Friday, February 27, 2015
Three of my favorite things
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Smallmouth senses
Let's talk a bit about a bass's senses and how they view the world. All of a bass's senses are radically different from our own. For example take a bass's ability to see motion. It may be that motion may be the biggest driver of a bass's predatory instincts. The average motion picture plays at 24 frames per second. To us this fuses together into one continuous moving picture. But a bass can see motion so well that to a bass a movie would still be a series of one successive image after another even if the movie was playing twice as fast! Learning this has caused me to rethink things like the idea of painted spinner blades on lures. I've always thought, boy those are pretty but they are spinning so who cares. Well now I'm wondering about just how a bass sees a blade with an ultra realistic baitfish painted on it. I'm guessing the bass sees a flash of the fish, then off, then back again. I'll be picking up some painted blades and experimenting with them this year for sure. A bass is the ultimate motion detector, to a bass something has to move to be alive. And this amazing ability works even in extremely low light levels. A bass it is thought can detect motion at a hundredth of the light level needed for a human to do so and can find food using even faint starlight.
In contrast most small prey fish are wired more like humans, that is with lots of cones for seeing lots of color. Which means in the middle of the day minnows have an advantage and probably see the bass better than the bass see them. But come low light the pendulum swings to the bass's advantage. A bass has an eye loaded with rods for low light acuity. Which is why bass become more active and feed early and late in the day. It's thought that bass see reds and greens very well but not so much things in the blue end of the spectrum. In experiments bass often confused blues and purples with various shades of grey and intense blues with black. It could be that a grey plastic worm might be just as effective as a purple one! In other experiments it seems bigger older bass actually see better than younger bass. That bass can recognize smaller objects and see them farther away as they age. A bass has large round eyes set on the sides of it's head and can see everywhere but directly behind and below it. The ability to see prey or potential danger from almost any direction is a tremendous advantage But to really focus on something it must turn and face the object so the two eyes can work together in binocular vision.
The sense of a bass that most amazes me, that I find almost magical is the use of the incredible lateral line. Water is full of waves, not just on the surface where we see them, but everywhere, these waves are caused by anything that moves in the water. The lateral line system is the fish's way of detecting these waves. Lateral lines are what enable schools of fish to move together so effortlessly. Lateral lines also enable fish to sense and not run into things they cannot even see such as the glass in an aquarium. And in the case of predators like bass they help the bass detect prey. The lateral line seems very adept at detecting the subtle movements of small prey fish located some distance away. Every description of how a lateral line works I've read gets really complicated and hard to understand. It seems that hairlike bundles rooted in liquid filled follicles sense minute changes in water pressure. Plus more of these hairs are located in the liquid filled canal of the lateral line itself. The bass feels out distant objects by interpreting how they disrupt the intervening water then uses it's vision to decide whether or not to strike in most cases. A bass can even tell how big something is by how much water it displaces! And in one of what is probably it's most important functions, the lateral line can sense the flow of current. The longer the lateral line the more sensitive it is. In essence, a longer line helps the fish receive signals spread out over a bigger area and thus triangulate or pinpoint the direction better the signal is coming from. Time and time again you will find in this article references to the advantage bigger bass have over smaller fish. Many primitive fishes like sharks and rays use a special addition to their lateral line called the ampullae of lorenzini. The ampullae of lorenzini allows them to actually sense the electrical impulses of the muscles firing in prey animals. The only freshwater fish that posses similar powers are sturgeon and paddlefish. All fish possess these ampullae of lorenzini but it's thought they are remnants of having the same ancient ancestors as sharks and rays and they have lost the power of electroreception. Some sources claim that all fish are sensitive to weak electrical charges and even market gadgets to "clean" the current flowing thru your boats electronics. But it hasn't been proven that most fish are sensitive to weak electrical currents.
And in concert with the lateral line a bass also has an inner ear which it uses along with it's swim bladder to hear sound. Sound travels extremely well under water, something like five times the rate it does in air. So not only can a fish feel a crankbait coming in muddy water it can also hear it. Bass are also able to sort out complex sounds by pitch, tone, and pattern. Much like a person's ability to recognize the notes and rhythms played by a musical instrument, and to recognize the individual instruments even if they are playing the same note and rhythm. In other words pick one minnow out of the school or the sounds of one crawdad crawling on the rocks in a noisy riffle. Bass combine signals from the inner ear, the swim bladder and the lateral line to form an overall summary of a object in the water. Though a bass relies most on its vision, even blind bass are able to forage and feed because of the almost magical powers of their lateral line and hearing working together.
A smallmouth bass has two pair of nostrils called nares on each side of it's head. Some researchers believe that a bass’s sense of smell is a thousand times stronger than a dog’s! While the smell of injured prey does induce an instinctual response to feed, the smallmouth’s sense of smell often serves more important functions outside of catching dinner. It's thought a bass's sense of smell is the primary way that this fish avoids conditions in the environment that may be harmful. Things like high or low pH, low dissolved oxygen content, or even the gasoline from the boat motor you got on your plastic worm handling when it. Some theories suggest that intra-species communication, or the way by which smallmouth “talk” to each other, takes place by each individual giving off distinct odors called pheremones. In other words, bass know each other by smell rather than name, and communicate with each other by these smells. Male and female smallmouth probably use smell to cue each other to make whoopee at spawning time. Like it's eye sight a smallmouths sense of smell gets better with age also. A membrane called the olfactory epithelium, consists of complex folds that line the nostrils. It's thought bigger fish smell better than smaller fish. A 6 inch bass have 5 or 6 folds in it's olfactory passages. A 12 inch bass may have 10 folds. While that trophy 20 inch smallie may have as many as 20 folds. I think there is no doubt that scent could at times makes a big difference in your catch rate. Hand in hand with this, a bass has a good sense of taste and that "scent" you put on your bait may have a taste that makes a bass hold on to your lure just a bit longer.
In contrast most small prey fish are wired more like humans, that is with lots of cones for seeing lots of color. Which means in the middle of the day minnows have an advantage and probably see the bass better than the bass see them. But come low light the pendulum swings to the bass's advantage. A bass has an eye loaded with rods for low light acuity. Which is why bass become more active and feed early and late in the day. It's thought that bass see reds and greens very well but not so much things in the blue end of the spectrum. In experiments bass often confused blues and purples with various shades of grey and intense blues with black. It could be that a grey plastic worm might be just as effective as a purple one! In other experiments it seems bigger older bass actually see better than younger bass. That bass can recognize smaller objects and see them farther away as they age. A bass has large round eyes set on the sides of it's head and can see everywhere but directly behind and below it. The ability to see prey or potential danger from almost any direction is a tremendous advantage But to really focus on something it must turn and face the object so the two eyes can work together in binocular vision.
The sense of a bass that most amazes me, that I find almost magical is the use of the incredible lateral line. Water is full of waves, not just on the surface where we see them, but everywhere, these waves are caused by anything that moves in the water. The lateral line system is the fish's way of detecting these waves. Lateral lines are what enable schools of fish to move together so effortlessly. Lateral lines also enable fish to sense and not run into things they cannot even see such as the glass in an aquarium. And in the case of predators like bass they help the bass detect prey. The lateral line seems very adept at detecting the subtle movements of small prey fish located some distance away. Every description of how a lateral line works I've read gets really complicated and hard to understand. It seems that hairlike bundles rooted in liquid filled follicles sense minute changes in water pressure. Plus more of these hairs are located in the liquid filled canal of the lateral line itself. The bass feels out distant objects by interpreting how they disrupt the intervening water then uses it's vision to decide whether or not to strike in most cases. A bass can even tell how big something is by how much water it displaces! And in one of what is probably it's most important functions, the lateral line can sense the flow of current. The longer the lateral line the more sensitive it is. In essence, a longer line helps the fish receive signals spread out over a bigger area and thus triangulate or pinpoint the direction better the signal is coming from. Time and time again you will find in this article references to the advantage bigger bass have over smaller fish. Many primitive fishes like sharks and rays use a special addition to their lateral line called the ampullae of lorenzini. The ampullae of lorenzini allows them to actually sense the electrical impulses of the muscles firing in prey animals. The only freshwater fish that posses similar powers are sturgeon and paddlefish. All fish possess these ampullae of lorenzini but it's thought they are remnants of having the same ancient ancestors as sharks and rays and they have lost the power of electroreception. Some sources claim that all fish are sensitive to weak electrical charges and even market gadgets to "clean" the current flowing thru your boats electronics. But it hasn't been proven that most fish are sensitive to weak electrical currents.
And in concert with the lateral line a bass also has an inner ear which it uses along with it's swim bladder to hear sound. Sound travels extremely well under water, something like five times the rate it does in air. So not only can a fish feel a crankbait coming in muddy water it can also hear it. Bass are also able to sort out complex sounds by pitch, tone, and pattern. Much like a person's ability to recognize the notes and rhythms played by a musical instrument, and to recognize the individual instruments even if they are playing the same note and rhythm. In other words pick one minnow out of the school or the sounds of one crawdad crawling on the rocks in a noisy riffle. Bass combine signals from the inner ear, the swim bladder and the lateral line to form an overall summary of a object in the water. Though a bass relies most on its vision, even blind bass are able to forage and feed because of the almost magical powers of their lateral line and hearing working together.
A smallmouth bass has two pair of nostrils called nares on each side of it's head. Some researchers believe that a bass’s sense of smell is a thousand times stronger than a dog’s! While the smell of injured prey does induce an instinctual response to feed, the smallmouth’s sense of smell often serves more important functions outside of catching dinner. It's thought a bass's sense of smell is the primary way that this fish avoids conditions in the environment that may be harmful. Things like high or low pH, low dissolved oxygen content, or even the gasoline from the boat motor you got on your plastic worm handling when it. Some theories suggest that intra-species communication, or the way by which smallmouth “talk” to each other, takes place by each individual giving off distinct odors called pheremones. In other words, bass know each other by smell rather than name, and communicate with each other by these smells. Male and female smallmouth probably use smell to cue each other to make whoopee at spawning time. Like it's eye sight a smallmouths sense of smell gets better with age also. A membrane called the olfactory epithelium, consists of complex folds that line the nostrils. It's thought bigger fish smell better than smaller fish. A 6 inch bass have 5 or 6 folds in it's olfactory passages. A 12 inch bass may have 10 folds. While that trophy 20 inch smallie may have as many as 20 folds. I think there is no doubt that scent could at times makes a big difference in your catch rate. Hand in hand with this, a bass has a good sense of taste and that "scent" you put on your bait may have a taste that makes a bass hold on to your lure just a bit longer.
Sunday, February 8, 2015
hair jig surprise
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Ewing Bottoms, Indiana
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
River Camping
The last couple years it seems the thing I write about that interests people the most is when I post about my camping trips along the river. Now that it's the heart of winter it seems like a good time to start a conversation about how everybody does it. Here's how I do it.
I sat down once and tried to account for all the nights I'd spent camping in the outdoors. I tried to think of all the vacations spent for twenty+ years backpacking in the Appalachians. All the week long fishing trips as a kid spent camping on the Ohio river. The twenty five or thirty years we camped for at least a week a year in the woods bow hunting. The month spent backpacking the continental divide. And the countless nights spent one or two at a time along the river. The best estimate I could come up with is that I've spent a couple years out of my life camping.
The last few years I've taken three or four long weekend type fishing trips along either the Little or Great Miami each summer out of my kayak. Kayak camping is a lot like the backpacking I used to do so much of along trout streams in the mountains. In both there is a limit to just how much you can carry, either on your back or in the yak.
Probably the handiest gadget you can bring along to save weight is a water filter. I've had a bunch of these over the years and I've learned a few things. The best in the long run are the ones that have the ceramic filters. It might be cheaper initially to buy one with a paper filter but then you have to buy the filters and find them. Like fishing reels, water filter models seem to change every couple years and after a while finding the right filter was always a pain. And trust me you need to filter the water. Years ago my wife and I spent some time backpacking Rocky Mountain National Park which is overrun with elk. And even with a filter we both ended up catching giardia or some other protozoan parasite and spent half the summer cramping and going potty five times a day. Like I said filter the water.
I'm a huge fan of the little isobutane backpacking stoves to cook with. They boil water very fast and you can adjust them down to a low simmer. One of the little canisters is all I need for a three or four day trip. I do though cook on the campfire also which saves fuel. You can tell a difference in their performance in really cold weather but they do still work. I know because we started out one morning in fifty degree weather along a trout stream in the smokies when it started to rain lightly. By the time we got to our backcountry camping spot that night up on the mountaintop there was a near blizzard going on. But the little stove cooked supper and breakfast as well as thawed out the half inch of ice covering the rope used to hoist our food up a tree. It was a little too wild lying in the tent that night hearing trees fall all around us because of the ice.
I like to eat a meal or two of fish while camped along the stream. I carry some heavy duty aluminum foil and a zip lock baggie of seasoning. Then I usually bake the fish wrapped in foil on a flat rock nestled in a bed of the hottest coals I can rake around it with a stick. But you can't eat fish all the time. The handiest, lightest way to eat well is dehydrated food. Lots of dehydrated food is sold in places like Bass Pro in the camping section. But there is a way to eat better and way cheaper at the same time. What you do is repackage the little "add boiling water" cups you can buy in the grocery store. I'm not talking ramen noodles here.
If you go to Jungle Jims they have scattered throughout the store a wide variety of these dehydrated foods. Potato soup, chili, black bean soup, I'm guessing at least a dozen different kinds. And some of it is very good, as good as canned chili and soups. Kroger has a few of these but not nearly what Jungle Jims has. If your going on a longer trip the best thing to do is to repackage it all into ziplock bags. No bulky packaging and it's rainproof also. I usually take instant oatmeal for breakfast. Like the dehydrated food, it's light, filling, and fast to prepare. I carry a decent sized pocket knife and one of those spork things made out of unbreakable plastic.
I make my own firestarters. Buy cotton balls and Vaseline. Get a handful of cotton balls and smear Vaseline all over them. Then begin pulling them apart, shredding the cotton balls and mixing the Vaseline in. By the time you have it pulled apart into one big fluffy clump the Vaseline will be mixed all through the cotton ball. Stuff this along with two lighters into a ziplock bag. Pull out a little at a time, the equivalent of what was once two or three cotton balls will start a fire. Just start with small stuff and add slightly bigger sticks of wood till you have a fire. If you use small matchstick sized stuff at first you can even start a fire in the rain with cotton balls and Vaseline. And it weighs nearly nothing and squishes down to nearly nothing too. Just rip it apart and fluff it up again if its too compacted.
If I'm in the yak or hiking back in I only bring one pot. A small aluminum one with a sturdy wire bail. Like I said earlier I'm cooking things that only require boiling water so I don't need any thing fancier which would be heavier. Don't get me wrong, I love cooking with the Dutch oven and we make everything from roasts to cake in them. But that's campground or deer camp cooking. If I'm going to be in the same spot for more than a day I enjoy making all kinds of things to cook with. I'll cut forked sticks and a cross bar. Then find just the right half inch thru little tree that I can cut to maybe ten inches long and trim down the little side branches down to a couple inches each so that it hangs off the cross bar and the pot hangs off one of the stubs carved from the branches.
After all these years we have accumulated four or five tents. Everything from a great big one larger than my living room down to a little solo one that fits nicely into my kayak. The little solo one can be a bit claustrophobic though. If your going to take a tent I'd suggest the smallest two person backpacking tent you can find. But if it's summer I'm more likely to take a tarp and some nylon rope. With a good spool of nylon rope, along with the bungee cords I use to lash things onto the yak, I can rig up a pretty cool shelter. Everything from lean-to shapes to tent like shapes, with a bit of imagination you can rig one up pretty much anywhere. And have a lot more room to get in out of the rain than you would in a tent.
I stole that drawing from survivalistboards. com btw, It's a pretty interesting site if your into ultralight camping like this. Or just preparing for the end of the world I guess. So with all the above and a dry box for wallet and camera and a knapsack full of fishing gear I'm pretty comfy spending the weekend along the river in summer. I try to keep a small tube of sunscreen in my fishing pack plus a small flashlight AND a headlamp and a water bottle.
Oh one more thing. Those zip off legs, quick dry backpacking pants are the best thing ever made for wading, camping and kayaking along a river. They dry in minutes by the fire so you can get them soaked wading and still sleep dry and cozy. Don't wear shorts unless they are these pants with the legs zipped off. Just wearing shorts guarantees you will get in the middle of an endless patch of stinging nettles, have to take a dump in the middle of ten acres of poison ivy or that the mosquitos will be bad. Get the pants, you will never go wading without them again.
So there you have it, that's how I go about it. How do you go about camping along the river?
I sat down once and tried to account for all the nights I'd spent camping in the outdoors. I tried to think of all the vacations spent for twenty+ years backpacking in the Appalachians. All the week long fishing trips as a kid spent camping on the Ohio river. The twenty five or thirty years we camped for at least a week a year in the woods bow hunting. The month spent backpacking the continental divide. And the countless nights spent one or two at a time along the river. The best estimate I could come up with is that I've spent a couple years out of my life camping.
The last few years I've taken three or four long weekend type fishing trips along either the Little or Great Miami each summer out of my kayak. Kayak camping is a lot like the backpacking I used to do so much of along trout streams in the mountains. In both there is a limit to just how much you can carry, either on your back or in the yak.
Probably the handiest gadget you can bring along to save weight is a water filter. I've had a bunch of these over the years and I've learned a few things. The best in the long run are the ones that have the ceramic filters. It might be cheaper initially to buy one with a paper filter but then you have to buy the filters and find them. Like fishing reels, water filter models seem to change every couple years and after a while finding the right filter was always a pain. And trust me you need to filter the water. Years ago my wife and I spent some time backpacking Rocky Mountain National Park which is overrun with elk. And even with a filter we both ended up catching giardia or some other protozoan parasite and spent half the summer cramping and going potty five times a day. Like I said filter the water.
I'm a huge fan of the little isobutane backpacking stoves to cook with. They boil water very fast and you can adjust them down to a low simmer. One of the little canisters is all I need for a three or four day trip. I do though cook on the campfire also which saves fuel. You can tell a difference in their performance in really cold weather but they do still work. I know because we started out one morning in fifty degree weather along a trout stream in the smokies when it started to rain lightly. By the time we got to our backcountry camping spot that night up on the mountaintop there was a near blizzard going on. But the little stove cooked supper and breakfast as well as thawed out the half inch of ice covering the rope used to hoist our food up a tree. It was a little too wild lying in the tent that night hearing trees fall all around us because of the ice.
I like to eat a meal or two of fish while camped along the stream. I carry some heavy duty aluminum foil and a zip lock baggie of seasoning. Then I usually bake the fish wrapped in foil on a flat rock nestled in a bed of the hottest coals I can rake around it with a stick. But you can't eat fish all the time. The handiest, lightest way to eat well is dehydrated food. Lots of dehydrated food is sold in places like Bass Pro in the camping section. But there is a way to eat better and way cheaper at the same time. What you do is repackage the little "add boiling water" cups you can buy in the grocery store. I'm not talking ramen noodles here.
If you go to Jungle Jims they have scattered throughout the store a wide variety of these dehydrated foods. Potato soup, chili, black bean soup, I'm guessing at least a dozen different kinds. And some of it is very good, as good as canned chili and soups. Kroger has a few of these but not nearly what Jungle Jims has. If your going on a longer trip the best thing to do is to repackage it all into ziplock bags. No bulky packaging and it's rainproof also. I usually take instant oatmeal for breakfast. Like the dehydrated food, it's light, filling, and fast to prepare. I carry a decent sized pocket knife and one of those spork things made out of unbreakable plastic.
I make my own firestarters. Buy cotton balls and Vaseline. Get a handful of cotton balls and smear Vaseline all over them. Then begin pulling them apart, shredding the cotton balls and mixing the Vaseline in. By the time you have it pulled apart into one big fluffy clump the Vaseline will be mixed all through the cotton ball. Stuff this along with two lighters into a ziplock bag. Pull out a little at a time, the equivalent of what was once two or three cotton balls will start a fire. Just start with small stuff and add slightly bigger sticks of wood till you have a fire. If you use small matchstick sized stuff at first you can even start a fire in the rain with cotton balls and Vaseline. And it weighs nearly nothing and squishes down to nearly nothing too. Just rip it apart and fluff it up again if its too compacted.
If I'm in the yak or hiking back in I only bring one pot. A small aluminum one with a sturdy wire bail. Like I said earlier I'm cooking things that only require boiling water so I don't need any thing fancier which would be heavier. Don't get me wrong, I love cooking with the Dutch oven and we make everything from roasts to cake in them. But that's campground or deer camp cooking. If I'm going to be in the same spot for more than a day I enjoy making all kinds of things to cook with. I'll cut forked sticks and a cross bar. Then find just the right half inch thru little tree that I can cut to maybe ten inches long and trim down the little side branches down to a couple inches each so that it hangs off the cross bar and the pot hangs off one of the stubs carved from the branches.
After all these years we have accumulated four or five tents. Everything from a great big one larger than my living room down to a little solo one that fits nicely into my kayak. The little solo one can be a bit claustrophobic though. If your going to take a tent I'd suggest the smallest two person backpacking tent you can find. But if it's summer I'm more likely to take a tarp and some nylon rope. With a good spool of nylon rope, along with the bungee cords I use to lash things onto the yak, I can rig up a pretty cool shelter. Everything from lean-to shapes to tent like shapes, with a bit of imagination you can rig one up pretty much anywhere. And have a lot more room to get in out of the rain than you would in a tent.
Oh one more thing. Those zip off legs, quick dry backpacking pants are the best thing ever made for wading, camping and kayaking along a river. They dry in minutes by the fire so you can get them soaked wading and still sleep dry and cozy. Don't wear shorts unless they are these pants with the legs zipped off. Just wearing shorts guarantees you will get in the middle of an endless patch of stinging nettles, have to take a dump in the middle of ten acres of poison ivy or that the mosquitos will be bad. Get the pants, you will never go wading without them again.
So there you have it, that's how I go about it. How do you go about camping along the river?
Monday, February 2, 2015
Come visit me at The Columbus Fishing Expo
February 13th - 15th // 2015Friday 12:00 (noon) - 8:00 pm // Saturday 10:00 am - 8:00 pm // Sunday 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
100+ VENDORS including fishing tackle, gear companies, fishing guides, outdo...ors outfitters and much more.
60+ Seminars Taught by professional bass, walleye, crappie, musky, perch, trout, catfish and carp anglers, and yours truly on smallmouth bass in rivers. Plus I'll have a booth there signing my book.
February 13th - 15th // 2015Friday 12:00 (noon) - 8:00 pm // Saturday 10:00 am - 8:00 pm // Sunday 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
100+ VENDORS including fishing tackle, gear companies, fishing guides, outdo...ors outfitters and much more.
60+ Seminars Taught by professional bass, walleye, crappie, musky, perch, trout, catfish and carp anglers, and yours truly on smallmouth bass in rivers. Plus I'll have a booth there signing my book.
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Ten biggest smallmouth ever caught
| 1 | 11.9375 | David L. Hayes | Dale Hollow Lake | Kentucky | 7/9/1955 |
| 2 | 10.875 | John T. Gorman | Dale Hollow Lake | Tennessee | 4/24/1969 |
| 3 | 10.5 | Paul E. Beal | Dale Hollow Lake | Tennessee | 4/14/1986 |
| 3 | 10.5 | Owen F. Smith | Wheeler Dam tailwater | Alabama | 10/8/1950 |
| 5 | 10.125 | Archie Lampkin | Hiwassee Reservoir | North Carolina | 6/1/1951 |
| 6 | 10.0625 | Billy Westmorland | Dale Hollow Lake | Tennessee | 3/17/1972 |
| 7 | 10 | Billy Westmorland | Dale Hollow Lake | Tennessee | 3/29/1970 |
| 8 | 9.8438 | Andy Anderson | Birch Lake | Ontario | ?/?/1954 |
| 9 | 9.8125 | Willis E. Spear | Dale Hollow Lake | Tennessee | 9/9/1951 |
| 9 | 9.8125 | Harold Hardin | Pardee Reservoir | California | 7/3/2007 |
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