Fishing Articles

Catching panfish on first ice is not rocket science. Bluegills, sunfish, crappies, and perch are still relatively active when ice first forms. It’s basically an extension of the hot fall fishery for a while. Weeds are still green and producing oxygen, waters are not super chilled yet and panfish are still actively feeding. On first ice, you can get away with heavier line, larger floats and jumbo wax worms and still catch panfish. Things change though as winter deepens. As weeds die they become less hospitable to panfish. Oxygen levels plummet and oxygen-starved panfish become increasingly dormant. Forced out of...

 Detroit is the kind of place where people work with their hands. Back in the day, when most folks worked in the auto industry, everyone knew how to make things. And that experience served sportsmen well; they could take old machines and turn them into fishing gear. And a unique fishery grew up around Detroit, where guys learned that you didn’t even need a fishing rod to catch walleyes. You could do it with a hand line. Hand-liners hold on to a line (usually of wire) that’s dragging a lure or two (or in some cases three) near the bottom...

To be totally honest, I hate the cold. It doesn’t matter if I am ice fishing, deer hunting, or waterfowling, I flat out dislike freezing my backside off. I do it to chase my passions, to be an outdoorsman 12 months a year. No matter how long I shiver, or how cold my hands and feet get, I still do it, because eventually, the sacrifice is worth the payoff. When it comes down to overall reward for effort during the winter months, nothing tops the hours I spend freezing my body to an ice cube chasing winter steelhead. For me,...

Fishing & Relationships - The way to make them stronger In the past I have talked about passing along the passion of the outdoors to our children.  This has always been a goal of mine and it is a very important thing that as sportsman we should really keep in mind.  However, another topic related to this is to also keep in mind that you don’t have to be a child to start enjoying the passion of the outdoors. Year after year we have seen the industry grow with more opportunities for women in the outdoors.  There are many new...

  Recently I was treated to some exceptional fishing on Saginaw Bay. What makes this particular experience noteworthy is that the fishing didn’t occur on open water, but rather on a moon-scape environment of frozen water. Luckily I was actually trolling crankbaits on these same waters a few days earlier and had at my disposal some very fresh GPS numbers to explore. Normally ice forms on Great Lakes fisheries slowly over time. In this case extreme cold caused the ice to form much quicker than normal, giving anglers like myself a bonus month of ice action. It’s not often that...