Successful Fishing with Friends & Family

Its been a great winter to remember your family, friends and successful fishing of years gone by.

Personally I can remember almost 70 years but also in the back of my mind remember both my Dad & Grandfather handing down information about how to catch Fish and feed your friends.

The information you are about to read covers probably 130 years of fishing facts.

I am looking at not one not two but three large or more tackle boxes & about the same number of rods & reels with the same number of spare spools of line. If I went fishing today it would take an hour of preparation to load & unload the gear.

I put my thinking cap on to try & find a common denominator to the many, many fishing trips in the past where we caught our limit of fish .

It certainly wasn't the hundreds of dollars worth of tackle boxes loaded with artificial lures , rod & reels .

Eighty-five percent of the fish that we caught were on a size #6 steamer hook , split shot worms or live but mostly dead minnows. I was fortunate that both my Dad & Grandfather tied trout Flies and guess what used # 6 long shank steamer hook. They were both traditional Fly tiers and their selection of flys really worked. My Grandson & I have learned to tie their flys and are presently experimenting with trout flys with glitter & flash added to the old school trout Flys.

They are working extremely well as the fish seem to be really mad when they hit, they explode at the fly missing it or just maybe I am too slow in trying to set the hook. I can tell you it gets the heart pumping even if you miss them.

This last year we caught a lot of what is known as pan fish , which were returned to the lake which is a good lesson in conservation. Today in a lot of lakes there is a slot size for game fish that you abide by which is bringing back the populations of these lakes.

We had the privilege of meeting some Americans this last summer that treated us to a fish fry not of Walleye or trout but Pan fish, crappie, perch & rock bass. If you were blindfolded you would swear it was the game fish that we treasure. It takes a little more skill to clean & prepare these small fish but is well worth the effort, the fillets are so tender & sweet cooked & are cooked in the same manner as your Walleye & Trout.

We recently acquired a large selection of # 6 Streamer hooks and have them packaged up in 2 dozen lots, included with this selection we thought we could print up a bulletin as to how to rig,bait these hooks in order to have the success we have achieved over the years and also how to clean & prepare your catch.

Back to basics that is what this is all about. Hook, line & sinker and a slip float to get the bait in the right location.
Many years ago you had about two choices for lines & one basic hook, the green hand line and the black nylon lines that caught all the fish we could eat. Today we have so many lines and styles of hooks it boggles the mind . In closing put this information to work for you I wish you tight lines & good eating.


Contact BIG "T" : bigtint@shaw.ca