What gear to bring on a fishing trip?

fishing gear

Going for fishing? Let us see what all we need to gear for a fishing trip. The last time I went fishing, these were the following things I packed : need rod, reel, line, flies, fly boxes, leaders, leader straightener, tippet, wadding staff, wading belt, fishing jacket, rain jacket, net, quick release lanyard for net, polarized sunglasses, flashlight buy, clipper, forceps, sun block, fisherman’s bag.

When we were a kid, we used to carry an old cane pole with a length of line. On it there was a hook and bobber. This old cane can still work in the warm weather for fishing.

I always carry a fishing vest to carry all my fishing gear. It is available at any decent sports store. Now let us make a list of everything we can keep in our fishing vest for fishing. Finalize what all is really needed, and stick to it.

1. Weights and swivels: You will need weights and swivels of different sizes. I prefer to keep mine in empty film containers as they are a convenient way to carry.

2. Hooks: Always keep some hooks for backup.

3. Stainless steel pliers: This is used to remove hooks from the fish’s mouth. Make sure you carry two of them. I personally prefer hemostats.

4. Spinners/Spoons: Keep some plastic boxes with spoons and spinners of all sizes. You must have at least two of each option.

5. Match sticks and a lighter kept in a Ziploc bag: It is always better to keep this while going fishing as you never know when you will need a fire.

6. Bait bag: Just hook on a bait bag along your vest as it is the easiest way to carry live baits. If you do not want to buy one, you can also make one at home.

7. Power bar: Something to eat if you are hungry.

8. Waterproof flashlight: During dark, you can flash light even 2 miles away.

9. Nail clipper: You should always keep them while going fishing.

10. Wader repair kit: will be needed when you pop a hole in your wader and you are 2 miles away from your truck and its raining.

Angling is a sport fishing which requires a lot of patience. If you are gearing for an angling, then the basic equipment required will be rod, line, spoon, hooks and reel. So make sure you remember to keep these while planning an angling.

Keeping theses ten things with you while going fishing will be safe. You may also add something else to which you might think is important. But these are the basic necessity for a happy and safe fishing trip.

February 6th, 2010 by admin

What are the differences between all the fishing lines?

fishing line

A fishing line is a cord which is used for angling. The main parameters for fishing line are length, material and weight. It is the most important thing between the angler and fish. It is the fishing line that keeps the hook, rods and reels together. Depending on the situation, you need to choose the right fishing line which is a difficult task. Many anglers do not take this into consideration and may lose fishes.

When the hook is attached to the fishing line, it functions as a mechanism retrieving the line. Angling is a method of sport fishing. It is very enjoyable if you have got the time as it requires a lot of patience. Angling also has methods of conservation. Angling makes fishing eco friendly. No matter which fishing line you choose, if the angling is right, then your catch will definitely be good.

There are mainly three different types of fishing lines, namely, monofilament, braided and fluorocarbon lines. All these three are in their place. While choosing a line it is also important to see how thick it is. All lines look the same, but there are subtleties which make them better than the others.

The most popular fishing line is monofilament. More than 66 percent of all fishing lines sold are monofilament. It was invented in 1930 and is a plastic line made of nylon. Melted plastic is poured into a tube which gives it the shape of a line. The meaning of mono is single and this is a single strand of line. This fishing line receives more quality control and is more abrasion resistant. That is why it is more expensive than the others. It can be used for heavy fishing and rough conditions like rocks. It is extra tough.

Braided lines were the preferred line for many anglers before the monofilament line came. These fishing lines are resistant to abrasion. This fishing line is very strong that you may even have trouble breaking it when you finally get a snag. Hence, the fish you caught is very unlikely to break it. It still lacks behind the monofilament fishing lines. It is one of the strongest types of fishing line if we talk about the diameter.

The fluorocarbon fishing line is made from polymer of fluorine which is bonded to carbon. This line has a lot of advantages over the other fishing lines. This comes closest to the refractive index of water. Hence it is almost invisible under the water. Even ultraviolet rays do not affect this line. It does not float and lets you to bait and falls faster and quicker and deeper into the water.

February 2nd, 2010 by admin

Ice Fishing – 4 off Season Angling Benefits

ice fishing

During winter months, fishing does not come to a standstill. There are many anglers who enjoy the winters. They find it to be an ideal weather and get ready to face challenges of angling on frozen lakes and waterways.

Let us discuss about the benefits of fishing during the winters. It offers a lot of advantages to the fisherman because of the off season angling.

1. There is a lot of calmness of fishing on ice: Fishing can be done of the ice on a bright day by putting up a tent or house which is easily portable and can be put on the ice. Even if the weather is freezing, you can keep a portable heater inside the tent and fish inside the tent. If the weather is good and the weather is not windy, then you can also put your chair outside on a clear spot on the open ice. You need to simply drill a hole on the ice and sit back and wait for your catch. Ice fishing is more relaxing than summer fishing. Lots of people find winter months difficult to sit out and fish and hence prefer summer fishing.

2. There are fewer crowds for ice fishing: Since summer months are more popular for fishing, there is not much of a crowd for ice fishing. It is more peaceful with not much people around and there are more chances of making good catches. There is more variety and quantity of fishes available. Not many anglers are there present. It is more relaxing way to have a fishing expedition.

3. Tackles needed for ice fishing: Do not use a bait of fly fishing method. Try to use a reel and jigging rod instead. Less equipment will be required for ice fishing than normal fishing. This makes ice fishing trip safer for children and makes the entire trip more family oriented. Not much things are required to carry.

Tip up is a particular type of rod holder which is obtained. It keeps the line under the water and has a flag at the end of the rod. This makes it visible to see the fish biting under the line. For ice fishing, longer lines are needed. This is because food and fishes move deeper under the water as they look for a warmer place. The fishes are not available as they are in summer.

4. There are many ice fishing tournaments: Ice fishers gather all in one area and make it a social event. There are many ice fishing tournaments held. There are many spontaneous fishing competitions held and make the trip enjoyable to the fullest. The event is made more exciting as many areas conduct ice fishing tournaments.

February 1st, 2010 by admin

Transforming from Good to a Great Angler

Angling is now one of the most popular recreational activities for fishing enthusiast around the globe. This is at present a multi-billion dollar industry in both the United States and Canada. So, what is the reason that this activity is generating so much revenue and gaining popularity? What makes anyone a good angler and improve his angling skills?

Tools and equipments don’t make good anglers. They are simply there to aid anglers. No matter how good your tools are you still would not be able to catch that trophy winning fish until you have the required amount of experience. Under mentioned are a couple of tips which are not enough though, but they would certainly help you get wiser with your angling skills.

  • The real power is knowledge – It’s important that you have an open mind for new learning related to the angling skills. There is always something that is available from other anglers about new methods, approaches and tactics those are non conventional but works. One easy way to know these are by reading articles and books written by veteran anglers. Doing that you would be able to gather different facts, tactics and skills, which they have gathered over the years of angling. These can be really handy at times while you are out door angling all by yourself.
  • Documentation of details – It’s a good practice to log both the successes as well as your failures. Ensure that you keep a track of details like water temperature, whether conditions, location, and time of the day when you started angling. These details would help you to analyze later, the reasons for your success as well as the reasons for your failure. Which you could work upon later. No wonder they say that failures are the pillars of success.
  • Try considering specialization – Concentrating on specific species of fish, would result in accumulation of great amount of knowledge about the specie. Another way of doing the same is going by season. As you might have already come to know by now, that each of the different species require different techniques for angling along with equipments. So by cycling specialization you would land up gaining a whole lot of information related to a lot of fishes. This experience with a wide variety of fishes would get you not only the confidence but ideas too, to try out different techniques in situations that you have not experienced before.
  • Don’t get de-motivated – Angling involves both success and failures too, so it is important that you do not get bogged down by the failures but rather take a lesson from them. Try to analyze them and get to the root cause of your failures and improve upon them in the future.
January 27th, 2010 by admin

Some Thing about Angling with Worms

One great way of catching fishes is in the current of the small rivers and the streams. In this article we would try to pass some great tips to you related to using the angling fishing technique with worms. It is also important for you to note that there has been some technological breakthrough and synthetic worms have been developed for the purpose of fishing.

Most of the tips that I would be mentioning here are best used in flowing water. But you surely can try modifying them for angling in any kind of water. You ought to understand the fact that no tip can benefit you more than spending time on your sport in water. Like they say practice makes a man perfect. It applies to angling as well.

  1. Water with depth – Normally in rivers or streams a lot of riffles are found. Along with runs and pools. It isn’t necessary that the maximum of the fishes are to be found in the pools, rather the runs are also good places where you might find a lot of fishes.
  2. Bouncing along the bottom – When you are fishing with worms the best results are produced if the worm happens to bounce at the bottom naturally along with the current. An easy way to do this is by attaching the hooks to a line using a small barrel swivel along with using small slit shock sinkers as weight. You might choose to add or remove the split shots depending upon the depth of the water, along with the flow of the current. This would make your offering bounce along the bottom.
  3. Using gang hooks – While doing worm fishing ensure that your bait should look as natural as possible. I am sure you would want the worm to look like a worm and this is done by the usage of a gang hook. Now if your question is what is this gang hook then I would say it’s just a pair of hooks tied together in a tandem which enables the angler to present his worms to the fishes in a stretched out manner, which works better to lure the fishes.
  4. Ensure you have clean hands – You should always have clean hands when you are set out for worm fishing. This is so important because, in case you have some unnatural scent in your hands they get transferred to the baits as well. This is something the fishes are able to sense well enough. Thus it would impact the result of your fishing. Thus to avoid this kind of a thing you should rub your hand well with grasses or even better would be soil.
January 17th, 2010 by admin

Impact of Water Temperature on Angling

If you want to be a good angler when it comes to bait game fishes like flat head catfish, channel cat fish, blue gill etc, it’s very important that you have a sound idea of the right water temperature for angling. That is because generally the fishes are not really much active if the water temperature is not right for them. This certainly would be impacting the bottom result of your angling activities.

Let’s say for example if you are out fishing in summer when the water temperature is going to be 70 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and your target is a game fish like flat head catfishes, channel cat fishes, blue cat fishes, blue gills etc in that case you can expect them to be active in the water. So in this kind of a temperature you can get set with all your baits and hope to get some good results for your angling.

Now if intend to go fishing when the temperature ranges between 61 to 69 degrees Fahrenheit, you could expect good results if you are baiting for fishes like northern pikes, small mouth bass, walleyes, yellow perches, muskellunges. These temperature ranges suits the said fishes very much, and say if you have gone out fishing for some walleyes at this temperature range you are most likely to find them in dozens and at the depth where the temperature is at 61 to 69 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now in case you have your baits set for some game fishes like the brown trouts, Chinook salmons, cutthroat trouts, rainbow trouts, brook trouts and lake trouts. In that case you would have to look for very cold water which should be in the temperature range of between 50-60 degrees Fahrenheit. So a suggestion from my end would be if you are planning for bait fishing for the said types of fishes then the best thing to be done would be find a nice cold mountain stream and get a night crawler and no weights. Then just let it drift slowly with the current, this would be good enough to help you bag quite a few brook trouts.

Hope this would be of much help to you and I am sure this article has given you good in depth knowledge of how to relate the water temperature to a successful angling expedition. So what are you waiting for just get, set and go there, and check out what improvements has this bit of knowledge caused to the output of your angling experience.

Not just while fishing but temperature also plays an important role in the recovering of fishes from angling-induced stressors. According to some recent researches, scientists have found out the impact of water temperature, ammonia concentrations and dissolved oxygen on the time for the fishes to recover from angling-induced stressors.

January 13th, 2010 by admin

How to Use Bait Boats for Angling

In case you have plans to set out for angling in a boat then here are some tips that might come in handy for you.

The Initial Setup

The first thing that you should make sure you have along with you is the marker float. It’s really important you have it with you even if you have plans to fish around the banks. It would help you ensure that there are no snags. It becomes particularly important if in case you have never fished before in that area. How to use the marker float is something that you can easily learn from Google.

It is important that you place your bait boat on to the unhooking mat to ensure it’s protected. Then you need to pull your rig from the underneath. Carry as much bait as you think you might require. Then usually people pull the rig to the top of the bait pile. It’s important that the lead and the hooks are kept as straight as possible. This would save your rig from getting entangled when you drop it. PVA foam also might be used to keep the hook from getting entangled with the weeds. Next you can set up a couple of bank sticks on which you can rest your rod. This is important for a couple of reasons first being to avoid the wind from taking some any slack line, and the second, is to ensure that you rod is always in the same position.

Taking Out the Boat

It would be a good idea, to follow the direction of your marker float, and in as straight a line as possible, while taking your boat out. Try keeping your line tight, now when you think you are in position, drop your load. Just let it till the lead hits the bottom. Then pull up any slack without moving your hook bait away from the pile of tempting bait. Now depending on the boat that you might be using, you ought to repeat the procedure of dropping your next rig. It’s good to take one rig at a time. Now you should set your rod on the pod and wait.

After The Fishing Is Over

After your fishing trip is over you need to do a couple of things, like always ensure that there are no weeds etc on the props. Now remove the pieces of electrical tapes put on the draining holes of the boat, which are aimed at stopping the water from getting in to the boat if the water is choppy during the trip. You ought to be careful of thieves as these bait boats are expensive.

January 8th, 2010 by admin

Effective Live Worm Angling

worms

Everyone living on this planet is aware of the fact that liver worms are effective bait for fishing. But what is important is that though everyone knows this, very few know how to fish a live worm with proper effectiveness. Angling live worm effectively does not mean to simple thread a live worm onto a hook and call it good. Though this is what most anglers do, but this is not an effective way for fishing with live worms. Angling of live worms is simple, but an important task of fishing. It is this that leads to high rate catches.

The piece of fishing gear is called a set of gang hooks. The next question coming to your mind must be – what is a set of gang hook? It is nothing but a pair of small hooks which are tied in tandem. This enables to live worms to be natural and outstretched. When we thread live worms onto an angle or a hook, live worms are presented like a worm ball. They naturally look to be outstretched, they look this way naturally. This is what a set of gang hooks let you do. A set of gang hooks is the start of effective live worm angling.

The hooks are barely visible with a set of gang angles (hooks) of size 8 or 10. It looks as if they are just thrown into water. This makes the gang hook more effective. A fish is more apt to bite a worm which looks natural like a worm ball. The live worms take the shape of a worm ball which attracts more fishes.

If you want to effectively angle the live worms, then you will have to carry your worms while going fishing. But carrying live worms in a container with you everywhere you go fishing is not a practical way. Carrying the live worms in an effective and practical way while fishing is called a bait bag. What is a bait bag? A bait bag is a small and simple bag which can be easily attached to fishing vest and is used to carry live worms for fishing purpose. This bag is very useful and a must buy for all live worm anglers to carry live worm for effective fishing.

This article will be very useful for effective live worm anglers. It has taken a lot of effort to bring all these tips together and they should be used for angler for more effective live worm angling. These tips are the best tips laid together by a number of live worm angler. Using these tips will make you a better fisher and will improve catch rates too. Live worm angling is not complicated. There are little things that make difference.

January 4th, 2010 by admin

The Best Bass Fishing Tackle

Have you watched TV programs that show about bass pro fisherman? If not, then do watch them. You will start loving such programs. You will see that these guys are always into the latest techniques of bass fishing.

Many people believe that those guys on such shows are only interested in selling themselves on TV. These guys also receive compensation for the fishing equipment endorsement and tackles. These shows are not always commercial as these guys do have an acute interest in bass fishing.

The answer will surprise many people that the use of proper good quality bass fishing tackle does make a lot of difference between letting a big one get out and landing of a big one. That is the reason why the pro fisherman uses tackle boxes to the gills with other sort of tackle. The guys doing these shows on TV channels actually use this stuff.

If you are an angler, then you could apply these applications to your own life. But it is worth to learn about different types of bass fishing tackles which are available. If you not only want to learn what all is available, you should at least be able to distinguish between the garbage and good stuffs.

Let us share a secret. Let us know how to find out which is the best tackle to use for bass pro fishing.

There are two sources of information which will help you to understand the best tackle: one is angling friends and the second one is fishing magazines. The best thing to do with friends to do from time to time when out fishing is to have a small casual conversation about tackle which will help you to learn from them. Listen to their responses and from the conversation you can learn a lot of lures and tackle that has actually worked wonders with them. It will also teach you other things which they have used but that has not worked. It will save you lots of money not having to buy worthless items for bass fishing tackle. Remember to take your friend’s recommendation. It does work.

The worst thing to do is to make tackle purchasing decision based on window shopping. This is the last thing which one should do. This impulse buying will not let you know what items of fishing tackles actually works.

This is when fishing magazines are more effective. Reading them regularly will make you learn more. Remember to read the product reviews that describe the performance of fishing tackles. Whenever you are in need to buy any item for tackle fishing, then simply take these magazines out and read them. Save these magazines for future reference. They are a good source of honest and unbiased information.

So whenever it is time to buy a replacement for bass fishing tackle, read the magazines for what to buy. Do not go in for any window shopping.

January 2nd, 2010 by admin

Choosing the Best Fishing Spot for Walleye

Walleye

To catch Walleye, an angler must seek out a quality fishing spot. Walleye possess habits that can help an angler understand where to look for them. Hence, a closer look at the behaviors of Walleye can help an angler find the perfect fishing spot to catch them!

An angler, when angling for Walleye, can find a good fishing spot in lakes, ponds, rivers, and large, relatively still streams. In the quest for a fishing spot, an angler should seek out deep bodies of cool, clear water. Additionally, a good fishing spot for Walleye can be found near transitional areas: areas that convert from one environmental element to another. For instance, an angler may want to find a fishing spot that is located near an area of water that houses a series of rocks that transition into a large gravel or mud bed. Further, an angler can position their fishing spot so that they have access to the shoreline during their typical feeding time.

An angler should be aware of the typical Walleye diet, as it can aid them in finding a fishing spot and selecting the right bait to catch them with. Walleye feed on crayfish, drum, insects, mudpuppies, salmon, snails, trout and yellow perch. Snails and insects can be used as live bait to snare Walleye. Also an angler can research the environment of his choosing to determine if it is a good fishing spot for Walleye. A good way for an angler to research the fishing spot in question is to contact local fishing officials for the regular fishing reports they produce.

Walleyes have eyes that are particularly light sensitive, which gives them the ability to see in murky waters. Conversely, Walleyes prefer clear, cool waters; thus an angler should seek out a fishing spot that has the cleanest water possible.

An angler will benefit from knowing that Walleye tend to be lackadaisical; they prefer not to have to chase their prey very far and they like to ambush them as they swim past. Thus, a good fishing spot for Walleye should possess a lot of good hiding spaces to seek out lurking Walleye. For example, schools of Walleye can be found clustered around rock formations and shorelines where lots of weedy vegetation grows.

An angler should also consider the depth preferences of Walleye: because Walleye have light sensitive eyes they prefer to remain in deep areas of water: many Walleye are hooked at waters depths reaching twenty to forty feet. Thus, an angler might want to consider including the use of a boat and a depth finder on their fishing expedition: a good fishing spot for Walleye can be found in the deepest waters.

Finally, an angler can benefit from knowing that the best time to fish for Walleye is in the evening. Walleye come to the surface and near shorelines after the sun goes down. Thus, an angler should consider a safe night location when choosing a fishing spot.

December 29th, 2009 by admin