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Post #545 by Rajesh Kumar on May 6th 2016, 4:07 PM (in topic “What's new for 2016 fishing opener”)

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What's new for 2016 fishing opener




MADISON, Wis.---Grab your lures and poles, this Saturday is the game fish opener. Thousands of people are sure to flock to Wisconsin's 15 thousand lakes and 42 thousand miles of rivers. This year's season has some new regulations and ways of getting a license.
 
"Wisconsin really offers some of the most diverse fishing opportunities in the country." said Todd Kalish of the Department of Natural Resources.
 
This year the DNR rolled out a new system called Go Wild. Through Go Wild, you can have your fishing license on a conservation card, or you can download your license to your smartphone.
 
"Some people have really embraced the new system, obviously it took a little while to get all the kinks out, but i think that we've pretty much got it down now." said Dorn Outdoor Pro Staff employee Dan Phillips.
 
You can also print your license out yourself, or register your drivers license or state ID to more readily store your license purchases.
 
"Or if you don't want either, we can print out a paper receipt which you can laminate and show as proof." explained Phillips.
 
"You also want to make sure that you check the fishing regulations. We have a variety of new regulations this year." said Kalish "Sport fishing actually generates approx 2.3 billion dollars to the economy."
 
Fishing also supports about 22 thousand Wisconsin jobs.
 
"You're also contributing to your local regional and statewide economy by participating in the sport of fishing."
 
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Post #545

Post #544 by Rajesh Kumar on May 6th 2016, 4:05 PM (in topic “Fishing conditions in the region”)

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Fishing conditions in the region




Lake of the Woods
Lake of the Woods appears to be ice-free, based on satellite imagery posted Thursday.
 
Walleye fishing is closed until May 14, but pike reports this past weekend were favorable, despite conditions that were windy at times. Anglers have caught some big pike in the bays by dunking a frozen cisco just off or on the bottom. The slow presentation is a favorite technique for targeting lethargic fish this early in the season. A few pike also have been caught casting lures into the shallows.
 
On the Rainy River, sturgeon reports have varied. The current remains fairly strong from recent heavy rains upstream in the watershed, and anglers are using at least 4 to 5 ounces of weight to keep the bait on the bottom. According to a report from Sportsman's Lodge, some anglers said it's crucial to keep the bait in the same spot without any movement; otherwise, the bottom-feeding fish have a difficult time picking up the scent. Give a spot at least an hour before moving.
 
The sturgeon harvest season ends Saturday, and fishing is catch-and-release only from Sunday through May 15. For more information on sturgeon regulations and licensing requirements, check out the 2016 Minnesota Fishing Regulations booklet, available at license outlets or online at mndnr.gov.
 
Devils Lake
Fishing reports are improving with the onset—finally—of warmer weather. According to the latest report from Woodland Resort, anglers should look for the warmest water they can find and explore a variety of depths and presentations. Six Mile Bay and Pelican Lake are good bets this time of year, the report said, but anglers should be careful navigating through Pelican because of lower water levels and the increased risk of hitting trees or other hazards lurking just under the surface. The Pelican boat landing is not accessible this year because of the lower water levels.
 
Anglers fishing from the shore have reported catching a few walleyes and numbers of pike at any of the bridges where the current is moving. Jigs tipped with live bait or soft plastics and crankbaits have been the most productive presentations.
 
Red River
The water temperature is about 60 degrees, and the catfish are becoming more active, Grand Forks catfish guide Brad Durick reported. There are lots of smaller cats to be caught, he said, and bigger fish are starting to show up with more regularity. Best spots have been in the wood near current and slack water areas. Catfish seem to be hanging shallow in the morning and moving into the current as the day warms up, Durick said. Best baits are cut sucker and goldeye; anglers should give a spot 20 to 30 minutes and try a little of everything. River conditions are nearly perfect so anglers should take advantage, Durick said.
 
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Post #544

Post #543 by Rajesh Kumar on May 5th 2016, 4:11 PM (in topic “Fishing on the Potomac: Line, sinker and hooked”)

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Fishing on the Potomac: Line, sinker and hooked




It’s starting.
 
The fish are moving. Yesterday, Gordon Leisch and Paula Smith pulled their first white perch of the year — an astonishing 75 keepers — from a secret hole downstream near Key Bridge. Paula says they had to work for them. All were males, generally the first to arrive. “They’re males,” shrugs Paula. “They can’t wait, if you know what I’m saying.”
 
But the perch have yet to make it the two more miles up to Fletcher’s Boathouse in any numbers. Sure, a few were caught from shore on the mud flats just past the parking lot last week. Shallow water heats up faster, so that’s where the first ones are usually caught. But those fish — part of the annual ritual — were flukes, outliers. Perch don’t really like a mud bottom. Nobody ever gets into them good from shore.
 
The river’s right — 55 degrees, the water stained but not muddy, running high but not too high on this late-March day. And it’s late enough in the spring, which matters because the angle of sunlight matters. The wisteria and serviceberry are in bloom. But spawning fish don’t consult solar tables or thermometers or gauges. They come when they come, usually don’t stay long and are gone just as quick. In flood years there’s no run at all. Painted lines on Fletcher’s cinder-block concession building show the high-water marks of hurricanes in ’96, ’85 and ’72, when Agnes swelled the river up to the roofline.
 
The days when the run lasted two months and you measured your catch by the bucketful ended 30 years ago. Gordon remembers. He has been keeping detailed records for 60 years. But the perch still come. Maybe it’s the mystery of their arrival that makes them so compelling, pulls certain kinds of people to come down to Fletcher’s to stare at the water as if we might make fish materialize through sheer force of will. All the migratory fish — perch, striped bass, American and hickory shad, river herring — are out there somewhere and coming this way. And the urgency of the ones that do come to spawn in the waters of their birth is as strong as ever.
 
Anglers like Gordon, Paula and me are primarily interested in white perch. They’re the sweetest meat that swims in the river and about the only one you can legally keep these days. Not that there’s much enforcement now that all the money goes to homeland security. (You don’t want to eat any fish that lives year-round in the D.C. section of the river.)
 
It’s too windy out there today anyway. If your anchor held, you’d still be swinging around like a tetherball, not a good thing when trying to fish deeper holes. And Fletcher’s won’t be renting its gray-and-dark-red rowboats for another week. If those factors aren’t enough — and they are — there’s the fact of the cormorants. If there were fish here, hordes of the black birds would be circling, diving and skimming. Today, they’re packed shoulder to shoulder on rocks out in the river, like Supreme Court justices sitting irritably for their portraits.
 
Even knowing what we know, every one of us would be bouncing bucktails or worms off the bottom all day if we could. We can’t help it. And we’re not the first to feel the pull of this river, these fish and this tiny cove. When Park Service archaeologists came in before a wheelchair ramp was poured a few years back, they dug up and carted away thousands of pre-contact artifacts. Their report concluded that the cove had been at least a seasonal fish camp for a very long time. Nobody at the boathouse ever learned exactly what was found, what it meant or even where it all is. If you’re one of the people the place speaks to, you don’t need a report.
 
Fletcher’s Cove is the only break in the Potomac’s straight shoreline for miles up and down the river. Fish stage in the cove’s protected water before slugging their way farther upstream. Big fish feed on little fish, driving them to the surface. Birds — cormorants, herons, ospreys and bald eagles, to name a few — come to pluck what they can. And anglers like us stage here, too. It’s part of the ritual, as is the strangely comforting knowledge that there are powers and rhythms out there we can’t begin to understand.
 
When Paula calls three days later to say that the wind should drop enough for another outing the next day, she doesn’t have to ask twice. “But be here by 6:30, honey. After that, all you’re gonna see is taillights.”
 
We launch Gordon’s 17-foot boat at Gravelly Point, idle five miles upriver to a hole I’m not allowed to name and drop our rigs in 40 feet of water. We’re fishing the small bucktail jigs that Dickie Tehaan, a fishing savant who grew up at Fletcher’s, ties by the dozen. He won’t sell them but gives them to friends. The term “Dickie jigs” is so ubiquitous at the boathouse that once, when I saw Dickie with a big walleye and asked what he’d caught it on, I was confused when he said, “Oh, you know, a white bucktail.” It took me a moment to realize that their maker, the humblest of men, is the only person at Fletcher’s who doesn’t call them Dickie jigs.
 
It’s five minutes before Gordon catches the first perch, a six-incher, a throwback. You won’t find a perch in anybody’s trophy room. Anything over a foot is a monster, while anything under eight or nine inches isn’t worth keeping. We move, then move again. We catch a few, but we’re not on them. At one hole, we hook more striped bass than perch. They’re hunting the fish just like we are. The stripers are bigger and fight well, but you can’t keep them.
 
Having exhausted the known holes, we drift, hoping to find a school. And then it happens. All of us hook up at nearly the same instant. Paula reels up frantically, throws a nice fish in the cooler, then brushes past me to drop the anchor and cleat the line. I’ve got a fat 11-incher on. Gordon has a double, a white perch on each jig. “Yeah, baby!” Paula crows. “Slide yours on back!” I bowl my slippery fish aft toward the cooler. I’m hyper-focused and giddy at the same time. It’s happening. If you’ve ever picked something ripe and abundant — berries, maybe, or pawpaws or even apples — you know the heightened focus bordering on mania that possesses you at such times. Your consciousness telescopes down. There is only the next ripe fruit and the next and the next. There is only the urgency of this moment. My own theory is that this response is hard-wired into all of us, that it helped Homo sapiens survive.
 
It doesn’t last long — it never does — maybe 10 or 15 minutes. We check the cooler. We’ve boated 40 or 50 good perch. We don’t talk about it. We move again, hunting and pecking, pick up a few more. At 1 o’clock, Gordon calls it. The tide is all the way in. Nothing bites well in slack water. We head for the ramp.
 
We arrange to meet the next morning at a newspaper-covered table at Fletcher’s to fillet our catch. You don’t want to clean a bunch of fish at home if you can help it. In years past, we had always cleaned the fish, then divvied them up. In fact, Paula’s liberal insults of my knife skills during the work are part of the ritual, something I look forward to. In years past, she has likened me to an ax murderer and my fillets to fish run over by a lawn mower. This year, she instructs me to take my share and clean them separately. “No more of your bony, raggedy-ass fillets for me, honey,” she says. “No, sir.”
 
I’m disappointed. But she’s right. I’m lousy at filleting. Then again, I don’t get the practice that she and Gordon do. It takes me an hour to do 25 perch, 50 fillets. It’s not a lot of fish. Ten fillets makes dinner for two, so I’ve got five meals. But the meat is only a small part of the ritual.
 
I put my fish on ice and head home. I’m happy. It’s spring in a way it wasn’t before. I’ve lived to see another circle around the sun. Like the perch, I’ve answered some strange pull in my blood.
 
Bill Heavey is an author and editor-at-large for Field & Stream. To comment on this story, email wpmagazine@washpost.com.
 
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Post #543

Post #542 by Rajesh Kumar on May 5th 2016, 2:00 PM (in topic “See how fishing for tuna with a DRONE could be the future for recreational sport”)

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See how fishing for tuna with a DRONE could be the future for recreational sport

Fishermen Jaiden McLean and Byron Leal hooked a 20kg fish using bait dropped from a drone before reeling it in from the beach    
 
The gadgets have been used to snap pictures and deliver mail, and now they could be responsible for putting dinner on the table.
 
The large longfin tuna who are a target for the fishermen are shown out at sea, but they're no match for the technology of drones.
 

 
Jaiden, who is from Kingscliff in New South Wales, works at and knows the seas.
 
He worked with Byron Leal to use the drone to catch a 20kg fish.
 
The drone dropped a squid bait into a school of tuna off around 350m off Fingal Head and then reeled it in from the beach.


 
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Post #542

Post #540 by Rajesh Kumar on May 5th 2016, 1:25 PM (in topic “Fishing Forecast: Catch some cobia while you still can”)

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Fishing Forecast: Catch some cobia while you still can

 
 
The season is just starting to show signs of heating up, but we’d best talk about it before it all comes to a screeching halt.
 
Much has been said and written about federal fisheries management’s order to shut down the East Coast cobia season on June 20. And whether or not North Carolina and Virginia choose to comply with those orders and keep their fisheries open in state waters inside of three miles is anybody’s guess. Agencies for both states meet at the end of the month to decide their respective paths.
 
In the meantime, cobia have started to show in the waters around Ocracoke and lower Hatteras.
 
So while anglers wait to see what direction things go, it might be a good idea to get in on the action.
 
When conditions are just right – slight seas and sunny skies – sight-casters are starting to find fish as they make their way up the coast. Bucktails, plugs and live eels and croakers will bring strikes.
 
More and more fish will move into Carolina waters in the next couple of weeks.
 
And the inaugural Dare/Hyde Cobia Shootout starts Saturday and runs through June 17. The individual angler competition is based out of Pelican’s Roost Marina in Hatteras, and there is an entry fee of $50. Anglers can fish as many days as they want and the biggest fish will take home $5,000.
 
Drum fishermen working the shoals around the upper sections of the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay will happen on the first Virginia-caught cobia.
 
So enjoy the beginnings of a cobia season, because nobody knows when it’s going to end.
 
Summer flounder, Illustration courtesy of Duane Raver


 
SOUTHEASTERN VIRGINIA
 
While drum have made a showing, and cobia are on the minds of nearly every Chesapeake Bay angler, flounder are garnering a vast majority of the attention.
 
The best action continues to come from the backwaters of the Atlantic side of the Eastern Shore, with fish available around Chincoteague, Wachapreague and Oyster.
 
It shouldn’t be long before flatties are found around inshore wrecks and artificial reefs, and along the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. Decent flounder already are being caught inside Rudee and Lynnhaven inlets.
 
Red and black drum are showing around the shoals and inlets of the Eastern Shore. Sight-casters working the mouth of the Bay and along the Virginia Beach Oceanfront should begin to encounter better numbers of reds.
 
While anglers working baits on fish-finder rigs will encounter a few cobia, they also will be the first to hook into the season’s first sheepshead.
 
Unfortunately, an extremely good tautog season closed at the beginning of the week. In its place is a lesser striped bass fishery that is surprisingly still producing a few fish meeting the trophy criteria. Don’t expect much.
 
Smaller rockfish are available in good numbers, but slot-limit spring fish can’t be kept until May 16. The sea bass season opens May 15.
 
Bluefish numbers are increasing along the Oceanfront and a few Spanish mackerel have been taken. A few scattered speckled trout, along with some bigger bluefish, continue to show in Rudee Inlet.
 
Croaker and sea mullet are being caught from the state’s fishing piers, but most are small. Crabbing remains excellent.
 
Bluewater trollers willing to head to the southeast will find some scattered tuna, wahoo and dolphin. Deep-droppers working the edges of the Norfolk Canyon will find sea bass, tilefish, grouper and spiny dogfish.
 
Red drum,  Illustration courtesy of Duane Raver



 
NORTHEASTERN NORTH CAROLINA
 
Tuna fishing continues to impress out of both inlets, with yellowfin and blackfin making up the catch. Dolphin are becoming more plentiful, with more larger fish showing. Bluewater trollers also are taking wahoo and a few sailfish have been released on the southern side.
 
Grouper season is now open and wreck anglers are finding them, along with triggerfish and some amberjack.
 
More and more big red drum are becoming available along the beaches and are available for both boaters and surf casters.
 
Puppy drum, speckled trout, bluefish, small black drum, blow toads, sea mullet and some croaker are being taken along the beaches and from piers. Pier anglers also will hook into their share of red drum and cobia.
 
Largemouth bass, Illustration courtesy of Duane Raver


 
FRESHWATER
 
Largemouth action remains outstanding on all fronts, especially since temperatures aren’t rising too fast. Recent rains have also helped keep bass interested.
 
Bass will continue to work shoreline cover and will take a wide variety of baits.
 
Bass-casters also will start to find bowfin, gar and chain pickerel to be interested in their offerings.
 
Crappie should still be available in shoreline cover in waters from five to 15 feet deep.
 
Bluegill are starting to migrate out of deeper water and should be catchable in five to 10 feet. Continue to look for bigger ones on the deeper side, with bottom-bouncing live baits being the best way to find them.
 
Big blue catfish should be migrating out of the deeper holes of tidal systems, making them a little more difficult to find and catch.
 
Lee Tolliver, 757-222-5844, lee.tolliver@pilotonline.com Follow @LeeTolliver on Twitter.
 
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Post #540

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