FLY FISHING FOR SPRING CATFISH

Silently drifting though the air, the line snakes it way across the water. Dawn is just breaking through the mists when the streamer drops delicately on the surface and sinks.

The line tightens as a forked-tail fish mouths the streamer and moves off to deeper water. Catfish like to eat their prize in the safety of deep water. Using a streamer to catch catfish? Streamers are for fly fishing. Catfish don’t bite a fly. Or do they?

Today’s fly angler has expanded his list of prey. Catfish are the most recent to join the list of the hardcore fly fisherman, and the most fun. The prolific catfish can be found in almost any body of water in the middle of the country.

Catfish prefer a drop off are as where a riffle meets a pool. In the evening they move up to the shallow eddies and flats where they feed through the cooler nighttime temperatures. It is during these feeding periods that they are most vulnerable.

For those interested in catching catfish with a fly rod, a good starting point in the choice of tackle. A long, rather stiff, rod with a weight forward line to match is the beginning. For the more bulky fly a bass taper weight forward line would be good. A good tackle shop can help with the choice.

If more than one line is to be used, store them on extra spools so that the lines can be changes in response to lure selection and changing water conditions.

Monofilament of about five-pound test works well in a length of three to four feet for the tippet. If being able to see the line is a problem, then a colored mono line is OK. A float indicator can help identify a light bite as would a small ultra light float.

The choice of fly tends to lean toward anything that imitates a crayfish, leech or night crawler. Channel catfish tend to be bottom feeders. To match the hatch one has to match what is swimming or crawling on the bottom.

Fishing time tends to be early morning hours, up until about an hour after sunup. This bite does not last a long time but it can be done for a while and then one can move on to other types of fishing.

Fly fishing for catfish can be done on just about any lake, river or pond. If one is wadding, do so with great care as holes in the bottom can cause serious problems for the unsuspecting angler who steps in them.
The catfish has been described as a muscle with whiskers on one end and a forked tail on the other. That is not too far from the truth. On the light tackle of a fly rod and line the catfish is a formidable challenge. And it is a fun way to begin the day.

                                               Don Gasaway - The Ground Pounder
                                               http://www.dongasaway.wordpress.com/

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There’s One, There’s Two..

Many years ago in the fall of the year, I pulled into Tinker Helseth’s lodge at Nestor Falls, Ontario, on Lake of the Woods, late at night. Choosing not to awaken anyone at that late hour, I parked near the lake, climbed over to the back seat of my pickup, into my sleeping bag and went to sleep. I had driven all day and I was tired. Rambunctious, my Labrador, slept soundly in the front seat. He was along to retrieve ducks and grouse. I had stopped in Minnesota and bought a twenty-pound bag of his favorite brand of dog food. It was in the open bed of the pickup with most of my other hunting and fishing gear.

I was awakened by old Ram’s low, ominous growl, which continued even after I told him to be quiet so I could sleep. Obviously he was upset with something. Could be some Canadian outlaw was eyeing up my gear in the bed of the pickup, so I reached down beside me and grasped the shotgun lying along the floor. It was then I felt the whole pickup lurch a little as a heavy body climbed into the bed behind me. Suddenly I was wide awake. A thief was only a few feet away, with only the back glass separating us. He was big, black and hairy… and scary in the middle of the night like that. But he came for only one thing, that bag of dog food. By the time I got over the seat and out the door, he was gone with it, heading toward the lake. He wasn’t the biggest black bear I have ever seen, but sometime that night he gained about 20 pounds by eating that whole bag of dog food.

The next morning at breakfast, Tinker, an experienced and knowledgeable outdoorsman, bush pilot and guide, told me that bear was becoming a real problem. He had learned how to get the lids off their garbage cans and break into sheds, and he wouldn’t leave. He was a young male, a threat of some proportions, as well as a nuisance. In time, he would have to be shot.

I asked Tinker if they would eat him eventually and he laughed. He said he’d just as soon eat old Rambunctious. Even local Indians wouldn’t eat bear meat, and he said he had never tasted any that didn’t ruin his appetite. He said Americans come to Canada to hunt bear for bear rugs mostly, not bear meat. Most talked about how good the meat was to justify getting a rug.

Just last year when I was fishing with Tinker, he showed me a couple of places where he and another guide were baiting for bears, where American hunters would take one in the fall. How else can you hunt a bear up there, by finding a trail and set up a tree stand? Black bears aren’t like deer. You won’t be successful without baiting them or hunting them with dogs, and if you bait them, getting one is pretty much a sure thing. Local dumps attract dozens. And there are so many of them, killing a few doesn’t hurt the population at all. Around Lake of the Woods, black bear are very abundant.

How many do we have in the Ozarks? Care to make a guess? The Missouri Department of Conservation wants to know, badly enough that they are spending about 885,000 dollars to get a close guess. According to Tim Ripperger, Assistant Director for the MDC, they feel they can figure out just about how many Missouri has by doing DNA testing on patches of hair left on barbed wire fences, and that type of thing. You can see why that would cost almost a million dollars. But the MDC only has to pay a quarter of that; the federal government is paying three-fourths of it. In this day when there is all this talk about the federal deficit of trillions of dollars, laying out a half million to try to figure out how many bears we have is no big expense! I asked Tim if I could get in on that, maybe get a few thousand for going down to the National Forestland and counting tracks or something. Because I am so skeptical, almost to a point of being amused by this, I don’t think I would qualify. They have, after all, some top flight, book-trained biologists who will come up with an accurate figure for only 885,000 dollars. Sure they will!

That figure needs to be better than 500 bears, and it will be, eventually, because the Missouri Department of Conservation badly wants to sell some bear tags and have a bear season. They have arrived at a figure of 500 to 600 bears necessary for a hunting season, and I would bet my boots that Missouri doesn’t come close to having that many, but how could you prove we don’t? I know a little bit about bears from spending so many years hunting the National Forestland in northwest and west Arkansas for more than twenty years, where I have seen several. They have a bear season in Arkansas, mostly for those hunters who would pay about anything to get a bear rug, even if they wouldn’t pay much for a freezer full of bear meat.

In those mountain forests, black bear are so elusive and wild that seeing them is unusual. Who knows how many there are! They are easier to see however if you bait them. One Jasper, Arkansas backwoodsman got friendly with one when he started taking the bear a daily offering of day-old donuts from a local bakery. Three months of that made the bear fairly tame, so he started taking pictures. One day he took pictures when he had forgotten the donuts, and the bear chewed on him a little bit. He had to have 120 stitches to atone for no donuts.

I can guarantee you that we won’t have 885,000 dollars spent counting bears without having five or six hundred counted when it is all over. In time we will have a limited bear season with some hundred dollar bear tags and some new non-resident hunters paying three times that to get a shot at a bear skin rug. But if you want one bad enough, come by and talk to Tinker Helseth at our swap meet this coming March, and he can help you get one easily, right there beside the bait bucket in northwest Ontario, with time to catch a limit of walleye during the afternoon.

Tinker will be giving away a free fishing vacation to his Lodge on Lake of the Woods, by drawing, on Saturday, March 19, during our daylong Grizzled Old Outdoorsman swap meet, held at the gymnasium of the Brighton Assembly of God Church, seventeen miles north of Springfield. He can tell you all about black bears and walleye and moose and the Canadian Wilderness. He has been guiding there since he was 11 years old, more than fifty years now. But he also is a master at chain-saw wood carving, and he will create a carving of a fish on that day, and give it away by drawing too. You can watch him give a demonstration from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. and learn how to do it yourself.

I will be there all day too, and am thinking about giving a seminar on how to count black bears in the Ozarks. You can use that knowledge perhaps to get a federal grant.

My website has all the information on the swap meet...www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com. You still can get a table there to sell outdoor gear, and everything is free. No charge for a table, no charge to get in. Write me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo.65613 or e-mail lightninridge@windstream.net

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VERSATILITY WITH SPINNERBAITS

Casting to the stick up, an angler can see a bass suspended just next to it. Why does he ignore the lure? The answer may be that this particular spinnerbait is the wrong color or has the wrong shaped blade for this fish at this time.

There are seemingly an endless variety of spinnerbait blades and skirts in an infinite variety of colors. All of them will produce if used in the right combinations and under the proper conditions. They can be used in clear as well as stained water. They work in cold water conditions and in the heat of summer.

The most popular colors are white, chartreuse, black and a combination of these colors. Both the blades and skirts can be in these colors.

Blades come in three basic shapes: Colorado, willow leaf and Indiana. The later is a kind of tear drop shape, while the Indiana is more oval and the willow leaf is more oblong. The less streamlined Indiana and Colorado have more resistance in the water and provide more vibration. The streamlined Willow leaf provides little vibration but gives off more flash.

When choosing a color the nickel or silver work well in clear to slightly stained waters. The gold or brass is used in the rest of the water spectrum, up to muddy water. The colored blades work well in most water when flash is not being attempted.

Fishing spinnerbaits is a skill that the beginning bass angler should master before going on to more sophisticated lure and patterns. There are such patterns as slow rolling or bush bumping or perhaps buzzing and dropping. These techniques are too numerous to further explore here.

As you can tell by the above, there are a variety of uses for the spinner bait. Many bass anglers will have a number of rods rigged up with different spinnerbait combinations of skirts and blades. In this way when they encounter different water conditions or structure, they can drop one rod and pick up another. The idea is to maximize the time one has a productive lure in the water. Time spent removing one spinnerbait and tying on another, is time not spent fishing.

The Speed Bead Terminator spinnerbait is a good example of how science has made the multiple spinnerbait use simple. They have the same wire spinnerbait shaft as the other baits in their line except there are two subtle differences.

Half way up the blade portion of the shaft is a small twisted wire on which the tandem blade can be attached. The difference between this and other spinnerbaits is that this one allows the blade to be twisted onto the shaft and it still spins free. Other baits would require the cutting of the section of the shaft that contains the blade in order to change blades. By allowing the shaft to be twisted on and off, blades can be changed in seconds instead of several minutes.

At the end of the same shaft, standard baits have a wire look that holds the other blade of tandem bait. In most baits, this loop has to be bent out in order to remove a blade, the blade changed, and then the loop bent back. The end result is a weakened shaft and lost fishing time. The new bait has a small bead that can be slid back for changing of the blade. Upon the completion of the change, the bead is slid back in place and the bait is ready for action.

Changes in spinnerbait construction allow for an angler to fish different sizes, colors and configurations of blades on the same bait shaft with little or no loss of fishing time. One can make a single blade spinner bait into a tandem and vice versa with little effort and time. Coupling that with the ability to change the rubber skirts make spinnerbaits popular. Anglers can fish deep or shallow, clear or stained water, under all weather conditions.

The spinnerbait is easy to fish and one of the most versatile baits in the angler’s tackle box.

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The Grim Reaper is White

      Light enough to travel on top of the snow when it crusts just a little, bobwhites have to find food above it, and they are easily picked up by the eye of any predator, especially a hawk.  It takes twice as much foodto keep their body heat at a constant level when the temperature is 10 degrees, compared to 40 degrees.

 Twenty inches of snow fell on this wooded ridgetop where I live. In all my life living in the Ozarks of southern Missouri or northern Arkansas, I never saw more than twelve inches of snow fall at one time. Even in Canada, and in the mountains out west, where snow accumulates to several feet over the course of a few winter weeks, I don’t know if they have twenty inches fall all at once.

I know this; a snow of that depth is tough on wildlife, even wild turkeys. I have noticed that in a deep snow, winter flocks of turkeys which have been using fields to feed in, forsake them and remain in woodlands. The reason for this has to be in part the inability to escape predators in deep snow. The wild turkey may fly when surprised by a hunter or a bobcat or fox, but he needs to run a little ways first. If he isn’t hard pressed, he will just run and never fly at all. This snow nearly eliminates that possibility. In the timber, a turkey, especially the young ones, can take to sudden flight and gain the protection of overhead branches where they can perch, and be out of reach of most ground predators. I have seen young turkeys do this often in the winter in snow.

But food is going to be tough to come by, because in a snow of this depth, it is tough to find places where turkeys can scratch through it. In a situation like this, all wildlife, including deer, depends on heavy thickets, and especially thick stands of cedar. For a covey of bobwhite quail, those cedar thickets may be the only chance. In the cedar thickets, the snow is much less deep. The berries on buckbrush and juniper, (what we refer to as red cedar) are not highly prized for food by anything but a few species of small birds, so they last all winter long, off the ground. But right now those small bitter, blue cedar berries can mean survival for quail, turkey and all kinds of small birds. Even deer and some predators like the fox will eat them.

But all birds need grit, and if quail are deprived of access to small gravel, they may die in less than a week. Surprisingly, they can live without water for weeks. In the winter, when severe cold freezes everything up, all wildlife species live for prolonged periods without water, even doves, the one bird species which seems to need water the most in the summer and fall. The grit which must be in the bird’s crop (which old time Ozarkians pronounced ‘craw’) is necessary to grind up and digest larger seeds and acorns. That’s why right now you will find quail and all other birds coming to roadways, both paved and gravel, where bare surface is created by man’s machinery.

Rabbits and small ground mammals are much more exposed to predation in this kind of snow, but again, they find the heavy cover and thickets and burrow in.  They too do without water, but they can find food in the bark of small woody growth and saplings.

Some small ground mammals, in mice and rat families, will not hibernate at all in the winter, but most will hibernate some. And there are others which hibernate the entire winter, a matter of months perhaps. Squirrels and raccoons, skunks and opossums will hibernate for only short periods, during times of extreme cold and heavy snow, and survive it that way.  Fox squirrels hibernate for a longer period of time, it seems to me, than do gray squirrels, but never more than just a few days.

For predators, it is not as hard to survive in a difficult stretch of winter, but when you have twenty inches of soft snow, foxes, coyotes and bobcats have to find it difficult to maneuver. The eagle, owls and hawks aren’t much affected by it. All three will eat carrion if they have to. But a hawk after a mouse or bird, plunging into a deep, soft drift, can struggle to get out of it and into flight.

I feel sorry though, for the quail more than anything else. Bobwhites have been declining in the Midwest for two decades to some extent, and each year it seems to more likely that someday there will be none at all in the Ozarks, or any state north of the Ozarks for that matter. If you feed them, you have to remember how vulnerable they are to predators and house cats when they become concentrated and depend on food provided by man in some regular place.  They need open patches of ground to find grit, and they need heavy cover close by to escape. Next time you think about clearing out a cedar thicket, think about what it is like right now for a covey of quail in an area with little protective cover.

I am amazed that wildlife survives the winters they seem to be able to survive. It seems so amazing that wild creatures can function without water… and if you are thinking they eat snow, they get almost no water that way. Have you ever once observed a wild bird or mammal in the wild eating snow? In all my time outdoors, I never did.

Somehow though, enough of any species survives the bottleneck of winter to keep that species going.  And I have observed that in almost all wild creatures, there are cycles. When a species seems hard hit by some disease or hard winter or flooding or whatever, it seems to have a strong comeback by increased production of young. Some may want to refer to it as ‘mother nature’, but as I watch and learn, I realize that a mind greater than men can comprehend must be behind this amazing plan of survival.

Once many years ago, when I was a Naturalist for the National Park Service on the Buffalo River in Arkansas, I and two other young men set out to float a long length of the river in johnboats with basic supplies. We intended to film and photograph the river in winter, to show at summer night programs to visitors from the city. It was in January, and we got our tent set up one evening just before a major ice storm which kept us there for three days and nights, hoping the tent would hold up. One night as we huddled in that tent listening to light freezing rain and sleet peppering our shelter, we wondered how wild creatures around us coped. I would have felt better sitting around a fire in a river bluff cave, but it made me think about some things. Survival suddenly became the only important thing. We didn’t have to worry about the teeth of a predator, we had guns. The only concern then, for three days, was enough to eat, and the ability to stay warm.

A wild creature’s life is nothing else but that, always. Stay sheltered, stay fed, and stay hidden. In twenty inches of snow, those simple things become the most complicated tasks, and more wild creatures will die of predation, starvation, freezing or disease in the next month than any other three months of the upcoming year.

Our February-March issue of the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Magazine is out. They are now in the magazine racks of 120 Wal-Mart stores in Missouri, north Arkansas and east Kansas. You can see the new magazine on my website… www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com.   If you can’t find one any other way, call my executive secretary, Ms. Wiggins, at 417-777-5227 and she will tell you how to order one or get a subscription.  Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613, or e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net

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EARLY SPRING FISHING WITH SLIP BOBBERS

The versatility of slip-bobber fishing is made for early year action. It allows the angler to adapt to conditions and whatever species they seek.

Sitting on the shore and staring at a bobber dancing on the surface of the water may be food for the Zen consciousness, but it does nothing to put fish in the cooler. Staring at a bobber may be all that some people get to do early in the year.

Changing temperatures and winds make early spring fishing a challenge. Movements of fronts through the area cause changes in the feeding activities of fish as well as water temperatures. Because fish move to find their comfort zone, they are often in different locations at different times of the day. They will also move up and down the water column in response to water temperatures.

So where does one begin to seek out early spring fish?

A good location is in the backs of coves and other secluded bays. It is here that water begins to warm faster than in the deeper waters of the main body of the lake or river. A plain kitchen thermometer can be used to take water temperature readings in various areas. Tied to a line, it can be lowered and raised in the water to find temperatures at different depths.

Look for warming trends and begin to fish those areas first.

Warmer water is usually the water closest to shore in the spring. The sun shining on rocks or mud bottoms will warm them. In turn they hold the heat longer. The warmed structure helps tow arm the water surrounding it. It is important to approach such areas quietly. Fish in shallow water, especially clear water, spook easily.

In the spring, fish are generally interested in locating spawning sites. They will often be found near areas where such activity will later occur.

For walleye, areas of hard bottom structure are good places to begin. Also look to areas where creeks feed into a larger body of water. The water will be warmer there by a degree or two and that can mean fish will be present.

Rip rap is a good location as are most rocky areas in general. If the wind is blowing toward the rip rap, the warmer water will be blown there as well. This in turn attracts bait fish and the predator fish follow.

In rivers, look for eddies just off the current. The fish locate those areas and wait next to the faster current in hopes of a hapless bait fish passing by in the faster water.

Once an area is selected it is time to seek the depth at which to fish. All fish seek their comfort level when it comes to water temperature. On warmer early season days that will be near the surface or in more shallow waters.

The slip bobber allows the angler to place the lure or bait at precisely the same depth as the fish. Anglers can easily change fishing depths by moving the line stop up and down. In a boat with electronics, this is more easily accomplished as one can know precisely where the fish are suspended. For the ground pounder it involves a little more work. One has to experiment by changing the depth until a fish is caught. Then fish that depth.

The slip bobber gets the bait to the right depth. Slip bobber systems allow the angler to move back from the fish and cast to them in the targeted area.

The slip bobber rig consists of a line freely passing through the bobber with a hook and bait below and a slip know stop above. The line slides through the bobber and stops at the slip knot. The slip knot can pass through the rod guides during casting and retrieval.

The slip knot is set at the depth the angler wishes the bait to suspend. If the bait is not heavy enough, then a split shot can be added to the line beneath the bobber for additional weight.

A small hook suspended below the slip bobber can suspend a minnow or other live bait in the fish’s view. Simply cast the rig to the desired water area, allow it to sit for a bit and then retrieve it slowly. Slowly is the operational word. The fish are usually sluggish from the cold water temperatures.

It is a good idea to work the entire area, be it rip rap or culvert drainage. On rocky or sandy shorelines, try working the bait along the bottom. Allow it to just bump the bottom and then jig it along with a lifting motion. In warmer water or when fish are more active, try to suspend the bait about 9 inches off the bottom with the same rod motion.

For those using artificial lures, any small to medium size minnow imitation is probably a good selection. Twitch them on the surface or just beneath it. Some people get good results with rattling crankbaits in this situation. Floating crankbaits work well if you stop the retrieve periodically. They represent an easy meal to fish as they suspend in the water.

The two keys to remember are: Fish slowly, and look for water that is warmer than that around it. Early spring fishing is often a hit or miss prospect. But, with a slip bobber your chances are increased.

                        Don Gasaway - The Ground Pounder
                        http://www.dongasaway.wordpress.com/

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A Million Dollar Fish

Big Ed Claiborne actually caught the world record walleye, a little better than 21 pounds. In the 1970's, no one knew it was a world record.

 

Greers Ferry Lake sits in the rugged southern part of the Ozarks down in north-central Arkansas. I first saw it when I was 22 years old, just out of college, the new outdoor editor for the state’s largest newspaper, the Arkansas Democrat. It was January when I went to work there, I graduated from college in December. I had a degree in wildlife management and had been writing a weekly column for the Columbia Tribune. What I didn’t know about being an outdoor editor was considerable, but they hadn’t ever had one, and they were looking for someone who would work cheap. That was me.

Something else I didn’t know anything about was walleye. I hadn’t ever even seen one in person. On the Big Piney River where I grew up in southern Missouri, there weren’t any. The old timers in the pool hall called walleye, “jack salmon” and talked about catching them over on the Current River. In the pool hall, I would read about them in the outdoor magazines which were such a big part of my education.

When I started to work at the Democrat, in late January, Greers Ferry was getting ready for the World Walleye tournament, wherein fishermen from all over the Midwest would try to catch a world record walleye. The prize for such a fish was a million dollars. The newspaper sent me up there to write about it, and I sure as heck wasn’t about to tell them I had never seen a walleye. Dickey Bailey and Big Ed Claiborne had seen several. They were both involved in the walleye classic, and they sort of took me under their wing and promised not to let anyone know I was greener than a spring hickory sprout when it came to walleye.

The irony of that situation was, Big Ed Claiborne had caught a 21-pound, so-many-ounce walleye already. He should have been a millionaire, because his huge walleye is today recognized as a true world record if I am not mistaken. At that time the world record was a hoax, a 25-pound walleye taken from Old Hickory Lake in Kentucky. A few years ago a fisherman involved in that record came forth because he was getting old and couldn’t live with his guilty conscience, and he confessed everything. It turned out that the world record smallmouth from Kentucky was also a hoax.

I don’t believe Big Ed’s fish was legal, because both he and Dickey Bailey had a secret way of catching big walleye… they would go up the Little Red River at night when the huge fish were spawning and fish for them in deep holes below the shoals, using bluegill. It wasn’t legal to fish the river after dark during part of February and early March.
Arkansas fisheries biologists had found a 25-pound walleye up the river the year before, shocking fish at night, a legitimate world record. There was a picture taken of it, and it was used for years in Arkansas to promote that World Walleye Classic. Fishermen came from all over to have a shot at that million-dollar fish.

In a few years, the whole thing was abandoned when promoters from the Greers Ferry area figured out that it was getting way out of hand. There are people out there would do about anything for a million dollars; dynamite, poison, nothing was beyond that kind of person. Dickey Bailey told me once, “You know, there are a lot of people who would murder someone for a million dollars. If I caught one, I might never get it back to the dock.”

So the world walleye classic became not such a big thing, and I don’t know if they even do it anymore. I know that Big Ed and Dickey and some of their friends annually caught a walleye or two close to or over twenty pounds. If there is a 25-pound walleye anywhere today, I suppose it is there.

I didn’t stay long in Little Rock. I’d just as soon live in Chicago. But the Ozarks of north Arkansas was a great place to live and so I moved there. I caught my first really big walleye about fifteen years later when I was fishing Bull Shoals Lake with a wiggle wart lure in early March. It weighed about 11 pounds, was 29 inches long. It had a big growth on one side of it, but it fought like a tiger. It was five pounds smaller than one I saw caught from Bull Shoals by a friend of mine one night in May, fishing with shad under submerged lights. What a walleye that was!

About 20 years ago, I caught my biggest walleye in Canada one October afternoon. We were hunting ducks and geese in Manitoba when someone I met up there took us out on the Red River, noted for the biggest channel catfish in the world. Using a jig and minnow, fishing straight down, I caught a 30-inch walleye in about 15 or 20 feet of water, landed it and took a picture, then released it.

Here in the Ozarks today, I never release a walleye that is legal size unless I have my limit. I release most every bass I catch, and I eat every walleye I catch. They are so good to eat that I just can’t give one up, and when I fry a walleye, I lock the house and pretend no one is home if one of my friends shows up.

Of course I am writing about walleye because it is time for them to spawn, way ahead of everything else. Most will spawn up rivers above the tributaries in water way too cold to induce romance in any other fish. You can bet that right now, even with the snow and the cold, many are staging in deep holes up above the lakes, and when it is finally a little bit warmer, I will catch a few while fishing for whites or hybrids, or bass, from late February all the way into April. They will hit a spinner bait on occasion, because I have seen big ones caught by my uncle on spinner baits. They will hit those rebels and rapalas that you jerk down under water and they will hit a variety of jigs used for white bass. If you really want to catch them in February, use a heavy jig tipped with a minnow, or a blue-green deep running crank bait, and longer thinner ones are better than short fat ones.

Everyone knows they are sensitive to bright light, so those dark overcast days, or early morning, late evening situations are best. You probably can catch them at night better than during the day, but consult the fishing regulations, because for a period of time each spring, it is against the law to keep a walleye from rivers from 30 minutes after sundown to 30 minutes before sunrise.

With low water conditions, many walleye will not go up the rivers to spawn, but will spawn on rip-rap or rocky points out in the lake, and reservoir fishermen catch them there in February and March. That actually happens to some extent each year, even when there is plenty of water.

Big Ed Claiborne and Dickey Bailey are gone now. There are others who will go after the biggest of the Midwestern walleye in Greers Ferry and the Little Red. But Bull Shoals and Norfork have giant walleye too. February is the beginning of it and if it’s too cold for you, then you just ‘ain’t no grizzled old outdoorsman like we was’, back in the days when there were million dollar walleye to be caught, and all my tackle wasn’t worth much more than a twenty dollar bill!

Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 654613 or e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net. See all the details for our big outdoorsman’s swap meet on March 19, on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

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SLIP BOBBERS AND EARLY SPRING FISHING

Slip-bobber fishing is made for early season action. The versatility of this technique allows the angler to adapt to conditions and the species of fish he is seeking.

Sitting in the boat or on shore and staring at a bobber dancing on the surface may be good for the Zen consciousness. But, it does nothing to put fish in the cooler. Staring at the bobber may be all that some people get to do in the spring.

Changing temperatures and winds make early spring fishing a challenging experience for even the best anglers. Movements of fronts through the area cause changes in the feeding activities of fish as well as areas of water temperatures. Because fish move to find their comfort zone, they are often in different locations at different times of the day. They will also move up and down in the water in response to water temperatures.

Where should one begin to seek out early spring fish activity?

A good location is in the back waters. It is here that water starts to warm faster than in the deeper waters of the main body of lake or river. A plain kitchen thermometer can be sued to take water temperature readings in various areas. Look for warming trends and begin to fish those areas first.

Warmer water is usually the water closest to shore in the spring. The sun shining on rocks or mud bottoms will warm them which in turn will hold the heat longer. The warm structure helps to warm the water surrounding it. It is important to approach such areas quietly. Fish in shallow water, especially clear water, spook easily.

In the spring, fish are generally interested in locating spawning sites. They will often be found in areas near areas where such activity will later occur.

For walleye, areas of hard-bottom structure are a good place to start. Also look to areas where creeks feed into a larger body of water. The water will be warmer there by a degree or two and that can mean fish being present.

Rip rap is a good location, as are most rocky areas. If the wind is blowing toward the rip rap, the warmer water will be blown there as well. This in turn attracts baitfish and the predator fish follow.

In rivers, one should look for eddies just off the current. The fish locate these areas and wait next to the faster current in hopes of a hapless baitfish passing by in the current.

Once the area to be fished has been selected, it is time to seek the depth at which to fish. All fish seek their comfort level when it comes to temperature. On warmer early season days that is shallower.

The slip-bobber allows the angler to place the lure or bait at precisely the same depth as the fish. The angler can easily change fishing depths by moving the line stop up and down. Electronics can help locate the depth at which the fish are feeding or suspended. But, it is the slip-bobber that gets the bait in the right location. Slip-bobber systems allow the angler to move back from the fish and cast to them in the targeted area.

The sip-bobber rig consists of a line freely passing through the bobber with a hook and bait below and a slip knot stop above. The line slides through the bobber and stops at the slip knot. The slip knot can pass through the rod guides during casting and retrieving. The slip knot is set at the depth the angler wishes the bait to suspend. If the bait is not heavy enough, then a split shot can be added to the line beneath the bobber for additional weight.

A small hook suspended below a slip-bobber can suspend a minnow or other live bait. One simply casts the rig to the shoreline, allow it to sit for a bit, and then retrieve it slowly. Slow is the key to this type of fishing as the fish are still usually sluggish from the cold water temperatures.

It is a good idea to work the entire area, be it rip rap or culvert drainage. On rocky or sandy shorelines, try working the bait along the bottom. Allow it to just bump the bottom and then jig it along with a lifting motion.

For those who insist on using artificial lures, the small to medium size minnow imitations is probably a good selection. Twitch them on the surface or just below. Some people get good results with the rattling crankbaits in this situation. The floating crankbaits that actually suspend in the water if you stop the retrieve work well because they represent an easy meal to the fish.

The two keys to remember are: Fish slowly, and look for water that is warmer than that around it. Early spring fishing is often a hit or miss prospect, but with a slip bobber, ones chances are increased.


                                                        Don Gasaway – The Ground Pounder

                                                       http://www.dongasaway.wordpress.com/

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