nboucher

What Keithscratch said! Some days I'm Mr. Way Cool Angler, and other days I'm just an uncoordinated clueless schmuck. Either way, if I'm on the water I'm have the time of my life . . .

Raul, I was thinking about dragging those baby brush hogs along the tops of the lily pads and not letting them sink at all. These pads are thick; I can only get my kayak partway into them. If I didn't have so much darn work to do, I'd be out trying it now, hopefully not with the same results you had with your ribbontails, Dominick. . .

I was just looking at my baby brush hogs. They're about the right length and they're slim like a dragonfly. Do you all think they might work?

I was out yesterday literally in the middle of blue-sky day throwing a horny toad at a big batch of white waterlilies to see what might come up. I caught one small LMB, but as I was fishing, three or four explosions happened in other parts of the lily pads bed; one bug guy jumped so high I could see his nice fat profile. As I wondered what they were feeding on, I noticed an abundance of big dragonflies flying around above the vegetation. I'm guessing the bass were jumping after them as they buzzed and landed. Which made me think a small Senko moved slowly around the pads might work. It didn't. Anyone else see bass feed on dragonflies? If so, what bait might best imitate that?

Thanks, Russ. I just stopped by Benny's at lunchtime and picked up some vacuum packed minnows. But the trap sounds like fun. I'll see if I can find one at Wally World this weekend. Now I've got to figure out where all this stuff is going to fit in the car. :-? Thanks for the offer of rods. I've got mine and a handful of old Shakespeare spinning setups that'll work fine. See you soon.

Muddy, I agree. I dread most those series against lowly teams. As Red Sox fan, I dread them even more today, after the debacle in KC and Tampa. The sportswriters and pundits all talk about "beating up on these teams" and put the games in the win column before they're even played. Very bad karma. Then, when the good teams lose to those teams with inferior records, those same sportswriters and pundits panic. Happens every friggin year.

Dominick, I've got a good friend who grew up in the Bronx during that same time you were in S. Brooklyn. I've heard many of his similar stickball stories. Were you near Sheepshead Bay? I understand the fishing was pretty good there.

You guys are all great. Gene, I know what you mean about being the only fishing dad in the neighborhood. Because I usually fish out of a kayak, it's not easy to take someone else along. But I do have a canoe, and after this trip, I just have to use it to take out some of the other kids who have been hinting strongly about coming along. :-[ As a longtime bleeding-heart liberalkeep the PMs polite, please 8-)I always feel as if I should be doing something more with fishing and the outdoors, as you do, Dominick, to pass it on to kids who have little more than hundreds of cable stations with, as Bruce Springsteen once put it, nothin' on. Dane, not to worry. My plan is to get plenty of nightcrawlers from my compost bins out back, get everybody to feel a couple of fish on the line, and then offer plastics and maybe some lures to anyone who wants to try casting. For the guys, sometimes just casting is as almost as much fun as catching fish, it seems. Almost. It's all about getting them to appreciate, love, and above all, enjoy being outdoors. After all, they're going to be ones in charge of protecting it soon enough! Thanks again, all. Norman

Before this site, we would have had to pay lots and lots of money for the quantity and quality of advice we've received here. The Internet is an amazing thing, and Glenn is a visionary for making use of it the way he has. This site is a true community of people of wildly different lifestyles, politics, religions, personalitlies, income levels, educational levels, etc., all united by a love for being outdoors and fishing and then for coming inside and talking about what they've learned and what has puzzled them. I can't begin to describe all that I have learned here, and all the people I would love to fish with and then sit down and chat withlisten to, reallyfor hours. Thanks, Glenn, and thanks, all.

Thank you all for your great advice. One more question: if we're using worms and maybe bobbers and looking to catch whatever, what size/type all-purpose hook would you recommend? The few times I've taken kids in the past, I think I used hooks that were too small, which resulted in too much gut-hooking, which never goes over big with new anglers. By the way, we'll be fishing from canoes. Also, I don't want to mislead everyone into thinking I'm too noble. The teens I'm talking about are my own daughter (whom, I'm embarrassed to say, I've taken fishing far too seldom) and the kids in the other family we're going camping with, who are city kids through and through. Having said that, inspired partly by LBH's work with Cast for Kids and other kids groups, I do want to get into the habit of taking kids fishing more frequently, so I want to get comfortable with this. Anglerintraining, your tips are terrific. When I've tried this in the past, I've made the mistake of trying to fish myself at the same time, which is stupid because when I fish I tend to ignore everyone else! This time, I fully intend to be steadying the canoe, baiting hooks, taking fish off, taking photos, etc. You're wise to remind me that if the kids get distracted from it, that's fine, too, and I really like the prizes idea, which can help to keep them focused. Thanks again, all.

You got it, Russ. I can't wait to get outta heeeeeeerrrrrrrrre

George, what do you mean? Humane way to kill?

Thanks, all!

As I said in another topic, I'm taking some city teens camping and fishing next week. I'm looking for tips on introducing teenagers to fishing. Obviously, I'd love them to catch some nice bass and learn something about the natural world, but what I really want is for them to catch enough fish to enjoy the experience, so we may target panfish for part of the time. Any suggestions? Norman

Okay, a dumb question: We're taking some non-fishing teenagers camping next week, and I thought it might be a thrill for them to eat some of their catch. I've been practicing catch-and-release for a long time, so haven't actually dispatched a catch in a long time, and when I have I've just sort of whacked them. This may not be smartest way to do this, and I want to teach them right: so for those of you who don't always catch and release, what's your favorite, humane way to kill your catch? Norman

I wouldn't recommend keeping your headlamp on and it's not necessarily because of any possible effect it might have on fish in the water. Keeping a light on will prevent your eyes from really getting adjusted to the dark. If you give your eyes the time adjust, you will see more than you think, especially if there's any moonlight or other ambient light at all that the water will reflect back to you. Have you ever sat by a campfire or a lantern and then walked away from it not able to see a thing in the dark? It's a similar phenomenon. Your eyes adjust to the light, and when you try to look away or beyond it, your ability to see in the dark is impaired. Even when I'm camping, I try to use a flashlight or headlamp as little as possible; I think you actually end up seeing more that way.

rocknfish, LBH is a terrific fisherman. I've been out with him a few times, and he's fantastic at picking up the bite right away and setting that hook. His home lake is loaded with nice fish, it's true, and he knows every underwater contour and weedbed in it, but you've got to remember, he spends A LOT of time out there. Some days are slow, but he fishes so much that he makes up for them. He likes to say you've got to earn the fish by being out there, and, man, he's earned them. I'll bet if you spent as much time on the water as he does, you'd be hauling in some big guys, too.

Been LMB fishing for just about a year. PB was a couple of weeks ago, 6lb, 7oz, pictured in my avatar. Caught in about 3 feet of water in a 40-acre pond at 11:30 a.m. as clouds were turning to sunshine. Caught on a green pumpkin horny toad worked across the top of a wide expanse of lily pads, nearing the edge toward deeper water. Wonderful action, though I caught a 4lb, 4oz bass on the same pond last week that put up a better fight. . .

As a kayak angler, I LOVE fishing ponds, and find them plenty challenging, thank you. This spring I started by fishing lakes, then one day I put my yak into a 40-acre pond that is two minutes from my house. It's a wild little spot, and I've only ever seen one or two people fishing it, and that's rare. (That's it in my avatar.) Well, over the past month or so I've caught some of the year's best fish there: a six-pounder and three four-pounders. I take particular pride in fishing there because: (1) Unlike the bigger lakes, there are no maps of this pond and no known hot spots. I had to figure it out myself, and as a result I learned a lot more than I was learning reading about the bigger lakes and hearing where people were catching fish there. (2) In my yak, I don't get blown around as much as I do on bigger lakes. (3) The fishing pressure is practically nonexistent. (4) It's a beautiful, quiet spot where early one morning while I was working the lily pads at one end, an otter stuck his head out from the pads. I don't know who was more startled, him or me. This was a pond that I'd driven by hundreds of times without ever bothering to carry my kayak down to it, and now it's my little secret spot! Since then, I've been examining maps for other such ponds, and although I've explored a handful of others nearby, none have beat this spot. Norman

I also think the answer to your question depends on how you're rigging the Senkos. If I'm wacky rigging, the hit almost always comes on the initial fall, because that's where all the action is. In fact, I think most people cast, let it fall, lift it once, then reel it in. If the Senko is t-rigged, I use various retrieves, from a series of quick lifts or hops to twitching it along the bottom, depending on what's working that day in that body of water. This more prolonged action creates more opportunities for the fish to hit.

Fascinating. Thanks for the reference, Jim.

Tell it to my wife, who shamelessly anthropomorphizes all our animals, and I love her for it. : I've heard of Millan's book, Rockville, though I seem to remember something controversial about it (thanks to creeping senility, I can't remember quite what ) We're probably getting far off-topic now, but my impression is that over the past fifteen years or so ethologists have been taking a closer look at this business of "emotion" and animals and that the old bugaboo about animals not experiencing anything like human emotions is looking a little shakier. It's become pretty well established, I think, that animals, from otters to polar bears, exhibit behaviors that seem to be "play," though you could never know whether or not this brings them "joy." There's also all that stuff about elephants returning again and again to the site where one of the herd died, stroking the dead one's bones. We also like to think of ourselves as selfless for adopting kids who aren't ours, but when a pack of wolves does the same thing we figure there's nothing selfless about it. What's going on? Are the elephants experiencing "grief"? The point is that we have to be careful about our certainties concerning other species. We assume everything they do is to ensure the survival of the species, when the very concept of species is a human construct. It really is impossible for us to experience reality the way they do. I'm not saying that other species feel emotions as we do, or are "equal" to humans, just that we shouldn't be too arrogant in our assumptions about how they experience reality, since we can only view them in our own limited human terms. So far most of these studies have focused on mammals and birds. My experience as an angler makes me agree that getting hooked in the mouth and getting dragged out of the water probably creates only temporary discomfort for bass, though, wuss that I am, I'm still bummed when I gut hook a bass or hook a panfish through the eye.

Are you sure they're bass? LBH and I saw bluegills on beds recently.

Maybe, CoRy, but have you ever gut-hooked a fish? The ones I have seem to bleed pretty red Nobody on this forum asking anyone to stop fishing. But if you're fishing only because you think fish don't feel anything, well . . . you may be fooling yourself. I think the point is that the more realistic and knowledgeable we are about what we're doing, the better able we are to do it in a way that's as respectful of the fish as possible. Or the grouse, or the deer, etc. . . .

Wheezo, take a trip and go fishing with LBH! 8-)