A Dozen Delightful Days

Yesterday, I recapped half a dozen specific favorite fish from 2014, so today I thought I'd highlight a few of my favorite days on the water. When I looked back, though, I had a hard time narrowing it to a few. In fact, I picked a dozen, and I'd have a hard time ranking those, which only serves to remind me what a blessing it is to get to travel and fish and write fish stories for a living. And even with a dozen stellar days listed, I could have included several others. Listing is roughly in calendar order. Where a fuller post from the day exists, I've included "Blog Post" link.

Alabama Baitcaster Crappie - TJ Stallings and I spent a crazy fun day catching giant black crappie on Road Runner Rollin' Runners matched with 4-inch swimbaits, all on baitcasting gear with 14-pound test. Most weighed 2 pounds or more. Two broke the 3-pound mark. Blog Post

Bass Crazy Hobie Day - Nathaniel and I got to spend a couple of days with the Hobie Kayaks crew, trying out boats and taking photos, and enjoyed some seriously fast action bass fishing on private waters in South Alabama. In case you've ever wondered, fishing with your son, each in your own little Hobie Pro Angler, and catching more bass than you count, is seriously fun.

Wading the White - During last year's Gaston's trip, Nathaniel and I spent half a day fishing on our own, and as much as I always enjoy going out with the guides, there was something extra fun about wading shoals straight out from the resort, picking our own spots and catching a bunch of trout on Rebel Crawfish and Minnows and Ugly Bugs. Blog Post

Dry Run Farewell - No fishing for me on this outing. It was Nathaniel's final two-hour visit to his
favorite youth-only stream in Arkansas before he turned 16, and he managed to catch a huge and beautiful brown trout.

Niagara Slam - I mentioned this day with Capt. Frank Campbell yesterday because it included a brown trout that was one of my favorite individual fish from 2014. We mostly fished for smallmouths, and I'd guess we caught 50-plus fish that range from about 3 pounds to a weighed 5-15. Then, we put a cap on the day by running up the river and adding a steelhead and a lake trout.

Deadwood Finale' - Simple and fun. Wading right through Deadwood, South Dakota with friends from Cabela's and then exploring the canyon just downstream of town and catching more than our share of beautiful brown trout. Blog Post

Smallmouths in Sight - Clear, shallow water in the Sturgeon Bay areas and loads of big smallmouths absolutely locked in. Let's just say that we put the new Ugly Stik Elite outfits to a really good test that day!

El Salto, El Grande - This is another one I mentioned yesterday because it included my biggest largemouth in several years. Often you have to choose to go after numbers or target big fish. Paul Davis of Abu Garcia and I didn't have to pick on day one of my trip to Angler's Inn, which yielded 70 fish, including my 9-2, before lunch! Blog Post

Splendid Sequatchie - One of my favorite kinds of fishing is wet wading a cool-water stream for multiple species with spinning tackle, and the day I spent with Pat Roberson was that style of fishing at it's very best. We both fished with a single lure all day, and we caught countless fish and nine different species. Blog Post

Big Snowbird Plan Change - Nathaniel and I thought our day was done before it started when a muddy dirt road prevented us from getting to the delayed harvest section of Big Snowbird Creek. We instead waded a downstream section that probably hadn't been stocked for a couple of months, but the fish were surprisingly plentiful and quite cooperative, and we had the stream to ourselves. Blog Post

Asher's Birthday Outing - Asher and I only caught 10 trout in a pretty full day, but it was his first North Carolina trout outing, and it was just plain fun spending the day together knee deep in a stream. We also were celebrating his 10th birthday, so catching 10 fish was kind of cool. Blog Post

Ice Season Start - Going back only a couple of weeks, I quickly forgot about my nine bonus hours in MSP airport after I got on the ice with Jeff Sundin and Jon Thelen of Lindy. The first crappie came moments after I dropped a line in a hole, and the crappie/sunfish action never let up. The weather was also mighty nice, for ice fishing, and it was just plain fun being back out there. Blog Post

North & South

Sturgeon Bay in Door County, Wisconsin

A Delta notification on my phone tells me that I can check in for my flight any time. I guess that means the next trip is getting close. I'll actually drive to Atlanta early tomorrow morning to get on a plane and will do the same thing next week at about the same time. Both are fishing trips that promise great action, the chance to field test some cool gear, and many opportunities to gather photos and story material, but that's where the similarities end.

Tomorrow's travels point me north. I'm flying to Minneapolis and then connecting to Green Bay, where I'll spend three days fishing the spectacular bays that bound Door County, which is located on the peninsula between the Green Bay and Lake Michigan. We'll fish cool, clear, rocky water and target smallmouth bass, walleyes and salmon, and I suspect it will be sweatshirt weather.

Next week's air travel take me south -- way south -- with the first flight going to Dallas and the connecting flight taking me to Mazatlan, Mexico. From Mazatlan, we'll travel by van to Lake El Salto, where big largemouth bass will be the lone target. We'll work timber and vegetation with big lures, and light fishing clothes will be the order of the day. I'll go with sleeves and long pants, but only for the sake of sun protection.

Today's work is a mixed bag of wrapping up writing projects, packing, banking, charging batteries, clearing memory cards and doing the other stuff that will make me ready for travel. Hopefully I'll get to bed at a good time, because the 2:30 a.m. alarm is going to seem pretty early!

Dog Fish

Kenneth sheds. In fact, he sheds a lot. So when he got a bath yesterday, I got a big pile of black dog hair. If it turns out to be good jig material I'll be set for a long time. There's a big pile of it drying outside.

I tied one quick little Kenneth bug yesterday, just to see how manageable the material seemed, and I took it along on a short pond outing. All I can claim at this point is that the bluegills like Kenneth bugs. We'll find out about trout soon, I suspect, and I might have to whip out a few 1/8-ounce Kenneth bugs to test next week at Sturgeon Bay.

The hair looked good in the water, and the jig stayed together well. The material was less buoyant than I expected, so I might have to mix with other materials or tie bugs thicker if I want a slower sink rate.

A Few Days Early

Dan Elsner of Get Bit Baits shows the sort
of fish the waters around Sturgeon Bay normally
produce by the dozens early in the season.

The spring wake-up showed signs of getting going yesterday in Little Sturgeon Bay, and word we heard suggested that it was happening throughout the area. No crazy catch numbers, but fish caught and spotted in normal early areas. Plentiful sun on Sunday and yesterday clearly has fish moving up into the bays and within a couple of days the fishing should be absolutely off the hook. Unfortunately, I won't get to see it because I fly out of town today.

Virtually every spring, the best Sturgeon Bay fishing of the entire year occurs on the first few days after Wisconsin's bass season opens. This year was the exception. The ice only broke up a few days before the season, and the water just wasn't warm enough, soon enough, for the fish to start moving up into the bays. In fact, the ice still isn't completely gone. There are still a couple of  huge sheets of ice out floating in the main bay, and we could see one of them near the horizon from Little Surgeon Bay while we fished yesterday.

Fishing was tough, and I know that was hard for Dan Elsner of Get Bit Baits, who was eager to show off the spectacular smallmouth fishery just outside of his back yard. I still enjoyed learning about the area and getting out there, and I'm confident that we did all the right stuff to try to find the fish. It was just a weird opener, and we were a few days early.

I don't fly home today. Instead, I fly to Buffalo for another round of Great Lakes fishing. The ice lingered for a long time in Lake Erie, too, so it will be interesting to see what I find at that end. I suspect if Erie is way behind as well we might focus most efforts on trout and salmon in the lower Niagara River. I'll get plenty of reports after I get to town tonight, I'm sure.

Delight & Dread

Little in fishing blends delight and dread quite like a jumbo smallmouth going fully areal. I experienced that in a big way today. As soon as I set the hook, this fish came straight up, and as she flopped in mid-air, well out of the water, we actually thought her to be even bigger than she was. And of course she wasn't done. Despite my best efforts to hold her low with the rod, she jumped two more times (although neither of the others was a high as the first).

Dread, of course, was magnified by the fact that big fish haven't come easy this week. My fish was one of four smallmouths that came in the boat, and that was better than most people have been experiencing for the past couple of days. Normally, you wouldn't think twice about losing a smallie -- even a big one -- in this area during opening weekend because it would be one of dozens. However, this year's Wisconsin bass opener has been tough on virtually everyone in the Sturgeon Bay area and even south through the lower Green Bay area, where we were today. Winter was so cold that everything is behind and most fish seemingly just haven't moved up into the bays yet. One day soon it will be amazing. Hopefully tomorrow we'll see a good hint of that. We're fishing Little Sturgeon Bay.

My big jumping fish hit a Get Bit Baits Crawling Tube, fished on a 1/8 ounce head inside-style tube head.

Round 1 to the Fish

Well, the fish won today. With everything way behind (here, like most places) and most water in Sturgeon Bay hovering close to 40 degree, the fish simply hadn't moved up even to the places where they normally show up first and typically are already using when Wisconsin's bass season opens.

Although the fish didn't cooperate, I had a great time running about the bay and learning about it and am very appreciative of Chris Johnson and Doug McDonald, who hit it hard, covering a lot of water, trying a lot of stuff and teaching me a bunch. Both grew up in Door County, and they have been friends since sixth grade and tournament partners for nearly 25 years. For me it was a fun day of learning about a beautiful area and about the bass fishery that Bassmaster just named No. 1 in the nation. And despite the fish not showing themselves today, I know the fishery truly is world-class.

Tomorrow our smallmouth quest goes a few miles south to the Fox River, which feeds the Bay of Green Bay close to the city of Green Bay. I'll keep you posted when I can!

Cold Water

Word is that the waters around Sturgeon Bay are seriously cold, as in mid 30s and low 40s, which is a good 5 degrees lower than normal. I'm not sure how that will affect the bass bite because the season just opened this morning, but we'll find out very soon! I'm rigged and ready to rumble.

Tour De Bronze 2014

Well, my big bronze trip begins tomorrow, when I board a plane to fly from Atlanta to Green Bay. Travel actually includes two trips in one. After arriving in Green Bay, I'll spend three days fishing Sturgeon Bay and the other bays that bound Door County, Wisconsin. From Green Bay, I fly directly to Buffalo, to fish for more big smallmouths in Lake Erie's eastern basin and to fish for a mix of species (including smallmouths) in the Lower Niagara River and Lake Ontario.

The Sturgeon Bay area, the Buffalo area of Erie and the mouth of the Niagara clearly rank among the finest trophy smallmouth waters in the world, and the first days after they open typically are among the very best for catching the most and the biggest fish. Fishing is still fishing, so it may not happen, but if the weather allows us good approaches to the best waters, chances of tangling with seriously big smallmouth bass are about as good as I could ask for.

At Sturgeon Bay, I think we'll be fishing with Tubes and other Get Bit Baits soft-plastic offerings, plus some hair jigs custom tied specifically for the early-season bite. At Erie, tubes, live shiners and jerkbaits could all play a role.

Of course this trip isn't all about bronze. I'll also be spending time on the Lower Niagara River fishing for steelhead, salmon and lakers, But maybe that's another story for another time.

Swimmingly Simple & Seriously Fun

Sure, retrieve speed makes a difference, and long, well-directed casts improve your total numbers most days. Still, there isn't a much more basic approach to catching fish than casting a Kalin's Lunker Grub with a spinning outfit and winding it back slowly and steadily. In fact, when you're swimming Kalin's Grubs though the legendary smallmouth waters that surround Door County, Wisconsin, the most difficult thing is landing the decidedly mean smallmouth bass that are going to attack your grub.

Despite an accurate day 1 forecast of "winds 25 to 35 MPH with gusts over 40" on my recent trip to Door County, we were able to catch some fish while drifting and dancing across big waves in broad bays and to find and catch a bunch more that were piled up in protected canals. Day 2 brought calmer seas and allowed us to work bigger areas with our grubs and to see more of the area's beautiful shoreline. Although I never caught any of the giant fish that sometimes show up in and around Sturgeon Bay, I caught between 30 and 40 smallmouths on the second day, and my best five would have weighed close to 20 pounds without a "kicker" in the mix.

We mostly fished our grubs on 1/8-ounce Spot Stalker jigheads, fished on 8-pound fluorocarbon (or light braid with a fluoro leader), and medium action Denali Rosewood Shadow Series spinning rods. A few fish hit savagely. Most were just there. One minute you'd be reeling in a grub. The next minute you'd be setting the hook into a smallmouth that was suddenly on your line.

It was my first trip to Door County, but I think it's safe to say that it won't be my last!