Archive for January, 2010

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