TECHNIQUE: Fly fishing off a jetty.

TROUT: Catching them needn't be complicated.

NORTHERN PIKE: The article expounds on one of my favorite things to do in all of fishing, targeting pike on the fly.

(Link via FlyFishMagazine's blog.)

PEACOCK BASS ON A CLOUSER

MAINE: Early season stripers.

SHAD: Fish are running ahead of schedule on the Delaware. I have been dying to try fishing the shad run, but yet again, I have no time to do so. One of these seasons...

PERSONALITIES: The cultivation of a fly fishing guide.

NEW BLOG LINK: Trout guys will want to check out the Trout Underground blog. Here's the site's mission statement..."It’s the kind of site a guy might build if he thought fly fishing was taking itself a little too seriously."

TROUT REPORT: I had an opportunity to drive up to Connecticut to fish the Housatonic today, but with horrid weather encroaching I decided against it. The cold rain did come, but it turned out to be not so bad, so at the last minute I decided to drive out to the Connetquot River, about half an hour from my house, for the afternoon session. I am glad I did.
I had the entire stretch of river north of the hatchery to myself this afternoon. And nobody fished it in the morning, so I had fresh fish to fool. The trout behaved a little sluggishly, so I had to abondon my usual woolly bugger tactics and drifted a bead-head bugger like a nymph. I kept the rod tip high and basically twitched the bugger like a jig. (I also swung a copper john and a local pattern whose name I forget.) Some sturdy rainbows hit hard, but the for the most part the fish eased up and gingerly took it into their mouths. I can't tell you how many fish I missed until I got used to the "trout set" technique again. But I did get some nice jumpers and a few brookies. On my last cast (had I not hooked one I'd have kept casting) I hooked my best trout of the year, a brutish brown that took me for a little ride. So I got to complete the Connetquot Slam.

NEWS: Dr. Martin Arostegui, one of the leading pursuers of world record fish, successfully fought and landed a 385-pound lemon shark on fly. It may be the heaviest fish ever caught on fly rod. I've had the opportunity to fish with Dr. Arostegui on two occasions, and you couldn't meet a better guy. When the record is approved it will be well-deserved.

(Link via ESPN Outdoor News Hound.)

FLORIDA REPORT: Back from my trip down south. I went down for work to cover the World Sailfish Championship in Key West, Florida. (A great time with some side stories that deserve a separate post.) Knowing that April is prime peacock time, I decided to take a pre-sunrise flight into Ft. Lauderdale with my six-weight as carry-on, pick up a rental car, and hit my secret spot for two hours before driving to Key West. Not very logical, since it's a four hour drive. But my arrangements paid off.
I touched down at 9:15 and had a chatreuse and white super hair bendback in the water by 10:15. Several male peacocks had staked out territory in the shallows right along the shoreline. Three prime ones sat lined up over a pipe culvert. I cast the fly beyond the first one and stripped it by him as fast as I could. He didn't like that one bit, and blasted the fly, the hump on his head breaking the surface and throwing a vee wake.
That's all I did for the next two hours, walk along the banks of the lake, spot a big male in the shallows, cast and laugh out loud at the explosive results. I lost the biggest one of the day. He didn't care too much for the drag system on my Battenkill reel, peeling off line and wrapping the 10-lb. test leader around some lily pads. I made the mistake of trying to horse him out, and he popped off.
The last one I caught did the same thing, but I learned my lesson and waited him out. He also made two runs into one of the big pipes connecting the lake to another under the road. Each time I was able to turn him back, so I got to grab his lip.
As for the World Sailfish Championship, my offshore drought continues but I really enjoyed the experience. I have to write about it for work, so I'll post the link when I do.

FLORIDA BOUND: Off to the Keys for work. I may be able to post some stuff but I doubt it. Hopefully I'll have some great stuff to post about when I get back.

READER PHOTO: Capt. Gordon Churchill sent this in with a report that the bonito bite has been hot off the coast of North Carolina.

FISH STORY: The fish that caught itself.
(Thanks to an alert reader for the link.)

TROUT: According to Moldy Chum, someone discovered a new species of trout, the Conchos Trout from Mexico's Sierra Madre Mountains.

TARPON: Scientists need help from anglers in collecting genetic information from silver kings.
(Link via Fl-Fishing.)

FLORIDA: New rule could put snook population in a pinch.

MICHIGAN: Clamping down on the cormorants.

NORTH CAROLINA: Anyone who reads the FlyFishMagazine blog probably already knows this, but trout fishing is popular in the Carolina mountains.

CATFISH: Missouri allows for more noodling.
(Link via ESPN Outdoors News Hound.)

FISH STORY FRIDAY: Here's a quick fish story in the spirit of the down4repairs blog. In December of 2000, I went fly fishing off Palm Beach with Capt. Scott Hamilton. We started in the inlet and just hammered the stacked-up 8-10 pound jack crevalle. Monitoring the radio, we kept hearing reports of a hot sailfish bite. After a while, Scott said, "Hey, do you want to try something different?" I did. So we headed offshore and Scott hooked up a ballyhoo teaser spread on a spinning rod to troll behind his boat. He handed me a 12-weight equipped with a 'hoo fly, and gave me the bait and switch instructions. Within 20 minutes, a sailfish came up on the teaser. Scott started to reel it back in fits and starts, driving the sail nuts. When the fish came within 20 feet of the transom, Scott yanked in the hookless teaser spread and yelled, "Cast!" So I flipped out the 'hoo fly to the side and behind the fish, as instructed, and gave it a quick strip. (The idea is to get the fish to take the hook moving away from the boat, so it sets itself.) The sail wheeled around, agitated, just as we hoped. It spotted the 'hoo fly and made a blasting sprint at it. My knees knocked together and my heart lodged in my throat. This was it! But it missed the fly. It turned again, swirling in a 360 degree maneuver around the fly, and then took off. That was it. I didn't get a hook-up, but to this day, it stands out as one of the most exciting 20 second stretches of my fishing life.

NEWS: The fishhook is ranked the 19th most important invention of all time. Personally, my favorite invention of the last ten years is the double decker taco at Taco Bell.

(Link via Midcurrent.)

BOOKS: Howell Raines, The New York Times editor who brought us Jayson Blair and Judith Miller, now brings us a memoir about fishing, among other things.

NEW ORLEANS: A fly fishing guide finds recovery from the storms.
(NYTimes log-in needed.)

ANTICIPATION: After a little dry spell, if all goes well, I should have six days of fishing within the next ten. But with my recent luck, you never know...

NORTH CAROLINA: Taking advantage of the "twin fishing moons."

NEWS: J.R. Absher's first post for ESPN Outdoors is up.

MORE VIDEO: A video compilation from my trip to the Galapagos last month is finally up.

TECHNIQUE: Well, it's not really a technique, but a mindset. A great article about the effects of having real confidence.
(Link via Midcurrent.)

VIDEO: On their Showtime show called "Bullsh**t", Penn &Teller take on PeTA . If you watch this, bear in mind that it's a cable show. (I was turned on to this while reading the Sportsman's Blog.)

ENVIRONMENT: 1,600 Indiana waterways too polluted to fish or swim.

SOUTHWEST FLORIDA: A rundown of the area's freshwater fish.

MUSKIE VIDEO: A cool film showing great topwater muskie action.

KANSAS: Creating a sterile saugeye.

TRAVEL: Don't go to Orlando just for the giant mice.

CONSERVATION: The finer points of catch and release.

PENNSYLVANIA: Trout await anglers.

TARPON: Andy Mill gives advice on how to hook them on the fly.

PENNSYLVANIA: The essense of trout fishing.

BOCA GRANDE: Fl-fishing has a post up about the new tarpon rules.

NEWS: J.R. Absher, of Outdoor Weblog fame, will start posting on his ESPN Outdoors page this Wednesday. I'll put the link in my Fishy Blogs list when it goes live.

PERSONALITIES: The editor of Midwest Fly Fishing Magazine.

FEED UPDATE: I took the "nuclear option" and resynched my feed, so it should be working again. If any feed subscribers continue to have a problem, shoot me an email.

BLOG STUFF: Apparently, RSS subscribers are reporting problems with this site's feed. It's being worked on, but bear in mind this blog has the technical proficiency of the Amish.

SCIENCE: Study of rainbow trout shows how fish can gender bend.

TARPON: Bonding with the silver king.

STRIPED BASS: The Washington Post has an article about striper fishing on Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia.

FUEL WOES: Dave Richey has an excellent post about fuel prices affecting sportsmen. I couldn't agree more. I have nothing but anecdotal evidence to support this, but from my personal experiences, I paid about $3.90 per gallon at the marina last year--complete insanity--and the 24' center console I ran last year had a 157 gallon tank. So to fill the tank cost over $600. That made an offshore fishing trip a serious financial consideration. As far as talking to others:
--Speaking to a few marina owners who charged those ludicrous prices, they said, not surprisingly, that business was way down for last season.
--Speaking to sportfishing captains who run offshore charters, they've had a hell of a time, because to make a worthwile profit, they've got to charge into the thousands, and four figure charter fees turn most people off.
--Speaking to inshore guides, they've had to add fuel surcharges to their fees, and have seen a lot of their full-day charters reduced to half-day affairs.
--Speaking to a lot of regular Joe-anglers, they've definitely curbed the number of boat trips, and the lengths they're willing to run to hunt fish.
--And the oil companies are posting record profits in the billions.

FLY FISHING: Joe Doggett of the Houston Chronicle offers another look at fly fishing past.

NEWS: Scientists discover a previously unknown species of hammerhead shark.

FLOUNDERING FLUBBED: I'm back from my trip to Wachapreague, Virginia, the summer flounder (fluke) capital of the world. In late March through April, there is no better place to catch flounder. We went down there with the idea of targeting them with fly rods, but got blown out on both of our alloted fishing days. The first day we experienced 20-25 mph winds. Yesterday we were supposed to have great weather, but a front rolled through that brought about wind gusts to 30 mph. In the the calm before the storm, we did manage to pull in a few keeper flatfish, but none on fly. They were holding deep in 18-20 feet of water. I tried to get a fly down to them with Rio T-14 line, but found no takers. Oh well, that's fishing.

FLY FISHING: Spring a good time to learn to fly fish for bass and panfish.

GONE FISHING: I'm heading down to Wachapreague, Virginia, and likely won't be able to post until I return.

OPENING DAY: Today is opening day for New York trout waters. Alas, I will be nowhere near a trout stream today or any day until about mid-month. But I do have some good saltwater fishing trips coming up. More on those as they occur.