by Bruce Middleton, December 31, 2006
Tips for improving your fishing experience…
One nice thing about bass fishing and fishing in general is that over time you learn a lot of "tricks of the trade" as it were. And being a writer, you get to share some of those things you have discovered and made that have helped you over those years that have landed more and bigger fish. I love writing and it has given me a lot of joy to share my experiences and expertise with fellow fishermen. The following story is really a collection of things that I have made or used in the past and/or present that I think may help you save a few bucks and help you catch a few more fish at the same time.
One of the things I always keep in my tackle box is a few safety pins. These nifty little clips can be used to string swivels on. It keeps them in a nice neat orderly group and easy to find. They are also good for stringing sinkers on so they stay organized too.
They are also handy to use to untangle backlashes with when you have to stop and pick one apart.
Also when you do get a really bad backlash, I cut the line on the bait or lure I just cast out and tie it to and over sized bobber or float and toss it back in the water. That way I have a free end to work with and I don’t have to worry about loosing my bait. And if luck something should strike the bait, and it has, I just chase the bobber around until it pops up and I hand over hand the fish in or if possible retie the line to the reel and play the fish to the boat. I also attach my car keys to an extra large bobber just incase something serious happens. I don’t like walking home.
If you need to add or replace a rattle on a jig or a top water frog or other bait, for instance, just go to any craft shop and buy a few small jingle bells. They cost about $3 for 50 of them. Just slip the jingle bell up the shaft of the hook of a jig and then using a small piece of plastic worm, super glue it into place under the weed guard. The jingle bell has a different sound than a regular rattle and sometimes that difference is just what the bass want. With a plastic frog, make a slit smaller than the jingle bell and force two or three into the body of frog and Super Glue the cut closed. Super Glue has no smell when dry and the bass pay no attention to it at all. I also buy red beads at the craft store instead of the fishing store because I can buy 200 of them for $2.50, which is a real bargain.
One of my all-time favorite spinner bait trailers is a preserved minnow. These small baits are sold every where, even your local K Mart. I hook the minnow through the chin and up though the head on the main hook of the spinner. Then insure that the trailer hook comes flush with the tail of the minnow. Bass just can’t seem to resist the vibration of a spinner bait and the look of minnow that seems to be chasing it. It is a dynamite trailer and second only to my black and blue grub which I use most.
On really tough bite days I learned this trick from a friend of mine. Take your favorite tube bait and stuff a quarter Alka-Seltzer tablet into the hollow. Add a few drops of scent and then hook up as usual making sure the tablet is trapped behind the hook. Cast it out and let it lie for a minute or two moving it just a little. The bubbles and the scent cause a great deal of disturbance and any bass in the area will investigate what is going on. The extra scent and slight movement combined with the bubbles will add the triggering mechanism even when just about ever thing else has failed.
I love to fish wacky rigged worms on very light line but they don’t stand up to hard casting. I have tried rubber "O" rings but found them a bit expensive for every day use. Now I use electrician’s tape and use just a wrap or two around the middle of the worm. I found that this doesn’t effect the wavy fall of Senko worms, which is very important to me as I use them a lot for this rig. I use electrician’s tape because now days the new tape is lighter than in the old days when I was an electrical apprentice and it comes in a rainbow of colors so you can come pretty close to matching the color of the worm you’re using. That and a role of tape are dirt-cheap and it sticks to the plastic very, very well.
Bullet shape tungsten weights are environmentally safer than lead weights and I use them more and more. The big drawback with them is that they are harder to peg in place when using them on a Texas rig. I beat this by using a piece of twenty-pound test line and tying a square knot above the weight to hold it position. Spider wire seems to work the best for this and I also use this method for tying a stop for floats when I use them. The tag ends are tough to cut off but definitely worth the effort. I have found too that a pair of children’s scissors is about the best thing in the world for cutting spider wire and they are more than reasonably priced.
I find more and more that in order to make sure that my knot tying holds I have to really pull and test the knot. But my eyes are not as young as they used to be and a lot of the time the knots fail. Now I pull the knot tight and add a drop of Super Glue to it for that extra holding power. Once dry the fish don’t care about the smell as it is as about as neutral as the fishing line itself. So now I have great confidence that my knot will hold and when using a Carolina or Texas rig, I know the knot will take the extra punishment of the bead or weight banging against it with no adverse effects. Super Glue can be used to repair worn out plastics by fusing the holes, made by the hook, back together again saving you a few bucks and a trip to the sports shop. I also use Super Glue to hold the knot when I tie two lines together, like a main line and a fluorocarbon leader. This insures that they never part. And speaking of fluorocarbon leaders, you should use them as much as possible as they are invisible underwater.
When I was younger and poorer and couldn’t afford to buy a lot of red hooks to replace all the hooks I wanted to on all the lures I wanted to, I came up with a real bright idea. I stole a $2 bottle of the hottest fire red metallic finger nail polish from my wife (or daughter, I forget now) and painted the hooks. Nail polish is some tough stuff and lasts a long, long time. It’s easy to touch-up and a single bottle and will cover over 400 hooks. The little brush also can be used to paint gill slits on hard crank baits and for adding a touch of red on any hard or soft bait. It is a really great little product for fishermen.
A long time ago I made my own lure retrieve. I use a lot of crank baits on the bottom plowing the bottom and making a lot of noise. But this tactic can and will cause you a lot of hang-ups if you’re not careful. My lure retriever consisted of a 12-ounce saltwater fishing weight that had two pieces of string tied to each end of the extra long swivels they come with. The string has extra long tag ends. Whenever I hang up, I just tied the long tag ends of the strings around the fishing line loosely and then tied a heavy line to the weight itself. You let the weight slide down the fishing line and with the heavy line bang it around until you knock the lure loose. Also the long steel multiple swivels on the weight can be used to snag the hooks of the lure allowing you to rip the lure loose. Either way you save the lure and after the first lure you save the weight pays for itself.
But speaking of lure retrieves, my favorite retriever is my medium long handled net I keep in the boat with me. I picked it up at a garage sale for 50 cents. Not only will it reach down quite a ways under water to get a lure, but also it will reach up quite a ways up into trees and brush to get a lure. This is where I usually end up trying to get my lure back from, not the bottom of the lake.
Last year I ran out of my favorite scent and was hard pressed to come up with a substitute at 6:00 in the morning. So on a hunch I grabbed a can of Pam cooking oil spray in garlic flavor out of the cupboard and used it as a trial. It worked just as well as the higher priced scent I had been using and it was easier to use since it dispensed by spraying it on. I also found out that spraying it on my reels and line kept me from having so many backlashes and the ones I did get were a whole lot easier to untangle. Pam is a product I recommend that everyone carry in the tackle box as it has a whole lot of uses. But I would warn you to use natural flavors like garlic and to stay away from the ones not made of Canola or Olive oil, as they don’t smell right to me.
I make my own buoy markers too, not that they cost a lot, it’s more the fact that I like to just make things myself. I start with a medium/small sizes drinking water bottle with a flat cap, not the spout type. I take the top off and screw in a small eyebolt in one side of the cap and drill a small hole in the other side of the top of the cap. After the inside of the bottle is completely dry I take a can of spray paint and spray in two coats of bright paint into the inside of the bottle. This makes the buoy look a lot brighter and the paint job lasts a lot longer. I then take about 25-30 feet of spider wire and tie a small nut to one end. The nut must slide inside the bottle mouth so you can epoxy or super glue it to the bottom of the bottle. After the glue is dry, wind the line into the bottle and run the other end out thought the big hole in the cap and screw the cap down on tight. Take the end of the line sticking out of the cap and run it around the base of the eyebolt twice and then through the eye of the bolt. Now tie a heavy weight to the tag end of the line and tape it lightly to the bottle. Whenever you need a buoy, just remove the tape and toss the buoy out. The string will unwind from the inside of the bottle but the wraps around the eye bole will limit the amount of line to just enough to let the weight reach the bottom and no more. That way the bottle stays right over the spot you tossed it and doesn’t drift away using all 25 to 30 feet of line in the bottle. When done, unscrew the cap, rewind the line back into the bottle, put the cap back on and tape the weight back in place. I use fiberglass tape because I found out you can reuse it many times if you let it dry out before you restick it to the bottle.
Lastly is a technique I use a lot around docks. It is called a slingshot cast. You grab the bait, usually a plastic or jig, and hold it so you don’t get hooked, pull back on bait so it bends the rod in half, aim and let go. An instant later, trip the reel release so the bait sails under the dock. You hold the rod low to the water and parallel to it so the bait can skip across the water and the line comes off the reel and off the rod smoothly. It takes a little practice to get the aiming down pat but the results are amazing. In short order you’ll be able to slingshot a worm under just about any dock where you never could before. I also sometimes use a little kid’s short rod for this type of casting, one of the short three-foot type. A short rod has a lot of advantages over a longer rod using this technique, but since more bass are under the dock and not around the sides it pays to get a bait under there to them.
Now one thing I don’t recommend making unless you own a Teac Welder is a crawfish trap. But if you do own one by all means build one otherwise go out and buy one. These mudbug catchers are great for catching fresh crawdads to use as live bait. And believe me there is nothing in this world like a live crawfish floating down next to a boat dock pier to get you so high-powered strikes. They also tell you the color of crawfish in a lake at any given time and therefore what colors are going to work better than others when choosing lures. A crawfish trap can be purchased for as little as $8 but the $14 one is much better. Bait is simply fresh fish heads, gills and guts.
I have also made up a fishing log for you to keep track of your fish catches. This log will help you establish a pattern of where the bass hang out during the year and which lures they like at each season. But it also lets you know where the bass hang out year after year. Bass are very territorial and will stay in the same general area year after year unless removed. This lets catch the big ones year after year. This logbook system can lead to some exciting future fishing if you just take a few moments to fill it out after each catch or even loss as they count too.
So there you have it, a couple of quick and easy ideas that anyone can use to help you be more organized, maybe help you catch a few more fish but definitely make fishing a little bit easier.
Fishing log Book
LAKE OR RIVER Date Day of week
Time of day Water temp Air temp
Structure type
Dock Stumps Rocks
Rip-rap Point Hump
Brush pile Other
VEGETATION
Lily pads Bank weeds Cattails
Hydrilla Reeds None
Growth stage
Emergent Full grown Dying back
WEATHER
Sunny Partly cloudy Overcast
Sprinkling Rain Other
WIND
Mph Direction
WATER CLARITY
Clear Stained Murky
Muddy Other
WATER LEVEL
Normal Raising Falling
Low High
Other factors Insects Baitfish
Crawfish Pressure Other
MOON PHASE 1sr qtr 1/2 moon
3rd qtr Full moon
Plus days Nines days
LURE USED COLOR WEIGHT
NAME TYPE
OTHER OTHER
L/M S/M LENGTH WEIGHT TIME
L/M S/M LENGTH WEIGHT TIME
L/M S/M LENGTH WEIGHT TIME
L/M S/M LENGTH WEIGHT TIME
L/M S/M LENGTH WEIGHT TIME
L/M S/M LENGTH WEIGHT TIME
L/M S/M LENGTH WEIGHT TIME
L/M S/M LENGTH WEIGHT TIME
L/M S/M LENGTH WEIGHT TIME
Bruce Middleton
bpmiddleton@peoplepc.com
*Editor's Note: due to html limitations the above log form is not exactly as Bruce sent me. But the sections are useful for you to make a log file, including his suggested sections. Mike