Today: Friday 29 March 2024
  • Ranger Alluminum
    Crappie Kingdom 15 Sep 2016

    Crappie Kingdom

     

    BE A LINE WATCHER

     

    There are several little things that a fisherman can do to improve his/her catch rate of fish.  Paying attention to small details can be very productive and in turn become normal practices on every outing.  I recall many years ago that while trout fishing, I very seldom felt the bite that the fish should produce.  Like most novice fishermen, I assumed the fish weren’t biting.  One day when I was at one of the local trout parks, I was kind of going through the motions of fishing, not really paying attention, and noticed a little detail that I had been missing for many years.  I was using a bright orange colored worm attached to a small hook with a tiny split shot above the hook.  I would toss it in the current, watch it float down stream, and retrieve it with no fish.  For some reason, I happen to watch it a little closer.  Low and behold, I saw a trout swim up to the bait, inhale the worm, and immediately spit it back out.  That’s when a light switched on and made me realize that I was getting bites but just wasn’t aware of what was happening.  If I would have been paying attention and watching what was happening, I would have caught the fish.  I tried the same approach again and this time when the fish swam up and inhaled the worm, I set the hook.  Immediate success.  This process worked for me for quite some time.  It worked really well as long as the sun was shining bright and I could see the fish swim up and take the bait.

    On cloudy days or days when the water was dingy, my success was somewhat limited.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what the next step was to figuring out how to detect the bite under cloudy or dingy water conditions.  The next best solution for detecting the bite was to watch the line and tip of the rod.  I quickly realized that when the fish would pick the bait up something would happen somewhere within the fishing system.  (I define fishing system as the line out the end of the rod, the rod tip, the rod itself, the rod handle, and the reel).  I would either see the line slightly jump, twitch, go slack, or stretch out.  The same would happen with the tip of the rod.  The rod I was using at that time was not the best of quality and way too stiff to detect a lot of fish reaction.Since I was not seeing much happen with the rod itself, I started paying much more attention to the line itself.  What a revolutionary move on my part!  Being like the majority of all early fishermen, I was self-taught.   I didn’t have the privilege of listening to someone who had experienced what information I’m sharing. 

    Since that time in my fishing history, I’ve been watching the line as a first and foremost detail.  Only one problem with exclusively watching the line.  The invisible colors of many brands of line makes it difficult for the human eye to see.  Good polarized sunglasses and more sensitive rods help relieve eye fatigue and gives an alternative to seeing the bite.  A good quality ultra-lite rod is necessary to see the slightest of bites.  I attribute large proportion of the bites I detect to seeing it through the rod tip.  The other large proportion is detected by seeing the bite through the line.  When fish are aggressive, I will feel the bite as well.  Good quality rods will let you feel the most subtle of bites.  I like a rod that you can feel a gnat land on the end of the rod.  Folks, this is called finesse fishing for crappie.  It is also called putting a lot of fish in the box in a short order of time.

    It is well worth your time to train yourself to pay attention to these small details.  The slightest movement or feel from the line or rod out of the ordinary is a bite.  There is no argument that it is a bite.  I want to be able to set the hook on the crappie before it really bites.  Implement these tips into you fishing techniques.  It is a challenge but makes a difference in who brings home the bacon.  Train yourself to be a line watcher.

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