Fishing Articles

When I began steelheading as a teenager, an old-timer of the sport told me that if I wanted to consistently catch fish, then it was imperative for me to be on the river well before other fishermen to secure the best hole. The definition of “first water” held a different meaning back then. Today, the phrase simply means to be the first angler to present his offering in the most likely holding water to rested fish. When I started, the drift boat phenomenon had not made its migration from the Westcoast to the Great Lakes, so most steelheaders resorted to...

Not so long ago fishing with an in-line planer board was considered a novelty among serious Great Lakes anglers. Back in the days when in-line boards were just starting to pop up on the Great Lakes scene, most open water anglers were already well versed in the art of board trolling. With the help of a mast and retrieval reel system, a pair of dual boards, tether lines, and a truckload of line releases, anglers could literally saturate the water column with fishing baits! The traditional planer board and mast set up is a fish harvesting system second to none in...

  While it’s true that local knowledge of a fishery is usually tough to beat for filling your live well, at times a fresh set of eyes can see opportunities to improve upon tried-and-true angling techniques. Case in point: Downriggers have been used to target deep-water walleyes on Lake Erie for decades, and while modifications to standard downrigger methods have certainly surfaced over time, anglers are still often frustrated by walleyes that simply won’t strike. When Great Lakes walleyes are aggressive, seemingly everyone on the lake is catching them using a wide variety of techniques. When walleyes are negative, it’s...

 Something New and Very Effective  My timing and location were almost perfect. It was the last weekend of April. The Saugeen had an attractive flow. The water around me was clear, deep, running fast and the river’s temperature was hovering just over 45 degrees Fahrenheit. It was also the first weekend of the steelhead season in the mid-section of Ontario’s most famous trout highway. The previous day’s scouting had revealed plenty of fish movement. The fishways downstream had been passing thousands of pre-spawners intent on reaching the mating grounds to propagate. Upstream, a few hundred yards above me at the...

In one of Hank Williams, Jr.’s more famous songs, titled A Country Boy Can Survive, he claims, “I can plow a field all day long; I can catfish fish from dusk ‘til dawn.” Applying that same logic, Captain Scott Heston must be a country boy, too, because he can definitely catch catfish from dusk ‘til dawn—all day long for that matter. Of course, he is fishing Lake Erie’s Sandusky Bay. Located at the south edge of the Western Basin just west of the town of Sandusky, Ohio, Sandusky Bay is catfish heaven. Shallow, muddy, and full of natural fish food,...