1. Northland Fishing Line. While I was at an outdoor writers' convention I grabbed some samples of Northland's 'Bionic' fishing line. All of the samples have performed well but the one that I like the best is their 5 pound test panfish line in blue camouflage.Why blue camouflage? Because panfish tend to feed upwards from below their food. I have a native green sunfish in an aquarium in my home library and I feed him bugs several times a day. When he is hungry he sits there about five inches below the surface with his face tilted slightly upwards. The fish in my house is used to me and is practically house-broken. But a wild fish will spook sometimes at the sight of a line attached to what looks like food -- especially if the area has been fished a lot. Panfish can definitely learn, if my green sunfish has anything to say about it. Making the fishing line blue can help it to blend in with the sky and water that the fish expects to see above him on a clear day.
Northland's 5 pound test is actually more of a 6 or 7 pound test line in terms of strength but is rated as a nominal 5 pound line based on the thin diameter of the line. It is sensitive and reasonably strong and makes the smallest bluegill feel like a trophy as you wrangle it in.
Don't use expensive lures with this line around a lot of snags, though. I find that it breaks off pretty quickly when I'm trying to free a snagged lure. This is only to be expected with a 5 pound test line, I supposed.
2. The Jitterbug fishing lure. When I was a kid I remember that my father had one of these in his tackle box. I never had one myself until this summer. This lure is a classic that has been in production for nearly 75 years and experienced bass fishermen are probably already familiar with it. This thing is absolute mayhem on largemouth bass. My second cast with it landed a 17 inch bass. The fifth cast pulled in a nice 13 incher. After that I figured that dinner was pretty well sorted out and so there was no sixth cast.
Yesterday while floating down the Rivanna river in a canoe I handed one of these to my skeptical friend Fergus Clare, who is really a much better fisherman than I am. He prefers weedless hooks with soft Powerbait lures, which I also frequently use. Within a few minutes he had hooked what I could see was definitely an enormous something-or-other. It was big, it fought like holy hell and Fergus had just about landed it when it snapped off his four pound test line and left with my Jitterbug.
Wasn't I just saying something about expensive lures and light test line?
3. Speaking of weedless hooks, they really do work. There are various competing designs out there. These Pro-Strikers have worked very well for me. They only cost around $0.75 each and they make a huge difference when you are fishing in heavy weeds. Literally, at times these guys are the difference between whether I keep fishing or get sick of pulling weeds off the hook after every cast and go home.
I have a rule of thumb for buying fishing tackle when I don't have any other information to go on. The product with the plainest package design that looks like it hasn't been updated in the last thirty years gets my money. Somehow that's usually the stuff that works the best.
4. Bent-shaft canoe paddles are miraculous. I cannot even begin to consider fishing from a motor boat for lack of money for a boat, trailer, truck to haul it with, or gas to feed to the boat. What I have to use, on those occasions when I can even afford the gas to transport it to the water, is a canoe. I'm a big fan of long, multi-day river trips in my canoe. In an age where gasoline regularly creeps up around $4 a gallon I like the fact that the canoe is powered by my body, which in turn is powered by the fish and birds that I kill and eat while on the water that the canoe moves me across.
Its like perpetual motion. With guns.
Anyway, a bent-shaft paddle is much more ergonomically comfortable for long paddles than a standard paddle. I can go for hours longer with this thing in hand. My own paddle is very much like the one in the link here, though not identical. It is one of my most favorite objects that I own. The down-sides to a paddle like this are that they tend to be expensive (bent-shafts start at around $50 or so for a crappy one) and that the fine laminated wood construction of the better-priced paddles tends to discourage their use in serious whitewater. You can find them in more durable carbon fiber construction but expect to pay anywhere from $200-$500 for those.
5. Kill Cliff. My friend, Baker Leavitt, recently sent me a case of a sport drink called 'Kill Cliff'. I started grabbing a can or two when I head out to hunt or fish in hot weather. The idea behind Kill Cliff is to fight inflammation and aid in recovery time after sporting activities. While I'm not an MMA fighter or football player, I have had to do a lot of hiking, fishing and odd hunting on a foot with a torn ligament this past month or so. It hurts and gets inflamed so I think I'm technically within the target market.
I can't say that I know a lot about the science behind Kill Cliff but I do know that I've gotten to like having a can of the stuff mid-way through an afternoon in the field. It has a little bit of caffeine (less than a cup of coffee) but not too much.
[Photo copyright 2011 by Jackson Landers. All rights reserved. That's my 4 year old with his first sunfish.]
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