Lake Wheeler Smallmouth

Last Friday I drove to Rogersville, Alabama and got a room near Joe Wheeler State Park on Wheeler Lake. For years I would have gotten up at 1:00 AM to make the five hour drive over but I think those days are gone!

The next morning I met Makenzie Henson, a student at nearby North Alabama College and member of their fishing team, at daylight to get information for my October Alabama Outdoor News Map of the Month article.

Wheeler is a big Tennessee River lake and it is a 5.5 hour, 200 mile drive from here. It is a pretty lake and it produces quality largemouth and smallmouth bass. Smallmouth have made a come-back in many of those north Alabama lakes and have added an exciting element to fishing them.

The lake is mostly river with small creeks entering it. We started at daylight and it was nice, for the first time this year, to actually want a jacket it was so cool riding in a bass boat. The first place we stopped, back in a small creek, Makenzie pointed to three does feeding in a pocket off to the side. One stood out a lot more than the other two since she was white.

We were not close enough to tell if she was a true albino or just a white deer. But I got some pictures of her with my zoom lens and they kept feeding there as we fished.

Makenzie had to be at work at 11:00 Alabama time so we fished for only four hours, from 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM central time. But in that time he landed five or six keeper size largemouth and I caught a couple of keeper largemouth, and we both caught several short largemouth and smallmouth. All hit either a drop shot worm or a Texas rigged worm on rocky points.

Although it was a beautiful Labor Day weekend Saturday we saw very few boats. Other than a small tournament that took off as we put in the lake was very quiet. Rumor had it fishing was not very good but our trip seemed to show otherwise.

The last place we fished some fish were schooling on the point and Makenzie caught a three pound smallmouth on his drop shot worm then got a hybrid on a topwater plug. A couple of cast later the highlight of the day, a four pound smallmouth, hit his topwater bait.

We hated to leave with fish hitting better than they had all morning, but he had to go to work. And I had a long drive home. It was a fun trip even if I didn’t get to fish much compared to the hours I drove. But a weekend or longer trip to Wheeler would be a good get-away and Joe Wheeler State Park would be a good place to stay.

Did Hook Tweaks Help Rapala Pro Ott Defoe Win?

Hook tweaks help Rapala pro Ott Defoe win Bassmaster tournament

Tweaking your hook set-ups can improve hook-up ratios and put more fish in the boat. Such was the case last week for Rapala pros Ott DeFoe and Seth Feider, who respectively won and placed second in a Bassmaster Elite Series tournament on the Mississippi River near La Crosse, Wis.

A new hook set-up and new knot helped DeFoe beat 106 of the best anglers on the planet and win his first regular-season, full-field Bassmaster Elite Series tournament. For Feider, a new take on a classic bassin’ rig put fish in the boat when it counted, rewarding him with his highest-ever finish in two years on the Elite tour.

Although DeFoe and Feider fished in different areas with different techniques, the Rapala family of brands contributed key elements to their success, including VMC hooks and terminal tackle, a a Storm topwater bait and Sufix fishing line.

Swim a Treble

Fifteen of the 20 fish DeFoe weighed for a four-day winning weight of 62 pounds, 7 ounces came from a well-known community hole below a low-head dam’s spillway. Although many other competitors fished in the area also, DeFoe caught more bass there than anyone else by throwing a soft-plastic swimbait with a non-traditional hook set-up.

Rather than rigging the swimbait with a weighted swimbait hook or swimbait jig head – as he most often would do – DeFoe fished it weightless, armed with a treble hook. The way cavitating current in the spillway was causing bass to bite led to DeFoe’s decision.

“In this particular situation, the hook-up ratio can be considerably better with a treble hook,” he explains. “When smallmouth in current come up under a bait to bite it, they have a tendency to just slap at it. So an exposed No. 1 treble hook back there, rather than just a single hook, can really help land more of those fish.”

Forged from the finest high-carbon steel, VMC Round Bend Treble 1X hooks are the leading choice for lure manufacturers and anglers who value maximum strength and sharpness. Available in a wide size range, VMC’s model 9650 round-bend trebles give savvy anglers multiple options for switching up the hook set-ups on their favorite baits to adjust to unique or changing conditions.

That’s exactly what DeFoe did to catch his spillway smallies, which were suspending in the top two feet of the water column as heavy current – caused by rain upriver prior to the tournament – washed stunned baitfish over the spillway, practically on top of them.

“There were a lot of other guys in here at the beginning, but I’d guess most of them were fishing under the fish, you know, with weighted baits,” he says. “Rigged weightless with a treble hook, that swimbait gives you almost like a topwater bite.”

DeFoe casted upstream and reeled in at the same speed as the current – not faster, not slower. “That’s so important about the retrieve,” he says. “You want your bait moving the same pace that something naturally flowing down through there would be.”

DeFoe caught the tournament’s biggest bass in the spillway late on the second day of the four-day event, a 6-pound, 1-ounce smallmouth that would prove instrumental. After he caught the 6-pounder, he culled a 2-pounder, for a net gain of about 4 pounds. He beat out Feider for first place by only 1 pound, 3 ounces.

Follow these steps to rig a swimbait with a treble hook:

• Using a line-threading tool, run your main line through your swimbait’s nose and down through its body, exiting just short of the middle. “This will end up putting the hook about dead in the middle of the bait,” DeFoe explains. If you don’t have a line-threading tool, he says, a needle or a long, thin-wire hook like a VMC Neko Hook will “do the trick just as well.”

• Attach a VMC split ring to a No. 1 VMC Round Bend Treble 1X hook.

• Tie your line to the split ring.

• Stick one of the treble’s three “arms” up into the swimbait’s body, vertically centered. The other two treble arms will flare out slightly to the sides. “This will keep everything settled on the cast,” DeFoe explains.

New Knot, Same VMC Hook

It was not a new hook, but a new knot that helped DeFoe land keeper largemouths when he was resting his spillway smallmouth.

After swinging and missing on a few bass while flipping grass with a punch rig, DeFoe re-tied his 4/0 VMC Heavy Duty Flippin’ Hook with a snell-type knot. Such a knot creates a pivot point which, when pressured by a hook-set, causes your hook to kick out into a fish’s mouth.

“I actually didn’t have it snelled the first two days,” DeFoe confides. “The first day I did OK – I missed one, but I caught more than I missed. The second day I only had one bite [on it] and I missed it.”

So on the third day that DeFoe re-tied all the VMC Flipping Hooks in his punch rigs with a knot he learned from a fellow competitor. “It’s not exactly a snell knot, but it works similar,” he says. “I don’t actually know the name of it. My roommate [on tour] showed it to me. It’s a similar style knot where your weight pushes down and it kicks the hook out. That really helped my hook-up ratio those final two days.”

To build your own punch rigs, click these links: VMC Heavy Duty Flippin’ Hook, VMC Tungsten Flip’N Weight, VMC Sinker Stops, Sufix 832 Advanced Superline.

DeFoe caught five of the 20 bass he weighed in the tournament by flipping his punch rig into mats of duckweed and coontail in a 100-yard stretch of river on the southern end of Pool 8. All his flippin’ fish were largemouth. Located about 20 minutes downriver from his smallie spot in the spillway, his largemouth spot featured clean water, current and “a really good edge and canopy,” he says. The vegetation was growing in three to four feet along a breakline that fell to about five to six feet.

“Those transition areas – where the depth changes and the grass ends – give bass an edge to follow and move in and out, up and down,” DeFoe explains. “And it makes a very good ambush point. They can tuck up into that canopy, under that shade, and look out into that open water and watch for baitfish. And they can look up shallow in the other direction under that canopy and look for targets to feed on.”

That being said, it pays to locate numerous such spots. “I found a lot of other places that looked very similar, but only one had fish in it,” DeFoe says.

Feider Finesses ‘Em

While Feider found hungry smallmouth around offshore sandbars with a Storm Rattlin’ Chug Bug, he put them in the boat when it counted with a modified Carolina Rig armed with a sticky-sharp 3/0 VMC Extra Wide Gap hook. While most Carolina Rigs feature heavy sinkers and a leader as long as three feet, Feider fashioned a finesse version popular among river rats on the Upper Mississippi river, but less so elsewhere. While it follows the same formula of main line + weight + leader line + hook, the weight is lighter and the leader shorter. This combination allows an angler to not only get bites in brisk river current, but feel those bites and set the hook soon enough. Feider was throwing a 3/8 oz. weight with a 12-inch leader.

“The really short leader is key,” he explains. “You’ll feel and detect bites better. With a long leader like with a traditional Carolina Rig, your bait just gets blown all around by the current.

“That current I was fishing in was running super hard,” Feider continues. “If you’ve got a three-foot leader behind your sinker downstream and the fish eats it, you’re not going to feel him until you move that sinker six feet.”

The short leader also keeps your bait on the sweet spot to which you often must make repeated casts. “You use the sinker to kind of feel around where the best little spot is and then that short leader keeps the bait right where it needed to be,” Feider explains.

Most of Feider’s Day 3 and Day 4 fish came on his modified Carolina Rig, which was anchored by 3/0 VMC Extra Wide Gap hook dressed with a 3 ½-inch green-pumpkin crawfish-profile bait with the claws dyed orange. He used 17-pound Sufix fluorocarbon for both his main line and leader.

Two of Feider’s key Day 3 bass came on another curveball finesse tactic – a drop shot rig.

“I’ve literally only caught two bass on drop shot on that river before the tournament,” Feider says. “That’s not really a traditional bait that guys throw there. But I knew there were still fish there and it was the next logical step in finesse to catch them. I caught two good fish on it and definitely saved my Day 3.”

Feider’s drop shot rig comprised a 3/8th oz. VMC Tungsten Drop Shot Ball Weight and a No. 2 VMC Neko Hook dressed wacky style with a soft-plastic stickworm.

Despite having no track record of successful drop-shotting shallow smallies on the river, Feider tried the tactic after a couple bass slapped at his modified Carolina rig “but didn’t really eat it,” he recalls. “They’d bite the pinchers off my bait, but wouldn’t really get to the hook. So I knew there were still some semi-active fish sitting there. Twenty casts later with the drop shot, I’d get one of them to eat. It had a little bit more subtle look to it.”

Chug ‘Em Up

Feider’s finesse bites came from about 10 or 20 spots he found in practice with a Storm Rattlin’ Chug Bug. Although each spot was different in subtle ways, each featured current seams in one to three feet around sandbars or small islands that are usually above water, but had been recently submerged by influx of upstream rainwater. Feider calls such spots “sand drops.”

“With the water being high, now they had water going over them and that usually creates a pretty nice drop, or hole, around them,” he explains. The location of these holes are given away by surface disturbances familiar to experienced river anglers.

“There’ll be some kind of key feature in the current that puts the fish where they are on the breaks,” Feider explains. “There’ll be a little swirl on it, or two streams will come together hard.”

In the three days of practice that preceded the tournament, Feider targeted these current seams with a Chug Bug in a chrome pattern. “It’s one of the louder poppers there is and I think the fish really like the profile on it too,” he says. “If there were fish there, they would show themselves on that, for sure.”

And not only did the Chug Bug tell him which spots held hungry fish, it showed him which spots held big fish. “I didn’t have to catch ’em to see how big they were, the way they were coming out of the water to hit the bait,” Feider says. “After the first morning of practice, I was committed to those spots. I feel like there’s more 4-pound smallmouth in that river than there are 4-pound largemouth.”

Bow Hunting In Georgia

Although archery season opened yesterday I don’t think many deer were killed. I didn’t hear any shooting at all.

I haven’t tried to throw sticks at deer for many years. When I was about 13 years old I got a bow, supposedly suitable for hunting. It as a 40 pound straight limb bow and was legal, but I am not sure it was strong enough to kill a deer.

At 15 I got a 50 pound recurve and shot it a lot,

enough to be fairly sure I could kill a deer. My parents did not want me deer hunting with a gun at that age but they felt comfortable with bow hunting, so they let me go with an uncle that was an excellent hunter.

They were not worried about me knowing gun safety but were a little worried about others with high powered rifles in the woods. This was back at the very beginning of open deer seasons in the state. There were a lot of rumors about how dangerous it was to go deer hunting and I think it scared my mom a little. My dad had gone deer hunting one time and hated it, so that did not help.

Uncle Adron taught me a lot about looking for sign and about stand placement. Opening day when I was 16 I missed shots at four deer, using all the arrows I had with me. That was my first experience with buck fever! The next year I got a 30-30 for Christmas so I hunted with it and didn’t spend as much time in the woods with a bow.

In college I hit the only deer I ever stuck with an arrow. A doe came directly under my stand and I shot her between the front “shoulders” straight down. I was so excited I tried to follow too fast and found half my arrow and a big pool of blood, but no blood trail leading from it. That ruined archery hunting for me for several years.

After moving to Griffin I didn’t hunt much for a few years with bow and when I started shooting it again I found I had some arthritis in my right shoulder and could not hold the arrow back long enough to make a decent shot. I never tried a compound bow, I was still using my old recurve.

I got a crossbow and learned to shoot it. But that was before they were legal to use unless you got a special permit because a doctor said you physically could not use a regular bow. I did get the permit but never hunted with the crossbow.

Hunting deer with bow is a challenge and I admire people with the skill and patience to kill a big buck with one. But I will wait until October when I can use my 7 mm mag. I have enough trouble hitting a deer with it nowadays!

How Did Justin Lucas Win the Elite Tournament on the Potomac River?

Instinct and Lure Choice Led Lucas to Winning Catch
from The Fishing Wire

The way Yamaha Pro Justin Lucas won the recent Bassmaster® Elite tournament on the Potomac River surprised everyone in the 107-angler field, possibly most of all Lucas himself. The weather was hot and humid and fishing on the famous waterway had been poor, but Lucas led all four days of competition and weighed in 72 pounds, 14 ounces of bass, all from a single long boat parking dock.

“I guess the lesson to learn from the tournament is to follow your fishing instincts,” noted Lucas. “The dock was not where I intended to fish at all, and even during two previous Potomac River tournaments I’d never made a single cast to it. It was 40 yards from the area where I had chosen to start fishing when the tournament began, but when I didn’t get a bite there, my instincts just told me to try it.

“I had not fished it in practice, and really, my entire practice had been pretty fruitless so all I was trying to do was salvage a top-50 finish. I had no idea my first few minutes around that pier would change everything.”

Those first few minutes resulted in two quality bass and by the time Lucas reached the end of the long pier, he had put more than 16 pounds in the livewell. Another pass down the pier allowed him to cull up to his opening day weight of 20-4.

“The longer I fished there, the more I began to understand what I had stumbled into,” continued the Yamaha Pro. “The pier was actually several hundred yards long and had vegetation growing right up to it. The water depth was five to eight feet, there was current, and I could see bluegills and other baitfish around. The pier itself offered plenty of hard cover as well, including not just the vertical pilings but also wide crossbeams between the pilings.

“It literally had everything you look for in one place, and with that much cover and food available, the tidal fluctuation did not move the bass very much. I caught fish on both the rising and falling tides.”

Lucas also credits much of his success to the lure presentation he happened to be using when he made his first presentation to the pier, a drop shot rig with a thin, six-inch plastic worm. He doesn’t think he would have caught nearly as many bass, if any at all, had he been fishing a jig or any other lure.

“Maybe it’s part of my West Coast fishing background where the drop shot was developed,” he said, “but it’s always my ‘go-to’ presentation, regardless of whether bass are shallow or deep. I used spinning tackle and flipped or pitched the worm around the crossbeams. I never made an actual cast all week.

“I’d raise the worm up and shake it on top of a crossbeam, then pull it off and let it fall to the bottom. Bass usually hit while the worm was still falling.

Lucas rigged the drop shot with a 3/16-ounce sinker at the end of his line and positioned the worm 10 to 12 inches above the weight. He prefers the six-inch worm for largemouths because it has a lot of action and it gets their attention, and it’s his first choice anytime he’s fishing for largemouths in less than 10 feet of water. Because of all the wood cover and barnacles, he spooled on 10-pound braided line.

“Several competitors noticed the three spinning rods on my boat deck that first morning and kidded me about them,” laughed the Yamaha Pro, “but I could not be a stronger advocate for learning to use a drop shot with spinning tackle. A regular baitcasting outfit simply would not have been efficient where I was fishing.

“Everyone thinks of a drop shot as a purely finesse-type presentation, but it’s much more versatile than that, and I know from years of experience a drop shot will attract bass when many other lures won’t. I’m just glad I had it ready and used it first when I decided to go over to that pier. I’m not sure those bass had ever seen a drop shot before.”

How Do Beavers Engineer Better Fish Habitat?

Oregon beavers engineer better fish habitat, more fish

After four years, scientists recorded a 175 percent increase in juvenile steelhead

Contributed by Michael Milstein
from The Fishing Wire

An ecological experiment that employed beavers to restore streams in Central Oregon found that the streams produced nearly twice as many juvenile steelhead within a few years after the beavers went to work.

While beavers’ natural engineering abilities are well-known, the project on Oregon’s Bridge Creek is the first to show that their reengineering of streams can yield such pronounced improvements in fish populations. The results suggest that, under the right conditions, beavers can restore the health of streams and their fish, faster and likely at lower cost than traditional river restoration that relies on expensive heavy equipment.

“What was most surprising was how fast we saw changes, and how fast the fish responded,” said Chris Jordan, a fisheries ecologist with NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center and coauthor of the research. “Beavers are themselves agents of change and we can see in this case how those changes cascade across the landscape.”

The results of the research on Bridge Creek, a tributary of the John Day River, were published in Nature’s online journal Scientific Reports by a team of scientists from Eco Logical Research Inc., Utah State University, NOAA Fisheries, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and South Fork Research. The research was funded by the Bonneville Power Administration and NOAA Fisheries.

Large numbers of beavers once coexisted with salmon and steelhead across the Northwest until they were trapped nearly to extinction in many areas. Streams such as Bridge Creek also deteriorated under pressure from grazing and other activities. Many streams became incised, cutting trench-like into the ground. The falling water table left streamside vegetation stranded on high terraces, where its roots could no longer access water.

Such streams provide poor fish habitat. Beavers also struggled because a lack of large wood left them to construct dams with small willows easily washed out by high flows.

“We used restoration as a large scale manipulation to a watershed to determine if and how restoration can improve fish habitat,” said Nick Bouwes, owner of Utah-based Eco Logical Research Inc. and lead author of the study. “We also used a very cheap approach which mainly relied on beavers doing most of the heavy lifting for us.”

In 2009 scientists tested what would happen if beavers got a foothold. The scientists jump-started the beavers’ work by sinking posts (called beaver-dam analogs, or BDAs) into the streambed of Bridge Creek to help the animals build and anchor their dams against the current. In addition, the Bureau of Land Management reduced grazing in wetland areas along the creek, and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife closed the watershed to beaver trapping.

Quickly, beavers began building dams using the BDAs throughout Bridge Creek. By 2013 beavers had built 171 dams with help from the BDAs or naturally, eight times more dams than the average of the few years before scientists installed the BDAs.

But the real change was in the stream. Beaver dams anchored to the BDAs raised the water level, creating large pools where sediment was deposited. Soon the trenches began filling in, and water spread out onto the adjacent floodplain, giving rise to streamside vegetation and creating side channels and backwaters. Water temperatures slightly cooled in stretches with beaver dams compared to those without.

“We went from a place where the beavers couldn’t even manage to build dams, to a place where the beavers control the landscape,” Jordan said. “We got it started, but the beavers did the work.”

The changes improved fish habitat, with a deeper more complex stream channel. Over seven years the scientists tagged 35,867 fish with tiny electronic tags to track their movements and survival.

They found that beaver ponds held more juvenile steelhead than adjacent upstream areas. Plus, the ponds created more wetland habitat. Overall in Bridge Creek fish density increased and juvenile steelhead survival jumped 52 percent compared to a control watershed where scientists had not installed BDAs. Only four years after scientists first installed the first BDAs in Bridge Creek, they recorded a 175 percent increase in juvenile steelhead production compared to the control watershed.

While the quality of habitat improved, the quantity of habitat also increased as stream channels and wetlands expanded into the floodplain, Jordan said.

“It’s hard to point to any one thing as the most important change,” Jordan said. “It’s all of the changes that makes better quality habitat, and makes more habitat too.”

“Because of the large scale nature of the experiment and the intense monitoring, this study represents one of the few examples of detecting benefits of restoration to a fish population- and perhaps the first to show beavers as the restoration agent to cause such a response,” Bouwes said.

More ambitious efforts to use beavers as agents of restoration are now underway in other parts of the Columbia Basin. An interagency team of scientists has also developed the Beaver Restoration Guidebook to assist landowners and others interested in recruiting beavers as natural engineers.

Additional Information:
NWFSC: Working with beaver to restore salmon habitat

Tough Lake Guntersville Tournament

Last weekend ten members of the Potato Creek Bassmasters fished our August tournament at Lake Guntersville. In two days and 16.5 hours of casting 27 bass longer than the 15 inch minimum size weighing about 60 pounds were weighed in. There was one five-fish limit and three people did not catch a keeper either day.

Ryan Edge had eight keepers weighing 18.89 pounds for first, Raymond English caught nine weighing 18.33 pounds for second, my three weighing 8.04 pounds placed third and my 4.76 pound largemouth was big fish. James Beasley was fourth with three weighing 5.63 pounds.

Guntersville is legendary for its big bass and numbers of them. But as our trip showed, it is less well known that it is the hardest lake in Alabama to catch a keeper in a club tournament. Some people get on the fish and do real good, others struggle.

I went over Thursday afternoon and got a campsite at Guntersville State Park, a great place to stay. The next morning Kwong Yu met me at the ramp to go fishing. He was staying in a cabin with some other club members. We both caught a keeper bass in one of the places we fished before noon.

At 1:00 we went back in a big bay full of hydrilla. When I stopped the boat there was about a foot of water over the grass bed that ran from a foot deep to the bottom in eight feet of water.

I picked up a frog and quickly caught an 18 inch keeper, then cast a big Whopper Flopper topwater plug for a few minutes and caught another one that size. That got me excited, I just knew I could catch fish there during the tournament.

We started there at daylight the next morning and never got a bite. We fished it two more times that day without catching a fish. In fact, with one hour left to fish neither Kwong or I had a keeper bass.

I caught a very skinny 18 inch bass on a jig and pig by a tree on a steep bank for my only keeper of the day. Sunday I got the big one and one other small keeper on a jig and pig out of a grass bed. We never got a fish out of that bay either day.

What Would An Australian Gun Law Do To Me?

My daddy always said “Never elect an honest man, holding an office will just make him a crook.” I guess that influenced me a lot. I often think that anyone wanting to run for office should be automatically disqualified. Why would anyone want to hold an elected office where every voter expects something in payment for their vote, and no matter what you do you are going to have about half the people mad at you all the time.

I am a one issue voter. I will never vote for anyone wanting to pass laws to restrict my 2nd Amendment rights. I have owned guns since I was six years old and got my first BB gun. My guns have provided me untold hours of fun shooting targets, have provided me food all my life and have given me the comfort of knowing I can take care of myself.

None of my guns have ever harmed another person, and they never will unless used to protect myself or someone else. So how does restricting my rights make a difference? If laws kept illegal things out of criminals’ hands, we would have no cocaine or heroin on our streets.

The election this year is a problem. Donald Trump has never been a gun rights person until recently. He says he has changed. Hillary Clinton has been anti-gun all her life. So do I vote for Trump and hope he does what he says about guns, or vote for Hillary and hope she does not do what she says she wants to do. To do that I would have to ignore everything else.

Recently Hillary said she wanted the same kinds of laws in the US that were passed in Australia. There, after a mass shooting in 1996, the government confiscated all semiautomatic rifles, pump and semiautomatic shotguns and almost all pistols. They said they would pay you if you turned in your banned gun by a certain time but after that they would just take it.

In 1988 25 percent of households in Australia had a gun, by 2005 only six percent had one. That is what Hillary wants for us.

Has it made a difference? The murder rate there dropped from 1.9 per 100,000 in 1993 to 1.3 in 2007, a tiny drop of six tenths of one percent. And it has not been a steady drop, in 2002 they had the highest number of murders there in 26 years. But in Australia, just like here, the murder rate had been dropping for years before they confiscated guns.

Some gun banners argue that confiscating guns will reduce mass shootings, like it did in Australia. But in this study – http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/Mass_shootings.pdf – the authors found there were so few mass shootings before gun confiscation that no before-and-after study could be done. They did compare New Zealand and Australia, two similar countries with very different gun laws, and found no difference because of the law. So, because of one mass shooting, a country confiscated over 600,000 guns, a high percentage of all guns in the country, and it has had no effect.

If Hillary got her way, the government would confiscate almost all my guns. Four they would take would be the Winchester Model 1893 pump 12 gauge my father inherited from his father and passed on to me, the Ithaca pump goose gun my father-in-law gave to me, the Browning semiautomatic long barreled 12 gauge my daddy shot doves with all his life and the Remington short barreled semiautomatic 12 gauge he shot quail with before passing them on to me. The government taking those guns away from me would really help with crime.

I will never support anyone wanting to follow Australia’s gun ban and confiscation law.

Why Is There A Complete Closure of Yellowstone River?

Montana Imposes Complete Closure of Yellowstone River Due to Fish Disease
from The Fishing Wire

An unprecedented fish kill has brought complete closure of miles of one of America’s greatest cold water fisheries.

(Bozeman, Mont.)—Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is implementing an immediate closure of all water-based recreation (fishing, wading, floating, tubing, boating, etc.) on the Yellowstone River and its tributaries from Yellowstone National Park’s northern boundary at Gardiner to the Highway 212 bridge in Laurel. This significant action on the part of the Department is in response to the ongoing and unprecedented fish kill on the Yellowstone. This action is necessary to protect the fishery and the economy it sustains. The closure will also help limit the spread of the parasite to adjacent rivers through boats, tubes, waders and other human contact and minimize further mortality in all fish species.

In the past week, FWP has documented over 2,000 dead Mountain Whitefish on some affected stretches of the Yellowstone. With that, FWP estimates the total impact to Mountain Whitefish in the Yellowstone to be in the tens of thousands. FWP has also recently received reports of the kill beginning to affect some Rainbow and Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout.

Test results from samples sent to the U.S. and Wildlife Service Fish Health Center in Bozeman show the catalyst for this fish kill to be Proliferative Kidney Disease – one of the most serious diseases to impact whitefish and trout. The disease, caused by a microscopic parasite, is known to occur in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. It has been documented previously in only two isolated locations in Montana over the past 20 years. Recent outbreaks have occurred in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. In trout, research has shown this disease to have the potential to cause 20 to 100 percent mortality. The parasite does not pose a risk to humans.

The effect of the disease on Yellowstone’s fish populations is exacerbated by other stressors like near record low flows, consistent high temperatures, and the disturbance caused by recreational activities.

FWP Director Jeff Hagener says in coming to the decision, the Department had to weigh the totality of the circumstances and risk to the fishery.

“We recognize that this decision will have a significant impact on many people. However, we must act to protect this public resource for present and future generations,” said Hagener.

“A threat to the health of Montana’s fish populations is a threat to Montana’s entire outdoor economy and the tens of thousands of jobs it sustains,” said Gov. Steve Bullock, noting that Montana’s outdoor recreation economy is responsible for more than 64,000 Montana jobs and nearly $6 billion in yearly economic activity. “We must be guided by science. Our state cannot afford this infectious disease to spread to other streams and rivers and it’s my responsibility to do everything we can to stop this threat in its tracks and protect Montana jobs and livelihoods.”

FWP will continue to monitor the river and will lift the closure when stream conditions such as flow and temperature improve and fish mortality ceases.

In addition to the closure on the Yellowstone, FWP is asking for the public’s assistance in preventing the spread of this parasite by properly cleaning (CLEAN.DRAIN.DRY) all equipment prior to moving between waterbodies (i.e., boats, waders, trailers). FWP has also set up two Aquatic Invasive Species decontamination stations set up along I-90 near the affected area in an effort to help reduce the chance of this parasite moving to other rivers.

Lake Allatoona

On Wednesday I met Frank Lillig at Lake Allatoona to get information for the September Georgia Outdoor News Map of the Month article. Frank is president of the Kennesaw College Bass Team and also Assistant Director of the ABA Division 125 Tournament trail that fishes Allatoona and Carters Lake.

Like many of the other college and high school fishermen I have done article with, I was impressed with his knowledge of bass fishing. And we had a cool rainy day!

Unfortunately, the spotted bass at Allatoona didn’t respond to the nice weather. For years Allatoona was known as the Dead Sea since fishing was so tough there. But a few years ago it started showing up on the Georgia Bass Chapter Federation Creek Census Report as the lake in Georgia where it took the least amount of time to catch a keeper bass in a club tournament.

I would like to fish Allatoona more often but traffic is ridiculous going and coming from the lake. The most direct way to get there is straight up I-75 through down town Atlanta. Pulling a boat north at 5:00 AM is not bad. Pulling it south in mid-afternoon is a nightmare!

Handling the Heat and Staying Hydrated This Summer

Tips for Handling the Heat and Staying Hydrated This Summer

From GoBoatingFlorida

In many parts of the country, summer boating safety tips revolve around the increased number of boats and activity on the water. In Florida, we experience that issue between Thanksgiving and Easter during what we affectionately refer to as ‘season’. However, summer boating in Florida does come with its own set of seasonal challenges, which are either heat or weather-related. Let’s start with weather…

Afternoon Storms

Spend any time in Florida between mid-June and late August and you will notice that almost every day, the skies open up in the middle of the afternoon and send (you’d swear) nearly every drop of precipitation they have down upon us for about an hour and a half. For those of us on land this simply means staying inside and dry.

If you’re out on a boat, it’s a whole different story. Depending on sea conditions, this could be a long hour and a half, especially if there is lightning—the biggest concern. The best way to deal with this kind of weather is to, obviously, not be there. Check the forecast and schedule your time out to be before or after the storms. When this is not possible or something comes rolling in quickly, seek protected water or, better still, head to shore.

Staying Cool

The Florida sun is intense most of the year, but summer is the worst…especially mixed with increased humidity. Which means sunstroke or overexposure to the sun is a real danger. This, unlike weather, is more within your control. Sunscreen is an easy precaution. Use a high SPF and make sure to use the water/sweat-proof kind. Apply before you go out and one or two times during the day depending on your skin type.
The other thing to do is add or use the boat’s canvas top. If it has a hard cover, which is common on larger boats, this is easy. Smaller boats usually include a Bimini top which provides great shade but many boaters don’t use them while running as they can often vibrate underway…a small price to pay for shade.

Finally, jump in. After all, you’re on a boat. A quick swim can lower your body temperature quickly and refresh you all at the same time.

Staying Hydrated

Your body depends on water to survive. Every cell, tissue, and organ in your body needs water to work properly. Your body even uses water to maintain its temperature.

Water makes up more than half of your body weight. You lose water each day when you go to the bathroom, sweat, and even when you breathe. You lose water even faster when the weather is really hot—so if you don’t replace the water you lose, you can become dehydrated.

Symptoms of dehydration include: Little or no urine, or urine that is darker than usual, dry mouth, sleepiness or fatigue, extreme thirst, headache, confusion, dizziness or producing no tears when crying.

Don’t wait until you notice symptoms of dehydration to take action. Actively prevent dehydration by drinking plenty of water. For some people, fewer than 8 glasses may be enough on an average day—this amount should be increased 50-75% when outdoors in hot wether. And don’t forget, you can stay hydrated via fluid intake and eating water-rich fruits and vegetables like grapes, watermelon, tomatoes or lettuce.

Following these guidelines can help keep you safe, healthy, and none the worse for wear on your next outing. Boating safe is boating smart!

Read more like this at www.GoBoatingFlorida.com.