My fishing adventures.

 

A while back I wrote about all the fish I had ever caught and the fact that I have gone fishing quite a bit more than I have in past years. Since it has been a slow news weekend and I have nothing else to write about I figured I would write an update about how I have done fishing this year. 

Though I have been fishing since I was a kid, I decided to go more often this year, dramatically so, largely because my other outdoors hobby, shooting, has been largely destroyed by massive demand for ammo. I have been going once or twice a week, weather permitting, for awhile now. 

I started in March and April during the Walleye run up here, and it did not go well for me. I think I snagged a baby perch and that was it. Lost a ton of lures, only had a couple of bites, and only even saw a couple walleyes get caught. 

Later in April I finally started to catch some fish. Part of that was switching from lures to live bait, which seemed to help a lot. But I have been catching some fish now on lures as well. The fishing got better as the year went along and I have only been skunked once since then (most likely because I was fishing in a new spot that time). 

I have had quite a bit of luck. I have caught my new personal best channel catfish (see above) which was 6 pounds even. That probably isn't too impressive and I have seen bigger fish than that get caught but it is the biggest one I have gotten. I also caught my personal best sheepshead (freshwater drum) which also weighed 6 pounds even, funny enough. 

I have also crossed a few fish off that I hadn't caught before. I finally caught a white bass, seen below, and I actually caught two of them, both on crankbaits. I know people can fill coolers full of the fish in the right places, but where I go isn't one of them, and I was just impressed that I caught them at all. And as I posted before I caught my first white perch awhile back before as well. 

But what has really blown my mind is how many sheepshead I have caught. The fish are kinda ugly and not something I would ever want to keep but they do put up a very good fight. And some of them have been dramatically bigger than the ones I caught back in the day when I was a kid. Plus, I have been catching some of them on crankbaits and other artificial lures, which is not something I have done ever. 

Despite catching my personal best catfish, I haven't much luck targeting them. I have mostly caught them on nightcrawlers with my cut bait being ignored on the bottom. I am not sure what the deal is there but I do think it's funny that I spent a lot of money on a new catfish rod and other tackle for the fish, and I am still catching them on the same nightcrawlers I have always used. 

There are also a few more species of fish I want to catch this summer. I tried a new place that supposedly had smallmouth bass but all I caught were sheepsheads again. Don't get me wrong, they were big sheepshead and fun to catch, but not what I was expecting. 

I also want to try going for bowfin/dogfish and possibly gar. I know a place that has them but I didn't have much luck fishing there due to the poor conditions that day. I've never caught either fish and it might be fun to try for it. 

I do wish I had the ability to buy a boat. I have the money for it, I just don't have a place to store one. Shore fishing is tough and it's not always fun to deal with the crowds. Most of the available fishing areas around here are in parks, and then you have to deal with screaming kids. And it would be nice to be able to go to the fish instead of waiting for them to come to me. 

I also have to say that I see so many people making mistakes when I go out. Things like using a bobber with 12 inches of line underneath to try and catch fish in 15 feet of water. Using buzzbaits and other surface lures in the middle of the river. Complete ignorance of the bag limits and regulations. It's really a mess. I think a lot of people got into the hobby last year during the pandemic as it was one of the only excuses you could use to get outside. And a lot of these people don't know what they are doing. 

That being said, I have also seen some pretty amazing fish get caught. A guy today caught a pretty large flathead catfish (and I almost died of jealousy). And last week I saw a guy catch an absolutely massive (for around here) 7.5 sheepshead. It's clear that the places I go have a ton of big fish in them. It's just a matter of catching them!