Live Fishing Bait -Part -5
June 19, 2009 by Daniel Ambrose · Leave a Comment
Today we will continue our live fishing bait series where we left off discussing some live flying fish bait. We last discussed, in cryptic detail, the life cycle of the mayfly. Here we begin with some detail of the cycled appearance of these wondrous creatures.
Mayfly Nymphs usually have three tails and are best used for live fishing bait when they have exceeded one inch in length and are found in muddy stream bottoms.
The more mature Mayfly Duns are still sexually immature, dull in color with gray wings and are found near streams on some green leafage.
The Adult Mayflies, often called spinners, have triangular wings with an upturned tail that may be three times the length of the body and they are sexually mature.
This next one is commonly mistaken to be a large mosquito, when in fact it is an Adult Crane fly. About an inch in length with long spindly legs and see through wings that appear to have veins running through them. Mostly they are found in damp woodlands or near streams with trees all around it.
Usually seen darting and hovering over streams, lakes, marshes and ponds the Damselflies rest with their wings held lined tightly to their body, while the adult version, known as a Dragonfly, rest with their wings fully extended.
All our trout fishermen will be paying close attention here as trout love flies of all sorts and they are often spotted picking flies off the waters surface. Some trout, such as the cutthroat trout, even eat flies almost exclusively.
This is where fly fishing comes in. These experienced fishermen know that to catch these fly eaters, they must immitate them as best they can. Just as the normal fly will just touch onto the water for a very brief moment and jump from spot to spot, so shall the fly fishermen by casting their flies.
We will end our live fishing bait series here for now and we hope you will check back often for more great fishing articles, or better still, take a moment to click the RSS link in the upper right of this page and get signed up to receive instant notification of all the new posts I make.
Live Fishing Bait -Part-4
June 18, 2009 by Daniel Ambrose · Leave a Comment
We continue our live fishing bait series with our discussion on some of our favorite bugs. So if your interested in crickets, flies, and some other goodies like that, you are going to want to pay attention to this post.
The way I see the insects is there are the swimmers, the crawlers, jumpers, and of course, the fliers. All of which are like candy to different fish. They cannot help themselves when they come in contact with their favorite one, because they see it so rarely it becomes a treat.
Crickets and grasshoppers are a fishing favorite, because like nightcrawlers, some fishermen can catch them as they need them, and for others they are commonly available at your local live fishing bait store.
Crickets are usually found in wooded areas or fields, especially the dark-colored cricket, commonly known as a field cricket. There is a gray cricket that is commercially raised and sold in bait shops and pet stores.
Grasshoppers like grassy or weedy fields. Most are 1-2 inches in length. The dark colored grasshoppers are some shade of gray or brown and live on the ground. The green shaded crickets live on plants.
Mayflies are a fish favorite and they are a very interesting choice as they go through many changes in their short life cycle. Of course this is one of those which came first things, the egg, or the mayfly because their short life is so ever changing.
The mayfly life cycle is something to be aware of as they can be used as live fishing bait in several different stages of their metamorphosing life. So lets look at their short life and see something amazing.
1) A mayfly mates with the opposite sex while in flight.
2) After mating the female drops her eggs in the water.
3) The eggs sink, adhering to plants, rocks or other things at the bottom.
4) The larvae hatches in about six months. They eat and grow for about five months going through several molts -changes.
5) When full grown they swim to the surface.
6) Now it splits and sheds its skin -molts, and in seconds it has wings that harden.
7) The mayfly then flies off to nearby vegetation where it stays for a day, or two
It molts into an adult where it lives just long enough to mate and drop its eggs, except a few live for weeks.
Its the many changes and short life of this live fishing bait that gets it so much attention in this post, but we are going to pause here, we will say its in memorial for such a short lived fishing bait and we hope you will return to view the next post in this Live Fishing Bait series.
Live Fishing Bait -Part – 3
June 16, 2009 by Daniel Ambrose · Leave a Comment
As we continue in our live fishing bait series we find ourselves touching upon some other wonderful live fishing bait that all true fishermen are sure to find useful.
This first one I remember using alot as a boy because they were so easy to hook. In fact, I have even had them hook themselves on a baitless hook. I kid you not.
Bluegills, they have a blueish gill flap with a black lobe. The bluegills and other sunfish, often called bream, are well distributed in North America.
Mottled Sculpins, known to some as mudlers or bullheads, have large pectoral fins and they live in mountain streams of the West and many eastern states and Canada.
Yellow Perch are most commonly found in the northern United States and Canada. They are identified by their yellowish tint and have 6-8 dark bars running top to bottom on their sides.
Rainbow Smelt are iridescent with silvery sides and adipose fin, a pointed snout and long narrow body. They have large teeth. An ocean species, although they have been stocked in many inland lakes in the northern United States and Canada.
Whenever you are buying live fishing bait avoid buying baitfish with damaged fins, reddish snouts or fungus growing on the body. Fungus grows as white cottony patches wherever scales and slime have been rubbed off. This indicates the have been handled too much.
You should also watch out for any with bulging eyes and blackened heads, as this too are signs of disease in most kinds of baitfish. But moving along…
Lets take a few minutes to discuss some other live fishing bait. For instance, did you know there were eight different kinds of common fishing worms?
Probably the most commonly used is the Nightcrawler, big and juicy, how can the fish resist them. But there are some others that may not be so well known to you by name.
We use many of them perhaps without realizing their different names like the Leaf Worm, Garden Worm, Red Wiggler, Gray Nightcrawler, Grunt Worm, and even the African Nightcrawler.
So you see there are numerous worms that we use for our live fishing bait. So with that said I will pause until the next post where I will continue with Live Fishing Bait -Part – 4. Be sure and check it out as I am sure you will enjoy it.
Live Fishing Bait -Part – 2
June 13, 2009 by Daniel Ambrose · Leave a Comment
In our previous post we ended with descriptions of a few of the most common minnows that we use as live fishing bait. In this post we will continue our discussion of live fishing bait with the continuation of the minnow descriptions and then we will go on from there with other live fishing baits.
Goldfish, which many say resemble carp because they both have saw-toothed spines on the dorsal and anal fins, but goldfish do not have barbels and are found thoughout the United States.
Golden Shiners have a deep body with gold coloration with a sharp-edged belly behind the pelvic fins and they can grow to over one-foot in length. They prefer the quiet waters where they thrive in the clear lakes with dense stands of aquatic plants. Commonly found in southern Canada and the eastern half of the United States.
Southern Redbelly Dace, or rainbows – as sometimes referred to, have a reddish belly and two dark bands on their sides. Commonly found in the Midwest and South in smaller streams.
Red Shiners are deep-bodied and rarely exceed 3-inches in length. Males have orange fin edges. They are commonly found in large, slow rivers from the Midwest to Mexico.
Common Shiners have a broad body and deep, narrow scales. They are found in streams and lakes from
Saskatchewan to Colorado, east to the Atlantic Coast.
Blacknose Dace have dark blotches on the body and a black line from the eye to the nose. They live in fast-water streams in the eastern half of North America.
Finescale Dace have smaller scales and are less colorful than the redbelly dace. They live in bog, streams and lakes in the Great Lakes region and parts of Canada.
Spottail Shiners are named for a black spot at the base of their tail. They often share waters with the emerald shiners, but do not go as far south.
Emerald Shiners have a slender body, and a large faint band along the side. They live in the lakes and rivers in the eastern two-thirds of North America.
We will pause there for today but come back soon, or register with my RSS feed in the upper right hand corner of this page to see the next portion of live fishing bait called Live Fishing Bait -Part – 3.
Live Fishing Bait
June 11, 2009 by Daniel Ambrose · Leave a Comment
There are a lot of live fishing baits in this world and they all are broken down into many different categories. For instance, you are not likely to use a one inch minnow as your live bait if you are fishing for sharks in the ocean.
So you see there are some restrictions to what live baits you use and where you use them. Some baits are only available in certain areas or during certain times of the year, while others are simply not useful for one kind of catch, but extremely good for another.
We want to discuss things like minnows, and other baitfish, as well as things like crickets, frogs, toads, leeches and worms, crustaceans, salamanders and all sorts of flying insects.
Minnows are used for numerous reasons. Some minnows are chosen for their size, shape, activeness, sex, flash or color, even taste and smell. With so many decisions its a wonder anglers ever have time to get their bait in the water and this is just the decisions regarding the minnows and we still need to figure out our hook. But we will save that for a different topic.
Lets quickly go over minnows so you can identify them and perhaps even learn why some are chosen for one catch, but not the other. We will now identify the most popular thirteen minnows at your local bait shop.
Minnow Identification:
1) Fatheads, sometimes called mud-minnows or tuffies, have a short first ray on the dorsel fin and live in lakes and rivers throughout most of North America.
2) Creek Chubs look similar to the hornyhead chub, but have smaller scales and a dark spot at the front base of their dorsel fin. A very common stream minnow usually found in eastern North America and thrives in gravel bottom streams east of the rockies in the United States and southern Canada.
3) Bluntnose Minnows are more rounded at the nose than the fathead and have a dark band from the tail to eye and they live in the eastern half of the United States.
4) Horneyhead Chubs, also known as redtail chubs, have a lateral band that extends to the tail and they prefer gravelly streams from Wyoming to New York, south to Arkansas.
We will pause there and pick this up in our next post, so be sure and check back for Live Fishing Bait -Part – 2. I would strongly suggest you bookmark the website, or take this opportunity to sign up for my free RSS feed.
