Basement Studio Progress

 

The studio space I’m developing in my “fishing basement” has taken significant strides since I posted about it a few days back. In fact, instead of just having opened a place where I could have a consistent set and controlled environment for filming occasional intros and off-water videos, I suddenly have a space where I’m excited to film something.

The space is in an unfinished basement beneath a room addition. It has block walls and a cement floor and a pull-string light but no outlets. It is essentially a closet for outdoors junk, which admittedly is kind of a mess.

A few weeks ago, it was a total mess, and I waded into a gradual reorganization project. Somewhere along the way I started wondering about carving out a corner for occasional off-the-water filming needs for my Fishing on Foot YouTube channel.

I indeed started with a corner and with a very nice green office chair a friend had wanted gone — which was perfect for what I had in mind. When I wrote the last post, a corner had been cleared and the chair moved to the basement, and I was considering using a big cooler as a table.

Since that time I’ve switched from the compressed corner to a longer wall space at my wife’s suggestion, painted that wall with some great “oops” paint she found at Lowe’s, added a bookshelf (for fishing gear — not books) that other friends were giving away, and moved a trunk from our porch as a table, which looks far better than the giant cooler.

I’ve also ordered a couple of battery-powered studio lights, added few framed pictures to the wall, and some put stuff on the shelves. I still need a mic for the best functionality, but I think I’m getting close to having a decent little studio space. Of course I’m sure it will continue to evolve, but the base is in place, and I’m eager to put it to use.

Basement Filming Studio?

My most recent post noted that I’ve been at work on my basement, gaining order in the area where I keep fishing gear. A part of that has been carving out a corner as a filming studio.

That sounds fancier than what I have in mind. I don’t even have electrical outlets and will need extension cords just for lights. However, I want a space with a standardized set, controls of lighting and minimized external sound for filming intros and other video elements and possibly some video shorts for my Fishing on Foot YouTube channel.

As you might guess, my videos are mostly filmed knee deep in a stream or the surf or from the bank of a pond or lake, and that should never change if I don’t want boring videos (which I don’t). That said, sometimes there’s need for some off-the-water filming, and on a few occasions, I’ve battled to find the best spot for such needs. And I do have a couple of ideas for shorts series that could be done in that sort of setting.

I’m not sure what the set will look like yet. I’ve figured out the best corner, opened some space and put a few possible elements in place. I have ideas about the rest and have even bought some paint. In truth, it’ll probably be an evolving space — changing as I look at it and work within it and identify possible improvements.

And who knows when I’ll first use it in a video. For now, it’s just one element of the bigger basement project.

Video-related, if you haven’t checked out Fishing on Foot and subscribed, I’d certainly appreciate you doing so!

Fishing on Foot Footprint Expanded

A while back I mentioned that I had created a YouTube channel, Fishing on Foot, which focuses exclusively on fishing that can be done without a boat. From wading trout streams to casting from the surf to walking pond banks, I cover all kinds of Fishing on Foot in video form.

I grew up fishing from piers and bridges and from the banks of ponds and creeks, and while I’ve enjoyed opportunities to experience so many types of fishing over the years, the stuff I can do on my own two feet has remained my passion. I think anglers tend to overlook the quality and variety of fishing that can be found without aid of a boat, and I like the opportunity to share that message.

The channel has grown gradually since I created it and now has a little more than 500 subscribers. Meanwhile, I’m even more gradually learning about video production and channel management.

Recently I decided to deepen the footprint of the Fishing on Foot message by creating a new blog, which you can find at fishingonfoot.com. Blogging is a format that’s more familiar to me and that is easier for me to feed regularly, even when I haven’t had opportunity to get out and gather fresh video content.

Like the YouTube channel, the new blog will focus on angling opportunities that do not require a boat, with a mix of destinations, how-to articles, gear discussions, tales of Fishing on Foot outings and more. It’s simply in a blog format for folks who still enjoy reading stories and seeing photos instead of only watching videos.

Of course, I hope you’ll check out the blog and the channel and that you’ll find things you enjoy and learn from in both places!

Fishing on Foot YouTube

Fishing on Foot Blog

YouTube Channel about Fishing Without a Boat

A fairly new venture for me has been the establishment of my Fishing on Foot YouTube channel. As the name suggests, this channel is all about fishing that can be done on without aid of a boat, whether that means walking a lake's bank, wading a creek or river, walking out onto the ice, fishing from a pier or wading a saltwater flat. 

It's a work in progress, and I'm still in the process of figuring out the tone and types of videos that will be the most prevalent, but I feel like it will lean heavily on how-to and destination content, where I can share some of my experience and hopefully make on-foot fishing experiences more fun and productive for anyone who chooses to tune in. It's also a learning project. I admittedly don't have much video production experience, so I'm figuring stuff out as I go. I hope you'll consider following the channel and joining me as I step farther into this venture. I've inserted a few videos from the channel.

Students Winners in Fatsack Outdoors Summer Bass Bash

Any high school or college student who showed up the inaugural Fatsack Outdoors Summer Bass Bash over the weekend on Lake Hartwell walked away a winner. It was a no-lose situation, with zero entry fee and top prizes of $2000 for the college division and $250 for the high school division. In addition, all registered anglers enjoyed dinner, a High School Fishing Academy session, the chance to meet tour-level pros and a packet of tackle donated by sponsors.

Developers of a journal keeping, instructional and social fishing app that is unlike anything else out there, Fatsack Outdoors puts a high priority on providing opportunities for young anglers, and the company intends to build upon the success of the Summer Bass Bash with future high schooland college events.

The high school division winner, Noah Pescitelli, opted to fish alone. Although Pescitelli traveled an hour and a half from home to fish the Fatsack Outdoors Summer Bass Bash and had only fished Lake Hartwell a couple of time, no one who knows anything about this young angler was surprised when he brought a bulging bag to the scales. A very accomplished high school angler, Pescitelli also operates Kickin' Their Bass TV, producing popular instructional, gear review and fishing montage videos. In fact, he's already produced and posted a really cool Vlog about the event. Check it out!

Also, while Pescitelli had only fished Lake Hartwell a couple of times prior to Saturday, he knows spotted bass extremely well because his home lake is Lake Lanier. Pescitelli's winning bag stretched the scales to 15.44 pounds, and he noted that most of his action came first thing in the morning.

The college winners, who brought in 15.70 pounds, were no surprise either. The team of Deion Latimer and Baylor Ronemus, representing Clemson University, brought some serious Hartwell understanding into the Summer Bass Bash. Anyone who has fished Hartwell tournaments for long knows the Latimer name, if not from Deion, from his older brother Brian or his dad. Plus, Clemson is right on Hartwell. Ronemus is from the Augusta area, so he grew up fishing Clarks Hill, which is two pools down from Hartwell on the Savannah River.

Latimer and Ronemus enjoyed their best action early in the afternoon. In fact, at noon, they only had two fish in the livewell and Latimer admitted that they were beginning to get concerned.

Not surprisingly for Lake Hartwell during the summer, most anglers who talked about the fishing reported catching their fish either on topwater lures or on finesse worms rigged on shaky heads or dropshot rigs.

Georgia Ice Plow & Other Cool Stuff

Ever wonder what it looks like when a johnboat crunches its way through rare ice atop a Georgia pond? Lose no more sleep. Click below to see for yourself.

"Georgia Ice Plow" comes from the new Nathaniel Samsel YouTube channel. Nathaniel wanted a place to launch videos that aren't necessarily instructional in nature. Just cool or funny stuff he sees in his outdoor adventures and captures a clip  of with his phone, the GoPro or another camera. He'll still produce and manage the videos on the Jeff Samsel channel. Those are mostly fishing how-to or destination oriented, but now he has a place for more fun stuff.

Pro Tips to Help You Catch More Crappie

Want to catch more crappie? These practical tips from crappie pros Doug Cherry and Mark Williams will help you detect more strikes and put more fish in the boat. More fishing pro video tips HERE.

Swimming Slither Rigs with Shaw Grigsby

New video on our YouTube Channel. Thank you to Shaw Grigsby for sharing. To learn more from fishing pros and guides, be sure to check out our channel. Hit "Subscribe" to keep up with new videos as they are posted!

More Reports from Jeff Samsel Fishing

If you're reading this, I'm guessing you have at least some interest fishing how-to, destination stories, tournament news or other maybe my family fishing adventures. With that in mind, I wanted to remind you of a couple of other places where I regularly share photos and fishing information.

While I try to get a fresh blog posted pretty much every day, that's about as much as I can manage, except on rare occasions when I'm making quick blog posts from the field. Usually, if I want to share more timely updates on the water, from tournaments I'm following myself or of other stuff like that, I post short notes or photos on the jeffsamselfishing facebook community page.  I also share a modest number of impressive fish photos, fishing news stories and other things that strike my interest from the fishing pages I follow. I try not to post so much that I flood anyone's feed, but I hope I add enough to keep things interesting. I'd invite you to give that page a look and like it if you indeed like what you find.

I also put some short notes on Twitter, @jeffsamsel, that you might not find on the blog or facebook page, and I retweet stuff from tournament organizations, fishing pros and more. I'm admittedly more sporadic with Tweets and my notes also include a blend of my fondness for Braves baseball and a few other personal interests.  But you can always follow to see if you like what you get and then unfollow. I won't take it personally!

Finally, I'll soon be contributing regularly to FINS'nTALES, mostly with bass how-to from a pro perspective, but also with other species. I haven't started writing those yet, but I'd invite you to watch the site.

My apologies to friends who already follow these other pages and to anyone who was looking for more about fish. However, with my fall fishing travels now underway, it seemed like a good time to let you know where to find more from Jeff Samsel Fishing and to explain how those places differ.

Oh, I almost forgot: If you prefer looking and listening over reading, don't miss the YouTube channel that my son Nathaniel operates for me. We'll be adding some great new how-to content in the next couple of weeks.

Gear: Plano 3700 Guide Series, ICAST Winner

Think that all tackle bags are created equal, beyond considerations of size? Think again. Take a look at this video as industry insider David Rose tells about the new Plano Guide Series Tackle Bag that took best of show for tackle management at this year's ICAST show. As David breaks down the features, think about your own fishing situations, the stuff you want to keep dry or protected, the baits types that are working best and that you want to keep handy and the benefit of things like a bag that doesn't fill with water when the rain decides to fall while you are fishing. Make it personal to your own situations and it's pretty easy to see what set apart this gear bag and helped make it winner in the New Product Showcase. For more fishing videos, be sure to check out Jeff Samsel on YouTube.

Ugly Tour Pretty Cool

Pros and guides? Nope. Classic destinations? Sometimes. Big catches? The fish will get to decide that part, but the first couple of go-rounds have produced an 8-pound largemouth and a whole bunch of crappie.

To spread word about the new Ugly Stik GX2, the folks at Ugly Stik have launched the Ugly Tour, which is sending a single Ugly Stik rod, a 6-6, medium heavy spinning rod, all over the country to fish for everything that swims, with each trip documented with an Ugly Tour webisode. Fishing could be by boat, bank or pier and in fresh or salt water, and the folks doing the fishing are Ugly Stik users who have applied by telling about the waters they fish and a favorite Ugly Stik memory. You can watch learn about the tour, watch existing webisodes and even apply to be added to the tour on the Ugly Tour website.

The tour highlights everything anglers across the country love about Ugly Stiks because it takes seriously tough equipment to send the same rod all over the place and put it in so many hands. It also shows the rod's diversity because the tour will include trips for a huge variety of fish species in all different settings. The webisodes, which are only a few minutes long, highlight the stories of the anglers themselves and the waters those anglers most like to fish. Each also depicts a real day on the water, no matter what the fish decide to do.

In addition to the Ugly Tour website, you can keep up with the tour through various social media outlets: facebook, uglystikfishing; Twitter or Instagram, @uglystik; YouTube, uglystikTV.

I know I'll be following the tour, so when I see an especially cool episode I'll try to remember to mention it. For now, check out episodes 1 and 2 and see what you think. Ugly Tour.

Tackle Show Only a Week Away

Wow. This time next week, I'll be traveling toward Las Vegas for the ICAST Show. I'm admittedly not a fan of Las Vegas, but I really enjoy the show, where a massive convention center floor is completely covered by fishing tackle manufacturers' booths. It's where the companies that make the rods and reels, the lures, the waders, the hooks, the sonar units... you name it -- gather each summer to show all their new stuff to wholesalers and to retailers from all over the world and to the fishing media. For most companies, it's the first showing of the following year's product introductions.

To a dedicated fisherman, it's like the world's largest candy store, and for a fishing writer, ICAST represents a tremendous opportunity to gather with the whole industry in a single place and to learn about all the cool, new stuff that companies are producing and to see industry trends. Things kick off Tuesday evening with a special preview of the New Product Showcase, which is a dedicated space where companies display the best of the best of their newest stuff. Of course, there also will be all sorts of pros and guide roaming the show floor and working sponsors' booths.

This year's show will be even better than normal, from my perspective, because the International Fly Tackle Dealer show will run concurrent with ICAST and use the same convention center. I don't do quite enough fly stuff to ever justify the traveling to just the IFTD show, which is the fly world's equivalent to ICAST, but I'm really looking forward to seeing the fly tackle too and meeting more folks on that side of the business.

Watch this blog, my Twitter feed, my facebook fishing page and my YouTube Channel for a steady flow of photos, videos and notes about stuff I see and things I learn from the pros.

10,000 Views

I noticed yesterday that the YouTube channel Nathaniel established last fall had passed 10,000 views, and I can only hope the bulk of those folks thought their two or three minutes were well invested. It doesn't seem like long ago that I was happy to hit 1,000 views, so maybe much larger marks are not that far away?!

The channel consists of short fishing videos, most of which are instructional in nature. Many use by pro anglers, guides or other industry folks. A few are just us. We use an all-species approach, and have covered everything from ice-fishing to casting for inshore saltwater fish.

Although it's still pretty early, with the channel being less than a year old and only including about 30 videos, early response clearly suggest a big interest in crappie fishing videos. We've posted four crappie how-to videos, and they are four of the five that top the "views" list.

If you haven't checked our or channel or haven't visited in a while, I hope you'll swing by to take a look. For a sample, just click on the video below.

Gear: i-Kam Xtreme

Sunglasses or video camera? Yes & yes.

I've only taken one trip since the arrival of my Hunter Specialties I-kam Xtreme sunglasses, and I'm already thrilled with the results. The little hole in the middle, right between the glasses' lenses, contains the video camera lens, so these glasses pick up everything you're looking at as long as they are running.

Click below and see for yourself. Nathaniel shot this video of an Arkansas trout battle just by fishing with the "glasses on." The shot at the end of me taking a photo of him is with the glasses on a rock, pointed at us, while we were unhooking the fish, getting photos and letting it go. So the whole thing is documented, from cast to release. Very cool stuff. We also got footage running in a boat, casting for bass, floating in a canoe...

With a micro SD card inserted, the I-kam Xtreme holds about three hours of footage, so you can run the camera pretty liberally if you think something cool might happen. You also can change out the lenses to clear lenses -- I suppose mostly for indoor shooting -- but I don't see doing that very often. They actually served nicely as sunglasses, camera function aside.

You can bet I'll have the card cleared and be ready to do more filming next week when I leave for western Pennsylvania to fish three different lakes in three days! More i-Kam Xtreme videos to follow for sure!

5,000 Video Views

To me, it's worth noting: The YouTube channel that Nathaniel established for our fishing videos less than six months ago passed 5,000 views this morning. Nathaniel and I have shared in filming duties, but he set up the channel and has done all the video production and posting. As of this morning, we have 24 videos on the channel. Most are fishing how-to, and they range from tackle tips to specific instruction about strategies. Sources include fishing pros, guides, industry experts and even a few by Nathaniel or me. Fishing types discussed include everything from inshore saltwater to ice-fishing. Our most popular videos, so far, have been about crappie fishing. One of my favorite videos, because of it's fun ending, features Nathaniel on the front side of the camera. Take a look:

Thursday Tips: Use Bigger Crappie Jigs

It's a theme I hear repeatedly from top crappie tournament pros and guides. As often as the guys who catch crappie every day say it, though, many fishermen have trouble believing that anyone really uses 2-inch grubs, 1/4-ounce jigheads and even crankbaits for crappie fishing. In the video pasted in below, crappie expert Todd Huckabee explains why he uses 2-inch baits and 1/4-ounce heads and demonstrates that such an offering truly isn't very big for even an average-sized crappie.

To see more fishing how-to videos, check out our YouTube Channel.

Small Water Surpise

Nathaniel and I spend a fair amount of time fishing a few little ponds on some friends' property. We spend the most time on the upper pond, both due to convenience and because we catch fish there pretty consistently and know it really well. Our favorite pond, though, is the beaver pond, which is tucked in the woods and a little more remote than the others. The beaver pond is shallow, full of stumps, has grown up banks and is really pretty, and it seems the frogs are always singing around the edges. We sometimes do quite well there, but we had never caught a fish that weighed more than about 2 pounds from it's waters. That is until yesterday, when Nathaniel threw an XCalibur Square Lip crankbait in the right place. See for yourself.

Double Trouble Jigging

White bass serve up serious winter fun, especially when you get atop a decent school and can drop directly to them with jigging lures. Not all jigging rigs and cadences are equal, though, and at times you need to come up with something a little different to tap into the best action. On a recent trip to Oklahoma, Gary Dollahon showed me a cool "shaking" technique he likes to use during the winter, and at times that was by far the best way to draw strikes. I also stumbled across a tandem rig with a spoon and a Bobby Garland Slab Dockt'R, using a little different sort of presentation. It is shown in the video below.

The video, shot by Gary Dollahon and produced by Nathaniel Samsel, is the newest on our YouTube Channel. The channel mostly features how-to videos, and we try to add at least one per week. Several are from bass pros, but we've also included saltwater, trout, ice fishing, a couple from crappie pros and now one about jigging for winter white bass. The channel is only two months old and is just approaching 1,500 total views, so we don't know a lot yet, but the crappie fishing videos have been the most popular in the early going.

Video Channel Growing

The YouTube Channel that Nathaniel set up a couple of months ago is gradually growing in content. Thirteen videos now posted include what I think is a quite a bit of practical information. He typically adds one or two videos per week.

Most of the videos are tips from pro anglers, including bass pros and crappie pros, but there is also a bit of trout stream material and some redfishing action from Louisiana in the mix. I leave for Minnesota tomorrow, so soon we'll have ice videos as well. Next stop after Minnesota is Oklahoma, where I'll be spooning for a mix of species.

Video view numbers are growing gradually as well, with a little more than 500 views as of this morning. A crappie fishing video with Ronnie Capps on Reelfoot Lake has gotten the most views so far. Our most recent video, which includes great tips for fishing extra shallow by Bassmaster pro Pete Ponds, is a good example of the type of content you can find on the channel.

Video Tip from Terry "Big Show" Scroggins

To see more fishing videos produced by Nathaniel Samsel of Samsel Communications, please visit our YouTube channel.