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Search Results for: name that fish

Get more out of your Graph

May 11, 2008 By JD 1 Comment

Fish, Lies and Video Screens…are you getting the most out of your fish finder?

See if this little scenario sounds a bit familiar to you:

You’re out on the water and you’re marking a bunch of fish on your graph. The fish are absolutely thick beneath the boat and you’ve got your gear plowing right through them…yet…you’re not getting bit. You’ve tried altering the depth of your lures to no avail and you have also been through the “trying everything but the kitchen sink” routine and have still yet to find something in your box that the fish want to eat. You can see the fish down there but it’s like they’re collectively flipping you the bird. Looking at all those schools of fish pass under the boat is kinda like the movie JAWS 4…so bad, you just can’t bear to watch anymore.

Believe me, this is the kind of stuff can get in your head, too. To skunk out on a day when there are tons of fish around has a tendency to eat away at your confidence and keep you up at night, pondering what you could have done differently.

But don’t take it too hard, amigo. You probably didn’t do anything wrong except believe a big fat lie.

Lowrance Graph
Click here to read more…

Filed Under: Trout & Kokanee Tagged With: fish finder

How to Catch Kokanee: The Basics

May 2, 2008 By JD 51 Comments

Kokanee salmon closeup

Kokanee salmon are more popular these days than Taylor Swift. And hey… they’re abundant, fun to catch, taste great on the grill… what’s not to love? You just need a few basics to get you started… and then you’ll be off and running.

Click here to read more…

Filed Under: Best of FishwithJD, Featured, Trout & Kokanee Tagged With: kokanee salmon, rocky mountain tackle, sep's pro fishing, trolling for kokanee salmon

Salmon-eating sea lions to be captured!

May 1, 2008 By JD 1 Comment

Sea Lion eating salmon.jpg
The Oregon and Washington Departments of Fish and Wildlife began trapping and transferring California sea lions from below the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River on Thursday, April 24.

The sea lions, which have been eating lots of huge sturgeon a day — and up to a third of the spring chinook run — will be transferred to a variety of zoos and water parks that have agreed to accept up to 19 animals.
Click here to read more…

Filed Under: uncategorized

Catching Bass on New Water

March 28, 2008 By JD Leave a Comment

How do you catch bass on a lake you’ve never fished before?

I posed that very question to our intrepid bass expert, Big Fred Contaoi the other day. A valid topic, I figured, as he has been fishing a bunch of new waters in his first two seasons as a pro on the FLW Wal-Mart Tour for Orange County Choppers.

Many of the tournaments he’s been fishing have been on bodies of water that Fred had never laid eyes on before. Most have been quite unlike the lakes of the West that he has cut his teeth on. So, what the heck do you do in that situation?

Big Fred's 8-pound bassIn Fred’s case, he can only practice for a short time on a tournament lake. So, he often practices on other lakes in the area when the one that the tournament will be held on is off-limits.

“For example, my first-ever tournament on Tour was at Florida’s Lake Okeechobee,” he says. “The first thing I did was fish a nearby lake — Lake Toho — so I could get a feel for the fish in this general area,” he said (he caught a nice 8-pound largemouth that day). “Then, I drove my truck around Lake Okeechobee for a couple days to just check things out and talked to people at local tackle shops, etc.”

Fred says that, when you’re chatting up the local experts, ask them about the size and color of the forage that the fish are on and what sort of cover they like in the lake.

When it was finally legal for him to begin pre-fishing, Fred simply got out on the water and started sniffing around.

“You have to remember that bass are still bass no matter where they live and they all have the same basic needs like food and shelter,” he says. “Once you figure out what they like to eat and where they like to live, you can set up a game plan.”

It’s not a bad idea to also try to set up a couple “emergency plans” in case you get a sudden change in weather between the time you’re practicing and tournament day. For example, poll the locals about stuff like where the area’s bass go when a sudden cold front moves through (think deep water) or what happens when the north wind blows on that particular lake.

You can also do some research online too. You can learn a lot about the many types of fish in a particular area by using the internet.

When you’re going to try a new water for the first time, hiring a guide isn’t a bad idea. You can learn more in a day with a guide than you could in weeks of doing it on your own. Depending on what part of the country you’re in, a guided bass trip can run you $125 to $250 per person…money well spent, to be sure.

Filed Under: Bass

Putting the finishing touches on the Stanislaus River salmon spawning riffle Restoration Project

November 24, 2007 By JD 6 Comments

Well, after weeks of grueling (but exciting!) work, we’ve pretty much got everything done on the Stanislaus River salmon spawning riffle restoration project I’ve been working with KDH Environmental on. The Cliff’s Notes version is this: we took a 1.5-mile stretch of virtually fishless water and transformed it, with lots of gravel, boulders, grunt labor and heavy machinery, into a fishy nirvana.

Here are some photos I took during the project. To see more, check out my essay in the the February issue of Salmon Trout Steelheader. Okay, on with the show…this is just some of the 18,000 tons of pristine spawning gravel we excavated, sifted, washed and placed into the river:

Click here to read more…

Filed Under: Best of FishwithJD, River Restoration Projects Tagged With: gravel restoration, habitat restoration, stanislaus river

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