A Different Kind Of Catch Catching Them The dark, jade water is balmy and warm. In my right hand is a high-powered spear gun. Its mechanism is set in beautifully worked teak. Around 5ft long, it is clumsy on land but once in the water it balances perfectly. A long sharpened spear is powered by thick rubber bands. The trigger of the gun will release a spear that could pin a grown man to the wall. As we alight to the side of a dun-colored reef with knobbled outcrops and fire coral, teeming with fish, the hunt for our supper begins. We are several miles from Key West in the Florida straits, diving from the Discoverer Ketty Lund, a wooden-hulled scientific research vessel on a trip around the Keys. Her captain is Eric Smith, a muscular, salt-encrusted sea skipper and diver with a boyish gap between his front teeth who has piloted his boat and marine scientists around the Atlantic for years. On the long trips down from places like Labrador, Canada, to his home in the Keys, he will jump over the side and go spear fishing for grouper, snapper and tuna to feed himself and his crew. As we descend deeper into the cool depths, he is showing me how to hunt under water. [Read More]

Making the most of your time - Fishing Safety rules everyone should know When you are going ice fishing, there are a lot of safety rules that you need to follow at all times. Unlike the other forms of standard fishing, ice fishing presents a lot of health risks. First, you should never go ice fishing without a well built shack. The shacks provide you shelter while you are ice fishing. Without this shelter, you will be susceptible to hypothermia and other health related problems. The second thing you need to keep in mind at all times is the condition of the ice and the weather predictions. Falling through the ice while ice fishing, especially alone, is a death sentence. Being trapped on the open ice during a blizzard is also extremely dangerous, even with the shelter of an ice shack available. When you are stocking your ice shack, you need to make certain that you have enough wood for the wood stove, or heating device within the shack. This device should also be cared for and watched over at all times, so the ice beneath the shack remains stable or that the shack does not burn. If you keep these fishing safety tips and rules in mind, you should be able to have an enjoyable time fishing without high risk of injury to yourself or others, no matter which form of fishing you choose to participate in. [Read More]

Confidence in Fly Fishing Three quick stories come to mind illustrate this. First off let me say there have been plenty of times when I have been on both sides of the confidence equation. A few years ago, I was steelheading with a couple of fly fishing buddies. Unlike me, though there guys weren't purists. And we were using terminal gear. Although were just dead-drifting jigs, very similar to fly fishing, I felt about as coordinated as a monkey performing brain surgery. As the day wore on more and more steelies were caught. Huge steelies, the biggest I had ever seen! None by me. I could feel my confidence shrinking. And I mean my confidence in all kinds of things, like being able to read the river, being able to detect a strike. Things that had no connection to me using unfamiliar gear. The pressure inside my head built, until I HAD to catch a fish. I didn't catch one fish that day, although I finally had a strike, and set the hook so hard I jerked it right out of the fish's mouth. And I fished longer and harder than anyone else on the trip. [Read More]

One-Million-Dollar Fishing Lure
Would you fish with a lure that costs $1,000,000? Neither would I! There are way too many ways to lose your fishing tackle, and I hate to lose a....