Outdoorsmen Adventures.com

When I’m doing in store promotions and fishing seminars, I get a lot of questions, the one that’s asked the most often is “how can I catch fish”?

It’s not really all that complicated; first you have to understand why fish do certain things and when they’ll do it!

What you need to do is to think like a fish.

In order to understand fish, you first need to understand the senses a fish uses to survive.

One of the most misunderstood senses of the fish would be its lateral line.

A fish’s lateral line is made up of a bundle of nerves whose projecting hairs is enclosed in a gelatinous substance located on either side of the fish.

The lateral line is sensitive to changes in the water pressure and as the pressure changes either by a change in depth or an approaching fish or creature causes the hairs to vibrate, sending signals to the brain allowing the fish to detect movement that they may not have see.

The lateral line also helps fish to swim in tight schools with out running into each other.

The eyesight of a fish is similar to that of we humans, they’re able to detect both brightness and color.

Fish that roam the shallow water, such as bass have excellent eyesight.  In bright light, bass see many of the colors that humans are able to see.

Other species of fish won’t have the full line of color perception that humans do.

Since water filters out colors, fish located in deeper water can’t detect all the colors that shallow water cousins can.

Walleyes for instance see primarily orange and green, with all other colors appearing as different shades of gray.

Fluorescence hold their color longer in deeper water, what this means is that the fish are more apt to see a florescent colored lure better in deeper water.

Fish that feed in deep water aren’t able to distinguish the different colors so instead of responding to color, they respond to vibration and the flashes of light coming off predators, prey fish or your lure.

All species of fish have an excellent sense of hearing.  Part of the reason that a fish hears so well is because water conducts sound better than air.

Fish don’t have ears like other animals; they pick up sound through the bones located in their head.

The way one species of fish will relate to sound varies from one species to another.  The vibration made by an angler walking along a bank can spook trout, but panfish don’t seemed to be bothered by noise.

I can attest for this first hand as a few years ago, we were SCUBA diving in Lake Francis Case, most of the fish in the area that we were working, moved away when from the bubbles coming from our gear.  The panfish weren’t afraid at all and came closer with the more racket we made.

Taste is another sense that fish have.  Taste is not one of their primary senses and not many fish rely heavily on just this sense when feeding.

The exception to this rule is the bullhead and catfish family.  They have very poor eyesight and rely heavily on the taste receptors located on the outside of their mouth in their barbells or whiskers to help locate food.

The sense of smell is excellent in most species of fish.  As they move through the water, their sense of smell is continually being used, checking out the surrounding body of water.… Continue reading

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

WEBSTER, S.D. — Our plan was to hit two lakes a day and take full advantage of the variety of fishing to be found in the Glacial Lakes area of northeastern South Dakota.

Mother Nature threw us a curve, however, and rather than fight 25 to 30 mile-an-hour winds, we fished mornings and motored off the water pounding against a spray of white caps each afternoon.

The first morning was the worst.

A south wind was blasting at 20 miles an hour by 10 a.m. We parked at the boat ramp on Reetz Lake, just south of Webster.

“We won’t last long, out there,” I said to Fran. “We might be able to get out of the wind along that west shoreline.”

I had not planned to fish Reetz. Less than a month earlier I had fished it and caught several walleyes over 20 inches there. But, with the wind I thought our chances were better here on a lake where all walleyes under 28-inches have to be released.

We lasted about an hour and a half and boated two nice walleyes on bottom bouncers and spinners fished in 12 to 14 feet of water.

The rest of the afternoon we spend prospecting other lakes and checking out boat ramps for the next day.

With the wind forecast to blow again, we launched the next morning on Enemy Swim Lake, long one of the northeast’s glacial gems.

It’s a beautiful lake. Clear water, wooded shorelines and a couple of islands. It’s 2,150 acres with a maximum depth of 24 feet. All bass between 14 and 18 inches must be released with only one over 18 allowed in the daily bag. That just about guarantees good bass fishing and that is just what we found.

We started on one of the main lake points casting crankbaits and spinnerbaits in water nine feet and less, but never brought up a bass. We moved deeper on the same point and switched to bottom bouncers and spinners with crawlers.

Again, nothing. Only perch.

We left that spot and headed for a small rocky island nearby and that’s where we found the bass.

Smallies were laying in the shallow, boulder-studded water and were more than willing to take our Big O crankbaits.… Continue reading

Reprinted from Sioux City Journal

ISLE Minn. — “Inch for inch, pound for pound, the gamest fish that swims.”

That’s a quote from Dr. James Henshall’s “Book of the Black Bass.”

Dr. Henshall’s book was published in 1881.

That was 129 years ago.

And you know what? It still holds true today.

The smallmouth bass is, without question, the gamest fish that swims.

Dr. Henshall, a midwestern medical doctor and devotee of bass fishing was writing at a time when trout was the kingpin of angling endeavors throughout the populated East.

Fly fishing was the method of choice and native brook trout was the quarry. German browns were soon to take over the limelight, but they were not stocked in any numbers until 1884.

Henshall’s book was the measuring stick of all books written about the black bass through the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century.

But trout fishing held sway until the mid 1950s when another writer, Jason Lucas, angling editor or Sports Afield magazine, finally swayed public opinion towards the black bass.

In the South, largemouth bass is king. In the North, the walleye holds sway.… Continue reading

High water with heavy flows following a rain makes for tough fishing.

These seem to be the norm this year as there’s high water everywhere, coming down every creek, river as well as in all the ponds and lakes.

The bad side of this is that all the water running into the lakes and rivers, muddies up the water, making it hard to fish without getting your crankbaits, jigs and livebait rigs all gunked up.

The old wives tale, “with every bad there comes some good” is very true in this instance as water flowing into any body of water means the fish will start will be on the move.

It might take a few days for the water to settle down and the swift current to subside, but you can bet when there’s a rise in the water level, with water being released downstream the fish will become active.

The reason for this is pretty basic; the influx in water will bring new food sources down stream.

Worms, insects, zoo plankton as well as the baitfish and fingerlings that were tucked safely into the creeks and backwaters are now being flushed downstream into the rivers and lakes, bringing a smorgasbord to the fish that will be moving towards the incoming water on their way to see what’s on the menu.

In the river, sandbars and vegetation that were once high and dry will now become flooded and the insects and other material that was lying in these areas are now in the water.

In a river, this influx of water and new food sources will attract the fish to the slack water located behind sandbars and points.

Fish, both big and small will move towards the incoming water to feed on what’s being washed or forced downstream.

The biggest benefit of high water in reservoirs located on the Missouri River will reach capacity and water will need to be released through the dams.

Some of the deepest water in the system with the most hospitable water temperatures is located directly above the dam and because of this, there will be large concentrations of fish in these areas.… Continue reading

Before heading out onto Mille Lacs, our guide Mike Christensen of Hunter Winfield’s Resort www.hunterwinfields.com had shown us a spot on his GPS where the LakeMaster chip in the unit indicated an area that smallmouth bass had been feeding.

As we approached the buoy, the huge boulders and rocks deposited there by the glaciers started to appear below the surface.

Many were larger than our boat, extending out from a point into the lake at a depth of 12 foot, giving the smallmouth excellent hiding spots from which to ambush bait fish.

Team member Larry Myhre and I have been frequent visitors to Mille Lacs as it is an excellent fishery with good numbers of trophy size walleye, smallmouth, musky as well as numerous other species of fish.

We’d arrived the day before, hoping to have the opportunity to film a couple of our Outdoorsmen Adventures segments, if the weather didn’t force us to change our plans.

Mike strategically maneuvered the boat through the shallow water, positioning us within casting distance of many of the larger submerged boulders.

We were on the water early, trying to take advantage of nice weather hoping to beat the many fronts that would be coming through the area during the next couple of days.

Since we weren’t sure what the fish would want this morning, all three of us in the boat were rigged with different baits, allowing the fish to tell us which bait they preferred, once they did, we’d all switch to that bait and hammer on them.As we worked our way around and through the submerged rocks, a smallmouth smacked something floating on the surface off to our right.

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

WEBSTER, S.D. — It was early morning, but there was no sunrise.

We sat in the parking lot at the boat ramp on Bitter Lake, my boat still on the trailer.

Across the western horizon an angry mass of blue clouds hung like a curtain, and sharp streaks of lightening occasionally ripped across its dark tapestry. So far, the rain was light and most of it would move north, but we waited.

It was afternoon before we felt safe enough to venture out. Les Rowland, a local, and longtime friend, had joined Gary Howey, Kyle Nickolite and me for this morning adventure.

We dragged bottom bouncers and spinners across a sunken bar and I took a 17-inch walleye right… Continue reading

The toughest part of fishing for all anglers is locating the fish as a very small percentage of the water in the lake actually holds fish.

There are numerous was to find the fish, unfortunately, most of these take a lot of time and we all know that there’s never enough time to go fishing.

One method to help you to locate the fish and to catch the more aggressive fish would be to use crankbaits.

What exactly is a crankbait, well, it’s a bait that needs to be trolled behind a boat or cast and retrieved, as this is how the vibrating side rocking action is put into the lure.

The action of the bait depends on the bill or lip of the bait, the large the bill, the deeper the bait will dive.

There are numerous versions of when it comes to crankbaits, there’s the floating, sinking as well as the suspending baits.

Crankbaits come in several sizes with the size 5 and 7 being the most popular.

The come in every color imaginable, natural to almost bizarre colors, some are jointed while others aren’t.

A few of those that I carry in my bait box include0 Shadling, Shad Rap, Thunderstick and the Flicker Shad.… Continue reading

If there’s one thing my grandson Brandon Caserta likes to do when he visits his grandfather, it’s to go fishing.

And we did just that for two days last week. In the boat were grandson Eric Fluharty, wife Fran, daughter Teri and Teri’s husband Patrick.

Patrick, Teri and Brandon live in Phoenix, Ariz., and do get a chance to fish in some of the ponds in parks around their home.

But it is not like climbing into a boat and fishing some of our Missouri River oxbows.

We put three spinning rods in rod holders out the back. One to the port side, one to the starboard side and one right out the back.

We were pulling my number one, go-to lure for this kind of fishing on any of our oxbow lakes, a Rebel F-77 Teeny Wee Crawfish. It doesn’t dive more than about three feet and if you shortline, it will go even less.

It’s one-and-a-half inches long and has a strong wobbling action that calls in any gamefish.

We used them in Chartreuse/Brown Back, Chartreuse/Green Back and Cajun Crawdad, a sort of neutral brown.

Most of the time there doesn’t seem to be a strong preference for color on the part of the fish, but on the second day, it was clear that the rod with the Chartreuse/Brown Back lure was getting all the action.

Eric ran the bow mounted trolling motor keeping our speed at about 1.5 miles an hour.

When one of the rods bent, Brandon grabbed it and landed the fish.… Continue reading

When we headed north for Devils Lake in mid-central North Dakota, we had no idea as to what we were in for.

It could be three days of good weather, poor fishing or poor weather and good fishing.

As anyone who does an outdoor television series can tell you, it’s not very often that you expect it to be excellent weather and great fishing.

Well, that’s the way it happened last week when Team member Scott Ulrich and I along with cameraman Kyle Nickolite made the trip north to the big lake.

When I say big lake, I mean big lake, as Devils Lake is 177,100 surface acres, covering about 208 square miles and growing.

Not good for the landowners in the area, but great for anglers as it creates miles of new water for us to fish and structure beyond belief as there are flooded roads, railroad tracks and acre upon acre of flooded vegetation.

We met up with our guides the folks from Perch-Eyes Guide Service www.percheyes.com around 2:30 that afternoon and were on the water by 3:30 looking for areas where the wind was pounding into the flooded vegetation.

Since the lake is so clear, the fish were attracted to the mudlines and the warmer water temperatures in those areas.

The plan was to pitch Lindy Shadling crankbaits and X-change jigs up into the shallows of these areas, hoping to entice the fish to bite and bite they did!… Continue reading