish use in normal lakes. Reservoirs are different. The approach to crappie fishing has to change to stay with fish. About the only thing that will be constant from season to season is any color preference that the lake you fish might show. Tackle might have to be switched. Down-sizing or up-sizing might be needed to keep a bite going. Live bait may be an option the changes the shape of success. One thing is for certain though, and that is the need to be aware of how these little zones can influence how well you are doing with the crappies. Not finding numbers of crappies in the more “normal” spots sends me snooping. I may be fishing as I scan the water, but I am going to be looking for something that creates a pocket of water that seems out of character. If my general fishing is not panning out, it is the out-of-ordinary that usually changes the pace. This is something that all anglers can grasp and all anglers should be aware of. Just knowing that small, “micro” areas can be crappie magnets can help steer fishermen into more fish on other-wise quiet days.

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6-19-07

Do You See What I See?

We seem to have gotten embroiled in our summer weather a bit early this year and, as usual, the crappies have maybe seemed to have vanished for some anglers who are leaning on Lake Zumbro. Depending on where a person is concentrating his efforts to find them, this may appear to have happened. Really though, it all boils down to location, location, location.

My community education classes have all been taught to look at fishing for crappies as a big mirror and that only one-half of the year need be put in front of it when we are dealing with these fish. The reason is simple: crappies tend to reflect, or mirror, the opposite of what they were doing six months ago.

The heat of summer and the dead of winter bring relatively constant water temps. Once we see the lake capped in ice and the water temperature becomes static, we see the crappies spread out and pull away from the shoreline water. They can be found anywhere along the center of the channel as long as the bottom is fairly flat. Summer will also find these fish, the better ones too, leaning on the same water and generally in the same places where the winter fish are found, simply because the water temps right now are again in a state of relative flux….water temps are very constant once again due to the very warm weather and clear skies with a lack of substantial rain to mix things up. We are seeing a mirror image of what we saw about 6 months ago. When people were finally able to get on the ice last winter, they didn’t find the good fishing along the deeper shoreline waters, they found it at mid-channel.

Way too many anglers get fixed on shoreline structure. By concentrating all of their time along these parameters, these anglers are diminishing their angling potential by a lot. Crappies are at their most mobile stage right now. This means they are on the move unless some weather event prompts them to button down for a while. With the warm water extending well down into the water column, without a thermocline having set up, [a thermocline, incidentally, will not set up or exist where there is a constant current….like what is found at mid-channel on Lake Zumbro and eddys will often set up a minor thermocline on this lake, but these can appear/disappear in a heartbeat] the crappies are foraging where the current is working for them and where the least amount of angling pressure is taking place. The fish are there. The anglers just are not where the fish are because they won’t step away from a location that gave up fish 2 months ago.

Will crappies be found deep when they are out in the middle of nowhere? Sure, they can be found at all depths in this venue as long as sunlight levels are comfortable for them. Their primary forage will be young-of-the-year minnows…shiners, chubs, carp, suckers, crappie and sunfish. All of these small fish are eating plankton and the plankton are rife in areas where the current pulls them along. The shoals of small fish are better able to feed in the open water. Closer to shore, where everyone may think they have the best cover is not necessarily the most secure locations for them. Most all of the predator fish from sunfish to pike to catfish and carp are prowling the very same waters. Those small fish that stray into the shoreline waters are easy targets and will not last long. Those who reside in the open water are those which will live to spawn. Crappies follow the shoals of prey into this open water world and generally stay below them, darting up to grab a minnow from the bottom of the heap.

What makes this fishing location an exercise in frustration is that, like in the winter, these crappies will seldom be viewed on the locator screen if they are actively feeding. These are the fish that come from absolute nothing and hit. These fish do not study a bait and have committed to the hit the instant they see the prey. And again, just like the winter fishing 6 months earlier, crappies found in a group and milling around are going to be negative/neutral fish and will have to be teased. Any crappie that wants to eat or has to eat will not be subtle about the hit. Any crappie which wants to eat or has to eat will be found ABOVE any other crappies that are simply milling around. When the feeding fish have eaten their fill, they fall back into the ranks of the milling fish to rest and others may decide to slide upward and do their feeding. If a person locates a group of ho-hum fish, the last place the bait should be is IN the pack. ALWAYS fish atop of these fish by at least a couple feet, if not more. A feeding warm-water crappie will go a long way to eat….up, ahead or laterally. Hardly ever will they go down to feed.

People who have filled a GPS with a ton of winter coordinates have all the information they need to begin to catch the summer crappies on Lake Zumbro. When you are getting ready to hit the lake in search of crappies, take a look in the mirror and ask yourself what you really see. That mirror doesn’t lie. Remember that what you see is NOT you at all, it’s a reflection, but it shows you things that you yourself cannot see. Now look at fishing the same way. Just like in the winter months when there will be a primary pile of people who will not break away for the traditional fishing sites and settle for some random fish, summer will find that there will be a few anglers who break rank and raid this un-tapped fishery. These anglers are not fishing any specific water temperature; they are not fishing any defined structure other than a moving water channel. Today there are boats found there. Six months ago it was snowmobiles traffic. Same water, same fish, six months difference and in six months they’ll be right back there.

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6-3-07

Dating A Fish

Lots of anglers look at the size of a Crappie and use the fish’s length as a measure of age, but we should not let Mother Nature fools us in such a way. There are a number of factors that determine the length of a Crappie. Genetics is one. The environment in which it lives is another. Weather can affect growth rates. Food is largely affected by the same influences as the Crappies and can play a huge part in a Crappies physical size. So why worry about this ratio of age to length? While it offers a bit of insight for the curious, it also helps to see what the general health of the Crappie is like in a given body of water.

Maybe genetic power becomes a pawn to evolution to some degree, but it is easy to recognize that not all Crappies are created with the same genetic capabilities. Two very same lakes separated by a hiway can each have very healthy Crappie populations. The forage base may be the same, the water depths and temperatures may be nearly the same….every aspect of each lake can be nearly identical yet one can have Crappies that seldom exceed 9 inches in length while the other can produce 13 inchers. Genetic predisposition to producing larger fish exists and is alive and well. Considering this, age could be easy to mis-judge. In fact, those 9 inch fish might be eight years old where those 12-13’s are only six.

Not all waters are created equal either. Some bodies of water are simply not up to the task of putting out numbers of large fish. Any water has to be able to support huge amounts of food beginning with phytoplankton and the algaes right up to meat-sized minnows. All aspects of the food chain have to enjoy relative health to see Crappies do the same. If a chink just tossed into the machinery even very low in this chain, everything will show it. The healthier the water, the healthier the fish production. A healthy environment enhances what Mother Nature has seeded thru genetics.

Weather is something we often get mixed up with climate. Climate is data that supports patterns over many, many years. Weather is what will affect us this week. So how does it affect fish and their size? Weather can mess up a lot of things is a short order. Heavy rains at the wrong time can dirty water and raise it long enough that spawning production suffers. Not just the Crappies now….all fish can suffer from high water including the minnow life which creates a big part of the forage base. Seriously hot summer weather can work against water quality. Major continuing cold fronts can work in the same fashion only at the other end of the thermal spectrum. Not enough rain or snow can equate to lower water levels. Less water equates to less dilution capability and water temps that exceed those required for consistent growth rates. Fish hatching from spawn in normal water temps get a good start, but if they are plunged into a sustained cold water period while they are suppose to be enjoying heat will yield fry that are short for their first year. If the same happens over a couple different summer periods, genetics will not help these fish out and they will simply be short for their age.

What Crappies dine on at any given time is again largely dependant on what the weather and the water offer. “Normal” and “consistent” become key players in this role. The more stabile the environment is for that which graces a Crappie’s dinner table, the better the growth rates tend to be, as long as what is offered for food is balanced….it can’t be all bug life, nor can it be all meat. Like all living things, Crappies too tend to be what they eat. The glitch here is that without genetic predisposition to being large, Crappies may have a much shorter maximum length and age will never see them any longer that the average of the larger fish in that water. If that length is 9 inches, a ten year-old crappie that has eaten very well has likely maxxed out in length.

So why give a hoot about the age/length ratio? For some people it is a matter of curiosity and really isn’t a consideration much beyond that aspect. For yet others, it is the understanding of how some waters can kick out so-so Crappies and why mere puddles across the road toss a guy pigs. A few anglers may look at some bodies of water and consider the Crappies to be a measure of the water itself. Anglers looking for a wall-hanger might use this information to eliminate water from potential places to find such a beast.

And of course the next question will be about determining the age of a Crappie. Easy. You need a tape measure, a tweezers, some blue ink [a dark-blue drawing ink works good] and a magnifying glass. Measure your fish and then carefully remove a scale from the side of the critter at about the middle. Put the scale in a baggie until you get home and then carefully wash and lay the scale skin-side up on a paper towel to dry for a day. Using a toothpick or maybe a very small paint brush/q-tip just touch some of the ink to the scale as it laid while drying. If the ink puddles, use the corner of a paper towel to collect the excess being careful NOT to wipe it. Allow the ink to dry. Now place the scale, stained side up in a good light source on a piece of white paper and, using the magnifying glass, count the clusters of rings or bands. They will show up as several very narrow closely bunched ones followed by a few quite wide ones and then the sequence will be repeated. The narrow bands are winter growth, slower because of the cold water and wider where warm water has been the case. Start the band counting on the edge opposite the outside edge of the scale and often has a small spur or pointed tip much like a “root”. The bands will start there, become wider and then become narrow and compact. This measures one year in the life of the Crappie. This process is repeated for each year of age thereafter.

Where the relevance of this dating is most interesting is when it is coupled with journaling. A person can go back and see what events may have caused a slow-down in growth during other-wise fast growth periods. When documented occurrences are available, one can see how specific events in the weather that affect the spawning period or perhaps fish kills can alter what will be on tap for future fishing. As an example, the springs of 2006 and 2005 found the Crappie spawning process interrupted by high water on Lake Zumbro. Not all of the Crappies got the job done last season and the year before it was unlikely that any got to that point. Today though, we see a better number in the large fish department. Lake Zumbro has a Crappie base in both the white and black species that is genetically predisposed to supporting Crappies that can attain lengths of between 14 and 16 inches when all of the elements fall into place. By removing a part of any year-class, or in the case of 2005 the whole year class, the amount of available food goes into fewer mouths…..meaning more food for the fewer number of mouths over-all. Growth rate blossoms and for a couple years we see better numbers of larger fish.

This “dating” information does not mean that people who do it will be better anglers. It certainly will not assure anyone of bigger fish. What it does do, though, is allow a person to understand the interaction of fish growth and quality when compared to documented physical events that changed or altered a particular piece of the Crappies yearly cycle. In part, it also allows an angler to look at what the future of a specific body of water “might” be holding in store by simply taking a closer look at a scale.

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5-30-07

Inquiring Minds…

There may be some of you with inquiring minds who want to know why I have chosen to leave LakeStateFishing.com. The reasons are many.

I am finding that my time is more important to me when I spent it in other ways than working for hours a day at a website where there is nothing but turmoil. The owner of the site simply sees what he wants to see and he certainly doesn’t have a great deal of commonsense when it comes to dealing with trouble making staff persons. For the most part, the people with whom I worked at a staff or pro staff level were good guys/gals. I liken this to living in a basically good neighborhood, but having a whorehouse next door. If nothing can get done to eliminate the bad, then its time to move on. I chose to move since nothing was getting done about the wrongs of the site, so lakestate can have its whorehouse and the old neighborhood.

Something has to be said on behalf of the good websites….like the one found here and InDepthAngling. The quality of the people found here make being a part of the family a nice feeling. Perhaps I got tired of the expectations on the larger site. Maybe I got fed up with people who lie to make themselves look better….and there are a couple of masters at this trade on lakestate. But I have promised myself not to spend time worrying about lakestate and what might have been or could have been or should have been. Instead, I am taking a rest.

I have some of my teaching formats to work bugs out of. I have a million notes amassed to go into a book and maybe it is a sign now that this time should be spent working on it. I have some show schedules that will occupy some of my time working with a couple of the tackle makers that I rep for and I am looking forward to being in the public again with them. I know it doesn’t sound so much like I am taking a rest, but without having all of the onsite-conflict to have to deal with, it really will be peaceful.

I have always been one to share information. I love the interaction with people. So while one site is losing this, RochesterAngler and InDepthAngling will be getting what I gave elsewhere and I do promise to keep the info current and interesting.

Those who know me know that I am not motivated by status. I am motivated by my passion to be inquisitive and then to share what I find. I have no-one to impress but myself. I walk with my peers, not ahead of them.

So if any of you look for me elsewhere and cannot find me, its because I am here or nearby. I’ll be fishing or writing, or gardening, or mowing, or making jigs. One thing is for sure…..I am done with those big sites and I am already enjoying the small time.

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5-5-07

The Time, The Place

At this time of year many of us are looking for crappie fishing to be outstanding as the fish begin to dot the shorelines in huge numbers to take part in their annual fling. It is a time of many thoughts: where are they, when does it start, what water temp, why this, why that. The list of questions is seemingly endless. Much of the confusion can be tossed out though, if we just quit thinking like people when we need to be thinking in terms of what the fish might be thinking.

We know that crappies spawn in the spring and over time people have made correlations between many annual occurrences and that fishy event: lilacs blooming, cottonwood fluff, spring birthdays, and full moons in May…..the list can go on. In reality, crappies do not realize these things so they are of moot importance to them. One thing that crappies do pay heed to, though, is water temperature and that one single aspect of their world dictates much to the “time” factor of the title as well as the “place”.

Fish live in a liquid environment. Like our own air, the water can get dirty or smelly [lots of rain or not enough]. It can get seemingly heavy or thick [barometer changes]. Since liquids give up heat and take it on slower than air, change within the water that fish live in is a more subtle issue. Still, if the angler does not understand this one issue, he/she will be at odds as far as putting together a relative time-table that can be used to pattern the crappie.

When the water temperature nears the 56 degree mark, the crappie angler can start to expect to see the crappies staging near spawning sites. Bear in mind the reference to the “start to” and the “near”. These are keys that will help to determine where a person should be thinking of fishing based on water temperature alone and not on a time line since each year is different – this spring period is way different from last year’s same period of time. As the water temperature nears the 62 degree mark, male fish are going to be found at the spawning areas claiming and fanning nesting sites.

Basically, it is the temperature of the water that dictates when the spawn will take place. Water temperature governs the maturation rate of the eggs. It governs where the fish’s location is relative to the time of year [which equates to available light, not a calendar]. When followed closely and with reference to preferred temperatures of the crappie throughout there year, water temperature determines when one should fish where to be successful.

All waters are not created equal, like-wise with the crappies themselves. We know that crappies are societal fish and enjoy the safety and company of their own kind. We know too that they live according to a well-shaped and defined “pecking order”. That order determines that the superior fish [the largest and oldest] get the best feeding sites, feed first, get the most secure structure and protection from structure during weather changes and other turmoil created in the water. The biggest get the best. By understanding how water temperature drives the crappie and how crappies are controlled by a definite order, one can begin to understand how a couple feet of water depth where the temperature stability is consistent and not affected so much by wave action or over-night chills can be the difference between plate sized fish and saucer sized fish.

Far too many anglers ask the question “When is the best time to fish for crappies?” or “Where is the best place to find the crappies right now?”. In a very general sense, these questions can be answered IF everything with the weather and wind stay in a state of flux and nothing changes as far as water temperature goes. Throw a day of wind and cold rain on a shoreline where the fish had begun to stage or even had begun to fan nest-sites and you will not find fish where they were the day before the weather. They will not be far away and they will still be catchable, but 2 degrees difference in water temperature can mean 10 feet in depth change to find the fish. And then it might mean a person has to look even closer to find that difference of a half a degree to find the larger fish. And if that 2 degree change gets down in the water column deep enough, it can take days to regain it at a shoreline to get fish back into that spawning fever again. To complicate this scenario even further, a change in wind direction can mess with water temperature in a huge way.

A lot of what is being touched on here holds a super amount of relevance to the angler being successful with decent fish. The problem with water temperature and reading it is that 95% of all anglers use a temperature reading coming from a locator and a transducer with the temp sensor mounted on a transom or at the end of a trolling motor. This is NOT where the fish are found and most certainly is not where a prudent angler targets his fish. You have to get down in the water to get anything concrete. Water temps over-night can change by as much as ten degrees at the surface, while those temps at 6 or 8 feet might actually climb a degree. Try fishing at sunrise in water that is 58 degrees at 6 feet and 51 at the top. Your best fish will come from 6 feet. If the weather in nice, the sun is out and winds are ripple the water a little but don’t blow you away, pay attention to where you get your better fish as the day wears on. Chances are that as the water warms at the surface your fishing will become shallower as long as the sun isn’t allowed to get on the water while it is flat. A prime example of this is the small bay that produces nothing at first light but is hotter than heck at 4:30 that same afternoon.

We see so much general information on the time and place for fishing that things can get very, very muddled. To be a better angler one really has to learn when to stop using the general, almost generic, repetitious information and lean on something not so ordinary in nature. Like water temperature. Anglers who learn to look at water temperature and its controlling ability over the crappie answer the questions of when and where all by themselves. As humans, anglers do too much thinking in “our” terms…days, weeks, months….and we fill our minds with references related to specific time-frames, such as when the lilacs bloom, the crappies will be biting. By stepping outside of the “general information box”, one can find out that the crappies have been biting since the ice went off the water and that by following the water’s temperature, many anglers haven’t had to wait until flowers bloom. The Time, The place need to be replaced by How Warm, How deep.

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4-22-07

Lighten Up

About this time of year we hear a bunch of chatter about lines: which one does this best, which one does that best, which one holds the best knots…..the list goes on. One thing that is an absolute must, though, when a person finally decides on a particular line – favorite or untried – is to consider how heavy it should be. This one single element can spoil fishing or can make a trip a hallmark.

Panfish are not hard-surging, tooth- riddled, tackle rippers. Yes, they put on an arguable display, but they are fish that don’t often snap a good line. Mishandled fish can break a good line when they are out of the water, but in the water pan-fish are easily controlled on even very light lines of two pound test. So….what is the best weight of line to consider when pan-fish are the targets?

To start, one should consider how the line is going to be used. Will it carry a float or will it be a free-line rig? Is casting distance going to be an issue? What is the reel’s capability to handle a line, pound-test-wise? How light is the lightest bait you intend to use going to be? It’s all relevant to line weight.

Any time you put something on a line you create surface stress on the line. A sinker that gets pinched on the line can nick the surface and stress it. A float with a spring clip can force the line to run at critical angles when carrying the load of a fish. When thinking of fishing in a way that may include adding any similar scenarios, stay away from using ultra-thin or light line as they have little room for the possibility of surface corruption. 4 pound test lines are a minimum for float fishing. A 4 pound line will allow for the string knots used in slip floating to clench the line without binding it and have enough surface diameter to handle some pinching from weights and it will perform without fail during periods of free-lining. 2 pound line is one that should be reserved for free-lining as it doesn’t have the diameter to deal with pinching and can “roll into” the string knots used for slipping when they get tightened.

Casting distance can often be an issue associated directly to line weight. People rigged with an 8 pound mono, even if it is a soft mono, will get about ¼ of the casting distance of someone using a soft 4 pound line when casting baits of 1/32 ounce. Even six pound lines are distance robbers. Keep in mind that the heavier the line, the more rigid it will be due to the diameter of it. The tricky part here is that you have to do some shopping and you have to read some labels. Not all lines are created equal and one 4 pound line could easily be .002” thinner than another. That can equate to casting distance differences of several feet. Try choosing lines of the smallest diameter within a give pound rating instead of by the name.

One of your prime considerations when choosing a line, especially for panfish and crappies, is what the lightest bait is that you will fish. The lightest bait should be fished, of course, on lighter lines to maximize your casting potential, but here also lies another consideration: drop rate. While you can cast a 1/32 ounce jig like a bullet on a free line of 2 pound test, what if the fish want a drop rate slower than what two pound test lines can provide? This is where having more than one rod plays a part in your game-plan. Carry a couple rods, one with you two pound and one with you four pound line. The added diameter and stiffness of the four pound will effectively slow the drop on a jig in that weight range without having to downsize to achieve the drop rate the fish want. The time a bait spends within the fish’s window of vision, or strike zone, is a whole lot more important that what people think. This one issue can be a critical one during high water or dirty water periods.

And of course we have all had or heard of the woes that come with the use of light lines, particularly in the arena of jigging crappies or sunfish. “The line twists so bad” or “My line is full of tangles all the time”. The list can be endless. Most of the time it is not a fault of the line itself and usually it is caused by one of two things: jigging too aggressively or closing the reel’s bail by turning the handle. Jigging on a light line, whether on a free line or under a float, is a something that will have inevitable twists getting into your line. When you see it start to happen, take off the strip the line of everything and let it run off the reel with the bail open while the boat is slowly moving forward. When a hundred feet or so have been allowed to trail out, pinch the line between a couple of fingers while reeling it back in and then dress up the rigging and go back to fishing. This takes all of three minutes and can save you twenty minutes of headaches. Also, when you close your reel’s bail, get in the practice of doing this by hand. Every time you close the bail by turning the handle, you are ADDING ½ of a twist to the line. It doesn’t take long for combined cumulative causes for line twist to make your day miserable. And it only takes a couple minutes to cure it. Another thing to look at is whether the retrieve roller on the take-up side of the bail is freely turning. Sand can stop that roller in a heartbeat and that leads to twisting as well.

Light lines and light baits are a superb match for panfishing IF you take some time to understand some of the little glitches that both can bring. Much of the challenge amounts to some simple understanding of what you are dealing with and the ability to balance your tackle to meet your needs. It is a proven fact that your catch rates will improve if your approach to crappies and sunfish lean on the light side of things. So, if you are feeling like maybe you are not doing as well as you should with that eight and ten pound line, just lighten up…you might amaze yourself.

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4-18-07

Slowing Down

This is the time of year when people can find mixed fishing results when things appear or seem to be the same from day to day. As always though, small factors can make a huge difference in the outcome of our jaunties to the lakes and rivers. We now start to notice some subtle changes taking place with the water itself….temperature being the most pointed. Mother Nature can toss in some glitches too….rain, snow, barometer readings and wind to name a few. Rising water can really be a curve ball for some anglers. There are a couple of things that we can do though, to put the odds in our favor when we set out to chase crappies and other panfish.

Understanding the lake/river where you fish is one such advantage if a person takes the time to do some homework. All a person really needs is a map of the water in question to begin to see how some of the issues above the water might affect the situation below. Wind from one direction can greatly affect a current moving in another. A map will help you visualize some of the dynamics tied to current and eddies.

Another, more common, issue for spring fishing effectiveness is fishing too little in any given chosen area. Instead of making four or five casts to that tree limb after catching a fish and then moving on, consider this. Crappies and panfish are social creatures….they revel in company of their own kind. Even as we approach the spawning season where competitiveness and aggression can run rampant, we still see that they tolerate each other as long as boundaries are not crossed. Basically, if you find one fish at a tree limb right now, you will find more very close to the same spot. They might be higher or lower in the water column. They could be nearer to shore or maybe a tad bit further out away from the limb. Chances are pretty darned good though that if you only make a few casts to a piece of structure like this you may be passing up many fish.

You can’t effectively fish structure if you are in a hurry. Slow down and really look at what you have in front of you. Quietly run your electric and take your boat right over the outside edge of that limb and see what lies beneath where you cannot see. Many times a limb that appears to have meager offerings can extend well down into the water column with most of it out of your sight. Doing this will give you a whole different perspective on “how much more” is actually there for you to fish. Approach this new-found structure from different directions. Fish from the top down as you change your direction of approach. Change colors and do it again. Try a different plastic and technique and repeat it. This is “really fishing” a specific piece of structure….this is how an angler makes a day a productive one. Spending 4 hours on the water fishing a total of 1/8 of a mile of shoreline may be fishing too fast at times. Spending four hours on six separate pieces of structure may be all one needs to fish to have a banner day.

Time spent at the outboard is time taken away from fishing. Knowing your water and quarry are simply musts if you want to enjoy any kind of consistent success. Understanding the correlations between the dynamics of the water and the fish are huge bonuses to the angler who takes the time to consider them. In the end, though, it is the amount of time actually put into a single piece of structure that will weigh in with big weights. These are fast times in our society. Run here, run there….always on the fly. 99% of the time this is why some anglers can enjoy only mediocrity in their time on the water. Try shifting to a lower gear and challenge yourself to more thoroughly work specific areas. While only a tree limb has been a topic here, points, bays, eddies, rip-rap, bridge pilings and docks are all other examples of fishable structure that see far too little direct attention for a longer span of time. The old adage of “Stop and Smell the Roses” comes to mind, but in this case it may be more apt to “Stop and Smell the Fish”.

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4-5-07

Those who know me know that I seldom fish with minnows. They’ll also tell you that I am a huge fan of plastics. Like most everyone though, I cut my fishing teeth on worms and gradually got graduated into the minnows arena and was tied to live bait for years before I moved into any sort of plastics theater. Things are great with the plastics I use today, but they were not always the as kind or friendly when I got my introduction to them. Shortly after getting my first bunch of the "new" baits to use way back when, I discovered that they were as friendly to the angler as the first hornet out of a just-swatted nest. The plastic was brittle and broke as easily as it wagged. There was only one action and that wasn’t always what it was advertised to be. If colors got mixed up, they bled into one another so bad they had to be tossed. And eventually I ended up buying more tackle boxes than I care to fess up to because those great baits ate the plastic box up. I endured somehow, but the fact remains that I still carry a tool from my old bait days simply because I will use this item even though I am fishing with a plastic. That item is a simple hook. Some plastics fished on a plain hook are deadly because the drop rate is so much slower.

But what I want to relate here is not for those who join me in my allegiance to plastics. This is for those who still find minnows the way to go.

If I was to give any two pieces of advice to a bait angler, it would be these: use Tru-Turn hooks and bead them. Don’t ask me to explain the mechanics behind the Tru-Turn hook, because I can’t. I can tell you that they work better than plain old Aberdeen hooks of the same size though. And I can tell you that when they are beaded, they will out-perform any hook hands-down.

So…. What is a beaded hook? Well, we see people putting the small , bright plastic beads on their lines ahead of a hook for rigging worm harnesses and we see that same practice with minnow and leech users when the target walleyes, so why now use the concept in a similar way to target crappies and panfish? This rolled thru my head years ago and this is what I did with the idea. I began with a bronze #4 Aberdeen EagleClaw hook and slid a single bead on the hook all the way to the eye and then epoxied it. And then I fished it. The results were immediately positive. That first beaded hook was done up with a chartreuse bead. Then I tried the hot orange ones and they worked too. Then I got my mitts on some glow ones, but they were iffy at best when used alone.

So I didn’t feel like I had hit on something only to be corrected later, I took these plain beads to the water and fished them on the line like walleye anglers were doing. What I found was the same apparent desire to have them along with the bait, but sometimes the water in the hole held the bead off the hook a ways and the hit would go to the bead, not the baits. Missed fish were not my intention here so I went back to the beaded hooks and bingo….the hooking percentages went sky high again.

When the Tru-Turn hook line of panfish hooks hit the market, I had to try them. This was a huge benefit. Those hooks resulted in very few missed fish, ever. Incorporated with the beads, they turned out to be nothing less than pure winners. Sometimes we overlook things that can be a positive influence on how and why those fish hit. Sometimes it is just a speck of color that turns the tables in our direction. Minnows tend to have one thing going for them and that is scent. A minnow that has been soaking under a float for a n hour will not have much zing to it, but if that hook it hangs on has something to catch that crappie’s eye you can see an entirely different turn of events. Jig heads can be tailored for a specific color and with today’s market what it is, beads for dressing up a hook are plentiful in a vast array of colors. The plain beaded hook being used for a minnow bait will tire the minnow far less than the same minnow on a jig. You can still get the color for attraction without the weight. Bait users do not have to be in the dark any more either. The new glow plastics are higher powered than those of years ago and will do exactly what the ice tackle does by delivering light where it once wasn’t. Bait users should stop and think about the treasure trove of possibilities they have at hand with these simple beads. With nothing more than a tube of super glue and a couple bucks worth of plastic beads they can add new color, new life to an age old bait. Bait doesn’t have to be drab to be good.

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4-1-07

Red Alert

That caught your eye, didn’t it.

In recent years we have seen quite a few "twists’ tossed into our tackle arsenal that focuses on the color red. Red line, red hooks, reed this and red that. Is this hype myth or sales pitch? Here’s my take on this stampede.

I make jigs. I have done it for many years. And long ago I gave up on the train of thought that gold hooks boosted a jigs performance. I gathered a ton of data while fishing for a number of years using gold and the traditional bronze hooks while fishing for crappies, sunfish and walleye/sauger. After studying the overall effectiveness of the gold vs. bronze hooks, I was able to see that the only time a gold hook mattered in the least was when the water was gin clear and the sun had to be bright and shining directly on the water. Even then, after eight or ten feet of depth, color was of little issue.

In the case of the red hook, the color red would be that color only until it got down to about nine feet and even then it would have to be that gin clear water with a bright sun shining directly on it to maintain the color to that depth. Water with any color or dirty water will nullify the color red shortly after it hit’s the water. The red hooks are actually gold hooks that have either been lacquered or electrically colored red. Both processes are expensive and add to the cost of the jigs/hooks from the start.

Is it worth the extra cost to an angler? Figure this. The process of plating a hook bronze does not affect the inherent temper of the hook. The process of gold plating requires lots of electrical "heat" and does change the temper of the metal resulting in a hook that tends to be brittle. Test this for yourself…take a small bronze hooked jig and a pliers and straighten the hook out then bend it back. Try this with the gold jig of the same size and see what happens. Gold hooks are five times as likely to fail as bronze hooks, especially when using the fine-wire Aberdeen type hooks whether they are used for live bait or for use in jigs. And indeed, fish can snap the hook under certain circumstances.

Consider too, that studies have shown that certain colors perform or hold together better at different depths than other colors. Ironically , red falls apart first, followed very closely by orange. Blues, greens and yellows? Among the fish mentioned above, we have not determined yet that any of them have eyes particularly sensitive to these colors. Reds yes. Oranges yes. Both the first two colors to literally wash out and lose effectiveness. Quite literally, all colors will turn to a gray/black/brown as they descend, and again ironic, that this is closer to the traditional bronze hook color.

Lines will undergo the same exact color transition. So when the companies blowing their horns about the product they want you to buy disappearing underwater, sure it does….to a point. Remember now, the line has tint to make it red. This color turns to a dirty brown after 8 feet or so in clear water. Does brown show up in clear water? I would say so. Even in colored water this "brown" line will be visible unless by some stroke of luck the color of the water and the line are at the same color level in the spectrum. Dark colors will act as contrast agents in the water. What might look red at the surface and is supposed to disappear below might actually take on the appearance of rope in certain conditions.

And to further this, those lines with disappearing fluorescent coloration are a hoax. Every nick or surface abrasion is going to look like a neon sign in the underwater world since the light from above is captured within the line itself. And the knot’s terminal end….where it gets cut off….that little dot is going to show up light a spotlight on clouds at night. So much for being "hidden". And the braids….well they are in essence rope and just can’t help but look like it, regardless of how it is colored. I fish braids on occasion….where using rope really doesn’t matter to the fish, but its use in my world is very limited.

Is red the answer to more fish? I doubt it. In my book, red is really only a pretty brown. The only two attributes that I see red having are: having above water visibility and being pretty in a package to lure customers. But for me, when I go fishing, I do not want to spend the day seeing red.

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3-30-07

Hooking Up

So….you walk into the nightclub straight from a day of hard construction and take a look-see at who’s around. There amongst the regulars is fair maiden of wonderful proportions and you saunter up to get a better look. After a bit of inspection you approach and offer this well-worn line…."so, how’s about you and I hooking up?" And things just go south from there. The whole situation might have gone better had you actually taken some time to go home, cleaned up and then approached the damsel when better prepared for her. The same thing applies to fishing.

It won’t matter how well you study a water or how well acquainted you get with a certain type of fish if your approach to catching them falls back on generic practices as a rule. To be getting the most out of your time on the water, you need to apply specific strategies to specific fish ….and this applies to the hooks you are using.

Looking at the panfish and crappie arena, live-bait hooks have historically had long shanks. These are especially handy with sunfish and bluegills, but are equally useful on crappies and perch when swallowing a hook can be of issues. Sure, you can catch these fish on a salmon-egg hook, but mortality will be a problem for the fish you release if they have taken the bait deeply and you do not plan to keep them. Small fish will pester you to death. In the case of sunfish and bluegills an Aberdeen fine-wire hook is just about as good as it gets. But what about jigs?

Aside from the fish, jigs and what gets put on then create their own challenges. The fishing industry has some standards base on popular norms that fall into this one-size-fits-all mentality that wanders this country today. For jigs dressed out in marabou, hair, or tinsel, these standards are almost ok. But if you are playing the plastics game, you may need to re-think what you are using for jig-heads. Some of these heads you buy today are based , again, on an industry standard and may not be helping you out in the catching department at all.

Using a 1/32 ounce head as an example, it has what the industry thinks everyone should have. It has weight. It has color. It has a nice size 6 hook. And it has this wonderful barb that keeps things in place….namely the plastic. Here is where things start to fall apart. We’ll use a common twister-tail for a plastic. If you are opting to size down and use a one inch plastic on this head, that barb will split it and you will be spending your time tying to get that plastic to stay on in one piece far more than you will be actually fishing. Guaranteed. If you step up to 2" twister to eliminate the splitting issue, it will be the bulk of the body that creates the lack of hook gap…the distance from the top of the bend in the hook to the barb. This gap reduction can lead to missed hook sets. Maybe the size of the 2" plastic itself will put you outside of a size window that the fish are wanting. So….what to do?

You need to shop. In an old tackle satchel that has several hundred twisters and tube baits in it, I have some 1/32 and 1/16 jigs with barbed shanks. When the fishing really heats up, this bag will be in the boat along side of the "better" bag because I have been know to revert to old tactics on occasion. The thing is though, I have not used a barb-shanked jig for ten years now. Every crappie or panfish jig I use today is collar-less in design. Every 1/32 ounce crappie or panfish jig I use today also is on hand with the #6 standard hook AND in a # 4 over-sized hook. Every 1/16 ounce jig in my tackle satchel that gets used is made with an over-size hook of #2 instead of the standard #4 and they are collarless. I may have those collared 1/16 heads, but they just keep the satchel from flying out of the boat at high speeds.


The smallest plastics I use with narrow bodies slide right up on the1/32- #6 without any splitting issues at all. IF I need to up-size my plastic or gain more hooking gap, the number 4 hook gets play time. A simple jig change can allow me to fish a super broad spectrum of plastics while allowing me the needed hooking clearance without changing head size on penny’s worth. If I am using a size 6 hook jig and am being pestered to death by smaller sunfish while picking up an occasional bull, I will up-size to the size four. The additional gap prevents many of the smallest sunnies from getting the plastic far enough in their mouth to get hooked. The size 4 is the ultimate when fishing my favored Paddletails, but I can switch to smaller plastic baits in a blink and not have to worry about splitting the plastic, having it skewed on the jig. I have one of these hyper-hooked 1/16 ounce jigs rigged with a skinny-bodied "peg-legs" plastic. Its stored in clear tube and has been for about four years now. It has not split, but has accounted for a ton of fish. Try that with a jig that has a barbed-collar.

Hook size is one of those considerations that far too many angler take for granted. Really understanding how hook size can benefit you or hinder you is an issue the deserves some thought. In an attempt to keep costs in check and to make marketing less of a headache, the fishing industry pretty much determine what size of hook you will get in a jig of a specific size. This is not likely to change. The collar issue can be addressed by doing some shopping….there are collarless products out there.

Collarless jigs do not come without issue though. Any plastic used on them can slide after a hook-up or even a hit. To counter that problem IF it becomes an issue, carry a small tube of super glue. A dinky tap of the glue on the shank of the hook when you slide the plastic up to the head of the jig will cure that woe for quite a while.

Stop and think about your approach to "hooking up". You may find some room for improvement.

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3-28-07

A Little Off the Top

Who’d have thought that we would go from late winter right into early may fishing conditions. This never really crossed my mind until I fished yesterday and found the water temps a balmy 55, 56 and 57 degrees. But fear not, all good things will end and this little climactic event will fall apart too handing more "normal" water conditions back to us to deal with. But while we are in the here and now……

Us crappie hounds can start to expect the crappies to show some serious interest in structure relating to deep water shoreline about now. While they might find favor with submerged trees laying more flat in the water, the best of the best will be structure that has a more vertical disposition. While both will hold fish, the way to approach each is way different. However, each approach should start from the top.

In the case of horizontal structure, such as a fallen tree, you will not want to fish deep inside the tree’s limbs and branches. You will find your best fishing by staying over the tops of these. Even if you have a float set at a foot, you want to stay above the structure itself. Actively feeding fish will have no reservations whatever at coming up to the bait. And on the outside ,or deep water edge, of the canopy, your fishing should be done in such a fashion as to gradually work your way down thru the water column, while paying particular attention to the size of the fish you are catching. Gradually drooping in depth can often show a very dramatic size differential, especially with crappies.

Vertical stuff will have a split approach to it, but still the direction you want to work is from the top down. Just like the description of the canopy in the last paragraph, vertical structure will hand you an identical senario. But….it will also hand you a twist as well. If you imagine a pencil standing straight up on its eraser and you looking down at the point, you are in the proper perspective to imagine this. Now imagine the pencil, as you see it looking down on it as mentioned, as being the axle of an old wagon wheel. Imagine the spokes radiating out around the axle. Crappies will not only be found according to size and depth, but they will be found with the larger fish being closest to the axle. If this structure is free-standing and you have access all the way around it, you may not need to move your fishing to another spot for some time.

Way too often anglers touch the periphery of spots like this at one depth and then assume the fish have moved on when they cannot get hit anymore. This is when the savvy angler takes advantage of the situation. He fishes all of each of the many various tiers clear to the bottom of the water column or the bottom of the structure. He will approach this structure for as many angles as possible too. The one constant with the savvy angler is to fish from the top down in a methodical way . Doing things in reverse simply hauls struggling fish up thru the upper level portion of the school and that spooks them. Chances are good that they will move or will not hit if approached.

The early-open-water period requires some thought if an angler wants to stay with fish. Understanding how crappies are reacting to this "new" water can help to put more fish on the end of the line. Slowing your fishing down so you force yourself to thoroughly work a structure will make you a better angler. Try taking a little off the top…a few fish…. and then a drop in depth, a few more fish….and then a drop in depth. When you are working a vertical piece of structure, be sure you begin your fishing "outside" of the structure and work your way in. Do this all the way around the structure before you make that move downward and then repeat the who shebang over again. And again. And again.

Many people realize that crappies stratify by age and that like sized fish will hang together at certain levels in the water column. However, few realize that the same fish will have a horizontal pecking order at times and sometimes both of these social organization factors apply to one piece of structure.

While the water is still cool and we are waiting for the spawning drive to start setting the pace of the crappies, try taking off the top in baby steps and see if the fishing doesn’t hand you ore than you expected.

CT