bummed around Naples for a week prob five years ago and had a riot, it was summer so I’m sure the local fish species vary quite a bit seasonally but what I had the most fun with was spanish mackerel off the piers and once i got a little more gutsy sneaking into the sailboat/yacht club marinas, the mangroves held mangrove snapper and jacks along with juvenile tarpon (absolute riot), the snapper were live lining shrimp and the jacks and baby tarpon hit zara spooks and plastics, but by far the most fun was catching the young (still 20-50 lb)goliath groupers that hung out under the docks, the guy who put us up down there had a stand up boat rod and some huge lever drag reel that he lent us and we’d use that and a big circle hook, for bait you’d catch a saltwater cat and smack him over the head and hook em up under the chin, even the 20-25 lb grouper would hit a foot long catfish and the strikes were all the violence of a musky times about 10, most of the time they’d wrap you in the pilings and break off but you could wait 15-20 min and hook the same fish again and get your circle hook back, as far as the piers we used pilchers nose hooked on walleye rods and we killed the mackerel and lost a ton of line to tarpon, you could watch your pilcher dissappear into a giant toilet bowl flush on the surface followed by a few seconds of excitement and fantastic jumps followed by getting spooled, for the yacht club fishing what worked for me was memorizing a name off of one of the boat boxes and claiming to be a guest of Mr. so and so, that worked a few times and then I got booted but totally worth the azz chewing

I’m right with ya on the odd difference between summer and winter fishing, I think that during the winter lower metabolism in the fish dictate lesser needs to feed without discrimination, panfish in the summer can and usually are downright stupid and if the size/profile of your bait is even ballpark to what their preference for the day is color usually isn’t much of a difference, most of the time if I’m tipping with live bait I won’t use anything but a gold hook and even then I don’t believe it matters, when fish are finicky in the winter I don’t believe in colors as much as hues (dark, bright, metallic, glow) and usually that is as a result of water clarity, occasionally I do better even in more turbid water with darker natural colors if the fish are in a funk, but as a rule of thumb I’ll only go bright if the water is really dirty, metallic for tannic waters, glow at night and low light periods, and dark/natural colors for everything else, I’ve never really seen in openwater times where a similar color orange vs firetiger, chartreuse vs yellow, black vs purple makes a big difference, usually it boils down to profile and presentation, I’ve had guys both open and hard water try to tell me that there’s one secret color and I had better have it only to go with my gut and smoke them with something else, you gotta go with what YOU believe will work, confidence is key as I believe someone already said

whatever tail position makes a close fish illegal seems to be the preferred DNR measurement

the bulk of the snow is where it needs to be, far away by the headwaters, they can have it, we’ll get it in the spring in liquid form

yep lake ec dam, and correctamundo on the chore boots

Grizzly 24″ ul with a slaters mini reel, old school, can’t buy the fish, not saying they aren’t nice but a 100 dollar combo isn’t gunna put more fish on the ice

p.s. the boys at the kewaunee nuke plant don’t appreciate sneaky fishermen, nowhere to hide there either, grrrrrrr

next decent day on a weekend I’m gunna hit up a spot on the Miss that hot water discharge keeps open…, AND IT’S NOT REDWING, yeah who woulda thunk, but it involves a decent hike and a good terrain utilizing sneak through a coal plant, post some pics if I get down there soon, never hit it from shore but ditched a boat there to hit the retention pond before, this is the time where the ambitious get first dibs, gotta love it, anyone who’s ever snuck into a fishing hole has to agree that the moments of nervous giggling laying in the grass waiting for someone to finish their smoke break and go back inside often are more memorable than the fishing itself

hope my last name doesn’t become taboo

if you could find a way to heat lakes/rivers to 44-48 degrees it would help, and maybe play a little marvin [censored] underwater to set the mood

There’s a guy who rents one on wissota but that’s gunna be 12″ cigars and and a handful of really big crappie, not sure if that fits the bill but it’s close. I think his name is Mark McIlquham.

Gillespie is the flavor flav of fishing or whatever he calls it, I’d dig Joe Bucher or Larry dahlberg and James, could throw Pete Maina in there too, one day of walleye one of skis, north country smackdown

no can’t say I have, big thumbs up on the 3mm, supposedly fiska makes a 2.5 but usually if I’m going small it’s gunna be size 12-16 marmooska, lead ain’t cool anymore but the slower fall I think makes a big difference, I’ll pick up some of those chekai jigs and let ya know how I do, sounds like some kind of crazy polack invention but at least around west central wisco those are the best kind, if I can remember to post a pic. I made “the polish snowmobile” that things is the sweetest ice sled I’ve used, fits a five gallon buckets width perfectly (24 pack of brew fits snug too), and sits on skis, it’s even got a compartment in front that fits a spare pounder of propane and has hooks on the back for skiddin out slimers

I noticed the shark hook too, I wish every company used the hooks on fiskas, those things are insane, never really liked the gill pills orientation as far as tie point, it seemed like I would always have to squash the knot back against the jig body to make it work like I wanted to, to me fiska or scandia makes a better jig than anything in the CJS lineup and if I was gunna use a shrimpo or ratso I could do the same thing better with a purist or rembrant in the shallow stuff

steady is the most predictable but the most violent crazy bite windows I find are always on a falling barometer just before a nasty front, just don’t wanna be there when it hits rock bottom and starts climbing, if you’re headed out and the smoke above houses is hanging low that’s your low pressure time, high wispy clouds and sun is the high pressure system, sometimes a guys gotta break out the ghetto weather center, oh and if there’s an east wind blowing stay home or bring lots of beer

I use 20 lb seguar flouro with the longest length applicable up to maybe 6 ft and a rapala sure set hook either #4 or #6 and if there’s not current or really deep water to contend with no weight or very little weight, I like to put a red bead above the hook and sometimes a brass bead between a couple glass beads above a tiny split shot to hold it in place (clacks when minnow swims), the sure set hooks are pretty cool I thread it from back of the dorsal fin to just forward of the dorsal fin, it pins the hook really right to the minnow and when the pike turns the bait to eat it I seem to get a lot of hookups in the roof of the mouth and thus less bite offs, flouro has worked out way better than I thought and I’ve only been snipped off a couple times or so in the last few years and I’ve had days where my flags have easily had triple the action of guys around me using wire

gotta keep all that hot air trapped inside…

Up until last fall I was a boatless wonder so wading was my game entirely, I like 6’9″ or 7′ so for increased leverage to turn fish, drive hooksets and punch through the wind, but over that it might be tough to land fish in the water, I like to be able to pull them right up to my waders, one thing in particular if you’re building a rod is to maybe think about using a shorter rear grip, when I’m wading deeper (chest pocket depth) I catch my rod butt on my sweatshirt/coat a lot on hooksets because your arms are hiked up to stay out of the water, I probably always will be a wader guy, less pressure no stress (other than falling and drowning) and bigger fish, nice to see that you’re making a rod specifically for wading have to post some pics/specs when you’re done

sorry couldn’t help myself, every time I think maybe I’m developing into a productive adult member of society I relapse into a weiner joke cracking moron

“just the tip,” that’ll never happen

One more and this ones got a pic, I was fishing walleye in EC and hooked a huge musky on my dink walleye stick (size 1000 shimano 6 ft light and 6 lb test), only got one look initially and it took off into the current, the river was full on flood stage and there was a terrible back eddy ripping around a sandstone cliff back towards the dam, I was putting everything I could on that fish to keep it outta there but eventually it got sucked into the whirlpool, the only thing I could do was wade out to a rock and open the bail with the hopes of the fish turning if it didn’t feel pressure, I managed to get to the rock without drowning and opened the bail, after about 30 seconds I was losing hope and started reeling in slack, there was a youngster fishing perch down there and I turned to him to tell him that the fish was gone and before I could finish my sentence the drag was screaming and the fish was headed downstream, from there it was a war of attrition until I eventually slid the huge fish into an eddy behind a rock and half grabbed half bear hugged the thing, never got a measurement as I was in a rush to get a picture and release the giant but that fish put up such a fight any number would have been an insult to it, if I had to guess right around 50 maybe a lil over, any guesses

I was fishing with my younger brother in oconto and we were maybe 9 and 12, we were eating cheetos watching some spawn bags on set lines and his rod started going, cheetos were flying dropped the flashlight in the water and the fight was on, maybe 20-30 min later he had a nice 17lb hen chinook in the net and his little size 6 octopus hook had threaded the eye of a treble snagged in the fishes back, the odds of that have got to be a bagillion to one, we don’t really see each other much anymore but that is one of my best memories with him, somewhere out there is a polaroid of that one but you’re gunna have to take my word for now

it was coming up like it was at least hooked in the front half but very suspicious that the video segment of them landing the fish was missing and suddenly the jig was in the corner of the mouth, never had a flattie bite in the winter and cant imagine that if it did that tiny jig wouldn’t have been buried somewhere deep in that maw instead of skin hooked in the corner of the mouth, leaning towards snagged… just my take

I’ll be back, I’m going to take this first run as a learning experience, I’m really looking forward to ice out and getting a canoe into these lakes, I’m already scheming how to weld up a canoe trailer for a bicycle, is there pike in many of the lakes other than horseshoe???

Tried the natural stuff brown duppies black purist you name it, same result could drag their butts up 2-4 ft and they’d either drop to the bottom of freeze up, usually I jig down from 2-4 ft above where I suspect the fish are and work back up, I’ll do that two cycles a hole and move, maybe the down jigging put em off but usually dropping into the fish too quick seems to result in less fish for me personally, even tried dead sticking with the occasionally twitch, would oxygen depletion possibly be an issue? both the small lakes we hit were around 15 acres and 20-24 feet deep at max, didn’t drill up any dead fish and the few dinks we caught looked healthy, the weather shouldn’t have been that bad I had a slowly dropping barometer in the early AM partially cloudy, west wind, maybe the quick warm up had em in a funk, lost for answers

no I didn’t, out of curiosity what did the bugs look like midges, bloodworms, usually when I cut the stomachs open I find more of a brown mud but if I pick it apart they’re tiny midges

Pug if you didn’t mind a little drive the amery area is really something the big lakes like round, bone, balsam and wapogasset get a lot of pressure but white ash, magnor, Blake lakes and the trade lakes get a little less and black brook flowage, apple river flowage and one other I can’t talk about get very little pressure and all have phenomenal panfishing some even have pretty decent pike opportunities

I have killed the gills all winter but it’s been a lot of finesse, size 12 all the way down to 16 marmooskas and chicken skin with ASSO 1lb flourocarbon, randy if you check out a post on I think the bluegills/panfish forum that was called “strips for bluegills” I posted some of the different things I do with chicken/duck skin as far as dyes, scents, cures… that combo of a 45 deg micro marmooska and chicken skin produces so consistently that I’ve kinda been using it as a crutch, over the months of December and January I left the ice with less than 20 fish only once and only fished later than 10 AM once, I’d say if anyone has struggled this winter go to the places you marked and couldn’t convert and drop down to the smallest gear you can find, keep in mind a size 16 jig requires no hookset just a pause and a steady lift opening the hook gap a lil helps too

I’m not talking about restricting gun rights I’m simply saying a handful of walk on only lakes per county would be cool, for people with physical disabilities or the elderly a class A permit to operate a motor vehicle on that water could be issued, we have more water in Wisconsin than we know what to do with, and you’re right everyone should have an opportunity to enjoy the outdoors, currently in Wisconsin there are no regulations (at least that I know of) that protect the interest of guys who don’t want to deal with cars/trucks/snowmobiles ripping around the lake all day, and I’m def not advocating against boats but a few more non-motorized lakes would be cool, sounds like I just gotta move to Ely

Depends on shape but I’d say 11 plus with some thickness might make a pound but 12 should for sure never caught one that big but my buddy is a taxidermist and he mounted two an 11-1/2 and 11-3/4 that were a lil over a pound but not very tall just thick