Mike G

Rich, To muddy up the water with facts, here's a link to an article. http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=46753. It seems that the switchgrass strain needed to make inexpensive ethanol is not ready to go. To prevent runaway propagation and increase glucose content, they are genetically engineering a flowerless strain that might see commercial growing by 2011. The first question is whether we want "engineered" plants on the banks of our rivers. Are they wonders of modern science or freaks. Kinda reminds me of the Barry Bonds issue. Anyway my key points are that we cannot just start planting this stuff tomorrow and that the process is not risk free. Joseph, If he followed your logic, Booker T. Washington would have stuck to snack foods instead of coming up with alternate uses for the goober. Where would we be today? Anyway it is too late, corn products already go into ink, paint, cosmetics, shoe polish, tires, wall board, glues, and my favorite-Canadian Whisky. Personally I am willing to watch this one play out and see if the "freak" plants are worth the worry.

Mike, Good question. TU's response,"Because we can" is already overworked. Their video was not bad considering the source. It points out the schizophrenic nature of their sport. They go out to escape the rat race and enjoy peace, solitude, and the beauty of nature. (OK that line is overworked too.) But the experience is not complete without the head banging adrenaline rush of hooking and landing a fish. (Note, I would like it better without the Heavy Metal stick.) The reason I fish keeps on changing. When I started, I used bait hoping to catch a lot of big fish and hear my father rave about how good they tasted when Mom cooked them. Today I am more after the challenge and satiafaction of catching fish on flies that I tied myself. (PS, that is big fish with "Ode to Joy" wailing in the background-Full Chorus, Heavy Strings, Woodwinds, and Brass.)

Rich, I would give anyone a 20 on that one because there are so many ways to measure them. Do you measure with the mouth open or closed? Do you measure to the fork of the tail or do you compress the tail and measure to the extreme tip? Sometimes they measure differently if you turn them over and measure the other side. Which side was measured? Knowing how sparing you are with words, I assume it was a Smallmouth. And Congradulations!

Nick, A friend who uses both the parasite weights and the clips said the same thing about the nose tearing loose. Never the less he keeps using them because he prefers to risk the tear which he can fix later with a candle or lighter over having the bait gob up in the hook bend and prevent the point from catching in the fish. I get around the problem by using keeper hooks. The keeper pull out of the nose. Most of the time the bait slides up the line completely out of the way. Land the fish and put the keeper back in the nose of the bait.

Thanks to Al, I have been doing some pull tests pitting the Wotton know against the Crawford Figure 8. So far the Figure 8 winse very time. Davy's knot seems to have about 1/2 the strength. BTW here's the Figure 8: I will be using it instead of Davy's knot. I am still looking for knots where the tag ends juts back toward the hook. So far the Trilene knot and Kreh's fixed loop fill the bill.

A friend from work recently returned from a week up North, with glowing reports on how great some Parasite Clips he picked up at BassPro were. On soft plastics, they provide better hookups and fewer lost baits. This confirms previous reports here. However, there is more. Ever since you owned a tackle box, you have probably had an equally good device in your box. As a reminder here is the 28 cent clip. Rigging: Ironically, the April issue of a magazine, which he loaned me a while back, had a tip on using the following 8 cent device to achieve the same effect. Ready for the new device? < < < < < < < < < < < Questions?

Thanks Mark, do you have a picture or link to to one that shows how to tie it?

Al, Thanks for sharing your experience. I was looking for that. I am just in the early stages of trying this knot out. I am willing to give up a little strenght to reduce the bulk. That is the main reason I go to the figure eight sometimes. Where bulk is not an issue, I prefer the other knots that I mentioned. I like your hands on testing procedure. I will put the Wotton up against the Figure Eight on opposite ends of a piece of light mono and see how it comes out. That will give me a lot of practice tying the knot too. Since the line is not dubbled throught the hook eye and there are not a lot of cushioning wraps around the running line, the Wotton and Figure Eight knots are ones I would retie more frequently.

What goes around comes around. Just passing on some information with the assumption others will do likewise. On small flies the Uni, Improved Clinch, Palomar, and even the Orvis knots tend to be a wee bit bulky looking. Till now, I have used the old Crawford Figure Eight to keep the bulk down. Recently I came across this one as an alternative. When the Davy Wotton Knot is snugged, the tag end sticks out to the side rather than jutting forward and forming a small hook to collect debris the way it does on the Figure Eight. Whether you like the knot or not, the site it came from is a keeper. http://www.warmwaterflytyer.com/pond.asp?page=2

Jamie, You made some good points on circle hooks and handling fish. If we are sincere about survival, are we ready to go to octopus or circle hooks and take a chance at missing X% of our hookups? Isn't the typical BASS Tournament handling a "bad example" for the kids? Too bad the tournaments put such emphasis on speed, and that is what we see on TV. TIME=FISH=MONEY on the BASS circuit. Compare that with the extreme care shown by Musky Fishermen and Trout Fishermen when they net and unhook a fish. At least on the TV shows, they show that they care as much about safely releasing the fish in hand as they do about catching a bunch more. Typically the Musky or Trout is kept in the water in a net or cradle during the process of removing the hooks. The angler is allowed a brief "pose" with the fish held horizontally.Immediately after, the fish is returned to the water and held in an upright position till it swims off by itself. PS as a result of your observations, I ammended some of my rules above. Are we ready to adopt the same careful practices in handling bass? It is ironic that Ray Scott defended what they currently do as a vast improvement over the early tournament practice of donating the day's catch to a local orphanage. His C&R rule was a pragmatic PR move. Even though the bass populations of the large reservoirs they fished could easily take the removal of the catch-a tiny fraction of the bass population, they could not convince the local anglers that the tournaments were not ruining their fishing holes. So he came up with live wells, live release, and penalties for dead fish. Give him a little credit.

Tim, Good post. It is a nice spring board. First question is,"If we have no reilable studies on Smallmouth Bass, what do we do?" I would say to err on the side of extreme caution. Treat them like trout, fish that we know more about. BTW I think studies are going to have better survival rates than day to day angling. You have anglers with a certain level of skill; they are instructed on how to release; and big brother is watching. The fish has a much better chance here than he would have being caught by a casual angler. Specifically, releasing knowhow and skill is very important. And are we "prepared" as the scouts say? That is, do we have the forcepts, side cutters, or needle nose pliers ready to hand, buried in a tackle box, or back in the car? This whole discussion started with fish caught on soft plastics. Plastics are a lot more like live bait than they are artificial IMHO. While it has been a while since I used live bait, I still have my share of deep hookings on those salted, scented, and flavored morsels even though they are "technically" artificial. I still kill some. I would kill less if I observed some simple rules. What do you think of these? 1. Debarb all hooks. 2. Replace treble hooks with single hooks. 3. Do not use live bait. 4. Do not use soft plactics unless you use octopus or circle hooks. 5. Have appropriate forcepts, side cutters, and pliers out and ready before you start fishing. 6. When you lift a fish out of the water, hold your breath; do not breath again until the fish is back in the water. 7. Land fish with a net or cradle as the Musky and Trout Fishermen do. Man laws? Note: Items in italics were added after Jamie's post.

BASS boasts that they have a 98% live release rate at their tournaments. But that says nothing about survival. 15% sounds fair to me overall. I think we underate the damage we do to fish. Though it is high, 15% for C&R is way better than 100% C&K.

Yep. I have a photo with the same arm angle. She was a post spawn 5# fish from Basswood Lake, Ont. #4 Mickey Fin Streamer, HCF (WF7F) Rod and Line. Those were the good old days. Mike

Mike, Your response is like a star. It points in 5 different directions. The one I think is most important is fishing's lack of political clout in Illinois. As you point out, it is the result of divisions that run very deep like the one between C&R and C&Kill. Even more interesting is the fact that Illinois Trout Unlimited chapters do all their volunteer work in other states having written off Illinois as "not having any potential for wild trout." That is where they choose to concentrate their "limited resources." What can you do when a lot of money and muscle is siphoned off to another state? Fishing is a powerful industry in Wisconsin politics; it is a homeless begger in Illinois politics. ISA is working on it. You have your events. The Mayor has Bob Long Jr.'s efforts. But, though I hope I am wrong, I do not expect to see funding for the DNR and Conservation efforts becoming major campaign issues in Illinois. The candidate's positions on gay marriage and abortion will hold front and center along with the usual hot button issues (E.g. tax cuts) aimed at collecting one issue voters. Like Ronald Regan said,"How many trees do you need to look at."

Todd, Not a chemist either, but willing to advance the topic till one comes along, I will say this. Lawn and garden fertilizers contain nitrogen, phosphate, and potash. The bags tell you the percentages like 20-5-5. (In this case the other 70% would be filler.) Whether these are organic or not, they enter the runoff and fertilize the pond, lake, or river giving us excessive green bloom, algae, and weeds. From that point of view, a fertilizer is bad regardless of whether it is "organic" or not. (Or it may be good in the rare instance where the body of water is infertile and needs a boost.) Worse offenders in lawn and garden applications are pesticides and weed killers. When these enter the runoff, they kill micro-organisms at the bottom of the food chain-diminishing the whole chain. My opinion, then, is that organic fertilizer has the same effect as inorganic in the runoff scenario. The way it is produced may have a "green" advantage. I would like to see what it is. Maybe a chemist can tell us.

Note: The quote is from a Fly Fisherman, but I think it has general appeal. For some time now, fishing tackle manufacturers, Boat manufacturers, their dealers, their magazines, and anyone else, that they can get to listen, have been bemoaning the fact that the percentage of anglers in the population is declining. I found the following quotation a pleasant antidote to that jabbering. It is even more interesting to note the author and the year it was published. First the quotation: “The profound disdain with which some of the trout and salmon anglers regard the black bass has always been a sore point with me—at least it used to be. Recently, as I find my old bass fishing haunts more and more encumbered by other fishermen, I begin to feel grateful that all anglers do not prize the black bass as highly as I do. No longer do I exhort the dry fly enthusiasts to have a try at the black bass. Let them be content with their trout and their salmon. Our good bass waters already are too crowded.” And the source: John Alden Knight, The Theory and Technique of Fresh Water Angling, Harcourt Brace and Company, 1940, p. 151.

Mike, In simple terms,"I wouldn't even invite my mother." The problem is that laying out an open invitation, that is, a detailed description of a location on a public forum puts the information in the hands of too many people. Though 9 out of 10 may be upstanding sportsmen, the 10th can be the stinker who brings in the family bucket brigade and quickly cleans out the hole. So the extremely cautious approach that many on this site promote makes sense to me.

Thanks Jude, I know it is the answer to the rubber worm and maybe the grub. I am not sure about the Senko because the Bohemian material is very flexible. Part of the genius of the Sluggo and Senko is that they are inflexible and display a meandering, eratic movement under water as they sink on a semi slack line with an occasional optional twitch. So, while I can make a fly that looks like a Senko with this material, I am not sure how to get it to behave like a Senko. Someone said, "Bass do not take a fly because of how it looks; they take it because of how it acts."

Some of the people who bought the chenille assortments I am selling are just getting into tying. I Pormised to put up a few pictures on how we use it. I hope this inspires others to share their inventions and discoveries. Row 1: The long worm is 5" long. Row 2: Adding a foam tab gives some action and floats the grub's tail up. Row 3: Hula Grub and Tube? Row 4: Furled Grubs. Furling slightly increases bulk and stiffens the worm. Row 5: 6" diving slug. The bulky tail is a braid of three pieces of chenille. The eva foam diving head is an interesting alternative to spinning a Dahlberg head.

Gregg is onto something. Tackle manufacturers and fishing magazines sing the sad song about the declining fishing population. But when I arrive at my local lake on Saturday morning, I find myself wishing that there were a lot fewer people there. Locallly the available resources (lakes and rivers) are severely taxed. So I am happy to see people taking up biking, hiking, and climbing instead of fishing. It gives me some room anyway. Tongue in cheek, I say I am happy to see the fishing population decline. We should have mandatory fisher's ed classes just like we have driver's ed classes before kids can get a license. I don't want just anyone taking up fishing.

Eric, Welcome. Gary Hit the nail between the eyes on places to fish. Smallmouth fishing around Chicago is a river thing mostly though there is the Lake, too. Since Chicago is a big place, we have to ask,"Whereabouts in Chicago do you live?" That will make talking about fishing waters and car pooling easier. My generic thoughts are that you should pick one place close to home for the times when you have just a few hours. Then find another place more distant for when you have the better part of a day. For example, someone who lives in the heart of the city might fish the Lake front when he has only an hour or two to spend. He could head out to the Kankakee if he has the whole day. Since even the smallest stream can get up, I would wear Sospenders all the time even after I thought I "knew" the waterway.

Courtesy of Mid-Current here is a link to a great interview with Lefty. He got his start fishing Smallmouths on the Potomac. Hear what the legend has to say about the past present and future of the sport. http://www.midcurrent.com/podcasts/matthews/podcast17.mp3

From what I have seen in previous 17 Year Locust years and this year, that eating is not typical of the Locusts. The 17 Year Locusts do make a slit in the bark to insert their eggs into the small twigs on the tips of tree branches. This process weakens the very tips of some beranches to the extent that they snap off. The result is that you will see a lot of 4 to 6" leaved twigs on the ground in a couple of weeks. One source said that this is how the larva make the trip from the tree tops to the grouind. The standard explanation is that mature trees can take the shock of loosing some twigs and leaves while newly planted stuff might be hit harder. But. Hey! What effects are we seeing on fishing? I expected by now to hear of someone doing real well with a black Jude bug or a black Crick Hopper. So far the areas where I have fished, though very close to the Arboretum, were almost free of Locusts. Thus there were no signs of fish eating them.

I will try diplomacy here. Technically, you are right Paul. Loosing 1-2" from the tip of a rod would result in some measureable change in performance. For instance, using a finely calibrated scale you might detect the repaired rod is slightly stiffer and bends into a different arch. Having fished with rods that were on their second tip guide fairly often, however, I can say that kend is practically right. It is not a difference that I noticed. Fish do not spook more quickly when they see a rod tip that has been repaired. Even when you loose 6" or more from the tip, "you cup is half full." Look at it this way. You now have a rod with a different action-more medium instead of light. BTW, to cure backlash problems, Buck Perry recommended cutting 6" off the tip of your casting rod. Getting rid of the wippy tip that some rods have also gets rid of the excessive acceleration that causes birdsnests.