Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2018 i In-Fisherman

JULY 2 Sportfish Gone Big & Bad > River Giants, Alaskan Pike > The Hunt for World-Class Lake Trout > Beast Busting Green Bay Muskies JULY 9 Petal to the Metal Sportfish > Grayling Gone Wild > Wood-working Channel Cats > Tubing the Edge for Largemouths JULY 16 Presentation Traditions Personified > Spider-rigging Secrets for Slabs > Grub Grinding Smallmouths > Pitching Program Walleyes JULY 23 Scratch Attacks for Tough Times > Dippin’ Time Channel Cats > Sturgeon Beasts of Current > Beating Cold-front Largemouths…

KAWARTHA LAKES REGION ONTARIO Panfish » One of the most famous areas in Ontario, just east of Lake Simcoe, surrounds the city of Kawartha Lakes, with dozens of lakes with big and abundant crappies and bluegills, plus other species, including largemouth bass and walleyes. Contact: Guide Sebastian Kowalczuk, 613/419-1031, fishingadventures@hotmail.ca. Lonnie King LAKE ASHTABULA NORTH DAKOTA Walleyes & Pike » This reservoir just north of Valley City offers fantastic fishing for abundant walleyes and pike, with big fish part of the mix, plus smallmouths and occasional crappies and white bass. Contact: Guide Cody Roswick, 701/840-5407, finhunters.com. In-Fisherman LAKE RAY ROBERTS TEXAS Channel Catfish » Roughly 2,000 acres of stand-i g timber produces excellent numbers and sizes of channel cats regardless of summer’s swelter. The timber also keeps recreational boat traffic…

Scan the Internet for light-line smallmouth tactics and we see players shying away from the cutting edge like coyotes from a fire. Most want us to believe 8- and 10-pound lines are light. One tried to convince me 30-pound braid with a 10-pound leader is “light.” Ron Lindner used would never fish for bass with anything less th nd line. Old maxims die hard. Still it’s a numerous pros have won bass tournaments on 4- to 5-pound braids, fluorocarbons, and monofilaments—that “finesse” is only discussed in terms of jigs weighing 1/8 ounce or more on lines with break strengths of 10 pounds or greater. A 2016 FLW event at Shasta Lake in California was won with spybaits fished on 4-pound fluorocarbon. The winner, Greg Gutierrez, caught mostly spotted bass in…

Fish Reveal HD Lowrance’s FishReveal, with High-Visibility Color, makes fish and structural details easier to see on DownScan Imaging, as well as StructureScan HD and 3D. It’s available as a free download for users of HDS Carbon, Gen3, and Elite-Ti units and is standard on the latest Lowrance products—lowrance.com Swim Blade The Swim Blade Swimbait Hook (TK178) from Eagle Claw Trokar features a #3 willow blade secured to the lead body via titanium wire and a swivel to keep the blade moving smoothly. Weight options are 1/8, 1/4, and 3/8 ounces, and hook sizes 3/0, 5/0, and 7/0—$5.99, eagleclaw.com Double-Duty Sunscreen Bull Frog Mosquito Coast offers a formula to prevent sunburn and mosquito bites. It’s DEET-free and lasts up to 8 hours, while the SPF 30 formula protects against burns—$10.99…

Wrapping and Finishing Ferrules Building multipiece rods requires each joining section of the blank, known as the ferrule, to be reinforced with a thread wrap. Ferrules increase hoop strength around these crucial connections to resist cracking and splintering. It’s important to ensure thread wraps are tight and as close to the ferrule’s open edge as possible. Not only does it look better, it improves the wrap’s ability to protect connections between each blank section. CRB Blank Extension Tool — The CRB Blank Extension Tool available at mudhole.com is a must-have for wrapping and finishing ferrules. An incredible boost in efficiency, if you’re wrapping a ferrule with ProWrap Thread or finishing it with ProKöte Thread Finish, this tool makes both tasks fast and easy. It works to extend the blank and…

Growing Bigger Pike Field Studies— For several reasons, managing populations of northern pike has proved to be among the more challenging issues in fishery management. For one, more efforts have traditionally been applied to studying and managing other species, notably trout, muskie, bass, and walleye. Second, pike populations are remarkably diverse in their size structure, growth rates, and maximum size potential. Third, reductions in wetlands have reduced pike spawning habitat in many waters, while eutrophication has reduced summer habitat, and a warming climate has limited the suitability of some waters for large pike that prefer water temperatures below 70°F. Finally, anglers who pursue pike also are diverse in their attitudes and focus. In search for solutions, a team of biologists from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) conducted a…

For decades, bass “plugs” sported short metal bills that made them wobble when cranked. Before the revelations of sonar, bass fishing was almost exclusively a shallow affair. Buck Perry began to crack the code in the early 1950s, using his metal Spoonplugs that were built to run at a certain depth when trolled, to both chart bottom topography and catch fish. Carl Lowrance’s sonar invention played well with structure theories and offshore fishing began in earnest. But for years, crankbaits ran no deeper than 10 feet. Crankbait Timeline In the mid-1980s, Illinois lure designer and avid angler Tom Seward turned his attention to plumbing the depths of his local reservoirs. His efforts resulted in the Hot Lips Express crankbait, with several features that gave it unprecedented diving power. Its Tri-Lobe-Pow…

Jig and softbait combinations do a terrific job of triggering pike. They can be tempered to fish well for smaller fish as well as to target big fish. They cast well, hook fish superbly, and it’s easy to handle them once you land them, because a single hook usually is easier to extract than mul tiple hooks. So it’s easy on fish, too—minimal hook damage and, typically, less handling time. On fisheries requiring single barbless hooks, it only takes a moment to flatten the barb on the single hook with pliers. ¶ I use jigs from spring until freeze up, playing a handful of proven options against select crankbaits, jerkbaits, glidebaits, and other single hook lures. In some situations, those “other lures” are the best thing to throw. I’ve noted…

I was buzzed. A natural high. My life-long fishing pals and I had spent a magnificently productive nine hours on the water. It was our first day at Knobby’s Bamaji Lake VIP outpost in the Northwest Ontario Bush, and it was only four in the afternoon. Bodies tingly warm from the brilliant sun, and the outside world all but forgotten, we returned to the cabin in a pleasure-induced daze. The banker tied a safety pin stringer holding six lively walleyes under the shaded dock to clean later. The long drive up and a sleepless night of anticipation had us hankering for a short lie-down. In the cabin we unzipped and tossed life jackets, kicked off shoes, and collapsed in our bunks. A nap before dinner was our plan. If you…