always forget spare socks.

The musings of an Idaho fisherman. I tell stories about my fishing adventures, as well as tie and sell flies. If you want to purchase flies from me, please send me a message, and I'll be sure to answer you. I can finish an order within a week, depending upon the amount and type of fly, and I can ship anywhere within the USA. For an extra $10 I can include a fly box (purchased, not hand made) in which I will ship your flies. For more information, please leave me a message. I'll try and get back to you as soon as possible.

[nosparesocks]

alright, so i'm gonna start blogging more seriously about fishing

but this means a few changes. right now i can't reblog or follow any fishing blogs since this is a side blog.

so here's what i'm doing

i've renovated my old tumblr domain, the one i got when i first joined tumblr, and i'll be doing all of my fishing blogging there.

here's the link

i won't be doing any more posting here, and i'm gonna try and shift all these posts over to that blog pretty quick, so nothing gets lost.

if you're still interested in following this blog, get over to http://lostalongtheriver.tumblr.com and follow me there.

[nosparesocks]

okay, hold on...

apparently Al Lindner left In-Fisherman in 2001.

i mean, i was 9 years old at the time, but HOW DID I NOT FIND OUT UNTIL NOW?

i mean come on! knowing who i am and what i focus on, i didn't find out about this until i stumbled across his "new" show's youtube channel? JUST NOW?

i'm shocked and dumbfounded. i mean i understand the reasons why he left, and i totally accept it, but how did i not know? the man has been my fishing ICON for the past 15 years of my life, and i didn't know he left in-fisherman?

what the heck?

seriously, i'm okay with all this, i'm just really surprised that i didn't find out sooner.

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finally dug out my fly tying bench after the flood back in august.

got a jig for ice fishing, some soft hackle flies, and a couple different types of streamers. all of these are super easy to tie, and they're all either patterns that have caught me fish, or they're based off patterns that have caught me fish.

lemme know if anyone wants instructions!

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Dinner time

Crank up the radio! Gonna get some steak and fried zucchini up in this!

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Do more of what makes you happy.

Carmel McConnel

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deep sea fishing! lemme tell ya, this was an incredible experience, and i recommend it to any fisherman. i had the largest Sand bass at 22", my dad consistently caught 20" sand bass (a limit was 5 and all of his were between 19" and 21"). my brother landed one of the two Yellowtail that were caught on the trip, it weighed 36 pounds. the ugly red fish he's holding is a Sheepshead, which is by far the ugliest fish i've ever seen. but it's very very delicious, and definitely worth it.

other species we caught included Lizardfish, Rockfish, Scorpionfish, and Whitefish. we were fishing sardines, anchovies, and cut squid all day on a dropper rig with a 4-6 1/2 oz. sinker and a number 4 or 2 hook.

i'm definitely gonna do this again

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Largemouth! these are from late May. almost all of them were caught on a Carolina rigged 4 inch curtail worm in Camo color. the largest was 14" and the smallest is the one in the last two pictures, at 4 1/2"

Carolina rigging is now my go-to method for bass, btw. i went fishing on the 15th of July on a lake i'd never fished in the summer before, and caught 16 bass, all on a Carolina rigged plastic worm.

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some pictures from early June during the Smallmouth spawn. the biggest is the one my brother (in red); 18" long and 3 1/4 pounds, caught on a red Rooster Tail spinner.

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Dinner! i figure with all the bluegill i'm catching i might as well share my recipe for frying the delicious little buggers.

keep in mind, you'll have to increase and decrease quantities depending on how many fillets you have:

panfish fillets

2 eggs

1/2 cup of milk

1 cup flour

1/2 cup bread crumbs (optional)

2 tablespoons Lemon Pepper seasoning

1 1/2 tablespoon Italian seasoning

3 teaspoons Cajun seasoning

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground black pepper

1 teaspoon your favorite seasoning salt

instructions:

crack eggs into bowl and add milk, blend them together until it's a creamy yellow, set aside.

pour all dry ingredients into a gallon ziploc bag, zip closed and shake thoroughly until all ingredients are well bended.

dip fillets first into the egg/milk mix and then drop them into the gallon ziploc. (i usually do four at a time) shake vigorously and fry in hot oil, repeat with remaining fillets.

dip, shake, fry, repeat. fry the fillets until they begin to flake apart, or if you want crispy fish, until they're golden brown.

dab the fillets dry on a paper towel and set aside to cool. they won't take long to cook, so be vigilant or else they'll burn. add more oil to the pan as needed.

[nosparesocks]

some scenery of the pond, and my dinner that night, i finally dug out the pontoon boat and did most of my fishing from there.

and of course, the classic hot dog over an open fire. you really can't get much better than a good day of fishing concluded with hot dogs under a beautiful night sky on a warm night.

[nosparesocks]

the second trip to the ponds: overnight, and significantly more successful, with a grand total of 30 fish. 28 were small bluegill, no bigger than 4"-5" and the other two fish were a pair of carp, one going 5lbs 12oz, and the larger one (pictured) going 6lbs 14oz. both were caught on 4lb test line, which is INCREDIBLY challenging,not to mention an absolute BLAST!

[nosparesocks]

been a bit...

last you heard from me, i was going back to the pond after a cold front, unfortunately it DID completely shut down fishing. i managed a few trout out of the creek that runs nearby, but i didn't get any pictures.

since then i've been on a couple more trips to the pond, the first i was completely skunked on, but the second was more successful.

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heading back to the pond

tomorrow afternoon i'm going back to the pond with a friend. unfortunately a cold front came in last night, and probably killed any chances we had at bigger fish, especially since i have no way to get the canoe there as of yet.

so far, i've been lucky and the cold front isn't too bad. i just hope my luck holds out and it warms up enough to get the bluegills feeding again. we'll see what happens.

but, knowing in advance that the weather isn't terribly good, i can plan ahead for the worst.

i'll be mostly fishing slow and subtle with bobbers, tiny flies and jigs, and live bait. if the fish get more active, or i'm not consistently catching fish, i'll start experimenting with everything from tiny crankbaits and poppers, to spinnerbaits, to tube jigs.

this'll be an especially important time to focus on In-Fisherman's equation: "fish+location+presentation=success"

i know the bluegill will likely be in a negative mood, so now i have to figure out where they are, and what exactly they want to eat. if i had all day it'd be significantly easier, but i have to work in the morning so we'll only have about 5 hours at maximum to fish.

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What happens to the fish you catch? I mean, 36 is a lot. :o

i release most of them, depending on the species, their size, and where i'm fishing.

say i'm fishing one of my favorite lakes for bluegills, the 'gills there can get to be 9" pretty regularly, and 8" fish are common. so if i keep any, i'll keep the ones that are around 8"-8 1/2", maybe a couple 9-inchers if i've been catching a lot of them; and i won't keep more than maybe 15 all day. but say i'm fishing a different lake, where bluegills seldom get larger than 7 inches or so, and there's LOTS of them. "can't make a cast without catching a fish" type of lots. then i'm likely to keep more fish, maybe 30 in a day. they'll be slightly smaller ones too; the 6" and 7" fish, releasing any that go bigger than that. keep in mind, in northern climates like where i live, a 10" bluegill is incredibly rare, and any that go bigger than that are LEGENDARY.

now, say i was fishing for trout in the same lake. i'll still account for size, but most trout in lakes around here are stocked by the Fish and Game, are not fertile (they can't reproduce), and are much more likely to grow large in the right conditions. with this in account, i would keep trout on the LARGER end of the spectrum. 10" is usually pretty small for a Rainbow Trout, and they tend to taste better the bigger they are. however, if i was fishing for trout in a river or stream, i wouldn't keep any fish unless it was fatally injured.

this is called "selective harvest" i judge the general size of the fish i'm catching, how many there are in the body of water i'm fishing, and the species of the fish. each of these factors help me to determine how many i should keep, and what size they should be before i do keep them.

and as for "36 is a lot", that last trip was pretty close to a 70 fish day. if i'm out all day, and the conditions are right, i can easily catch more than 100 fish in a day.

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yesterday i returned to the pond. after about 2 weeks of weather seldom colder than 35, i knew the ice would not be good. i packed open water rods, ice rods, and a fly rod, there's a river nearby, so i wasn't planning on wasting the trip.

my suspicions were confirmed when i found less than 1/3 of the pond had ice on it, and it was thin enough that i could've fished through it from shore if i wanted to.

i didn't expect the fishing to be any good, nevertheless i took a walk around the perimeter to assess what the water was like this soon after ice off, and i caught sight f a small bluegill sipping gnats off the surface.

long story short, i spent an hour or so on the dock flicking a size 18 PMD at tiny bluegills with some success. soon after, i switched to my ultralight rod and started fishing with maggots under a bobber on a hook and split-shot rig, catching several fish in a few minutes.

after that, i left the dock to find larger fish elsewhere on the pond. i found them near a beaver lodge, casually eating gnats and backswimmers among the sticks.

here, i had to refine my tactic; the fish kept hitting the split-shot instead of the hook. so i switched to a small ice fishing jig and landed a large number of bluegill, 10 of the ones ranging from 6" to 8" are now occupying a small bag in my freezer.

Largemouth Bass were there on occasion, and i caught a couple of 7"  Green Sunfish in the last few minutes of light.

those Green Sunfish bring me particular joy, and make me anticipate this next summer much more, for one specific reason.

for the past few years, i've been chasing big Bluegill, and Perch in hopes of either beating my personal best (10" Bluegill, 12" Perch), or catching a new state record fish and getting my name printed on the records list in the state fishing regulations.

i didn't have much hope for catching a state record until last year, when i discovered that this particular pond held Green Sunfish. a fish that i had previously thought only stocked in middle or western Idaho waters, not southeastern ones. Upon some research ( i flipped a few pages in the regs) i found that the state record green sunfish weighs only 5 ounces, as opposed to the state record bluegill and perch, which weigh more than a pound. to the point, i intend to hold a state record by the end of summer, and these bigger green sunfish are giving me high hopes in favor of my success.

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3 days after my previous post, i went back to the same pond.

this time WITH my magic blue box.

after catching a few early on, and then a long lapse of action, i started looking around until i found where the majority of the fish were hanging out. nothing really big, as you can tell, but i lost count of how many fish i caught after 36 or so.

overall a good day, and a definitive illustration of how helpful electronics can be in ice fishing.

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this was i day i will never forget.

because, as you can see, i forgot my sonar.

i was in such a big rush to get out the door and on the water, that i forgot one of the most important things in my arsenal, and by the time i realized it was back at home, still on the charger, i was almost at the lake.

so.

i caught 13 fish in 4 hours, which is not too bad considering the fact that i had no clue what was down there or if there were even any fish, let alone if any were looking at my jig.

so i did the best with what i had, i found a spot that i'd fished previously with good luck, set up some dead rods to bring fish into jigging range, and proceeded to jig up a storm for the next 4 hours.