Fishing
 

Recently I've started going fishing a lot and it's been a lot of fun. I used to go when I was younger, but after not catching anything in the Potomac, I got pretty warn out from it. Now I've been making a few trips to a local lake as well as the Shenandoah river and I've found it's a lot more fun when you can actually catch fish.

The other day I went to the Southfork of the SHenandoah river at about 8am and caught about 7 decent redbreast sunfish and what appeared to be an 8 inch fallfish or something, I'm not really sure because it jumped the hook just as I was about to land it.

Does anybody else fish here and have any tips about locating, bait selection, and habits of freshwater fish?

Butters is a keen fisher if I remember correctly...

My country is a big fishing nation, I personally would like to get out there and do some, but I'd need to go with someone who knows what they're doing. It seems to be a tricky business if you haven't done much before.

I would agree, it's much less fun if you don't know what you're doing. For example, I just learned a way to hook the bait that makes it harder for it to snag on weeds in the water. It's been a lot more fun knowing that becuase constantly getting your hook stuck and having to cut the line is very, very annoying.

love me some pike fishing, sometimes bass but i never catch the cunts. my dad and i used to go all the time, but lately not so much. we've got a 16 foot fishing boat we always take out. i love cast fishing around weeds, stumps, fallen trees, etc. with a crankbait or a rapala. it's alot of fun building motions and patterns that you find work and attract fish while keeping your lure in the zones you wish to kepe them in.

i like to fish but my friend the friend i usually go with is working most of the time. A co-worker and i actually have something lined up for this saturday but im not sure if i'll be able to go yet.

I would love to catch a pike. Most of the fishing I have been doing (and plan on doing) is the Shenandoah river here in Virginia. It has sunfish, small and largemouth bass, crappie, fallfish, some catfish and muskie. It is supposed to be a pretty good place to catch smallmouth bass, but I've yet to catch one. I think I'm probably going to go this Saturday, maybe I'll take a camera and take some pics of anything I catch.

Fishing is THE best, nothing like waking up at sunrise, hitting the water and fishing for hours with friends. I can't wait to go fishing in a couple weeks.

I have never fished.

I live in Alaska. Plenty of spots to go fishing. I have recently went halibut fishing. Fun shit. I go every year...

Sunfish... are they not garbage fish ? The biggest thing I have ever cought was a decent sized rainbow trout in the 16 mile.

sunfish are really small usually. You can catch some bigger ones, but for the most part they are small fish. I'm not sure what you mean by "garbage fish" but the ones I caught were in a clean stream connecting to the shenandoah river in a state park so they weren't gross, if that's what you meant. Two of the ones I caught were probably about 5-6 inches.

i hate fishing. boring to me. Plus I hate fish.

Im going Salmon/Trout and bass fishing this weekend in Maine. Ive been going fishing since i can remember. My grandfather got me into it when i was very young.

Ive since aquired a little 12' Aluminum boat with a loud-ass briggs & stratton 5HP motor thats air-cooled. So its basically a converted lawn mower, and sounds the same, i get a lot of looks when im cruising WOT with it lol

how about hunting?

it was okay, but Im not keen on freezing my fucking ass off. Bullshitting with someone while out hunting = best, but that could be done anywhere.

hunting just never tickled my fancy.

I went fishing last weekend and caught 5 stripers, all above 16inch.

Stripers are fun as hell to catch, i went about a month ago and caught a few on fly-rod, rest on a spinning rod with those rubber eal things...

Otherwise i just fly fish for whatever bites, usually bass or sunfish, since most of the places around here are shallow and warm water

Yes, yes I am. rock:

Oh and for a real challenge in fishing, switch to lures. For your bass/crappie, try and match the lures to what they're feeding on. Down here, especially this time of the year, they hit alot of top water lures because of the summer bugs that sit on top of the water. Sometimes though, they hit shiners. For shiner matching I reccomend Yo-Zuri's. A little expensive, but WELL worth it. Soft plastics I'd roll with zoom baits. Try and get an assortment of colors. For me it's the super fluke ones . They have a sorta silvery/gray color to them. Make sure to get weedless hooks and rig em up.

Your best source of knowledge is obviously your local tackle shop. Don't get advice from any major chain stores that have an outdoors department, those fuckers wouldn't know a fish from a filipino. Just head to your local tackle shop and ask the guy what's best for where your going and what your catching and make sure to purchase at least one thing from the store, always a good show of respect.

Anyways, after that get a camera and challenge me for bragging rights beer:


Here's a 36 inch Jack Crevelle I caught on a Yo-Zuri using a 6'6 medium action rod with 12 pd test. HE wore my leader and was running me into the gears of a Lock.

[img]http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/3138/ap070051bq.jpg[/img]


And here are some random largemouth bass. Spawn season is the best

[img]http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/7218/ap020033ki.jpg[/img]
[img]http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/1443/ap020044ja.jpg[/img]

what are shiners?

right now, I have a few bucktail spinners, one crankbait, a few jighead hooks that I put squiggly tail grubs on, a plastic hellgrammite, lots of flourescent yellow grubs, some "Gulp" brand grubs in yellow and black, a few plastic minnows, and some Berkely soft plastic worms. That's really mostly what I have. I've been using the grubs hooked onto the jighead hooks or the soft plastic worms on a hook with a texas rig....

what else do bass like? what's the best place to find them in a river? how do you present topwater bait usually? what size hooks do you usually use with softbait? what different types (shapes and sizes) of soft bait do you recommend?

any help would be appreciated.

As in you can not eat them, the prick you, they have no meat, they are small, we often refer to the billions infesting Canadian lakes as garbage fish as they are good for nothing but stealing bait.

I used to fish a lot when i was younger. I really miss it. I think this weekend im going to go get my fishing permit

we used to go on a brook trout trip every year to Da U.P. that was a blast. Brookies are the best tasting fish out there

[quote="Short Hand":c248d]As in you can not eat them, the prick you, they have no meat, they are small, we often refer to the billions infesting Canadian lakes as garbage fish as they are good for nothing but stealing bait.[/quote:c248d]

no, you can eat them. they only prick you if you hold them the wrong way, just don't move your hands from tail to head. they don't have very much meat unless you catch the larger ones.

I used to fish a lot when I was younger; I harassed many fish in both Scotland and Ireland. I preferred course fishing, and enjoyed walking along the bank spinning for pike and perch.

They are small bait fish, like a minnow. It has silver sides, hence the name shiner.

Texas Rigged = Weedless. Gulp bait is good, but it smells like dirty asshole. Bucktails are okay for like crappie, but I'd also pick up some spinner baits in an assortment of colors. You can usually get em cheap at like 50 cents a piece. Crank baits, both lipless and lipped, are my personal fav. Like I said before, I really prefer Yo-Zuri's.

[img]http://image.basspro.com/images/images2/80500/80998c.jpg[/img]

They come in alot of diff colors. For shiner matching, I'd go with black/silver. The way to present it depends on weather and such. If it's cold, work em slow with the occasional jigging in between. When it's hot, like now, work em at a medium pace. If they're super active, work em fast. As for your soft plastics, it all depends where your fishing and where the fish are. If you're fishing lilly pads, or shallow area, just weedless rig one your worm,frog or lizard and work it on top off the lilly pads or what have you. For your deeper water use a keeper/flutter hook. They're a little pricey, 6 bucks for a 4 or 5 pack, but really good.

[img]http://image.basspro.com/images/images2/77000/77282.jpg[/img]

hook the front of your bait into the barbed spike part, then put the hook through middle of your bait. What you want to do here is make a long cast and let it drop to the bottom. When you feel the line go slack, just reel in some line and jerk up then let it flutter to the bottom again. What it's doing is when you let it drop, the tail end of your bait is making a more natural movement.

[img]http://snl.jt.org/arc/imp/John%20Goodman-Marlon%20Brando.jpg[/img]
Uh...I'll take Fishing for $1000

muskie is a fish i would love to catch, but theyre hard as fuck to get. i know a few guys that go fishing for weeks for them and only catch one or two. i dont thnk i could troll around doing nothing, i need to be casting or manipulating a lure to have fun.

when i was younger my dad and i had a conversation about how big a fish would have to be if we were to mount it. he said 40 inches was the cut off, a week later i caught this;
[img]http://www.ktait.net/other/pike.jpg[/img]

[quote="Airborne Butters":38e31][qt.[/quote:38e31]pig and jig owns. if you dont use it you should give it a try ... awesome lure that ( at least around here ) will produce fish.

[img]http://www.lakeforktackle.com/Images/MegaJigCutFromAd.jpg[/img]
(plastic skirt ones suck tho, if you try get the "hair" skirted ones).

when i was fishing a lot that and worms was just about all i used.

[img]http://www.fish-hawk.net/tips/texas/worm7.jpg[/img]

fishing them slow and on the bottom.

I used to go fishing...but i think im too impatient for it now

All I know is that the last time i went i was still scared of taking the fish off the hook.

yeah, judas, I forgot to mention, but I do have a couple of hair skirts.

I think this weekend I'm gonna try to go out to the Shenandoah again and give the hellgrammite a chance. Apparently the smallies eat them up if you float them over riffles out there. I might try some crankbaits as well, but I need to practice them because last time I used them I got caught everywhere.

You're right about the gulps though, they smell awful and the smell stayed on my hands for hours.

Basically I'm gonna try some new locations by wading out in the river above riffles and let some weedless rigs drift down. I might work in some practice with some crankbaits as well. If all that doesn't work, I'll probably just find some eddies and streams or some pools. It really depends on how it looks where I'm going. I've never been there so I don't know where the features are. We'll see.

Ok, so I just got back from my trip. We left at about 6:30am and got out to Shenandoah River State Park at about 8am. The total between the four of us was 12 smallmouth bass and 5 sunfish. I went out and got some ZOOM plastics last night and most of the fish were caught on ZOOM watermelon seed colored 6'' lizards. I also caught the biggest fish on a plastic worm. My friend caught about 5 smallies on a lead headed tube with a skirt. I tried out some crayfish plastics and some of the gulp grubs but neither worked very well. The lizards were amazing so I stuck with them in a texas rig with a sinker right above the hook. I caught the biggest of the group at 11" but unfortunately we had to release all of them because 11-14 inches must be released. I caught most of the fish under trees along the side of the river adjacent to a huge series of rock formations. I did a lot of wading and a lot of falling in the water, but it was a ton of fun.


[img]http://fishing-lures-expert.com/files/lures/gfx/plastic-worm-zoom-002-019_s.jpg[/img]

I just got myself a fish supper.

[img]http://www.babflyfishing.com/ProductImages/BlackWoollyBuger_large.jpg[/img]
Black woolly bugger > ALL

That depends on where you are.

Indeed, that is what I caught this King Salmon on post spawn.

[img]http://webpages.charter.net/j_george/Hunt_Fish/Pere%20Marquette2.jpg[/img]

just caught a 3 lbs smallmouth bass on it no more than an hour ago

[quote="Cool Fool":fa3d2]I live in Alaska. Plenty of spots to go fishing. I have recently went halibut fishing. Fun shit. I go every year...[/quote:fa3d2]

Do you get an oil dividend check every year?

I got some spinnerbaits to tryout, haven't caught anything with them yet though. I went nightfishing at a local lake last night and was pleasantly surprised to land this baby:

[img]http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/7774/fishscaleddownrl9.jpg[/img]


It's about 15.5 inches and I'm not sure about the weight, but I'd say in the 4lb range. I caught him in shallow water near reeds and rocks from a pier at about 12:00am (again on the 6inch lizards.)

This is probably the biggest freshwater fish I have ever caught.