Wader Questions...

I am looking for some general direction when it comes to Waders. I know I want some stockingfoot waders and boots. I am just wondering if you guys have opinions on:

Good quality brands?

Best quality brands for the cheapest price?

Good place to buy waders?

Is there a specific time when waders go sale? (like an end of season sale or anything?)

Fishing Ethics and Ettiquette

This is based on a post by Howard over at Windknots and Tangled Lines. Howard is a fantastic blogger and a real class act. When I read his blog post, I took the time to thank him for his approach because even though he was speaking about fishing ethics he didn’t do it in a shaming/condemning way, rather he took a more informative approach.

I will admit, even though I call my skill level intermediate, some of you guys have been fishing for decades and make my level of skill and knowledge look like a beginner. I don’t say that because of low self esteem or out of false humility, but simply honesty in the fact that I have a lot to learn and I’m only covering the surface. With that said, I want to learn. I am here to learn. I haven’t really had anybody correct me for doing anything “wrong”  except for one facebook comment and even then, I didn’t do anything illegal, just something that violated bass fishing “etiquette.” 

You see my profile picture of two healthy hearty bass?Thats the reason the facebook guy was mad.  I kept those sucker and ate them. Is it illegal? Hell No, I pay $45+ for a year worth of fishing and when I want to eat fish, I’m going to eat fish. With that said, I have never been a poacher or done anything stupid or illegal. I know most of the rules and usually look at the DFG handbook if I am confused about something. However, when it comes to “fishing ethics or etiquette,” I am not so well versed.

Although some may call it common sense, it is not common sense! Common sense would be,  “don’t catch fish just to kill them to leave them on the bank,” I think this is a great example of common sense as most people wouldn’t do something like this.  “Trout are a delicate species that require more care, and have a slime that protects them therefore it is best not to even take them out of the water,” is not what I would call common sense.   There are things that some have picked up along the way either from their fathers, grandfathers, other male role models, or even from other fishing buddies that weren’t common sense but rather acquired knowledge.

With this in mind, there are others that use this knowledge to try to argue with others or shame others into submission. I have choice words for that type of person, but I’ll keep those words to myself. Like the guy that called the fact that I had kept the bass in the above picture tried to shame me with his wisdom, what a rotten use of wisdom. On the other hand, my good fishing buddy Mark taught me that you must wet your hand when you catch and release a trout. My other good fishing buddy Sean taught me that you shouldn’t lay a trout on the floor because of the slime on them and their eyes possibly being damaged from being on the ground. If it weren’t for these guys I would be dry handing every trout I catch and tossing them on the floor! But because they took the time to share their knowledge with a fellow fisherman starting out, I now know a couple of these “unwritten rules” that give fish that are caught and released a better chance to survive.

All this to ask this:  Can you please take the time to share a rule/fishing ethic principle or two here in the comments ? (or feel free to e-mail me with them as well)

This could be for fly fishing or just fishing in general. I am doing this for myself but also, I would like to include a blog post/page on fishing ethics for beginning fisherman on this blog.

Thanks for your help everybody!!

Texas Fishing!

I am not as well traveled as most. Although I have seen Ukraine, El Salvador and Cabo San Lucas Mexico, I have never been outside of the four west coast states: Washington, Oregon, Nevada (which isn't really on the coast but is in the west), and of course California. This Christmas I will be heading out to Mcallen Texas and need HELP!!

I know nothing about fishing these parts! I did a little research and I found out that they have a popular canal fishing scene. That’s all I know. I am wondering if any of you have been out in that area or have ANY advice you can give me about fishing out there. Do you know any lakes, ponds or rivers in the area? I know it’s a shot in the dark but who knows, maybe one of you has been out there!? Let me know! And If I don’t get to say it later, Merry Christmas to you all!

Lures, Tackle and Sales, Oh My!

This one is for Angler's Belong who wrote:

Any pictures of the goods they send inside the box?

He is referring to my last post where i talked about "Mystery Tackle Box" A subscription service that sends you quality new tackle and lures for only $15 a month. With two posts about MTB and many to come in the future, maybe somebody has to sponsor me (Pay Me Mystery Tacklebox! haha)  they can just pay me in lures!

This is the type of stuff they send out

These Were included in Septembers Box

Here are the pictures you requested, sir!

Also, I'm not sure if you all were aware of this but Sports Authority stores are having a hue yellow tag sale on fishing lures and tackle. some of the stuff is crap but i found a lot of good stuff for VERY cheap. It's a 1/2 off sale so I was able to get some spinners, a sturgeon leader, a couple of jigs and some other tackle for Largemouths and Small mouths for about 10 bucks. $20 worth of gear for 10 bucks, That's a hell of a deal!


Any Sales that you guys have heard about? let me know and I will amend this post to reflect those sales.

Fishing Reports??

Does anybody have a Black Butte Lake fishing report?? I find myself searching the internet on this quite often! Black Butte Lake is a lake in Northern California about 20 minutes west of Orland, CA. It is known as a decent smallmouth, largemouth and spotted  bass fishery and an exceptional crappie and monster catfish mecca. With all that information you would think you would be able to find a single fishing report on it, but not at all. Or at least nothing recent. 

The sites that I frequent for my fishing reports include:

• Western bass
• Nor Cal Fishing News
• My Outdoor Buddy

Not a single one covers Black butte lake on a regular basis. One of the moderators told me it had to do with lack of a reliable source for a fishing report. While this is an acceptable answer, it still doesn’t give me what I want. 

So this is what I dream about:  One fishing report source! One single stop where I could check and get a report on any water I desire, not just the popular (larger) ones.  And I don’t just mean this for the one lake I’m ranting about, but all lakes and (dare I dream) all water ways out there.  You would think this would be easy, but it isn’t. By the way, I have attempted to make such groups on face book and on other social networking sites with no avail. 

The problems:

• Lack of a reliable source- Nobody really checks how many of each type of fish people are catching at each spot. Who has time for that? What about having people log in themselves and tell you what they are catching? See the last bullet on this list.
• People don’t want to share their spots – It’s a time-honored tradition. You have your secret fishing spots and you don’t want anybody to know about them. Especially if you are a bank angler in which case, the few spots we can access, we don’t want to share not only due to over-fishing an area, but this also brings morons who litter!
• Some people aren’t internet savy – just because me, my faithful readers, and fellow bloggers are able to write blogs and check websites and send fishing reports doesn’t mean everybody else who can cast the ol rod n reel can also handle this whole “internet, computer” thing!
• Some people just don’t want to- Why update a fishing page when I could be fishing more? Or doing something else or doing nothing for that matter?

That being said, This weekend I will be at black butte lake celebrating my buddy Dave’s last few days as a free man (bachelor party)! I will let you guys know what is biting and what we are catching. Apparently “BREAKING THE BANK HAS THE EXCLUSIVE OFFICIAL BLACK BUTTE LAKE FISHING REPORT” of the week, lol

Catch! ...and... Release??

So it all began with a snide remark from a guy on a message board referring to one of my pictures with a largemouth bass. Somehow he realized that it was a female (possibly because of the size?) and for some reason he assumed that I kept it. Even though I did keep it, I still resent the assumption that I kept it when he didn’t know.

So my conundrum comes here: I never understood why on fishing shows the pros would catch some nice size fish and just release them. I was raised to catch and eat fish. When I was a kid my dad and uncles would catch them, scale them, and clean them to eat them. The only thing I know is to catch and eat fish. I had always heard of catch and release but I never did this unless the fish was undersized or had any other regulation on it. 

Now that I’m older, know a bit more about catching fish and I think a little deeper into it, it does make sense to release some fish. A female that hasn’t spawned yet should be released. I want future generations to be able to catch this same fish. I also want this fish to create future generations. But I can’t lie, if I hook into a huge striper or largemouth that takes me a while to bring in… I can’t see myself letting it go!

New fishers, any experience with the philosophy and practice of catch and release? 

Seasoned anglers, what’s your opinion on C&R? you guys practice it? And if so how often?

Stocking Striper?

Boss pond is a secret pond outside of Williams, CA. The pond doesn't really have a name, we just named it that because it makes sense. The pond is on my friends dads bosses property (hence the name "boss" pond) and he stocks it himself. Apparently he has stocked bluegill, largemouth bass, small mouth bass, and catfish.

Recently we were out there fishing and i began wondering if it would be possible to add different fish in there... specifically striped bass!

To those of you who don't know, I have an affinity for striper! my dad taught me how to catch them, and to us they are pretty much the king of fish. I love them so much I have even thought about getting the above picture tattooed on me... no seriously, I have! lol

Anyway, recently we started discussing the possibility of stocking boss pond with striper. We figured we could catch a couple of 18 i striper, keep them in water and dump them into boss pond, hoping that they would survive, reproduce and thrive in the pond. I guess my question would be, is this a good idea? Would they destroy the fish population that currently exists there? Would they even survive in the pond? Thoughts, comments or follow up questions are appreciated!

Secret's out!

Easter weekend was a great fishing weekend. We went into the striper run at full force, expecting limits and nothing less. Unfortunately the striper weren’t having it! In fact, many anglers that were around us were saying the same thing but we all decided that within the next week the striper count should pick up.

Turns out our “secret” fishing hole isn’t a secret at all! We have what we thought to be a secret fishing hole out on the sac in Colusa. All last summer and winter, we hit that hole and rarely would we see anybody out there. All of a sudden at the beginning of the year we started seeing more and more people coming to ask us if we had caught any out there. This weekend we had four different anglers come out to check on the spot! Secret’s out!

Anyway, we used Anchovies and sardines with sardine pro-cure oil. There were bites but nothing major. While my dad was out of commission, his line got a bite, I ran over to get his pole, set the hook and brought up what I imagined would be a nice stripe! Turns out it was just this fat little 13 in channel cat which we ended up giving out to a group of anglers who were next to us and hadn’t caught anything. Wouldn’t you know it as soon as we left, they moved over to our spot!

Sunday was a good fishing day! After church we thought we might as well chase some bass in West Sacramento. Instead we ended up trying Putah Creek which some fols were recently telling me held a good amount of bass. Turns out they were right! There were a lot of bass anglers out that day and we ended up catching these two monsters! Pops caught his 17.5 in 3 ½ lber on a Yum Rubber Crawdad. I caught my 20 in. 5 lber on a wacky style rigged lucky strike black rubber worm.

Which brings me to my question of the day… Some guy in a discussion board, made a snide remark about me keeping this female largemouth. I thought to myself, “I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to?”  What’s the etiquette when it comes to female bass?  You see, I don’t know how to tell the difference between the two. My fat bass ended up being fat with eggs! I felt bad because I feel like I deprived that creek of future generations. Then at the same time, I consider myself a hunter/gatherer and everything we catch, we keep because we eat it! We’re not the catch and release type unless they are below size limit or prohibited for any other reason.

Well anyways, Seasoned anglers, have grace on me if I broke some sort of etiquette or rule, but please let me know if I did something wrong!? Newbies, I’ll let you know what the answer is once I get it!