all species fishing: August 2012

Friday, August 31, 2012

st. croix crocodiles

took my buddy greenwood out fishing on the st. croix in hopes of getting his first longnose gar. we started off the day targeting other species with just crawlers on the bottom but didnt have much luck. i caught a few small drum and kept them for bait. i rerigged both of our bottom rigs with floats set about 2 feet above the hook and we moved down to the mouth of the canal. we cast the lines a few feet out and it didn't take long before greenwoods float shot under and his rod doubled over. unfortunately the fish didn't stay on. the next cast he threw made up for losing the fish because again he got a take almost instantly. the fish pulled hard and thrashed all over until he dragged it up onto the bank. a nice longnose gar and a new species for greenwood.

we continued to fish this way and caught one gar after another.

i even caught my new personal best 30" longnose.

greenwood even got a lifelister shortnose gar and a nice one at that.

we fished into the night and eventually the gar bite turned off. we rigged up a rod with a huge chunk of cut fish and the other three with worms. we continued catching nothing but drum and bluegill for about an hour till greenwood hooked into something much larger. the fish didn't even bite he just adjusted the rod and felt the fish on the end of the line. it screamed the drag several times and eventually was brought closer to shore. i waded out to get a better look and saw a large pale fish in the light of the lantern. i grabbed ahold of it and carried it to shore. it was a smallmouth buffalo. i have dreamed of catching them for a long time and must say i am quite jealous of greenwood for beating me to it.

the bite slowed down and we began packing everything up. just as i was going to pick up my line with the large cutbait chunk the clicker screamed out. i let it run a few seconds and picked it up only to miss the fish. next week i will be back here night fishing to see what else lurks in the depths of the st. croix.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

a week on the river

i spent the last week in western wisconsin in a small cabin by a lake. the lake held quite a few large panfish but not much else so i spent my time fishing the nearest river. the water was crystal clear and packed with fish.

the smallmouth bass fishing was incredible. in the crystal clear water it was not hard to spot large fish holding behind structure. the middle of the channel was shallow and easy to wade pitching a gold bead head wooly bugger hehind every rock and boulder on the river produced a fish.

redhorse were also quite abundant in the river. silvers, goldens and shortheads were everywhere with the occasional greater passing through. we even saw a few tiny lake sturgeon swim by. my brother Randy caught the first fish of the day and it was also his first redhorse, a shorthead. we caught dozens more along with some goldens and silvers there over the next few days .

one of the days we fished the spot we caught all the redhorse at we had the perfect day to sight fish and spent our time tossing crawlers in front of fish. i watched in awe as a giant redhorse cruised right in front of me. i tossed a crawler a few feet ahead of it and drifted it down till it was in front of the fish. i saw its mouth move and my crawler vanished. i set the hook and the fish took off towards a down tree i turned it around and after a short fight had it up by shore. randy ran down to the water and soaked his shoes to land the fish. i had finally caught my lifer greater redhorse.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

no stone unturned.

using the dnr occurance mapper i decided to try and pinpoint the location of a few species today. i searched around some very tiny creeks north of the cities in search of tadpole madtom, mottled sculpin and several darter species. i narrowed my search down to two small bodies of water that according to the mapper contained what i was looking for. i tried each bridge that the shocking data was recorded at. most were just to shallow and weedy to fish right now but i did find one wide shallow spot with a nice rocky bottom. i waded through flipping over rocks in search of micros and it didnt take long. sculpin and darters were hiding under every bit of structure. i didn't find any madtoms like i had hoped but i did catch my lifelist mottled sculpin and johnny darter.

mottled sculpin

johnny darter

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

biggest channel catfish of the year

spent last night fishing one of my favorite cat spots. i have been very busy targeting new species that i haven't gotten out after cats in a while. after last nights success i think i will be spending some time chasing catfish this month. i caught one channel and one flathead but i also hooked a mistery fish on a crawler last night that screamed almost all the line out of my reel before wrapping something on the bottom and snapping the line.

the flathead was small and i didn't take any photos but the channel cat was quite dandy. a solid 30 inches long, my second biggest and the biggest of the year.