Rookies

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

By Mark Hicks

One of the biggest challenges every bass club faces is that of increasing its membership. This task is even more daunting in these tough economic times. Many anglers have fewer dollars to spend on recreation. You must convince them that your bass club is a worthy investment.

This is a twofold process. First, you must get a potential member’s attention. Then, when a rookie joins, your club needs to be sure he feels they are benefiting from their membership. Do that, and the rookie is more likely to be an active, longtime member.

New York’s Michael Cusano knows something about how to attract rookies. He joined the Salt City Bassmasters in 1996 and was soon elected president. The Salt City Bassmasters, founded in 1974, had shrunk to only 18 members. Four years later, its ranks had grown to 80 members.

Cusano, who is now president of the New York B.A.S.S. Chapter Federation, initiated several changes that bolstered Salt City’s roster.

“We made a serious effort to get our club’s name in out front of the public,” Cusano said.

One strategy was to contact local outdoor writers and help them gather information for their stories. This includes taking writers fishing and providing fishing information about local lakes. The writers often mention the club in their articles, which attracts new members.

“We also started working local sport shows, which is something the club used to do,” Cusano said.

This entails renting a booth at a sport show and setting up a display that promotes the club. Club members share time in the both to talk to show attendees and answer questions about club activities.

Some type of raffle also draws people to the both. One raffle item that has worked well for Salt City is a tackle box filled with lures donated by club members.

“Our club also needed to refocus on what we were all about,” Cusano said.

To attract rookies, Cusano knew the club had to be about more than simply holding tournaments. That might be enough for diehard tournament anglers. However, newcomers are often novice fishermen that are intimidated by tournaments. Many don’t own boats.

The club members worked together and wrote a mission statement that focuses on fun, sportsmanship and learning, with an emphasis on learning. Some of this stemmed from Cusano’s own experiences. When he was a rookie in the Salt City club, he fished as a boater.

“I got crushed by the more experienced members,” Cusano said. “I was dying to learn from our best fishermen. That’s true of all members, especially rookies.”

Cusano encouraged the better anglers in his club to step up and give seminars at meetings. The top finishers in club tournaments regularly discuss how they caught their bass. This includes the productive baits, key cover and structure elements, and their thought process during the tournament. However, information about specific fishing spots is off limits.

“Even a short 15 minute seminar brings more members to the meetings,” Cusano said. “That really appeals to guests that come to check out the club.”

Any fishermen that are interested in joining the Salt City club have an open invitation to attend a club meeting. When they see that the club strives to teach its members to be better anglers, it’s often the incentive they need to sign up.

“The majority of our new members join because they want to learn about bass fishing,” Cusano said.

Many rookies don’t have boats. Not only are they welcome, but they normally make faster gains than rookies that fish tournaments with their own bass boats.

That’s because the club’s tournaments pair boaters and nonboaters via a random draw. The nonboaters usually wind up fishing with a different boater in each of the club’s six tournaments. This exposes them to a wide variety of fishing tactics and gives them the incentive they need to experiment with something new.

As Cusnao pointed out, if a rookie has never tried a jig and pig, he’s likely to stop fishing it if he makes a dozen casts and doesn’t get a bite. It’s a different story if that same rookie is fishing with a boater that is catching bass on a jig and pig. The experience gives the rookie enough confidence to stick with the jig and master it. The nonboater can also ask his boater for tips on how to rig and fish whatever bait the boater happens to be fishing.

By being paired with different club members, rookies can learn more in six tournaments than they could in years of trying to figure things out by themselves. To make for a friendlier atmosphere, the Salt City tournament format eliminates competition between the boater and the nonboater. Each event is two separate tournaments, one for boaters and another for nonboaters.

When the club’s yearly tournaments are over, the top eight boaters and the top two nonboaters qualify to fish the B.A.S.S. Federation Nation Eastern Divisional.

The Salt City club also supports the Salt City Junior Bassmasters. It is a separate organization. The junior club provides wholesome activities for young people. When these anglers grow older, they are likely to become members of the regular Salt City club. Some of the parents of youth club members wind up in the club, as well.

Given that this is the electronic age of communication, the Salt City Bassmasters makes good use of the Internet. You can view their website at: saltcitybass.com. The site’s initial statement reads like an invitation to new members:

Salt City Bassmasters

Is an organization dedicated to helping its members become better bass anglers through discussion, seminars, and interactive learning. Salt City strives to provide a competitive bass fishing tournament trail that encourages sportsmanship, fun and learning. Lastly, Salt City Bassmasters wants to improve the knowledge of all anglers, promote ethical behavior and sportsmanship, and increase environmental awareness.

“The website is a great recruiting tool,” Cusano said. “We get a lot of questions from anglers who are thinking of joining.”

The site includes information about the club’s bylaws, tournament schedule, rules, tournament results, photos, and more. It also invites anyone who is interested in the club to come to a meeting.

David Canestrare, who lives near Syracuse, New York, took advantage of the web invitation two years ago. Canestrare was thinking of joining a bass club. He did a Google search and found the websites of Salt City and a few other clubs. He had heard of Salt City, and he liked that the club stressed learning.

Canestrare didn’t own a boat. His fishing experiences were mainly outings to Oneida Lake with his parents. They would catch an occasional bass, walleye or bluegill, but they went hours between bites.

“I would read about guys fishing tournaments at Oneida and catching 30-40 bass a day,” Canestrare said. “That’s what prompted me to look into bass clubs.”

Canestrare was impressed when he attended one of Salt City’s monthly meetings. The top five finishers from the previous club tournament discussed the baits and techniques they had used to catch bass.

“It was exactly what I was looking for,” Canestrare said. “I wanted to learn how to catch bass.”

After joining Salt City, Canestrare was pleased with the friendly atmosphere and the information sharing. He fished as a nonboater the first year and learned from every angler he was paired with. When he mentioned that he was new to bass fishing, the members were even more generous with their fishing pointers.

One of those events happened at Lake Champlain. There, Canestrare caught two 5-pound largemouths on a Senko, a bait that he had learned to fish from another club member.

The next year, Canestrare bought a bass boat and competed in the club’s tournaments as a boater. He also fished three New York B.A.S.S. Chapter Federation tournaments. The first of these tournaments was at Lake Champlain.

Canestrare returned to the spot where he had caught the 5-pounders the year before and went to work with a Senko. He proceeded to stuff a five-bass limit into his livewell that weighed 22.76 pounds and won the tournament.

“I felt like I had won the key to Disneyland,” Canestrare said. “I have to thank Salt City club member Brandon Schwoeppe for teaching me how to fish a Senko.”

Categories : Rookies

Old Bass Clubs Members & New Media

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

Social networking websites and other “new media” are easy to use, even for non computer sorts, and they can provide real benefit to any bass club.

By Jeff Samsel

Tweets, fan pages, chat rooms, blogs… it’s all gibberish to many bass club members, and for some anglers, there’s probably no need for that to ever change. That said, the “new media,” as blogs and social networking websites are collectively known, is a major part of today’s communications scene, and for many bass clubs and members, websites such as Facebook and Twitter provide outstanding opportunities.

Clubs that embrace the new media enjoy unprecedented opportunities to pass along information, whether that’s important news about a time or location change for an event or simply a word of a great bite that’s taking place on a nearby lake. And those members that are the most up-to-date (electronically) get the messages on their phones—often complete with photos or videos. The same types of websites provide fine opportunities for promoting club activities, accomplishments and objectives to the angling public, along with recognizing members who win tournaments or who do a great job of supporting the club in some way.

One great virtue of these sites to most clubs is that they are free to use. When expenses must be balanced against income, any opportunity to advertise club activities or gain other benefits that comes at no cost other than time warrants serious consideration.

Sites & Uses

The North Oklahoma City Bassmasters are part the growing contingency of bass clubs that make heavy use of Facebook to communicate with one another. A social networking site with more than 500 million active users, more than half of whom will log on any given day, Facebook makes it easy to share status updates, photos, videos and more either with anyone who cares to look or only with other Facebook users who have been accepted as Friends. Every member of the NOC Bassmasters has a unique Facebook page, and all are linked as Friends, which allows them to see one another’s posts.

“We use our individual Facebook pages to post results/pictures and communicate with each other about upcoming events,” said club member Greg Scallin. “By doing this, we can reach more people through our Friends, not just club members.”

Members of this club also make regular use of Facebook’s “message” and “live chat” features to communicate about club issues, plan events and schedule fishing trips, along with using the site to keep up with the fishing industry through regular posts by tackle manufacturers and fishing websites. Scallin pointed toward Lurenet and Zipper Worms examples of companies that keep Facebook pages up-to-date.

The NOC Bassmasters didn’t have a club page on Facebook when this issue went to press, but there was a shared desire among members to get one started, according to Scallin, and he anticipated one being established over the winter. Someone simply needed to take a little time to set up a page. The club does have a website, which they keep updated, but a club presence on Facebook will reach a much broader audience, draw visitors to the club’s website and be much more interactive with all club members and other anglers who want to add input about, say, a lake the club is about to fish.

Twitter, which has grown enormously in popularity over the past couple of years, allows users to post short messages, which can be seen on that user’s dedicated Twitter page, sort of like on Facebook, and which go to all followers. Messages (or Tweets, as they are known) are limited to 140 characters, often with links to things like videos, photos and longer blogs. A club can have its own account, both for public relations purposes and so all members can stay updated, or individual members can use Twitter for quick communication. Because of the character limit, Twitter messages can be shared even with very simple mobile devices.

Ever growing numbers of bass pros, tackle manufacturers, tournament organizations and clubs are building Twitter identities, allowing friends and fans to stay in touch with all they are doing with regular quick Tweets. They often use the Tweets to redirect followers to Facebook posts, club sites or blogs and other web destinations that offer more information they want followers to find.

C.J. Shaver, an Ohio bass pro, uses a variety of social networking sites, including Twitter, both to promote his identity as a bass pro and to help the SS Minnows, a junior bass club in Central Ohio that he helped start nearly a decade ago. The SS Minnows also maintain an active Facebook page, where they post pictures of fish brought to the scales, provide club updates and keep in touch with one another.

Shaver noted that the SS Minnows have always been leaders among junior bass clubs, having been among the first to wear jerseys in competitions and to attain club sponsors, and it appears they are taking a similar leadership role by promoting the club through the new media.

More so than Facebook or Twitter, a blog can provide a unique web identity for a club, with more space for details about tournaments and other events, profiles of members, details about sponsors or whatever else the club opts to post. Blogs can be set up more like traditional websites, with major differences being that they are free from some providers and far easier to self-administer than most websites. Blogs can be set up through a variety of sites, but two of the largest and easiest to use are WordPress and Blogger. Both offer many options in terms of the look of a blog, it’s set-up and its features.

Just Jump In

Something very appealing about social networking and blog template sites is that they are extremely user friendly. Many Facebook users are 100 percent new to that sort of thing when they take their first curious look to try to see something a friend has posted, but the site is so intuitive that pretty much anyone can jump in and do as little or as much as he wants on Facebook. Twitter and the blogging sites are similarly simple. A member with no web-managing skills could easily set up club blog in a matter of minutes, and anyone who had the log-in information could easily add new posts.

Likewise, any member who has spent even a little bit of time playing with features could easily manage a club’s Facebook page, and given the willingness of a handful of club members to add updates and respond to comments or questions, there really isn’t any need for a dedicated person to manage the site.

Blogs, though very easy to set up and manage, do require some upkeep because a blog site that doesn’t get updated can actually work against a club. Where on Facebook, few outsiders would notice if no one posted anything for a while, a blog is a dedicated webpage, so if no one posts anything for several months, it simply looks like the club hasn’t done anything for several months.

Due to virtues already stated—no cost and ease of use—establishing a presence in the new media doesn’t require much planning on a club’s part and it’s pretty much a no-loss proposition. A club can easily establish a Facebook page or Twitter account and encourage members to do likewise, and then figure out what to do with them as members spend time looking at other posts and at applications and seeing what fits the club best. A blog is similar. Although there should be some commitment to post something with some degree of regularity, the type of material posted can change regularly. A blog, by nature, is a log, more like a journal than a clearly defined column, so change is the norm.

But then again, that’s true of all the new media. It’s ever changing, which is part of what keeps it interesting.

Categories : Old Bass Clubs Members & New Media

Moving

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

By Mark Hicks

Last year Chip Ratajik retired from a stressful job as director of operations for a community health center that covered three Ohio counties. Soon after that he moved to Paducah, Kentucky, to be near Kentucky Lake. It was a dream that he and his wife, Peggy, had shared for decades.

Ratajik had been a member of the Southeastern Ohio Bass Club for 40 years. He joined the Paducah Bass Club soon after moving to Kentucky. Smart, very smart.

Joining a club after moving for whatever reason is the best way to get in touch with fellow anglers and to learn the local bass waters. Ratajik admits that he has a lot to learn.

Most of the tournaments he fished with the Southeastern Ohio club happened on small, heavily-fished reservoirs of less than 1,000 acres. Some of them were shy of 200 acres. The standard club joke was that the bass knew the make, model and color pattern of any bait you threw at them.

The club also held many events on the Ohio River. It was bigger water, but the fishing was just as challenging. Major tournaments on the Ohio River underline this fact. A limit of bass in any of the club’s tournaments was the stuff of legends.

Despite the tough fishing, Ratajik looked forward to every weekend tournament. They provided a major break from the daily grind and gave him an opportunity to do something he was passionate about. And, they put the thrill of competition in his life. He competed well, winning seven angler-of-the-year titles spread out over four decades.

Unfortunately, what Ratajik learned in Ohio didn’t prepare him for massive Kentucky Lake. The waters he fished in the Buckeye State were usually stained. Most of the bass stayed shallow throughout the year, and they were individual, scattered fish. Sitting on one spot and casting to a school of bass was unheard-of.

Small baits and stealthy fishing were the keys to Ratajik’s success in Ohio. His most productive lures were small shallow-running crankbaits, 1/4-ounce spinnerbaits and 4-inch Texas-rigged worms matched with a 1/8-ounce bullet sinker.

Ratajik had no experience with deep-diving crankbaits, 10-inch worms and 3/4-ounce football jigs. These baits regularly produce heavy limits of bass at Kentucky Lake, especially when the fish hold on offshore ledges.

Another issue was Ratajik’s boat. For many years, he competed in Ohio club tournaments from a 14-foot Sears boat powered by a 9.9 hp Evinrude. In the late 1980s he upgraded to the 16-foot Pro Craft that he still owns, which sports a 70 hp Evinrude.

The Pro Craft was sufficient for Ohio bass waters. And, it will suffice on Kentucky Lake, provided you don’t make long runs. However, a small boat is a handicap when you compete against anglers who fish Kentucky Lake from full-sized, high-powered bass rigs.

Competition wasn’t on Ratajik’s mind when he started taking annual family vacations to Kentucky Lake in the late 1970s. He usually rented a lake house at Cozy Cove in June. It had plenty of room for his sons Todd and Ryan, and for grandparents, too.

Ratajik fished main-lake ledges near Cozy Cove with Texas rigs. This approached produced quality largemouths and planted the seeds to his Kentucky Lake retirement dream. The clear coves across the lake from Cozy Cove were also regular stops. This was in the Lake Between The Lakes area, and it was especially good in years when Kentucky Lake supported lush grass beds.

It was in one of these coves that Todd caught his biggest bass when he was 12 years old. The 5-pound smallmouth engulfed a slider worm.

One of Todd’s grandfathers was in the boat. Gramps was as proud of netting the big bass as Todd was for catching it. The next year, 11-year-old brother Ryan caught his biggest bass, a 5-pound largemouth that pounced on a spinnerbait in a shallow grass bed.

Now that Ratajik lives a short drive from Kentucky Lake, he’s making new memories, thanks to the Paducah Bass Club. Due to the hectic job of selling his house in Ohio, buying a new home in Paducah and moving from one residence to another, Ratajik didn’t plan ahead to join a club.

“I was talking fishing to the realtor who found our house in Paducah,” Ratajik said. “He mentioned the Paducah Bass Club. I took his advice and contacted them.”

Ratajik found that the Paducah club had 25 members from all walks of life. What they had in common was a love for bass fishing, a strong club spirit, a keen competitive bent and high performance bass boats.

“It was a perfect situation for me,” Ratajik said. “I could leave my little bass boat at home and learn from guys that had years of experience on Kentucky Lake.”

Ratajik has been overwhelmed with so much information that he’s been tempted to bring a notebook while fishing club tournaments. He’s learned how to use the navigation buoys to run the lake safely, especially during low winter pool. Ratajik has also been schooled on how to find ledges that hold bass, how the current affects the bass, what lures and techniques to use, and more.

Ratajik got quite an education during his first tournament with the Paducah club. He drew out with Alan Shaffer, who owns a construction company. Shaffer made a sizzling run to a ledge on the main lake. Then he combed the ledge with a Carolina rig matched with a Zoom Brush Hog. Ratajik had never fished a Carolina rig or a Brush Hog.

“For the next 90 minutes, all I did was net fish,” Ratajik said. “I couldn’t believe how many bass were there.”

The day ended suddenly when Shaffer noticed that his outboard was leaking gas. The culprit was some type of sensor that had popped out.

Despite the short outing, Ratajik was happy with what he learned. Among other things, Shaffer taught him that a Carolina rig with braided line and a fluorocarbon leader greatly improves sensitively and hook sets. Ratajik took his advice and is gaining proficiency with a Carolina Rig.

A special treat for Ratajik was a club tournament on the Tennessee River below Kentucky Dam. He was fishing with Eric Carson, who works for a computer company. They were chunking crankbaits to riprap banks near the locks. The current picked up whenever a barge locked through and the water flow turned on the bass.

“When the alarm went off at the lock, those fish would go crazy,” Ratajik said. “There were big stripers and bass blowing up all over the place.”

During those brief periods, Carson and Ratajik enjoyed fast action with bass. Ratajik had never seen anything like it. To say that he’s thankful for joined the Paducah club is an understatement.

“These guys have been really helpful,” Ratajik said. “It would have taken me years and a couple of lower units to learn what they’ve taught me in a few months.”

Is a move in your future? If so, you’d be wise to check out bass clubs near your new residence before relocating. If you are now a member of a club that’s affiliated with a national organization, contact its headquarters to find whether it has any clubs near where you will be moving.

An Internet search will help you find clubs that are not in partnership with a national organization. Another good way to find bass clubs is to contact local tackle shops.

If you line up a club ahead of time, you’ll be ready to start fishing as soon as your new home is in order. You won’t miss a beat, and you’ll get a giant head start on how to catch bass in your new locale.

Categories : Moving

Fascinating Fishing Facts

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

By Keith Sutton

Fascinating facts about the biggest, smallest, fastest, strangest, oldest, coolest and most expensive in the world of fishing.

Bass club members have always loved discussing superlatives. No matter where we are, the conversation is likely to turn to the extreme aspects of fishing. If someone says something, for example, about the biggest this or the fastest that, a wildfire of discussion almost certainly will be ignited. Conflicting opinions will add fuel to the conflagration, wagers will probably be laid, and after some burning argumentation, someone will dart off to a bookshelf (or, increasingly, to the Internet) to find the information needed to settle the dispute.

To stimulate such tasty dialogues, we present the following randomly-chosen morsels about fishing that are sure to nourish the intellect and satisfy every appetite. These tidbits may also give club members some benchmarks to shoot for.

Favorite Fish

What freshwater fish are targeted most often by U.S. anglers? A report from AnglerSurvey.com has answers that aren’t surprising. With 59.3 percent of anglers targeting it, the largemouth bass continues to be the most-sought gamefish across the country, followed by panfish (36.8%), smallmouth bass (25.3%) trout (20.1%), catfish (17.4%) and walleye (14.3%), respectively.

Biggest Record Fish

So you think that wallhanger bass you caught was big, huh? Well, it probably was for its species, but landing it was no doubt a cinch compared to landing the biggest record fish ever.

On April 21, 1959, Alfred Dean caught a 2,664-pound great white shark off the coast of south Australia. Amazingly, he subdued this monster—the heaviest record fish ever listed by the International Game Fish Association (IGFA)—in only 50 minutes on 130-pound line. Dean also caught great whites weighing 2,333 and 2,536 pounds.

Biggest Fish Ever Hooked And Landed

Here’s another giant described in Fishes and Fishing in Louisiana by James Gowanloch. In 1933, Captain Jay Gould of Hollywood, Florida captured a manta ray that measured 19 feet, 9 inches from wing-tip to wing-tip. The ray was hooked on a large shark hook on 1,200 feet of 1/2-inch rope, and when it had been subdued and towed back to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, the city’s 20-ton crane had to be used to lift the fish from the water, after the chain hoists on three smaller cranes were stripped while trying to bring it up. The manta ray’s weight was estimated at 5,500 pounds.

Oldest Fishing Record

The 22-pound, 4-ounce world-record largemouth bass caught by George Perry in Georgia’s Montgomery Lake was unmatched from June 2, 1932 until Manabu Kurita caught an equally big largemouth on July 2, 2009 in Japan’s Lake Biwa. That’s a long-standing record by anyone’s measure. But one fish record has stood almost twice as long and remains unbroken—a 4-pound, 3-ounce IGFA all-tackle record yellow perch caught in New Jersey by Dr. C.C. Abbot in May 1865, more than 145 years ago!

Bass Master

Dave Romeo of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania is one of those guys who takes bass fishing to extremes. He set a Guinness World Record for the most bass caught in a single season—3,001 largemouth bass landed in just 77 days back in 1987. And after more than a quarter century counting, measuring and meticulously documenting every bass he’s caught, he achieved another Guinness record by becoming the first person ever to catch, record and release 25,000 bass in 25 years.

To celebrate, Romeo splurged and bought a new vanity license plate: 25K BASS.

Best Prize For A Record Fish

Anglers who win big-name bass tournaments can improve their financial status immensely overnight. But who would have thought you could get rich by catching a record carp?

That’s what happened to Al St. Cyr in March 2006. While fishing during the Texas Carp Challenge, he landed a 43.13-pound, state-record common carp in Austin’s Town Lake. That fish earned St. Cyr a $250,000 payday from the American Carp Society, the largest prize ever for a carp fisherman in the U.S.

Best Double

Here’s another interesting carp story. In 2005, British golf pro Gary Hagues pulled an 83-pound, 8-ounce world-record mirror carp from France’s Rainbow Lake. After the fish was officially weighed, he tagged and released it. Hagues returned to Rainbow Lake in 2006 to enjoy a free vacation he won for catching the first carp. And, against all odds, on November 30, 2006, he caught the same fish again to set another world record. This time the monster carp weighed 87 pounds, 2 ounces.

Fastest Fish

A group at Florida’s Long Key Fishing Camp came up with a simple method for accurately measuring a fish’s swimming speed. A fish is hooked. It makes a run. You measure how much line the fish took off the spool in a certain number of seconds, and you can calculate the fish’s speed. The fastest fish in these speed trials, perhaps the fastest fish in the world, was a sailfish that took out 300 feet of line in three seconds, a velocity of 68 mph. That’s zero to 60 mph in 2.6 seconds!

Oldest Fish

For many years, the oldest fish on record was female European eel named Putte. She was kept in an aquarium all her adult life, and when she died at Hälsingborg Museum, Sweden in 1948, that slimy ol’ gal was reported to be 88 years old.

That record is old news, though. Commercial fishermen in the Bering Sea recently hauled in a shortraker rockfish scientists say was 157 years old. Biologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration used growth rings in the fish’s ear bone to estimate the age of the fish that started life before the Civil War!

Fastest-traveling Fish

A tagged great white shark became the quickest recorded oceanic traveler after it swam from South Africa to Australia and back in under a year. The female shark was tagged with a data transmitter off South Africa in November 2003. The unit detached automatically and was recovered off western Australia four months later, but that wasn’t the end of the story. In August 2004, five months after the transmitter bobbed to the surface, project research scientists spotted the shark—identifiable by a pattern of notches in its dorsal fin—back in its old haunt off South Africa. It had completed a round trip of some 12,500 miles in just nine months.

Biggest Fly Rod And Reel

On June 12, 1999, Tiney Mitchell of Port Isabel, Texas, finished constructing the world’s largest fly-fishing rod and reel. The rod is a whopping 71 feet, 4.5 inches long. The reel measures 4 feet in diameter and 10 inches in width.

Biggest Wooden Fishing Lure

Most bass anglers keep their lures in tackle boxes. Ron Mirabile of New Port Richey, Florida, lugs his on a 14-foot trailer. Mirabile, a collector and carver of fishing lures, has built what may be the largest wooden lure in the world: an 8-foot-long, 200-pound torpedo called “Bassmonger,” which has two 9-inch hooks, two 2-inch glass eyes and a sleek coat of green paint with black spots.

Most Expensive Lure

Were you upset the last time you snagged and lost a $5 or $10 fishing lure? Then you might not want to fish with the Million Dollar Lure from MacDaddy Fishing Lures. This 12-inch trolling lure, designed to catch marlin, is crafted with just over 3 pounds of glimmering gold and platinum, and encrusted with 100 carats of diamonds and rubies (4,753 stones to be exact). Cost? Just as the name says—a cool $1 million.

Highest Price Paid For A Fishing Lure

Tracey Shirey, a collector from South Carolina, paid $101,200 for an 1859 copper fishing lure, a record price for an American fishing collectible at auction. The 10-inch-long saltwater lure was made by gunsmith Riley Haskell of Painesville, Ohio, in the 1850s. Its spinning, double hook was the first patented hook in the U.S.

Creepiest New Lure?

Scientists at Harvard University working with heart-muscle cells from rats have created a thin film that can twist, grip and pulse like a real piece of muscle. They hope this lifelike material may one day be used to patch disease-damaged hearts, but it may have additional applications as well, including the creation of new types of self-propelled fishing lures. Triangular sheets of the material have been used to make little “fish” that actually swim by swinging their tail from side to side, a fact that led Kit Parker, leader of the research team, to tell one interviewer the films might be used as fish bait. “It’s a lot easier to get a muscular thin film on a hook than a worm,” he said.

Coolest Bait Celebration

At Nantwich in northwestern England, the World Worm Charming Championship is held each June. This is a unique event where worms are “charmed” out of the soil by over 200 competitors from throughout the world. The record was set by Tom Shufflebotham in 1980 when he charmed 511 worms out of the ground at the first World Worm Charming Championship.

Most Consecutive Casts

So you thought you made a lot of casts during the last tournament you fished, huh? Check this out. In July 1999, Brent Olgers of Macon, Georgia established a world record for the longest period of consecutive casting. Using a Zebco 33 Classic reel, Olgers cast 6,501 times in just over 24 hours, averaging 270 casts per hour. Each cast had to be at least 45 feet in length.

Keith Sutton is the author of numerous books on fishing. Autographed copies are available on his website, www.catfishsutton.com.

Wild & Wacky Bass Facts

  • According to FishBase.org, largemouth bass have been stocked in 61 different countries.
  • Largemouth bass are on the list of “100 of the World’s Worst Invasive Alien Species” created by the New Zealand based Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG), a branch of the World Conservation Union. According to the ISSG, alien invasion is second only to habitat loss as a cause of species endangerment and extinction. And the largemouth bass is among the worst alien invaders.
  • A bass nicknamed Dottie, perhaps the largest ever recorded, was caught at least twice by anglers fishing 72-acre Dixon Lake near Escondido, California. (The fish was recognizable because of a unique black mark on the underside of the right gill plate.) When Jed Dickerson caught it in 2003, it weighed 21 pounds. When Dickerson’s friend Mac Weakley caught it again in 2006, it weighed 25 pounds, 1 ounce on a hand-held digital scale, making it a potential new world record. Weakley released the bass because it was unintentionally foul-hooked, and it turned up dead in the lake two years later, never having been caught again.
Categories : Fascinating Fishing Facts

Better Weigh-Ins

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

If your typical club weigh-ins is simply a functional finish to a day on the water, consider these ways to add interest and even attract crowds.

By Jeff Samsel

“Who won, by the way?”

It’s a question that gets asked far too often at club weigh-ins. It’s not a matter of anyone being disinterested in the results. It’s just that many weigh-ins are far from compelling, and often it’s hard to keep track of what’s going on at the scales, even with a dedicated effort.

Every club weigh-in doesn’t need to be TV-type affair, with crowds and hype and all the trimmings, and the personalities of some clubs dictate keeping everything low-key and simple. That said, many bass clubs would benefit from adding life to weigh-ins and making them events that offer an element of fun.

Upgrading weigh-ins can make the end of every tournament day into a special club event, adding fellowship to complement the days’ competition and attracting family and friends. Well planned weigh-ins even draw other fishing fans and interested parties, which is good for attracting new members and adds significant value for club sponsors.

Of course, building better weigh-ins doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Making a major event out of a weigh-in might be a once- or twice-a-year occurrence, possibly in place of a club picnic, field day or banquet, or a club might opt to incorporate just one or two elements to add more life to regular weigh-ins. Even those clubs that choose to keep everything totally low-key can retain members’ attention while fish are being weighed simply by adding structure, with a defined start and finish to the fish-weighing time and the person weighing the fish directly addressing whoever is assembled.

Make it Clear

An easy way to upgrade a club’s weigh-ins and to keep folks interested as the fish are brought to the scales is to add a microphone to the mix. If people have to strain to hear what is going on, most will just tune things out completely and turn their attention elsewhere. Then they start other conversations, which makes it that much harder for others to hear—and the downward spiral continues. A sound system provides the double benefit of making the weighmaster easier to hear and reminding club members that something is going on and that they really ought to be paying attention.

Most clubs have one or more members who do well with a microphone in hand and can keep a crowd engaged and entertained during the weigh-in. The sound system itself doesn’t need to be fancy. A little amplification will go a long way toward keeping folks interested.

Another thing that causes weigh-in spectators to mentally check out is uncertainly about what has happened. Some form of leaderboard that lists top teams and weights and can be updated as the weigh-in proceeds is absolutely critical for maintaining interest from start to finish. The board doesn’t have to be fancy. It can be a large erasable marker board or a magnetic board with magnet-backed strips of poster board for each team that can be moved up or down the board as needed. The most important thing is that the board is actively updated throughout the weigh-in so observers know the place of those anglers they are watching and so they know the significance of any bag of fish brought to the scales.

Feeding Time

Anyone who has ever planned church socials knows that if you want to attract crowds, you serve food. In addition to drawing crowds, a meal makes a weigh-in into much more of a social event. Grilled burgers or ’dogs, fried fish and smoked barbecue all lend themselves well to lakeside cooking and easy serving in an outdoor setting, and the food can be available from the time folks start coming in or it can be saved until after the last fish is weighed. The latter scenario does tend to keep people from leaving early, and it creates a nice opportunity for all to sit together and eat.

Two downsides to adding a food element to a weigh-in are that it adds significant work and that someone has to pay for the food and the fixings. Regarding the workload, a club simply has to decide whether the benefits outweigh the effort involved and whether someone is willing to do the job. The cost, likewise, could be a budgeted expense that the club opts to front in order to benefit club members and sponsors. An alternative is to charge a meal fee at a rate that simply covers the actual cost of putting on the meal or to find a meal sponsor.

A final option is to turn things around by charging a little more per plate and actually making a meal into a fundraiser for a club outreach program or some other community outdoor-related cause. For this option, it’s worth talking with local restaurants that offer to-go plates, as they often will sell prepared boxed lunches to a club at a very good price to help the fundraising effort.  The fundraising meal option is generally best reserved for just a couple of tournaments per year.

Prizes & More

Everybody likes free stuff.

Many tournaments offer door prizes of some sort, and when the drawings take place, everyone whose name is in the hat pays attention. Few things are less interesting to people whose names are not in the mix, though. Therefore, if the idea is to keep everyone in attendance engaged and to credit sponsors with all ears listening, hand out door prize tickets to everyone—not just tournament participants or club members. To maximize interest, gather some prizes that aren’t only of interest to anglers, and let winners pick from the entire prize table when their name or number is drawn.

A good way to keep everyone’s attention throughout a weigh-in is to draw some door prize tickets before the fish are weighed, a few halfway through and some more at the end. It’s important to realize, however, that as much as everyone likes to win a prize, no one wants to listen to numbers being read off for half an hour, so don’t go overboard with the number of prizes.

Beyond door prizes, another very good way to broaden the appeal of a weigh-in and build the total event is to plan a few games geared primarily toward youngsters. Along with the standard picnic races, pitching and casting games are always popular at fishermen’s gatherings. Games can take place before any fish are actually weighed or after the weigh-in is completed.

Still another fun way to add interest to a weigh-in is to add a live music element. It’s generally not hard to find a local instrumentalist or band to play a set before or after the fish are weighed or during a post-tournament meal, and they might even help with a sound system for the weigh-in itself. A band, of course, potentially adds an expense, but many musicians are glad to play for the experience and exposure—especially if they are allowed to put out an empty jar! Put the word out at a meeting. Someone probably knows someone.

Spread the Word

If you want a weigh-in to be an event, you have to bill it as such. It matters little how good a party you throw if folks don’t know it is happening. A certain amount can be done by word of mouth. Encourage every member to invite family and friends. If you want to attract other area fishing fans, though, you have to be more intentional about public relations efforts, getting something in the local paper’s community calendar, putting up posters, posting notes on social networking websites and fishing forums and so forth.

Of course, any PR is much easier if you have a good product to sell. Attract some extra attendees to a couple of weigh-ins that really are fun gatherings, and those folks will return and will help spread the word. Eventually, it can become mostly a matter of publishing dates and times.

Categories : Better Weigh-Ins

Back Deck Tackle Guide

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

As a passenger you don’t have the luxury of carrying a literal boatload of tackle. That means you need to be wise with your planning and packing.

By Jeff Samsel

Modern bass boats are like giant tackle boxes—or more accurately, tackle closets. With all their compartments, you can store enormous numbers of lures, dozens of rods and reels and plenty of accessories, keeping everything well organized and amazingly handy.

That’s all fine and dandy as long as you have a boat—and as long as you are fishing from your own boat any given day. Sometimes that won’t be the case, though. Instead, you’ll be fishing from someone’s back deck, armed only with the stuff you can reasonably carry aboard and stow away, probably in one back compartment and on the rod-storage platform that’s normally next to the passenger seat. On such days, it’s important to have a good plan regarding what you bring aboard and how your tackle is organized.

Gary Dollahon of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma always welcomes the opportunity to spend time in the back of someone else’s boat. Although Dollahon owns a bass boat and often fishes from it, as a public relations specialist in the fishing industry, he spends a lot of time in the backs of pro anglers’ boats and on a lot of different rivers and lakes. Dollahon doesn’t mind forsaking the extra thinking that generally goes with running the trolling motor and keeping the boat positioned properly. That allows him to focus his attention on where he wants to aim his next cast and which lure he wants to throw.

Tackle Organization

“Tackle organization starts at the home,” Dollahon said. “Anglers who have a well thought out system as to how they arrange and store all of their gear, especially lures, have it easy when it comes time to adapting their tackle selection to an upcoming tournament. Plano’s StowAway boxes are the standard for shelf management, just like they are for in-the-boat tackle lockers.”

Dollahon suggested keeping StowAways sorted on shelves at home, either stacked or stored bookshelf-style, with the sides of the boxes clearly marked with labels or permanent markers.  If you do own a bass boat and spend most of your fishing time in your own boat but some time in others, the boat compartments might be your primary storage place for your sorted boxes, replacing shelves in the basement or the garage.

“With everything at the fingertips and readily identifiable at home, it’s easy for an angler to build his ‘travel boxes’ for the need,” Dollahon said.

Lure Selections

To a degree Dollahon will choose his tackle based on the waters he and his partner intend to fish, whether based on conversations they’ve had, past experience, suggestions from a local tackle shop or on-line research. More so, though, he loads his boxes with the types of lures that best suit the styles of fishing he likes to do and that he considers his strengths. He’s not one to carry one apiece of everything but the kitchen sink. Instead he wants to be well equipped for the techniques he expects to employ.

“I typically take four StowAways in my Plano soft bag system—or at the most, five,” Dollahon said. “I always have one dedicated to terminal tackle, one for hard baits, one for soft plastics and one for spinnerbaits/buzzbaits. If a fifth box goes, it’s usually because I’m expanding my crankbait selection.

“I’ve found the most success in keeping my selections very focused and strategic to my abilities,” he continued. “For my travel kit, I keep these same StowAways dedicated for my tackle bag, and I am constantly changing what’s in each—except the terminal tackle one—according to the outing ahead of me. I take one bag only in the boat, wanting everything together and knowing exactly what I have and where it is.”

Recognizing that the guy in the front is going to have first shot at everything, Dollahon makes tackle selections that allow him to capitalize on the wide expanse of room he has from the mid-point back. He also tries to avoid baits that are highly apt to get snagged when he’s not running the trolling motor.

“Good options are topwater baits, vibrating baits and/or jerkbaits, and weedless rigged soft plastics, including Carolina rigs,” Dollahon said.

The best baits to pack also depend on the nature of the tournament and the boat pairing relationship. If it’s a team tournament, planning needs to be shared and you have to pack stuff that fits in with your combined plan. Of course, if you’re competing with a regular partner on familiar waters, you probably know exactly what you’ll actually end up throwing and would be best off leaving a lot of other stuff at home.

On the other hand, if you’re competing against the person in the front of the boat in an individual tournament or even competing side-by-side in some sort of a boater/non-boater format, you need baits you can work behind someone else and still catch fish and that will produce in a broad range of conditions. No matter what else you pack, be sure to have shaky heads of some sort, terminal tackle for Carolina rigs and finesse worms to rig on both.

Rods, Reels & Extras

While many bass fishermen favor specialized rods for every application, when you’re fishing from the back deck, you typically don’t have the option of carrying a different rod for every technique you might employ. If you know you’ll be fishing shallow, pitching jigs and plastics for big bass around dense cover, it’s easy to carry only a few rods and have exactly what you’ll need for the day. It’s the basically the same story if you’ll be fishing a deep, clear lake and you pretty much know it will be a dropshot bite.

Usually the truth lies in between, though, and you have to select rod-and-reel combos that work for a broader range of applications. There’s no magic formula because the right mix really does depend on the lake, the season and how you expect to be fishing. Consider those factors and the baits you are carrying and narrow it down to about five rods that cover the range of situations you expect to encounter.

One good way to equip yourself for a broader range of situations without adding more rods to fumble with is to carry extra reels or spools that are spooled with different sizes of line. A medium-heavy 7-foot rod and a reel spooled with 12-pound test is a totally different tool than the same rod and a reel spooled with 20-pound-test.

Of course, while the fish-catching gear is the most fun to plan, it’s not the only stuff you need with you in the boat. You might want a lake map for your own reference and snacks of some sort, and you always want to carry pliers, line cutters, sunscreen, lip balm and some sort of raingear. If the weather is warm and no storms are in the forecast, a lightweight, packable raincoat should do the job, but don’t go out without some form of raingear. Depending on the season and the type of tackle bag you carry, your extras might fit in the same bag as your lure boxes. If you need heavier raingear, gloves, hats and other extras, you’ll probably have to carry one more bag.

Plano Hyrdro-Flow

Gary Dollahon considers Plano’s brand new Hydro-Flo rack system, which is part of their FTO Elite series, and ideal option for an angler who is fishing out of someone else’s boat.

“It has a rigid rack framework inside of a soft-bag design, combining the best of both worlds,” he explained.  “What I like about this bag as a choice is its vertical format, meaning it has a smaller footprint than most tackle bags. The footprint is only 12 inches by 13 inches, but the bag stands 21 inches tall, so it holds a lot.”

The Hydro-Flo rack holds three ProLatch StowAway 3750s, one 3701 and one 3724 boxes, all of which are stored at a 15-degree angle in the rack to keep them in place. The bag’s base is rigid and skid-resistant. In addition to pockets and pouches, it has tie-down straps, which work nicely for holding raingear or a jacket.

Categories : Back Deck Tackle Guide

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