Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2018 i Game & Fish East

IF YOU’RE reading this magazine, you are a hardcore outdoorsman. You know the thrill of hooking into a 5-pound bass or making a clean shot on a buck. But we have to remember: to those who are not dyed-in-the wool, catching a fish or harvesting a deer can be a watershed accomplishment, a seminal moment. I was reminded of this recently when I took a gaggle of teenagers to a friend’s farm pond. Hooking into 3-pound catfish made faces light up and smiles wider than any video game ever could. I fished as well, and caught a few. But I realized that this was something much deeper for these kids. Was it the combination of adults participating with the younger generation? Or the common focus on the goal at hand…

NOT QUITE ICE Don’t overlook your ice-fishing jigs and spoons for vertical fishing early in the season. If fish are positioned so you can set up directly overhead and fish vertically, these offerings have much the same appeal as they did when fished through a hole during midwinter. In fact, while such an approach is less often associated with bass than other species, tipping an ice lure with a minnow or minnow head works very well for bass in the open water. ALL OR NOTHING A common mentality when extra-cold days make the bite tough is to “finesse” the fish with smaller lures. The fact is, though, that larger bass especially want their money’s worth when they expend the energy to eat on a cold day. Instead of downsizing, upsize.…

IN THE LATE 1940s, Nick Creme, an avid angler from Akron, Ohio, was working on an idea that would change bass fishing forever. Back then, many bass anglers fished with live night crawlers. But digging worms took time away from fishing, and bait often ran out just when fish started biting. Creme thought he could solve those problems by inventing a realistic artificial worm. So, with his wife, Cosma, he began experimenting. A breakthrough came when a DuPont lab tech gave Creme some plastic compounds to test. Nick and Cosma cooked them on their kitchen stove with added pigments and oils, then poured the mixture into a mold made from a real night crawler. After months of trial and error, they produced an artificial worm that felt soft and alive…

IT SEEMS STRANGE that it is so difficult to find information about Andre Meulnart, for like Creme, Buel and Rapala, his inventive mind gave us a fishing lure — the inline spinner — that is found in the tackle boxes of anglers worldwide. What we do know is this: Meulnart lived in Paris in the early 1900s where he was an engineer for car-maker Peugeot. He loved fishing, and in the 1930s, he started creating new fishing lures and reels. To market them, he created the company we now call Mepps, an acronym for Manufacturier D’Engins de Precision pour Peches Sportives, or, roughly, manufacturer of precision sport-fishing equipment. In 1938, Meulnart patented a lure with a Swedish steel shaft around which revolved a blade of brass and colorful beads. On…

FEBRUARY 3-11 2017 GREAT AMERICAN OUTDOOR SHOW Great American Outdoor Show will return to the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg. The show features over 1,100 exhibitors ranging from shooting manufacturers to outfitters, fishing boats to RVs, and archery to art. greatamericanoutdoorshow.org FEBRUARY 5 - 7 BASIC BOATING COURSE Held at Lancaster County East Donegal Township from 6:30-9:30 pm. Office building and sponsorship provided by East Donegal Township. Fee of $10 to pay for boating education safety certificate. David Eichler; david.eichler@donegalsd.org , fishandboat.com/Boat FEBRUARY 16-17 2018 HUNTING AND OUTDOOR EXPO The Expo will again be held at the Lancaster County Convention Center located in Lancaster. The Expo will kick off on Friday, Feb. 16 at noon-and run through Saturday night, Feb. 17. ecwsf.org/expo/ FEBRUARY 28…

While smartphones help us navigate our hectic, day-to-day lives, they’re also a valuable tool out on the water. The Navionics Boating app will help you squeeze more enjoyment from your time afloat and, ultimately, put more fish in the boat. Navionics Boating puts detailed charts and many high-end charting features in the palm of your hand. This slick app lets you plot advanced navigation routes, calculate ETA’s and fuel consumption, and access other pertinent boating information. Navionics Boating provides detailed topographical maps with contour lines displayed in one-foot resolution (with the ability to overlay satellite and terrain information). As they can with a console-mounted unit, fishermen can use this information to locate potential hotspots and navigate there via the GPS function. Waypoints can be stored, letting you save your top-secret…

LAST-ICE PANFISH can be fickle. A lot depends on where you’re at in the last-ice cycle. If you’re still in the throes of winter, perch fishing can be hot in the lake’s middle basin. If runoff has begun, fish will be on the move and bluegills, sunfish and crappie will be more active and relating to weed edges. The million-dollar question is, “Where are we in the cycle?” If the lake you’re targeting has yellow perch, late winter can produce one of the most consistent bites of the hardwater season. “You can count on perch relating to the deepest part of the main basin of the lake,” shared ice-fishing guru Brian Brosdahl (brosguideservice.com). “Deep is a relative term. In some lakes it might mean 20 feet; in others it might…

JANUARY WALLEYE @ LOWER ALLEGHENY RIVER Most boat launches are not plowed this time of year. Carry along a snow shovel and bucket of rock salt to keep a clear path for your rig. FEBRUARY BROWN TROUT @ SPRING CREEK Spring Creek’s wild browns see many offers from anglers and often prefer tiny subsurface flies in the winter, such as size 20 Copper Johns. MARCH CRAPPIE @ PYMATUNING Use a faster presentation like a Road Runner to locate these crappies. Then slow down and target the productive water with a fathead minnow under a float. APRIL BROWN TROUT @ PINE CREEK The water will likely be high and off-color in April. Be prepared to work big streamers, Woolly Buggers and spinners close to the bank near current breaks. MAY SMALLMOUTH…

When fishing clear waters on sunny days, spoons are excellent enticements for slab crappie. Use your fish-finder to pinpoint crappie suspended deep near bottom channels, and when you find a school, work it with 1/8- to 1/4-ounce jigging spoons free-spooled to fish below. Jig the lure by raising the rod tip with an upward flick of the wrist then quickly lowering the rod so the spoon falls on slack line. Crappie usually strike as the lure drops. Watch to see if the line twitches or stops. Strikes usually are seen rather than felt.…

WE MIGHT NOT be fishing with spoons today were it not for an accident that happened while young Julio T. Buel was fishing on Vermont’s Lake Bomoseen in 1834. Julio was eating lunch while his boat drifted, and when the boat bumped a rock, he dropped his silver dinner spoon into the water. As he watched the utensil twist and turn toward the bottom, a large fish grabbed it and swam away. Julio, who longed to catch one of the lake’s big brown trout, hurried home and “borrowed” another of his mother’s spoons. He sawed off the handle, soldered a hook to the concave side and tied his fishing line to a hole drilled in the handle stub. When he returned to the lake, he pulled the spoon behind the…

ALUMACRAFT VOYAGEUR 175 SPORT • STARCRAFT TITAN 186 DC • SMOKER CRAFT 182 PRO MAG • RANGER 2080MS ANGLER • G3 SPORTSMAN 200 • CRESTLINER BASS HAWK ALUMACRAFT VOYAGEUR 175 SPORT AlumaCraft’s Voyageur 175 Sport is perfectly suited for serious multi-species anglers searching for a craft that won’t bottom out their boating budget. At nearly 18 feet in length, this V-hull is confident navigating skinny water or friendly big water. The 175 is very stable, with a generous beam on a relatively short boat. The boat is intelligently laid out, with plenty of room to roam for anglers on the prowl. One of the first things you notice when boarding is the ample storage; every square inch of available under-deck space is used.This large storage includes a new rod storage…

ANGLER OFTHE YEAR The pre-spawn bite can be ferocious. MLF angler Brandon Palaniuk, BASS 2017 Angler of the Year, shares the secrets that help him consistently drag heavy sacks of pre-spawn fish to the tournament scales. G&F: CONGRATULATIONS ON THE AOY TITLE. LOOKING FORWARD TO THE CLASSIC? BRANDON: Thanks. I am always looking forward to the Classic. It’s the single largest “life-changing” event in professional fishing. WHAT ARE THE BASS DOING DURING THE PRE-SPAWN THAT MAKES THIS SUCH A SPECIAL TIME OF YEAR TO FISH? The big fish are hungry and moving shallow with the warming water temps. This makes them extremely vulnerable. PRE-SPAWN IS OFTEN KNOWN AS THE TIME AN ANGLER HAS THE BEST CHANCE AT CATCHING HIS PERSONAL BEST. DO YOU HAVE ADVICE FOR PEOPLE LOOKING TO CATCH…

SAFETY IS paramount on the ice all year long, but especially on last ice. Deteriorating ice conditions require additional caution. While falling through is a real hazard, falling on the ice is more threatening and more likely. Once the ice begins to melt and gets a thin layer of water on it, the surface becomes super-slick. If overnight temperatures dip below freezing it can create a surface that is like glass. Be sure to wear ice cleats or creepers, like Yaktrax (yaktrax.com) Diamond Grip creepers, before even thinking about venturing out. Take a spud or chisel and use it to check ice conditions as you go, even if you fished the area recently. Ice conditions deteriorate rapidly and can change from day to day. Wear a PFD or inflatable. Carry…

The past couple of winters left most serious ice fishers across Pennsylvania in want of more. Maybe this winter we will see more and better ice. Still, let’s not take any chances. Let’s head for one of the better lakes before we lose the ice we do have. Very often when an angler ice fishes a lake with little success it is not because the fish are not hitting. Nor is it the weather, or the bright sun. It is the lake. Some lakes seem to be good year after year. Most lakes occasionally have exceptional hatches of one fish or another which provide a few years of good fishing. Usually, these exceptional hatches occur on a cyclical basis. Here are some suggestions for anglers who want to have a…

BEFORE WRITING this article, I asked my Facebook friends to share ideas about lures that changed fishing. That post elicited more comments than any I’ve ever shared on social media. I got literally hundreds of suggestions for history-changing lures to include. Were I writing a book, I could include them all — if it were a big book. But my assignment was to choose four lures — just four — that have changed fishing. It wasn’t easy, but each of the following lures has changed forever the way we fish. And the stories of the men and women who created those lures show the amazing foresight, inventiveness and entrepreneurship of those who gave us fish-catching tools still used by millions of anglers today.…

LAURI RAPALA WAS a very attentive fisherman. As he rowed around Finland’s Lake Paijanne in the 1930s, he made a basic yet profound observation: Big fish eat little fish, especially injured baitfish that swim crazily about. He figured if he could make a lure imitating that wounded-minnow action, he could catch more fish. So he started whittling some cork, and in 1936, he created an artificial minnow that wobbled just right. Tinfoil from chocolate bars formed the lure’s outer surface. Melted photographic negatives gave a protective coating. He later hit on the idea of using light balsa wood for the plugs’ bodies, something that made his lures different from all others. Legend has it Lauri sometimes caught 600 pounds of fish a day with those lures. And as people learned…

I HATE IT when they don’t play by the rules. By “they,” I mean my wife Dawn, the kids and assorted wildlife, including whitetail deer, rabbits, ducks, squirrels and pretty much every species of fish. With Dawn, the rules change with the day of the week, the phases of the moon or some other mystical algorithm not yet fathomed by even the brightest minds in the world of natural and applied sciences. With the kids, my frustration with them not following the rules began as soon as they were old enough to start beating me at board games. Family game night always turned into a debate. “That’s the way we’ve always played,” said son Matthew. “You’re just mad because you lost again,” said son Brian. “We might as well take…