Innholdsfortegnelse for October/November 2022 i In-Fisherman

Greg Knowles: Decades ago a high-school pal talked me into spending a week in the Bush with some other friends I met at Thursday night poker games. Several of them had never fished anywhere before, yet they jumped at the chance to buy tackle boxes and Zebco rigs, drive from Iowa to Sioux Lookout, fly into a lake with only one cabin and zero creature comforts, and play poker under a sputtering Coleman lantern for a week. After a few years the poker players dropped out, and a core group of six actual fishermen made the annual trips. Somewhere along the line Doc, an avid fisherman and certified human being, joined the group. An advertising copywriter, broadcast producer, and, eventually freelance writer by profession, I had long enjoyed fictional characters…

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It was like a PBS documentary on the ocean, where you expected seals and sea birds and tuna to streak in and amongst the fray, but these baitfish were all alone. Unsurprisingly, they resembled the spottail shiner that somehow got skewered on the treble of one of my baits while I was trolling a weedline south of the landing. Even with 20 boats running up and down the same 1- to 2-mile stretch, fish were certainly up and eating those shiners. That’s despite the fact our best baits that evening were nearly twice as long as those minnows. Maybe our larger offerings stood out from those smaller baitfish, or maybe there were just so many fish in the area it was inevitable, or maybe fish that night were just on…

“If someone calls me and says, ‘Captain John, I want to catch a lot of nice-size blue cats,’ I have them schedule a trip after the water temperature drops below 50°F in the fall,” says John Garland, owner of Screaming Reel Charters on the James River in Virginia. “But if someone calls and says, ‘I want to catch a personal best, a real hog,’ I have them schedule a trip when the water temp is getting down to around 40°F. When things cool off in the fall is a good time to catch lots of big blues, but when things get cold is the time to go looking for Miss Piggy.” Garland pays close attention to water temperature as summer fades through fall and into winter. Cooling water influences the…

Fish, on the other hand, have no scale of favorability that defines their feelings or behavior. They act in a genetically programmed way, modified by environmental factors and life experiences. It’s a conundrum of sorts: Bass don’t bask in summer’s warmth, but they may innately understand that a large crop of bluegills, shad, or frogs makes for easier feeding opportunities. So they remain tuned to areas that provide for their biological needs. Fall is a time of change, whether it’s a relatively short one in the North Country—sometimes just 5 to 7 weeks, or the months of milder weather down south that can run from the end of September to Christmas and beyond. But the speed of that shift does make for more dramatic changes in northern waters. The old…

“I’ve done surveys at muskie banquets where many of the hardcore anglers admitted owning a thousand lures or more,” Larry Dahlberg told me. “Most guys I fish with clutter the boat by bringing several dozen lures. Yet when we start fishing, they often spend the entire day with the same bait. If I told them they could bring just one lure, they’d have a conniption!” So as I began asking a group of gifted anglers to pick just one—the singular lure they’d select if faced with such an unlikely choice, the answers weren’t always easy. Some couldn’t do it. Giving up so many other lures—even hypothetically—proved too painful. One Hall of Famer called me a bad word for daring to pose such a question. No problem, because the result of…

“Hey, Doc! Hold your horses!” Even though Doc at the tiller was as rare as a senator without a yacht, he was at the helm once again, plowing through the water like Aunt Lucy plows through snowdrifts to make it to the Legion on Bingo Night. “What’s the problem?” “I’m trolling here, Doc.” “Oh, c’mon,” Doc said. “Fish can swim this fast.” “Maybe if they’re running second in the Kentucky Derby,” I said. “What’s your hurry?” Doc throttled down, and my big-lipped cranker that had been cutting a furrow into the sandy bottom eventually bobbed to the surface. “Just got tard to death of moseying along,” Doc drawled. Uh-oh. This did not sound good. “Ridin’ herd on this here red-faced dogie is mighty tirin’,” Doc continued. “It ain’t a dogie,”…

■ WHITEFISH BAY, LAKE OF THE WOODS SIOUX NARROWS, ONTARIO Lake Trout » One of the top drive-to destinations for numbers of lake trout, with a shot at fish over 20 pounds. The south basin of Whitefish also has excellent fishing for smallmouths, muskies, and pike. Contact: Whitefish Bay Resort, 807/271-1625, whitefishbayresort.com. Jeff Gustafson ■ SACRAMENTO RIVER CALIFORNIA King Salmon » The Sacramento boasts a robust fall salmon run. The season peaks in October, with 30-pound kings common. Trophies in the 45- to 50-pound class are caught each season. Contact: Capt. Mike Bogue, 530/246-8457, mikebogue.com; Capt. Kevin Brock, 800/995-5543, fishkevinbrock.com. Cal Kellogg ■ LAKE FORK EMORY, TEXAS Crappies » North America’s most popular largemouth fishery continues to be even better for big crappies, with plenty of fish surpassing 1.5 pounds,…

Finding crappies these days has never been easier. In fact, anglers are starting to realize just how many crappies are out there. Not just in the classic spots but at all reaches from the inlet to the dam and at all depths from shore to shore. We used to have success dropping a small jig next to every visible tree until we felt a thump. It shouldn’t be a surprise that every 10th tree has some fish a few feet under the surface, and that more complex brush harbors more than one fish. We even knew that on some days the fish were a bit deeper on the trees and other days they bit at first splash. In deeper water, it’s always been possible to use traditional 2D sonar to…

Grandpa Owen had been an angler and bird hunter most of his life, full of colorful tales that transpired when shotgun shells were made of cardboard and flushing a covey of bobwhites was still a common occurrence in the farm country of central Illinois. Many of his stories were repeats, a collection of yarns I had already committed to memory. Float trips down the White River in Arkansas for trout, pesky bird dogs, and busted camping trips to the Wisconsin northwoods that were cast with younger versions of my mother and her siblings, ventures that usually included biblical bouts of inclement weather and few, if any fish. And before those seemingly mundane adventures, he had piloted B-24s over the Pacific during that great cataclysm that defined the lives and deaths…