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May 16, 2012

In the midst of the never ending NBA season, OKC Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook is taking a lot of grief from the fashionista-heavy hoops crowd over the shirt he wore the other night -- a collared Izod adorned with fishing lures that retails for somewhere in the neighborhood of 175 clams.

The baits may be a little dated (would kill to see him covered in Alabama Rigs), but I’ll give him credit for trying. Say what you will about his rags, and the glasses, too. I still think they’re better than Dwyane Wade’s skin tight shirt and LBJ’s man purse.

May 15, 2012

I've seen my share of ratty fishing hotels over the years -- cigarette-burned comforters, vermin in the room, shady characters in the parking lot -- but on my recent trip to Erie, I experienced what can only be called the exact opposite of those fleabags. Bill Hilts from the Niagara County tourism office completely hooked up a group of grubby outdoor writers by housing us at the Barton Hill Hotel and Spa in Lewiston, NY.

We didn't have time for the hotel's cocktail hour, nor did I have a chance to fire up the old fireplace. Manicures and pedicures would have been wasted on our crew, but I might have spotted the editors of Field & Stream, In-Fisherman and Bassmaster headed for a mud mask facial.

May 14, 2012

After a week away from home – the first half at Lake Erie for a fishing trip, the second half in Illinois for a funeral – I got a little worried that the BassKitty sitting in the garage might have forgotten how to run. Therefore, even though I only had a few hours free, I felt it was in both of our best interests to hit the Potomac on Saturday morning. This was especially important because the FLW boys started practice on Sunday, so if I waited any longer no blade of grass would go untouched as the river was enveloped by gaudy wrapped boats.

I launched at 5:30 and was at one of the river’s biggest community holes by 5:45. There were already three boats there. When some smaller tournaments blasted off at 6:00, more showed up. Then a larger tournament commenced at 7:00 and still more flooded the area. At its peak, I’m sure there were over 30 boats within eyesight, and the beauty of it was that everyone caught fish.

My best guess is that I was one of the few non-tournament boats in the vicinity, and I sensed a calm in myself that I would not have had last year, when I was still in competitive mode. If someone got “too close” to me, I was fine with that. If someone cut off “my path,” I redirected the boat. If someone else caught a 4-pounder and my biggest was 3 ½, so be it. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t do a mental calculation of what my best five would’ve weighed. It was a peaceable moment. I’m certainly not putting down tournament fishing – if it still gives you a stiffy, go for it – and to their credit, no fistfights broke out among the jersey-wearers. I ended up with somewhere between 20 and 30 fish, mostly swimming a jig, and I’m guessing some of the Senko-doodlers had many more, but when I left a little bit after 11, I was satisfied that I’d had a productive day.

Of course, my alleged goal – to run the boat – went unfinished. I made a run to my spot and a run back to the ramp, and then tried to blacken out a section of the map on my GPS chart. So be it.

May 11, 2012

On Monday, I fished Lake Erie with Mark Davis, host of TV's Bigwater Adventures. Last year we borrowed someone's walleye boat, but this year we got to use Mark's new rig from Blue Wave, a 24 foot center console. Take off the bimini top, maybe slap a little bit of carpet on it, and you'd be hard-pressed to tell this craft from an oversized bass tournament rig. With trim tabs on the back, he claims it'll get on plane in less than a foot of water while drafting just 10 inches, and we ran through Erie's chop at 50mph with no problems whatsoever.

Seeing as Pete Weighs In has consistently decried our sport's use of the words "on steroids," I won't employ that overused and meaningless phrase to describe his vessel, but if I fished the Great Lakes regularly I might just have to consider one. Of course, in the waters I fish the 24 foot length and 102 inch beam might leave you stuck between two pieces of pole timber or wedged between a couple of docks, so for now I'll stay traditional.

May 9, 2012

My friend Lawrence Taylor, head marketing guru at PRADCO, is an Oklahoma native and die-hard Sooners fan who now resides in Arkansas. I live in Virginia.

What do those locales have in common?

None of 'em give you much exposure to salmon, except in a can on your grocer's shelves.

Even though we're both immersed neck-deep in the bass world, each of the past two years we've spent a day chasing salmonids in Lake Ontario. Last year we whacked some big lakers, while this year we spread our wings a bit and added cohos and kings. Not a bad change of pace. The multi-species quest continues.

May 4, 2012

I'm headed to the hamlet of Lewiston, New York on Sunday, a few miles from the relative hustle and bustle of Buffalo but still proximate to plenty of chicken wings. I went last year and had a ball over the course of three days of fishing. This year I'll only get to fish two days and that puts me in a bit of a pickle: I'm desperate to catch a personal-best smallmouth to beat the 4-14 that I caught last year. I know the locals and the Erie regulars scoff at that kind of dink, so I want to break the 5-pound mark, and preferably notch a 6-pounder so that I can retain my man card.

The problem is that Erie, the Niagara River and Lake Ontario provide many more options than just brown fish. As you can see from the picture, last year I got to spend some time chasing lake trout with my friend Lawrence Taylor and super-guide Frank Campbell. There are various other kinds of salmonids there. They also have walleye...and muskies...even perch if that's your thing. Can I give up the quest for a big bronzeback in order to fish for a species that I can't find closer to home? I suppose all of this will be made easier if I catch a bruiser smallmouth on the first day, but they might just be like potato chips, where you can't stop at just one.

May 3, 2012

We're less than five months away from our second Brazil trip and the process of gearing up is in full swing. Never mind that I have an Erie trip starting Sunday, a week of hunting smallmouths in New Hampshire at the end of the month, and ideally a few healthy servings of local fish-chasing before we head south -- I feel the need to be prepared. The highly-phallic lure above is an Imakatsu Trairao. I learned about it on a peacock bass forum I frequent and it's a noisy sonofabitch.

Right now the biggest dilemma in my life is trying to decide whether to keep the factory paint job, or get it custom-painted in the pattern that produced best for us last year -- red with a yellow or chartreuse belly. That was deadly in both jigs and chopper-style topwaters, so I don't see why it wouldn't smoke 'em in a walk-the-dog style lure as well.

What do you think?

April 30, 2012

It's not quite Blinky the Three-Eyed Fish (prized piscatorial mascot of Springfield, USA), but this finned beast is pretty damn freakish in its own right. I guess outcomes like this are to be expected when you get in a few hours of fishing with a nuke-yoo-lar scientist.

We couldn't decide if it was a mutated bass, a Sharpie experiment gone wrong, or if largemouths and Dalmatians had somehow figured out a way to cross-breed.

The primary color rainsuit ensemble is a nice addition. That's what happens when a 5'10" boat owner has to cobble together protection from the elements for a 6’3” Sasquatch. There was about a 5” section of ankle that went uncovered, giving him the coveted Urkel-on-the-water look.

April 24, 2012

My ball and chain likes the ball and chain.

No matter how hard you try, your spouse is never fully vetted. You may think you know everything about her, having worked cautiously to find out her views on finances, politics, child-rearing, religion, baseball and gangster rap, but the fairer sex will always find a way to surprise.

That was the conclusion I reached after three days at Buggs Island with my wife of nearly seven years. We spent the first day and a half flipping, pitching and spinnerbaiting, things I like to do, but with the water level almost out of the bushes, we needed to find a fallback technique. Accordingly, I decided to teach her to Carolina rig. Actually, that’s putting too fine of a point on the matter, because I am challenged when it comes to dragging the heavy weight and leader across the bottom. I can do it, even catch a few fish on it now and again, but it’s something I’ll typically avoid at all costs.

After rigging up a couple of rods, one with a lizard one with a centipede (she emitted a chuckle when I referred to it as a “French Fry”) we went to a stumpy point and she proceeded to catch a couple of fish while I pretty much dredged the bottom. Next point, same thing.

“This is fun,” she said. “I like fishing this way. Why haven’t we done this before?”

“Um, because it sucks,” I wanted to reply, but I did not. I know that it works. In fact, until I caught a 12-pounder earlier this year, my biggest bass (8-12) was caught dragging a Yamamoto lizard while fishing the amateur side of an Elite Series event at Falcon. It can be deadly – I just don’t particularly care for it.

Luckily (?!?), on Sunday it was raining sideways and the wind was consistently blowing at 20mph. Not only is that not conducive to rotting out on a point with the rig, but to me it just screams “spinnerbait,” so we bladed our way around the lake. Still, when we got in the Suburban that evening, we started to discuss the day and I could tell she was a bit disappointed that we hadn’t dragged at all. Weird.

Can this marriage survive?

If it somehow turns out that she’s a covert dart-header or a closeted float n fly fanatic, we may have to seek an annulment.

April 23, 2012

Red Eye Shad, meet Mr. Snakehead. Luckily, trebles can be replaced. Mr. Snakey ain't feeling so well, either.