Bass Fishing Technique

by Bob Jensen Largemouth bass can, at times, be pretty receptive to whatever bass fishing technique you might put in the water.  On some days they’ll eat pretty much anything you throw that’s appropriate for where they’re hanging out.  If you throw a bait that’s made to work in shallow water, and if the bass [...]

Shallow Bass Fishing

by Bob Jensen The month of June provides some of the best fishing of the year in many areas of the Midwest. One style of fishing that is popular and productive is chasing largemouth bass in shallow water. When the bass are done spawning, they’ll hang around the shallows for awhile. The females take a [...]

Blade Baits

By Eric Olson Water clarity can be such an important variable that affects our success regardless the time of year.  Walleye and sauger both can be affected by poor visibility.  On rivers in particular when heavy rains or sudden run off can dirty the water and create poor visibility, anglers have to make the adjustments [...]

Topwater Bass Fishing

Top Water Fishing Lures By Nick Simonson I still remember the first time I watched a surface lure get inhaled and taken into the depths by a largemouth bass. It was a calm, sunny Saturday morning in late May and my buddy flung his Zara Spook about twenty yards off shore over a shallow flat. [...]

Soft Plastics for Bass

By Nick Simonson Fishing fast is a fun way of covering water and targeting active largemouth bass. Ripping crankbaits and burning spinnerbaits back to the boat triggers reaction strikes and puts a solid bend in the rod when largemouth are in a feeding mood. This fun-n-gun presentation also helps anglers key in on areas that [...]

Confidence Baits

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson   The woolly bugger is a pattern that rarely fails. Likewise, a ballhead jig with a curly-tail grub will catch nearly any fish. A red-and-white Daredevle spoon will with all certainty pull a pike out of any water that holds the species. These lures are time-tested producers; they are the ultimate [...]

Fishing Tackle Top Ten

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson Springtime means stocking the tackle box with jigs, spinners, twisters, spoons, crankbaits and more; usually more lures than I’ll ever need. However, if it came down to it, there is a handful of them I couldn’t go without. For whatever species I was pursuing, I would forsake all other jigs, rigs [...]

Catch & Release Tools

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson Catch and release works. Whether it’s preserving a viable fishery in a forty-acre bass lake or letting a trophy-caliber muskie swim back into the cabbage after an exciting battle, the mantra of C&R resounds stronger than ever through sport fishing circles. For those looking to preserve big fish it is easier [...]

The Coffee Tube

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson In the outdoors, it is tough to beat a hot cup of coffee in the morning. In the pre-dawn twilight of a fishing trip, a steaming hot Thermos-top-cup of java gears the senses up and gives an angler a reason to pause between casts, all the while adding a mountain-grown aroma [...]

The Fish I’ve Known

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson   We should all be so lucky to fish small waters, and fish the same small waters often. Time and time again Ixve said that our affinity with a certain river or small lake helps us take stock of the resource, to treat it respectfully and to see what a conservation [...]

The Texas Fishing Rig “Texas Rig”

Nick Simonson Summertime and the living’s easy. The fishing is pretty good too as predator species begin to enter a warm-weather pattern of eating, eating and more eating. Bass hide along weedlines, under docks and around stumps in wait for any prey to swim by. One of the most effective rigs for bass at this [...]

Fishing in May

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson   “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” This line, an eye-to-eye plea by Matthew Broderick as the title character in the 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, sums up our very existence. For anglers, month of May moves [...]

The Rapala X-Rap

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson     Whether your treasure on the water is colored gold, bronze or silver, the X-Rap by Rapala (www.rapala.com) marks the spot for great fishing. My experience with crankbaits has been limited; being predominately a river angler has restricted my usual arsenal to jigs and soft plastics which are comparatively inexpensive [...]

Beginning Again

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson   The orange jig and twister shot out from the tip of my rod, driven by the laws of physics and anticipation. The gray Fireline in tow spiraled wildly like the contrail of a botched rocket launch. The lure hung in the air, suspended indefinitely in the blue slivers of sky [...]

Topwater Fishing

By Jon Mitzel Long-awaited May is a great time to enjoy catching fish on surface baits. Northern pike and largemouth bass are aggressive fish and will readily attempt to chase food on or near the surface. The action is tough to beat, and most hits are vicious in nature. What an exciting way to catch [...]

Hot Fishing Lures for 2007

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson Hang in there, it can’t snow forever. As if spring fever wasn’t bad enough, a fresh 16 inches of snow over the last week has put the “cabin” into “cabin fever.” But while nature-induced lockdown might dampen most spirits; anglers know that now is the time to stock up on tackle [...]

Summertime Bass Fishing Tips

Nick Simonson Slop, gunk, or matting, call it what you will, but by this time in the summer, the combination of weed tops and surface vegetation has sealed off water access for shoreline anglers and limited the area that boat anglers can work. But those anglers who overlook this green gobbledygook could also be passing [...]

Simple Bass Fishing Techniques

PJ Maguire The first step I took as a fisherman was from catching sunnies off the dock to casting for bass along the docks. It is true that bass are a sunfish, so in theory this is a logical step. Most of my friends, like me, first started serious fishing for bass and then transitioned [...]

Long Cast Minnow

By Nick Simonson Technology! Isn’t it grand? Today’s advancements have not only improved the way we fish, but the way we live life.Though GPS and sonar may be the first ideas in many people’s minds when it comes to fishing technology, today’s topic is a much simpler aspect of the sport, yet it is the [...]

Praise for Polarized Sunglasses

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson As I pulled up the trolling motor and hoped for a clean glide over the small sandy delta leading into a back bay on my favorite lake for Minnesota’s Bass Season opener, I was disappointed to not immediately see signs of fish ahead of the Grumman. My yellow lab, Gunnar, and [...]

Largemouth Bass Ice Fishing

By Jerry Carlson of Ice Team       When it comes to winter time fishing, there is no question I spend most of my hours searching out crappies. I love the activity involved in catching these fish. I also enjoy the fact that I can be successful during the daylight hours without having to [...]

What is a Frog?

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson   You might be thinking “what does he mean, ‘what is a frog?’ It’s green, hops, eats flies and goes ‘ribbit, ribbit.’” It seems like a pretty easy question, but two out of five kids, ages nine-to-11, when showed a picture of just that animal, could not identify it. Another stumper [...]

Fishing Laydowns

Joe Zentner  Bank sloping trees that have fallen into the water, known as lay-downs, attract fish throughout the Midwest. Long-time anglers are keenly aware of the value of immersed trees. The primary cover choice of freshwater fish is, in fact, submerged wood. A lay-down is a tree that has fallen into the water and is [...]

Arbor Vital – Fishing Flooded Trees

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson I  think that I shall never see structure lovely as a tree. Pardon the take on Ms. Kilmer’s poem; let’s consider it the angler’s version. But timber – be it live on shore, a deadfall along a river or a man-made reef on a lake – is structure that all anglers [...]

Fishing Lures – What’s in a Name?

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson When it comes to marketing, a good lure needs a good name. No angler is going to buy lures called The Skunk, Zippo, or The Blanker. Lures must have two essentials to catch the attention of anglers. First they must catch fish, and second they must have a moniker to remember. [...]

Best Bass Fishing Lures of Today

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson     Topwater fishing for bass is nothing new. Anglers have experienced the excitement of having bass explode on lures such as the Zara Spook, Rebel Pop-R, and pre-rigged surface plastics like the Bass Rat for decades. But recent revolutions in plastic baits have bass anglers buzzing at the tackle shop [...]

Top 10 Fishing Lures of All Time

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson Springtime means stocking the tackle box with jigs, spinners, twisters, spoons, crankbaits and more; usually more lures than I’ll ever need. However, if it came down to it, there is a handful of them I couldn’t go without. For whatever species I was pursuing, I would forsake all other jigs, rigs [...]

Free Fishing Log – Printable Fishing Log

Our Outdoors Nick Simonson “Putting together the fishing pieces of the puzzle” Fishing, no matter how good a person gets at it, is still the grandest puzzle of all. There are so many elements that have to be put into place such as weather, season, bait, lures, and so on. When looked at in hindsight, [...]

Carolina Rig Fishing

By Kevin Dahlke     The Carolina Rig is a technique that has been around for quite some time. It is used to cover an area quickly to find out what kind of structure you are fishing. Personally, I have put this technique on the back burner for the last number of years, but as [...]