Freshwater Fishing

Learn about how crappie baits can be altered or accessorized to enhance opportunities to catch fish.

We fish: therefore, we are… tinkerers. We simply can’t resist the urge to make our crappie baits, well, “crappier.”

Some of our creations would make Dr. Frankenstein proud, while others would humble Rembrandt. Whatever the transformation, the only judge of its beauty lies in the beholder that waits at the opposite end of the line. And any crappie can have a mood that changes at the drop of a bait. The irony of it all is that a failed fishing outing can be just as inspirational in driving our quick return as one that filled the livewell quickly.

So, maybe, we’re the unpredictable ones.

Casting natural offerings to drift in the current is a highly effective way to catch trout. Learn the tricks to this time-proven approach.

Trout fishing has its share of stereotypes, with one being that trout fishing always means fly-fishing. Another is that trout fishing with bait only means sitting beside a heavily stocked lake or a big pool with bait on the bottom to collect trout for a stringer.

While that certainly is a popular way to catch trout and a fine way to spend a day, anglers who prefer to work streams more actively – moving, casting and making active presentations – should not overlook the virtue of using natural offerings. Drifting bait is a fun and highly effective way to tap into outstanding action in a trout stream.

Schooling fish in the early Fall can be a huge kick in the pants to most anglers because of their tendency to turn their noses up to any and all baits you toss out. 

 This can all change with the help of a little old springtime hero known as the soft plastic jerk bait! My favorite is the YUM Houdini Shad, and we will go into greater detail about why further in the blog.

Fishing a Biffle Bug on a HardHead is a year-round strategy for Tommy Biffle and a critical part of his gameplan. We talked with Biffle about the technique he developed in 2010 and has been refining ever since.

“Maybe I should have thrown this in that tournament,” Tommy Biffle said to me as he unhooked the fourth bass he had caught in as many casts with a Biffle Bug on a prototype swiveling jighead that he had never thrown before. He had shown me the design a few minutes earlier and mentioned that he’d had one rigged at Smith Mountain Lake, where the Bassmaster Tour had just been, but hadn’t picked it up. He’d instead been flipping and pitching Texas-rigged Biffle Bugs and had finished solidly in the money but not in contention to win.

Less than two months after that day with Biffle, in June 2010, he won the Bassmaster Elite Series Sooner Run on Fort Gibson Lake with the same combination and introduced the fishing world to the Gene Larew Biffle HardHead. Two weeks after that, he used the same approach to win a PAA event on Tennessee’s Cherokee Lake, cementing the HardHead/Biffle Bug combo’s place in the bass fishing scene.

For Biffle, this combination immediately became a mainstay in his overall approach, and that has never changed. In fact, its place has grown. He fishes this combination year ‘round in a huge range of situations for largemouths, smallmouths and spotted bass, from the Great Lakes to Florida and coast to coast. He always has at least one rigged. It’s usually on his front deck and often in his hand.

Wading a creek or river for bass and other species is a fun and highly effective way to catch fish during summer and autumn. Follow these tips to find great fishing adventures.

With only a couple of hours available, a buddy and I went for maximized efficiency. We parked my car near an Ozarks creek just before daylight and then rode in his truck to another access point, a mile or so downstream. We had tackle packed in light backpacks and topwater lures tied on, and as soon as we had enough light to see where we were walking, we moved streamside at the lower end of a long pool and eyed our first casts.

My Teeny Pop-R disturbed the slick surface first, and the first gentle pop prompted a not-so-gentle attack. The fish missed twice and didn’t come back, but we were underway. Two hours later, just in time to get to where we needed to go, we left fish biting and walked to my car, a few hundred feet away. We’d caught several smallmouths, a couple of spots and largemouths and a handful of mixed panfish. An amazing start to any day!

If you have wadable streams withing reasonable reach that offer public access and support a population of smallmouths, spots, largemouths, shoal bass or other black bass species, there are few simpler or more enjoyable ways to find fishing action than by wading-fishing with a light spinning outfit and modest arsenal of small lures. These tips can make your wade-fishing outings extra productive.

Bank fishing is one of the best American pastimes, but how do you get started and become successful with it?

It can be daunting finding quality spots and ever more difficult to arrange the best equipment for your fishing spots. Today I’m going to give three tips to amplify the decision-making process behind bank fishing to help you become more successful! These tips are choosing the right location, picking the right equipment to get the job done, and finally how to perfect the right presentation from the bank to be as stealthy as possible.

For help on this blog I also reached out to bank fishing guru, Ethan Butler. He is pictured above with a nice walleye he caught pond hopping right before his wedding!

Sometimes it’s tough to top trust live bait presentations for putting walleyes in the boat or on the bank.

As both hardbaits and soft plastics have gotten better and better you might conclude that live bait is an archaic throw-back to an earlier era; something you don’t really need in a modern walleye arsenal. Not so fast. There are still times and places to bring out the bait bucket – or more likely nowadays – the bait carton or Bait Tamer. And as proof, the renowned Ranger boats tournament walleye models come factory equipped with a Lindy Bait Tamer for the livewell. That’s not an accident!

And this article isn’t talking about aggressive bait approaches like big baited spinner rigs or the various spinning “death” hooks to make bait appear more active. No, this article encourages you to create your own modern incarnation of subtle bait presentations—ways to take a slip bobber or plain-hook bait rig into the modern walleye scene.

Excellent crappie fishing can be found all over the country – and not only at the most acclaimed destinations.

What freshwater angler does not like to fish for crappie?

Likely you will recognize some frequently mentioned crappie hotspots around the country, such as Grenada Lake, Kentucky Lake, Lake of the Ozarks, Eufaula Lake and Kerr Lake.

However, as a gadabout angler for the past 40 years, I can tell you there are dozens of other lakes in the US that provide quality crappie fishing experiences.  

Learn the details of a professional walleye anger’s set-up and technique to improve your walleye trolling success.

While interviewing walleye tournament pro Sammy Cappelli, I recalled early childhood memories of accompanying my father on walleye trolling outings. Dad’s 5 1/2-foot solid steel rod sported a knuckle-buster casting reel spooled with black Dacron line, to which a Flatfish was attached, along with two dog-ear clamp-on sinkers squeezed tight to the line.

My gosh, how walleye trolling has changed since the 1950s! The only thing in common between then and now was dad and Cappelli both cut their walleye-fishing teeth on Pymatuning Lake on the Pennsylvania/Ohio border!