FishwithJD

The web's best fishing magazine

Walleye: West Coast Style!

By 2 Comments

Now, if they only would pull a little string...


Though he spends most of his time chasing chrome winter steelhead and big wild Chinook along the coast of Northern California and has made many forays into exotic destinations for all sorts of big game, guide Tony Sepulveda is quite the “Midwest” species aficionado. Crappie, yellow perch, pickerel…you name it…and he’s into it.

And that’s especially true when it comes to ol’ marble eyes! Tony’s such a walleye junkie that, even on a busman’s holiday to the Columbia River recently, he took time out from chasing spring Chinook to try his hand at the river’s prolific ‘eye fishery.

“I’ve never been so excited in my life to catch something that fought so little,” he says of this gorgeous 12-pound walleye he hooked on a crawler harness with a chartreuse Mack’s Blade from just below John Day Dam. “It fought like a big, wet sock…I’m not sure what my fascination is with those things is, but I dig ’em!”

Wet sock or not, that’s one heck of a West Coast walleye! That should put a little more spin in any Midwestern angler’s Lindy Rig!

Woah! How about a World Record, 84-pound Carp!

By 3 Comments

Is it a carp or a legless hog??


British angler Jo Green caught and released this massive, 84-pound carp in France and the fish is now the all tackle women’s world record for the species.

She and husband Mike were on vacation fishing when the beast slurped up the bait. While Mike says it would have been fun to catch the giant carp, he’s okay with the way things went down:

“Although I would like to have caught it,” he says, “it makes my life a lot easier because she is happy!” Smart man!

Read more about the monster here: The Sun

Surf Snook from Costa Rica!

By 9 Comments

JK with his snook. Yeaaaa....finally!


O ur pal and regular fishwithjd reader Jay Kennedy risked life, limb and several layers of epidermis for this Costa Rican snook taken in the surf. Here’s his tale…

I woke up at 3 am on Thursday and headed to the mouth of Rio Baru and fished util about 10 am, changing lures like crazy,” says Jay. “And finally, I saw a beast chasing a school of mullet. My steelheader instinct took over and I threw on a gold and orange 3/4 oz Little Cleo. After about 5 casts…WHAAAAAAAM!!! Snook!! Well, these fish get pissed in the surf and it rolled, clearing a good 3 feet out of the the water before taking off and burning my thumb! Click here to read more…

Underwater Video: Inside a Bait Ball!

By 3 Comments

So, you see those bait ball on your depth finder…but have you ever wondered what it really looks like down there? Me too! That’s why I dropped a camera down in some Western reservoirs last summer and fall…to find out what’s going on beneath the surface. Unfortunately, the water clarity wasn’t the best but you still get the idea!

Was this a World Record King Salmon??

By 7 Comments

This huge king carcass measured 59 inches...without the tail!!


Holy crap! Get a look at this: Ray Fairfax sent in this photo of a giant Chinook salmon carcass he ran across earlier this winter while steelhead fishing on the Smith River in Northern California.

“We were fishing the Bailey Riffle and found a salmon carcass of amazing length,” says Fairfax. “All that was left was the jaws and backbone, but what a fish it must have been! I straightened the backbone out the best I could and laid my STR1025C Loomis down next to it. It measured 59 inches…minus, of course, the tail!!”

Fairfax says that the jaws looked almost as if the fish was a female, which is even more mind-blowing!

“If you add a conservative few inches for the tail, how big was this beast?” he asks.

Well, just for comparison’s sake: Les Anderson’s 97.3-pound All Tackle World Record Chinook was 58.5 inches long!! Of course, we’ll never know how big the King of the Smith was in his prime…but let’s just hope he spread a bunch of his genetic material around!

And here’s another one: The 50.7 incher found dead in a tributary of the Sacramento River a couple seasons back: GIANT SALMON CARCASS FOUND