Fishing Rhino

Never fished without a license. I have never wondered how many do.

That is a sad tale. On the other hand, count your blessings, you got to meet him, and it's quite apparent that was a good thing.

Any plugs should receive a generous application of dielectric grease. Good for light bulbs too. Keeps out water and thus inhibits/prevents corrosion. Makes changing bulbs easier. Also makes connecting and disconnecting plugs easier as well.

It's a superstition around here, and elsewhere I presume, that when you see cows lying down, it's going to rain. I seem to do better on rainy days. That poses the question, if that is true, is the fishing better because it is raining, or because there are fewer fishermen on the pond when it is raining?

While not strictly a "shore fisherman", since I fish from a canoe, I do fish mostly from shore. When I fish the windy side of the pond, I "park" my canoe in the vegetation, and cast along the shore or outward. I fish pretty much the same whether stationed along the shore or away from the shore. The main difference is that I allow more time for the bait to "drop" when I'm casting outward from the shore, into deeper water, and less time when I'm casting into the rocky shallows. You'll have to accept the fact that to be successful from the shore, you will lose more gear than you would from a boat, since you cannot work the bait free from the backside of a hang. I'm not sure if I would enjoy fishing without a boat. It's a case of the grass being greener elsewhere. Whether it actually is or not doesn't matter. The fact that I can get to it does. The main thing is to be or get familiar with the bottom of the areas you fish. It seems to me that most boat fishermen whether it be a float tube, kayak, jon boat, or a full bore bass boat, tend to work along the shoreline. Keep in mind that big fish are often found tight to the beach in shallow water. Do not walk right up to the edge to start fishing. If possible, stay back several feet so you can work the shallows first. This can be particularly critical if the sun is to your back and your shadow falls on the water. Even foot steps transmitted through the soil can spook fish close to the shore, where they are more vulnerable to fishing birds. If the shoreline is open, before you move to another area, make a few casts close to the shore where you want to fish next. Then you can move to that spot and work the areas away from the shore.

So what's the rant?

I recently got a tm for my larger canoe. I did not use it until I got a circuit breaker to install at the battery. Never skimp on wiring, and never use a circuit breaker that will allow the wiring to melt down. Better to go heavy on the wiring, and use a lower amp breaker, than to skimp on wires and use a too high rated breaker. Stuff does happen. That's why we have safety devices.

Always check the weather before venturing on the water. Get off the water when lighting is approaching or forecast. Alcohol and boating is a deadly combination. Be aware of your surroundings. Know how to get emergency services, and be able to give them an accurate location of where you are should the need arise. Make a "float plan", with details of where you are going and when you will be back. If those plans change, use your cell phone, VHF radio or CB radio to notify the party with your float plan info. Things happen. I fish mostly small ponds in this area. But, if I tell my wife I'll be home by dark and I'm not, she will need to know if I'm on pond A, B, C, or D, to notify emergency services. They can't help you if they cannot find you.

Oh no, not this discussion again. I've heard the arguments that it is more sporting to have to land them by hand, and the use of a net gives the fisherman some kind of unfair advantage over the fish. This argument is spurious at best. Every development, from boats, to tackle, to electronics, to fill in the blank, is sold on the premise that they provide advantages to the fisherman. We are long past the days of using our wits, stealth and a sharp stick to net (pun intended) our quarry. Giving the bass a "sporting chance" is the last thing on the anger's mind. Just for the record, I carry a net in my canoe. I have yet to use it this year. I brought it for pickerel, but have since learned how to handle them, and don't use the net for them. It's there just in case. In case of what, I cannot say.

And therein lies the rub. I haven't caught a large bass on topwater yet this year. Of course the fact that I haven't tossed a topwater yet this year might be a factor. That's not quite accurate, I have fished some of the Rage Tail products on the surface in the shallows, or just beneath it, leaving a disruption in the surface. I have caught plenty doing that, but,.........., and this is a big but, the largest bass I've caught on the Rage stuff, monkey, craw, lobster, toad, and even the shad, have come when I've let them sink, and fished them along or close to the bottom. The fly in this ointment is that many times, they were taken on the drop, and since I used a five or ten count, depending on depth, and they were on when I took up the slack, I have no way of knowing if they took them on the top, or the bottom. There is one more point I would like to make. I believe that each of us have varying abilities with different techniques. There are a number of reasons. Perhaps we shun the techniques that do not work for us, to concentrate on what does. That does not "prove" one technique is better than the other. Most likely it "proves" we are better with one of them. There are exceptions to every rule in fishing. Fish the windy side. Fish the shaded shore. Fish are not as active on bluebird days as they are when the weather is changing. There may be statistical advantages that we use to decide what, where, and when, much like a baseball manager puts in a left handed relief pitcher against a left handed batter. Since you fish topwater at a six to one ratio vs, flipping and pitching, it stands to reason that you would be much more proficient at the topwater techniques. It would be interesting to know if others fishing the same waters, who stink at topwater fishing, but excel at p and f, catch most of their large bass on the bottom. Depth of water is also a factor. If the water being fished is shallow, it doesn't take much to "call" a fish to the surface, even if they are tight to the bottom. The more I learn, the more I realize how much I do not know.

Hightide, your story sounds a lot like mine. Got into freshwater fishing as a kid with a bamboo pole, kite string, cork for a bobber, a hook, and a can of worms. Was fishing before my age reached two numbers. Back in the 1940s. My equipment got "modernized" when my Mom took me to the S & H green stamp store, and she exchanged her books for a green Shakespeare WonderRod, and a Pfleuger Freespeed spinning reel in my teen years. I started saltwater fishing in the 60s, and deserted the freshwater. Prior to last year, the last time I wet a line in the non-salty stuff was the late 60s. When I went shopping for gear last year I was bewildered by the infinite assortment of rods, reels and lures. Thank goodness for the 'net. I found an article about the fifty greatest fishing lures of all time, and started from there. They say, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." That's just not true. I know old timers get set in their ways. Had I continued fishing, who knows, I might have resisted change. But, since I'd been away for so many years it was like starting from scratch. I'm not afraid to try something unfamiliar, and enjoy being a mad scientist while on the water. It's great fun being innovative. A fellow was fishing with me yesterday. We'd fished a few times before. He said the first time he saw me toss my T-bone version of a wacky rig, he thought it was a joke..........until I started catching fish on it. He didn't know me well enough at the time, but he told me yesterday, that he thought it was one of the most ridiculous things he'd seen. While technique is still important, the modern baits are almost impossible to fish wrong. The action is great regardless of how you fish them. Enjoy your return from a fishing hiatus.

I'll 'fess up. I only read a couple of the articles Glenn posted, one of them being the damage caused when a fish ingests plastics. Regarding that article, fish ingesting plastics has nothing to do with catch and release. In fact, in one place it intimates that discarding "unusable" plastic lures overboard is a dangerous practice, since fish can ingest them. I was a commercial lobsterman for more than two decades. I've seen good years and bad years. I've seen the same regarding the squirrel, fox, raccoon, rabbit, you name it, populations around our home. These are absolutely normal and easily understood or comprehended. Nature has the ability to keep things in balance better than man's feeble efforts ever can. When there is a boom in the population of prey, such as rabbits and squirrels, you can dependably predict that a boom in predators will follow. When the prey is reduced by the overpopulation of predators, there will be an insufficient food supply to sustain the predators, and their numbers will diminish, making it possible for prey, not only to survive, but to have a boom in their numbers, beginning the cycle over anew. Disease, most notably rabies has its own way of levelling the playing field. Nature does quite nicely of maintaining resident populations of its critters. There is no reason to think that it cannot do so without man's interventions. The real damage man does to any resource is to over harvest it, beyond what is called a "sustainable catch". A sustainable catch being the amount of harvest that can be taken every year without impacting the census of that species. Interesting concept, since science tells us that there is a natural ebb and flow of populations. Around here, dogfish, also known as sand sharks were nothing but a nuisance fish. In late winter, early spring, when they moved into the waters around here, they clogged the gillnets that were targeting codfish. A market developed for dogfish, and at ten cents per pound, gillnetters were making handsome incomes on them. A small netter, forty feet or so, could load their boat with thirty or forty thousand pounds of the dogfish in two or three hours. When lobstering in Buzzards Bay, I'd see them returing to port, the decks heaped high with them. They were overloaded beyond reason. But making three or four thousand dollars for an hours boat ride and a couple of hours of hauling, causes some to throw caution to the wind, particularly on a calm day. Didn't take long, only a couple of years until the dogfish population was devestated. Skates, and monkfish were to follow in the decimation of populations. When the fleet cleaned out one area, they'd move on to the next, wreaking havoc on the fish populations. Seems when these fish were not being harvested, they existed in huge biomass populations. Lobstering, which was my bailiwick, is very interesting. It is controlled primarily not by catch numbers, but by size regulations, and other excellent means such as escape vents which allows undersized lobsters to exit a trap, without being released at the surface by a fisherman. It is claimed that over ninety percent of the legal lobsters are harvested every year in inshore waters. Increases in the size limits allow female lobsters to bear eggs once or twice more before they reach legal size. Does it actually result in an increase in the lobster population? Chances are it does not. Why? Simply because there is only enough food and shelter available in a given area to sustain, not a certain count of lobsters, but a certain total weight of lobsters. Five one pound lobsters can exist where a five pound lobster can. At least that is what science tells us. Having said that, I do believe the size increase is a good thing. It is good because it assures more eggs being put into the ecosystem every year. While year class survival depends upon many factors, the simple math tells us that the more eggs there are, the higher the number that will survive. It is impossible to "underharvest" any fish population, including undesirable species, while it is entirely possible to overharvest any species. Hence, catch and release is neutral. To put any onus of responsibility of those who practice C and R, is to also put the onus on those who do not fish. Survival of the fittest, the process of natural selection, are nature's way of controlling populations, be they animal or vegetable. I will concede to this one point. If any animal population is harmed by man's actions, then it does behoove us to eliminate the cause, whenever possible. And no, I am not a tree hugger.

Contrary to what any manager or biologist may say to the contrary, catch and release is neutral. It cannot be detrimental. Here's why. If I fish Lake X and return every fish I catch, and everyone survives, it is as though I had never been there. Now, it may be beneficial in some instances to keep fish of a certain size, but to return them does not make the pond/lake worse than it was before you fished it and returned all of them. Hence it is not detrimental. Detrimental by definition is something that worsens a condition. Catch and release does not make things worse. It leaves them as it found them.

Run the disc cleanup program. It'll get rid of a lot of useless clutter that slows things down. You can also defragment your hard drive. Do it when you won't need to use the computer for a few hours. It can take a long time. Defragmenting is sorting and organizing the bits of data that are stored at random on the hard drive. If you wanted to bake a cake, and the sugar was in one bedroom, the flour in a bathroom the baking soda in a hall closet, and all the other ingredients stashed willy nilly around the house, it would take forever. It's why all the baking goods are generally kept in a pantry or a kitchen cabinet. When you need something, you know where to look. When data is stored, it apparently is stored anywhere there is room. So when you want to run a program, the data for that program may not be all in one section. Defragmenting eliminates the need for the processor to hunt down each item it needs to run a program or to do what you tell it. Speeds up the process.

I went out today, and fished an area with similar bottom, a hundred yards to the south of where I caught them on the Fourth. From one spot, I caught four. One over three pounds and the rest around two. They all took the bait on the fall. Three of them were caught with the bait landing within a ten foot circle. I spent a half hour casting the bottom within reach of where I sat without another hit. And, again, it was the sunny and the lee shore of the pond. I started on east and the exposed to the wind shore, and caught a couple. Some days, they do not play according to the "book".

Folks, some of ya really have to lighten up a bit. Sorry, the devil made me say that (do it). The powers that be on this forum considered the topic important enough to merit a place on the FAQ list. Jeez, the next thing you know Jiminy Cricket never sat on Pinocchio's shoulder whispering in his ear, since as a puppet, he had no conscience. But hey, if you want to belittle those who make light of their propensity to spend money, and yes perhaps too much money, on fishing gear, by blaming it on the bait monkey, it's all good.

One quick example of transitional bottom. Lily pad beds. Some ponds are wall to wall pads. Some have none. The rest of the ponds fall somewhere in between. My "home pond" has four beds of the larger pads. They are in three to five feet of water. Since there is plenty of water at that depth, why so few beds? Passing over them, and studying the sounder revealed a distinct transition of the bottom at the perimeter of the beds. Where there were no pads, the bottom was smooth, and featureless. While the bottom of the beds was distinctly different. The line on the graph was irregular, with a ragged appearance. While not as dramatic as a rocky bottom with small and large stones, it was nonetheless quite evident. I suspect, but will not find out until next year, those patches of bottom will hold pre-spawn bass before the pads begin to emerge from the bottom. My reading of the sounder is that those patches are a cobble bottom. Patches of small stones, from baseball to grapefruit size. Only portions of most of those stones will be exposed. Even if my reading is incorrect, the fact remains that those areas have a bottom, distinctly different from what surrounds them. If the "irregularities" of the bottom line were magnified, it would resemble what the sounder shows for the rocky areas which have a mixture of stones from small to boulders a few feet in diameter. Hence my interpretation of it being a cobble bottom.

Fishing is like golf. First rule is to enjoy yourself and have fun. The thing with both is, the better you do, the more fun you have. Rule two is, you will have good days and bad days, as far as results from your efforts. The first priority for any fisherman should be to learn how to use a "fishfinder". Don't expect it to find fish. Expect it to show you the bottom, and bottom transitions. Transitions in depths, and transitions in types of bottom, whether it be soft, hard, rocky, "broken" and whether or not it has vegetation. Transitions of any type are important, and none should be overlooked. Some transitions are dramatic, and obvious, others are subtle and easily overlooked. You need to pay attention to catch the subtleties. There are even "sounders" for shore fishermen which can be cast, and show bottom changes on the retrieve. I do not know how well they work, since I have never used one. But, were I a shore fisherman, I'd surely find out.

I know some, if not all, had spawned weeks ago. I saw some on the beds back in May, and then caught a female who had definitely spawned out. Caught her in April, with a fat belly. Caught her again in late May. She had obviously "delivered" her eggs. She had a distinct, healed injury to her jaw, which identified her. It's possible those I caught were just well fed. The dinks I caught in the shallows had fat bellies as well. Just not typical to catch that many good sized bass in one area for this pond. Then again, if they are through spawning, I have learned something new to file away in the computer between my ears. I'm hoping that's the case. Today, the weather is similar to that of the Fourth. I'm off to try similar bottom in different areas with the same baits. If that doesn't produce, I'll try something else. I haven't tossed a buzz bait or a topwater yet, this year. I enjoy doing puzzles. The different types have their own patterns. Must be why I like fishing so much.

What? No bait monkey. No Santa. No tooth fairy. No Easter Bunny. I'm mad as heck, and I ain't gonna take it any more. Life ain't worth livin'. Goodbye cruel world.

I thought the spawn was over around here. Here's the story. In May, before the algae bloom kicked into high gear, I spotted some bass beds in two to four feet of water on a sandy, gravel, bottom. The bottom has a covering of brown filiamentous algae year round. But, drifting across it on a calm day I spotted the light colored patches two to three feet in diameter that obviously had been cleared in preparation for spawning. Yesterday, I got in a couple of hours fishing when my wife had to attend a funeral as part of her job responsibility. I got to this area, and parked my canoe in the weeds along the shore. Several casts in this area produced a half dozen nice sized bass. Two over four pounds, one over three, and three more in the two pound range. The females were "roe fat" appearing with bulging bellies. One had the bottom of her tail scuffed and raw, as though she had been sweeping the bottom. From what I have read, I would have expected that kind of fishing in a bedding area. I was fairly sure the spawn was over. What's your take?

Yesterday was interesting, to say the least. Looked at the weather radar in the a.m. and had a two hour opening before the lightning got here. Looked clear for a few hours once those passed. So, I went to the pond. Light wind, on and off sprinkles with an occasional downpour. The bass were either agitated or in a good mood, but they were co-operating. Nothing large most a pound and a half to two pounds. Caught them in four to five feet on wacky rigs. In slightly shallower water, three feet or so, spinnerbaits and the chatterfrog worked well. They were also holding in the pockets against the vegetation, and the Rage Tail lobster was well received. I had no sooner got on the pond, when I heard thunder in the distance to the west. Stayed close to where I put in, to beat a hasty retreat to cover. Caught three or four in the next half hour, when discretion told me to get off the water. Pulled the canoe well away from the pond and made the short trip back to the house to grab a bite. No sooner got into the truck when the skies opened, and the clouds dumped their contents. Returned to the pond about an hour later. Got in an hour and a half, caught another nine bass, and heard the next line of thunder approaching. Loaded the canoe, secured it, and called it a day for fishing. But for the lightning, I could have spent the day there. Maybe this afternoon. Hope they are still in the same frame of mind.

I suspect that most of the top pros run the boat of the manufacturer who pays them the most money to use it. Could be that Allison and Bullet among others are not interested in sponsoring fishermen. Just a guess.

The African Queen, with Bogart and Hepburn. The Hustler, with Paul Newman Thunder Road, with Robert Mitchum Bridge on the River Kwai Further back, High Noon, with Gary Cooper Sergeant York, with Gary Cooper Friendly Persuasion, with, ta da, Gary Cooper

Went out twice this morning between thunderstorms. Rain, sprinkle, deluge, no rain, a bit of sun then another T storm, preceded by a deluge. Fished the same stuff, in the same way, in the same places. The weather really turned on the bass. Caught 'em against the bank, away from the bank, and on the edge of the shelf. Rage Tail Lobster in the shallow pockets, spinnerbait and chatterfrog in slightly deeper water, and wacky worm in four to five feet. Everything worked. Hope you have similar luck.