Fishing For Dummies. Greg Schwipps
from the “up next” column. It’s an odd addiction. Try this: Type in the kind of fishing that most interests you. You can even add your geographic area to the search — something like “white bass fishing in Indiana.” Boom! Suddenly you have access to a video that should reveal the techniques an angler is using, the bait or lure, and maybe even the specific location. You can learn a lot about fishing in your neck of the woods and the kind of fish you’re interested in from a ten-minute clip.
Often the person you’re watching on YouTube will have a channel you can subscribe to. Now you have a steady stream of similar videos at your fingertips. Maybe the first video you watched about white bass fishing in Indiana was posted by a guy who only fishes small streams. So what can his other videos teach you about other fish, and other kinds of fishing, in small streams?
When no one knows: Walk the bank
Suppose you find a fishing hole no one has seen before. Let’s say there’s no local bait shop; no online forum mentions it. No YouTube celebrity has ever fished it. Can you still figure out this lake, and what lives within it? Of course you can. It comes back to paying attention: Walk the banks and watch the water. What’s the water clarity like? Cloudy or stained water means fish probably aren’t feeding visually — a loud, noisy lure like a spinnerbait might work. Or a smelly livebait, like a nightcrawler or a piece of cutbait. Are weeds prevalent? Moss? Baitfish will hide under moss and in weed beds, which mean predator fish will patrol nearby. Do you see schools of baitfish? Can you identify the species? If there are babies, there will be adults to catch, of course. Be on the lookout for dead fish or skeletons because these, too, will tell you what species live here. Without wetting a line, you can learn a lot about a body of water and the fish that live there.
Evaluating Freshwater Sites
From a backwater slough to the Mississippi River to Lake Tahoe, how can an angler approach such varying freshwater? It can be done, and you can do it. But it requires flexibility in your strategy. Different kinds of water call for different techniques (see Chapter 17), different gear, and different mindsets. Sure, all fishing has a lot in common, and your angling knowledge is transferable from one situation to another, but great anglers adapt to the situation and habitat they’re facing.
Ponds
Natural and manmade ponds dot the landscape. They range from farm ponds steam-shoveled out of a valley as a source of drinking water for animals, to depressions left from a glacier’s path that have filled with rainwater, to strip pits — stone-lined quarries left behind after mining companies move on. Ponds can support a lot of fish if carefully managed, and they provide a safe fishing environment for millions of anglers. Some ponds have fish populations that are carefully monitored by humans; others have wilder, more natural populations that self-regulate. Contrary to popular belief, it’s a myth that birds spread fish eggs from pond to pond. If fish are present, at some point, someone put them there.
Who’s home?
Largemouth bass, bluegills, and crappies are the classic choices for pond stocking, but channel cats are popular, too. If a pond has water that stays cool enough year-round, trout can survive. (This is true of some quarry ponds, where the water is deep and clear.) A well-managed pond will feature all the habitat of larger natural bodies of water, with plenty of cover, good water quality, and a healthy balance of fish populations.
With the right stewardship, ponds offer healthy fish that are great for eating, and worth bragging about, too. Check your state’s record list — I bet about half of the fish came from private ponds.
How to fish the water
Ponds suit themselves to the bank angler. If the banks are clear, and the pond is small enough, it’s sometimes possible to fish your way around a pond, casting as you go. (And that’s not a bad approach!) Most ponds have access points where you can get near the water and cast. Because there may not be a lot of structure to a pond (they are often bowl-shaped), one spot may be about as good as any other. Still, a visual inspection will usually call your attention to a few key spots — cover like fallen, partially submerged trees or floating docks draw fish. If the pond has a dam or levy (the earthen bank built across the lower end of the valley to hold back the water and form the pond), the water in front of it is often the deepest, and that might hold fish. Corners or coves often attract fish. Casting lures or flies allow you to cover a lot of water, and stillfishing with livebait is another good way to catch fish.
Streams and rivers (big and small)
Small rivers and streams often feature everything that makes for a great fishing trip: interesting fish, ever-changing environment, and beautiful scenery. Unlike small ponds, which usually start with an introduced population of fish, streams run wild and may carry wild populations of fish.
Who’s home?
Rivers and streams often hold a variety of fish, and I’m sure there’s a stream or river somewhere that has about every species of freshwater fish, from trout to smallmouth bass to catfish to walleye to muskies to stripers to spawning American and hickory shad. The largest rivers are deep enough to hide the biggest fish in freshwater. Streams and rivers allow for fish mobility. Many fish move upstream in the spring (often seeking spawning sites) and downstream in the fall, seeking deeper holes for wintering. But the opposite can be true as well. It varies from place to place and by species, but you should see the river as a highway with no roadblocks. It flows from place to place, and unless there’s a dam to stop them, fish can move freely up- and downriver.
How to fish the water
What makes a stream different from a pond is its current. Current influences a fish’s life about as much as a paycheck affects yours. Fish in streams make most of their decisions based on the current, so you need to understand how current works. Start with this nugget: Fish face into the current, so they can see food being swept downstream toward them. Therefore, you should present your lure or bait so that it looks natural: In other words, cast upstream of your target and retrieve your offering downstream. Now, this doesn’t mean always casting straight, or directly, upstream every time. You can still cast to different spots and at different angles. Just make sure that you are generally casting above your target — even if it’s at an angle. Fish often want to be near the current (to intercept food from it), but they don’t like expending more energy than necessary to maintain a position. For this reason, fish will often hide behind a large boulder or other obstruction, so they can be near the current but out of it. (You can find more on how to fish current in Chapter 17.)