Fish On!

This is my HOW TO FISH page.

But why re-invent the wheel. This is where I'll simply link in resources. I'll try to prioritize them so that the most important stuff is at the top. However, what's important to me and the fishing I do, may not be the most important for you. However, if you don't know fishing, it may be true what they say about folks who are beginning to learn any skill: "You don't know what you don't know." So if that's you, and you know that's you, start at the top. Otherwise, surf the page and do whatever.

By the way (BTW), "Fish ON!" (the title of this page) is what you yell to your canoe partner or boat mates so that they'll know you've hooked up and they need to get their lines OUT of the water and to grab the net and/or to steer/paddle for deeper water and to generally assist in successfully landing the catch. Since you can only eat so many fish, it's a good idea to release, unharmed, as many as you can. And if that fish is to survive, you need to land it efficiently and SAFELY. (safely for both YOU and the FISH)

But I digress... ;-)

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First of all, WHY FISH?

Fishing Quotes: (beginning with the one that is most famous and most often modified)

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." --Chinese Proverb

"Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity." --Karl Marx

"In communities where men build ships for their own sons to fish or fight from, quality is never a problem." --J. A. Dever

"Three-fourths of the Earth's surface is water, and one-fourth is land. It is quite clear that the good Lord intended us to spend triple the amount of time fishing as taking care of the lawn." ~Chuck Clark

"Good things come to those who bait." ~Author Unknown

"Creeps and idiots cannot conceal themselves for long on a fishing trip." --John Gierach

"People who fish for food, and sport be damned, are called pot-fishermen. The more expert ones are called crack pot-fishermen. All other fishermen are called crackpot fishermen. This is confusing." ~Ed Zern, 1947

"Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish. " ~Author Unknown

"Carpe Diem" does not mean "fish of the day." ~Author Unknown

"Bass fishermen watch Monday night football, drink beer, drive pickup trucks and prefer noisy women with big breasts. Trout fishermen watch MacNeil-Lehrer, drink white wine, drive foreign cars with passenger-side air bags and hardly think about women at all. This last characteristic may have something to do with the fact that trout fishermen spend most of the time immersed up to the thighs in ice-cold water. " ~Author Unknown

"An angler is a man who spends rainy days sitting around on the muddy banks of rivers doing nothing because his wife won't let him do it at home." ~Author Unknown

"Fishing is boring, unless you catch an actual fish, and then it is disgusting." ~Dave Barry

"There he stands, draped in more equipment than a telephone lineman, trying to outwit an organism with a brain no bigger than a breadcrumb, and getting licked in the process." ~Paul O'Neil, 1965

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day." ~Author Unknown

"There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot." ~Steven Wright

(Steve it's called "monofilament". ;-)

"Enjoy thy stream, O harmless fish;
And when an angler for his dish,
Through gluttony's vile sin,
Attempts, the wretch, to pull thee out,
God give thee strength, O gentle trout,
To pull the rascal in!"
~John Wolcot

"Give a man a fish, and he can eat for a day. But teach a man how to fish, and he'll be dead of mercury poisoning inside of three years." ~Charles Haas

"I am not against golf, since I cannot but suspect it keeps armies of the unworthy from discovering trout... " ~Paul O'Neil

"There is no greater fan of fly fishing than the worm." ~Patrick F. McManus, Never Sniff a Gift Fish, 1979

"Some go to church and think about fishing, others go fishing and think about God." --Tony Blake

"Too many Christians are no longer fishers of men, but keepers of the aquarium." --Paul Harvey

"Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish - too much handling will spoil it." --Lao Tzu

"I go to Alaska and fish salmon. I do some halibut fishing, lake fishing, trout fishing, fly fishing. I look quite good in waders. I love my waders. I don't think there is anything sexier than just standing in waders with a fly rod. I just love it." --Linda Hamilton

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Hmmm. Interesting. You know Linda Hamilton, right?

On the the HOW TO of FISHING.

You need to know how to tie some knots. Just about anybody can tie their shoes, but tying fishing line is different. Your knot will be the weak link of the chain so to speak. Knots are rated by the percentage of line strength they PRESERVE. So just any old snarl won't get it. These knots are designed to preserve as much line strength as possible. (trust him, it IS a lot easier to tie these with monofilament fishing line) Master the basic ones in the video below and you'll be able to get by.

Click here for "Animated Fishing Knots" - the BEST place to learn knots

Most fishermen are working with monofilament line. It can be delicate stuff, so you need to use the right knot for specific applications. So, I've linked to the main knots below. When you've made all the right moves and are ready to pull the knot down tight to finish it off the instructions will say to "lubricate" it. That means you SPIT on it. That allows you to pull it down tight.

Read the text to at each of the following links to learn the application of each knot. You really DO need to know all these. The last two are for tying your own snelled hooks. You could skip those if you have plenty of money or have diminished knot-tying aptitued.

The knots you NEED to know are these:

The IMPROVED CLINCH KNOT - for tying anything to your line

The ARBOR KNOT - to tie your line to your reel spool

The RAPALA KNOT - for tying on lures

The DROPPER LOOP - how to add something mid-line

The SNELL KNOT - tie line to a hook the "professonal" way

The PERFECTION LOOP - how to tie a good fixed loop

Ok, so we both know that unless you practice you won't remember how to tie those knots. So for the practice-challenged, click here to go to a printable TakeMeFishing.org PDF file showing a bunch of the basic fishing knots including some really good ones, like the Palomar Knot, that you didn't see in the above video.

KNOT STRENGTH and how knot strength is tested and more than you ever wanted to know about how knots weaken rope.

Click here to view the above graphic at full size.

EGG LOOP KNOT (for me, NOT beginners)

The Canoeman's Knot (Loop Knot)

Favorite Top Water Lures and How to use them. Click Here.

HA! Well, fillet my flanks and roll me in batter! I don't have to re-invent the wheel AT ALL!!!! Sweet! 'Cause this was making me have to think and was starting to seem like work. BUT NO MORE! Looky what I found!!!

www.TakeMeFishing.Org has already done all the work! Just click here! (then bookmark it for later reference)

OK, so the rest of this page is for how-to fishing stuff that I want to keep handy for myself to reference or so I can post stuff for my buds.

So my buddy and I are going to the Boundary Waters in a few weeks, eh? And he's never been there before, eh? So, in faith that we catch a bunch of walleye, and in hopes that I don't have to do all the fish cleaning, eh? here's a video showing a quick and easy way to FILLET A WALLEYE. Eh?

(If you don't understand all the "eh?" you aren't a "uper", Canadian or from Minnisota, eh!)

Ok, I apologize, the second time I watched this I realized he didn't say "eh" one time! I'm disappointed. I can HEAR it even when he doesn't SAY it. He's a north woods boy, though, eh. I can hear it in the way he says the words, "down" and "now" and "out".

Ok, then there's BOB. He's got a nararator. He's not a uper. At least I don't hear it. But he's good with a fish knife as well. And that knife's good and sharp. I'm embedding this here so you can see the similarities and contrasts to the one above.

Notice in the opening view Bob is demonstrating the "eye hold". I never hold fish like that even if I it's dead and going into the pan. It grosses me out to do it. I can watch it all day. I just don't like to do it. eeesh!

Bob likes to take the "cheek meat" first. And Bob cuts the fillets off the tale. Bob demonstrates leaving the skin tag per transport regulations. And Bob leaves the "Y" bones in.

Viva la differencia!

Bob, have another beer!

When fishing in the Boundary Waters, and whatever else you are fishing for, if you are successful at all, you will also catch Northern Pike - even if that wasn't what you were targeting. Pike are the Tazmanian Devils of the Northern lakes. Pike are different to fillet. Observe:

And of course there are other ways to do Pike as well. This is the way I've done it. Which is kind of the same as for a walleye except for dealing with the Y-bones at the end.

And it looks to me that the fancy-smancy knife in this vid could stand to be sharpened!!!

And of course the BWCA has a lot of smallmouth bass. If that's the only thing on the stringer come dinner time, you may need this:

So it looks like I've set a standard of showing two different vids of preparing all these varieties of fish. This one is a little less professional and a little more "down home". One line in here cracks me up, "Nice 15 incher. Are you recording? Oh, Nice 18 incher!"

Do fishermen lie? Or do liars fish? One of the mysteries of the universe!

This reminds me of my first BWCA trip. In the group of 8 men was a friend of a friend who was a uper. Dan. One night we were going to fix a BIG mess of walleye. The two of us volunteered to clean the fish - probably mainly because we didn't want our own food screwed up.

Anyhow, our fish were live in a rock dam we had built and then covered with brush to keep the eagles from robbing us. (yeah, the American Bald Eagle is a sneak thief!) So we get out of camp and down to the water and Dan asks if I can skin the fillets because he's smokin' good and fast on getting the fillets off the backbone. I say "yeah" and we set up an assembly line on the bottom of a flipped over canoe.

Dan was right. He was FAST! We called down another buddy to net the fish out of the dam. Dan would grab it by the eyes and slash, slash and flip me a fillet. Slash, slash and flip me the other one. It was all I could do to not fall embarrassingly behind.

All of a sudden our other buddy starts shouting and freaking out. Dan was pitching the head and bones into the edge of the water behind us. And he was so fast that all the fish he tossed were still alive! The heads didn't know what had happened to them and their mouths and gills were still working. They were just heads with ribs and a trail of their own guts still trying to "breath". It was a bizarre sight.

After that our pace slowed considerably because for our sakes Dan would make a big show of taking each fish, whacking it on the head, then looking at us to see if we were satisfied it was dead before rolling his eyes and then slash, slash, flip.

That night we fixed 20 fish for 8 men. It was a feast! We had all we wanted and then some. But you have to eat it all because of bears. Oops! Bears?!? That's why they tell you not to clean fish in camp. It draws bears.

An interesting side note to this bizarre tale of the north woods: When we were done cleaning the fish, we looked at the water behind us. Do the math. 20 fish, one head/spine/guts assembly, two skins each = 60 bits of fish debris in the water. Oops. Da bears! But even then we could see the skins slowly moving away from the shoreline. WHAT'S GOING ON?

We peered down into the water. The crawdads (crayfish) were dragging the skins slowly into deeper water. And seagulls, (yes! seagulls) Were circling and landing and watching us. We also could see turtle heads poking out of the water offshore. Yes, we were being stalked and watched by TURTLES!

We carried the fish up to the fire, cooked and ate. By the time we were done and went back down to the water's edge to see how much was left, there wasn't any. NONE! Everything disappeared, even the bones and fish heads.

Circle of Life, baby! Circle of Life!

On the Appalachina Trail there are trail shelters for hikers to stay in. All kinds of animals have learned that the people who stay there have food and are generally harmless. So vermin can be a real problem on the AT. Well in the BWCA everyone has to stay in designated campsites. And almost everybody who goes up there is fishing, and cleaning fish, and disposing of head and guts. These critters aren't any dumber than the ones at the trail shelters. Free food is free food. You don't survive in the wild by turning down meals.

OK, back to fish.

While searching "How to fish with Live Leeches", I found the following on www.fishexplore.com:

"I'm going to give you a rule of thumb to follow, year round, anywhere in the country about live rigging, I promise. First of all when it comes to using live bait, you have three options: jigging with a plain jig head or a jig head with a grub tipped with live bait-jigging vertical or pitching jigs on to structure and jigging them back. Next, a live bait rig also known as a lindy rig (which my wife mentioned before) which consists of some sort of sliding weight, then a barrel swivel or sort of stop, and then 3 to 8 feet of leader, IIuse regular monofiliment, and a hook anywhere from a #4 to # 8 hook, I prefer a Gamakatsu Octopus hook in these sizes in red or orange. Lastly, use a slip bobber. I prefer to slip bobber when I have a large concentration of fish on a small area. This is a great way to produce big fish and a lot of fish. It is the most natural presentation since the live bait can move freely with very little restriction. Now here's the important part, remember this like you would remember your wedding anniversary, 53 to 55 degrees water temp and COOLER use minnows-fatheads, shiners or chubs whatever you can get. 55 to 63 use night crawlers. From 63 and WARMER, use leeches. Give or take a degree. The shad have spawned and within the next 3 to 4 days it will switch to a strict crank bait bite. Shad Raps, Hot N Tots and Tasmanian Devils are your best bet. Good luck and keep us posted. "

Source: https://www.fishexplorer.com/fxrforum.asp?action=det&pid=2936

Western Lake Superior Water Surface Temperature - the closest to real-time BWCA water temps I could find

BWCA Live Weather Webcam - See current weather condtions (click on "map it" - this is right where we go!!!)

Minnesota Lake Maps Resource Directory (reference)

Basswood Lake Depth Map

BWCA Airphotos

Jackfish Lake joins Basswood Lake at the point straight down from the year date "98" of the photo below