Walleyes, Walleyes & More Walleyes

"We'll get our first fish within ten minutes," Ted Takasaki told me as he steered his boat out of the harbor at West Wind Resort on Minnesota's Upper Red Lake. Actually Takasaki, a long-time walleye pro, had contended confidently that we'd catch an abundance of fish back when we first began making trip plans several months ago. He fishes Upper Red Lake every year during May and June, and the fishing is always fast and furious.

The walleyes took any possible suspense out of the ten-minute challenge. The first fish bit about four minutes into our first drift, and we had at least two (maybe three) in the first ten minutes. We ended up catching fish four different ways over a day and a half, but the most effective technique was drifting along a breakline and dragging Lindy X-Change Jigs rigged with fathead minnows or shiners across the bottom.

Trout on the Tuck

Some things never change. I hadn't fly-fished for a few years before yesterday, but trout still like Woolly Buggers as much as ever. I spent a fun day with western North Carolina guide Alex Bell (http://abfish.org/) on the Delayed Harvest section of the Tuckasegee River, researching and shooting photos for an article on Jackson County's innovative new Western North Carolina Fly Fishing Trail (www.flyfishingtrail.com).
We were also accompanied by a film crew from UNC TV. They needed footage of anglers fishing together, so I followed Alex to a run that he said would hold fish. No doubt, the man knows his river, because we caught at least a dozen brook trout and two browns from that first run, and we left them biting when it was time to change the background for filming and photos. I caught all my fish from a small heavy Bugger with an olive body and and orange tail. Alex's switched between olive and black during the day, and he fished his as a dropper beneath a big bushy dry fly. He caught a few on the dry and twice hooked doubles!

Photo Fish Producer

All I can say is that it's a good thing I toted Nathaniel with me to New York. He landed ALL the best photo fish. I had my chance with a big steelhead (probably close to 15 pounds), but it won on jump No. 4, which was right next to the boat.

What an amazing place to fish! I knew about Erie's legendary smallmouths, but I didn't begin to grasp how many opportunities are in the area. On the second day of our outing, we launched on the Lower Niagara River, and we had six different gamefish species by lunchtime. Nathaniel caught two lakers that each weighed 12 and change on consecutive drifts at the mouth of the river, and the steelhead bite was fast and furious further upstream.

To learn more about the fishing, visit Capt. Frank Campbell's website, http://niagaracharter.com/. For much more about the region, visit www.niagara-usa.com.

Tour De Bronze

Well, the first leg of our spring smallmouth tour had to be cancelled. Nathaniel and I were supposed to float the New River in West Virginia today, rafting a spectacular gorge and casting topwater lures, crankbaits and soft plastics for ultra-abundant smallmouth bass. The river is raging, though (so much so that commercial whitewater rafting trips have been suspended) and definitely wouldn't be conducive to fishing. Instead we stayed home an extra day and will point the truck north later this morning. Tomorrow, we're fishing the Allegheny River with friend, fellow outdoor writer and fishing guide Jeff Knapp. Jeff runs a jetboat and knows the Allegheny and it's chunky bronzebacks extremely well. After that we continue north to Buffalo, where we'll spend two days on Erie with Frank Campbell (http://niagaracharter.com/). It'll be my first visit to Erie's legendary eastern basin, and I can't wait. If we get the smallmouths really good on the first day, we may try steelheads the second day, but we'll take things one day at a time. Fish stories to follow.