Cork is one of the best grip materials you can have on a fishing rod. Along with classic lines and looks, you’ve got the comfort and weight savings that have made them a strong option among all classes of fishing rods. But cork gets dingy after a few years, or even within a single season if you don’t take care of your rods. Here’s how I make them look new again with some OxiClean and a good sponge.
Should I Buy A Pellet Grill?
From multiple cooking styles and different food types, to various temps and techniques, pellet grills are here to stay.
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Pellet grills have gone mainstream; from something that sounded experimental only a few years ago, to a fully featured, well-seasoned backbone of the BBQ grill market. They’ve been around for decades, though their popularity is not really anything I saw coming, or even something I fully supported. I’m kind of a traditionalist when it comes to cooking, at least when I have the time to be. Yet at the same time, if it produces good food, especially with less input or fuss, I’m all about it. The same has held true for sous vide cooking or even newer techniques like reverse searing. If we can do it better, easier, faster, or all of the above, without sacrificing taste, or even improving it, why not?
Being an avid hunter and angler, I have ample opportunity and interest in all forms of cooking. From smoked turkey, to seared venison chops, and slow-roasting cedar-planked salmon, I want a grill to do it all. That comes from someone who owns or has owned a laundry list of charcoal and gas grills, vertical propane smokers, chimney-style bullet electric and charcoal smokers, and even a Kamado style cooker.
Extra room wasa big selling point for my Traeger 885 Ironwood - and it’s not even pictured with the extra rack that would hold a few more racks of ribs.
I’ve always been in search of versatility in terms of techniques and temperatures, no matter the fuel source, and no matter what I’ve tried, it seems like most versions of grills tend to do one or two things quite well, while being woefully inadequate in other areas. For example, I really fell in love with a cheapie vertical cabinet-style smoker I had a few years ago. It was propane, had tons of control, and it produced some really great results. Ultimately, it lasted only two seasons before rusting out at the bottom, and could not be used for anything other than smoking really.
Surely a Kamado style cooker would produce better results, so I dropped nearly $2k for the biggest and baddest, complete with a wooden roller cabinet to support its massive weight. I treated that wood with the most expensive stain and poly combination I could find, covered it religiously, and still found a way to rot out the cabinet, and grow fuzz on the inside of the grill itself. If it rains where you live, or worse, snows, then gets hot in the summer, a Kamado style grill might not be for you. It seared well, smoked fairly well, and did fine in terms of roasting, but without a temp/fan controller, really required some babying. Building and maintaining fires in them was a laborious process, and not to mention messy. I’m all for that style of cooking, when I have the time, but woefully disdain it when I do not.
Fish can be a tough grill chore if heating isn’t consistent or runs too hot.
It was about that time, I hired someone to build a new table for my Kamado, and got myself a pellet grill – the Traeger Ironwood 885. Again, with versatility in mind, I was interested in the size, multiple racks, temperature range, super-smoke mode, and especially, the ease of use. I’ve got a gas grill too (the deck is getting full), and see my Traeger in a similar light. Both are easy to use, require similar pre-heat, and are supplied by a readily available fuel source. Propane is easier to find, but I’ve got Traeger pellets at the local hardware store, big boxes, and outdoors stores too, so it’s a push for where I live.
The similarities stop there, and I’ve grown to really love my pellet grill. I get a solid “smoky” flavor and low temps when I want it, searing and high temps when I need it, and everything in between when I’m cooking chicken, fish, vegetables, and a host of other items, like desserts. I can choose from a variety of smoke flavors, simply by adding different pellets, and I can perform more complex cooks, more easily. For example, if I want to slow smoke ribs, then wrap and crank the heat to push the cook along, then unwrap and sauce at a slightly lower temp, I can do all of the above with the push of a few buttons.
The Traeger App allows you to search a recipe and enact it on your grill - complete with controls for heat, timing, and meat probe alerts. Best of all, you can monitor your fuel and switch it to “keep warm” so the food fits your schedule.
Better yet, I can do all of that and more from my phone. These days, I visit the grill to get it going, and come back to it when finished. Occasionally, I’ll check it out mid-cook for a spray, slather, or sauce, but the onboard temp probe gets put in the meat at the start, and I monitor internal temp from there. Recipe guides from the control app can be sent straight to the grill, complete with instructions, timing regulation, and alerts on my phone. While I enjoy some of the tinkering and going off on my own, I realize that most people do not. They want repeatable results and max ease of use. I can’t think of an easier way to grill.
There’s a few drawbacks, like the occasional need to remove ash via shop vac, and maybe some general grate scraping and foil shield replacing. All of which is as easy as the gas grill maintenance and way easier than any wood or charcoal grill I’ve owned. Ultra greasy grill-offs should be monitored, as I had one flare up when I didn’t keep the grease drain free from obstruction. My fault on that one, but lesson learned, and the grill was smart enough to shut itself down after it detected the fire. Still, I’ve had grease fires on gas grills and wood-fired grills too, so it’s been pretty rock-solid. I’ve gone through a few bags of pellets, but fuel is fuel – grill, smoke, or roast a lot of food, and you’re going to go through it. It’s slightly more expensive to fuel than propane, but with a load of flavor, so again, I’m not against paying a bit more for a quality result.
In App controls are reflected on the base unit, so you can monitor from afar or up close.
For that reason and others above, it’s become my go-to for about everything I cook, and I continue to find new ways to incorporate it into everyday cooking. Grilling used to be for weekends, but I’ve done some really great mid-week meals that don’t heat up the house and are a blast to do. The more I use it, the better I learn to make use of it for the varied styles and recipes it excels at. For just about every task, including pizza-making, it does better than the other grills in my stable.
Over the long-haul, I expect it to phase out my other grills for all but a very few specialized tasks. Even then, knowing what I know now, it would definitely be the one grill to replace them all had I only room for one. I’m excited to own it for years to come, and look forward to sharing more I learn along the way.
Last Chance Walleyes
We’re nearing the end of walleye season in MN, and things have gotten a bit tougher. Snow is deep and ice is thick(er), and the amount of available light at depth has been cut dramatically. Your early season haunts are likely nowhere near you’re fishing now, and at this point, it’s more about just getting bites rather than talking about how many you’re catching. Every year the fishing, predictably, slows down in February, but savvy anglers are still making the most of what season is left. Minutia and detail are key as we approach the end of walleye season, and here are a few details that year in, year out, have always helped me put more fish topside.
Jigging Presentations – Aggressive jigging may still work in low light periods, or during pre-frontal conditions, but more often than not, this time of year sees fish investigating the racket without actually committing to it. That still means it’s worthwhile, especially rattle baits or other heavy vibration lures, to call fish more than catch them. This is especially effective if one person “rings the dinner bell,” such that other anglers and set-lines may be rewarded with fish general being called into the area.
Color starts to matter more during this time of year, as fish get choosier. That means you might want to experiment with different hues during different light conditions. For example, high sun and clear skies may see favor for blue/chrome, gold, or other metallic colors, while clouds and low-light may see preference towards glow and UV brightened baits.
More important than color however is bait selection, with more deliberate lure classes, fished less aggressively catching most of your jig fish. Lift and pause, more than twitch incessantly. Focus on short drops and spoon baits to do most of the jigging work during this time of year. Plain jane is more exciting than fancy and frills. Truly, less can be more here.
Dead-Sets – Whether we’re talking rattle reels, deadsticks, bobbers, or a combination thereof, you need to be employing the use of some stationary systems with free swimming live bait. This can constitute the majority of your spread, though some active jigging is always welcome to draw fish in. From here, you want to fine-tune your approach. Dacron and big bobbers was fine early in the season. Use instead smaller marker bobbers on rattle reel setups, that displace little water, and offer little resistance to a fish eating your minnow. Now, you should be running a long fluoro-carbon leader to the hook end, making sure that your presentation looks as natural as possible.
Speaking of hook-end, consider your dead sets like a trolling spread. Vary your look to fish by offering a variety of hook choices and let them play favorites. You should start with a small wire hook with no color, up to colored variations, glow resin trebles, and then actual jigs to hook your minnows. Often, on the toughest days, the smallest hooks and most natural presentations win, which is something you’ll never know if you have 4 set lines down, each with the same jig as the rest.
Tend your set with electronics when possible. Too often, in a hard-house I see un-monitored lines down everywhere. Eventually, people disregard them, only to find out a large sucker swam and tangled with the next-door line, a walleye actually picked another minnow clean, and the last set has a dead minnow on it. Careful watch with electronics, even on your dead sets, will tell you how popular your offering really is. When something is being approached constantly, yet not eaten, it’s high time to make a change.
Minnow IQ – Not all minnows are created equal in the opinion of most marble-eyes. Fish that I’ve been on this year have shown a strong preference for smaller than normal suckers, and more importantly shiners. They’re the minnow we love to hate. Look at them wrong, and they’ll go dying on you, but employ them correctly and they can save a trip. Again, consider putting your eggs in multiple baskets here. Get a mix of fatheads to tip spoons, shiners and suckers for dead-sets, and even rainbows to mix things up where available. The goal is to let fish in an individual system, be individuals. Never argue with what the fish want, as they tend to win.
Other Details – Location can be really important at the end of the season, as fish can move less to feed, meaning you’re really on them, or really not. Small moves on a piece of structure can mean everything, as a house that’s positioned 15-20 feet away from a transition or other hotspot means its too far away for lethargic late season eyes to head over and eat. That also spurs a discussion on finding. Make sure to keep looking for fish, even if you’re on a proven location. Hub houses and other portables are invaluable scout-shacks, even if you’ve got a great permanent house to fish from. Quite often, these scout shacks can offer valuable intel on timing of the bite, shallower vs. deeper, and what general preferences fish may have in a certain area.
In addition, cameras are great tools for a host of fishing situations, but pull them up during this part of the year when stationary. Especially in clear water, walleyes can shy to underwater cameras and actually affect the bite of your deadsticks and jigging presentations. For lots of hard-house anglers, this may be difficult to do, but it may just increase your catch rate.
Lastly, pay attention. It’s tough to catch fish as the modern conveniences and enjoyments of most portables and wheelhouses draw our interest away from the actual fishing. I see it in new groups of anglers, kids, and avid anglers alike; the more focused a person is on catching fish, the more fish he or she will catch. If you’re only tuned-in when someone else is catching, you’ve likely already missed your opportunity. That can be a big deal when you may only get a 15-minute window of action morning or night. Make the most of the experience by staying engaged, and you’ll already be doing better than most anglers on ice.
Underwater Viewing - The Camera 1 - 2 Punch
Cameras are a key part of Tony Roach’s strategy for jumbo perch.
We’ve lived in a world with underwater cameras for several years now, and though technology has raced forward, the basic video feed of a swimming fish can captivate and inform nearly any angler. As cameras have become lighter, smaller, and more crisp, new advancements in sonar, live-imaging, and side-scanning have entered the fray as well. All of which makes for some tough decisions when budgeting for how best we can fool a fish.
Tony Roach is no stranger to that game, as he fishes across northern Minnesota each winter, doing his best to put clients continuously on panfish, perch, and walleyes. It should come as no surprise then that underwater cameras are a key part of his strategy, and have been since their inception. His camera approach mimics his now-famous “ice-trolling” concept of roaming select structural elements while drilling holes continuously, in an effort to both locate fish and stay on them. Few have drilled as many holes in the ice as Tony, and fewer yet have followed that up with as much underwater viewing as he has either.
The upshot is a 1-2 punch of underwater viewing that focuses on two main parts; the finding, and then catching, each of which utilizes different strong-suits of cameras vs. traditional sonar or even newer live-imaging devices.
Finding
Perhaps the most crucial portion is finding them, and cameras accomplish that goal in a variety of ways. The most obvious one, seeing a fish, shouldn’t be understated, as other means of finding fish rarely reveal speciation. Many an angler has chased suckers while thinking a walleye was the belly-to-bottom target they saw on the graph. Tony says, “We take out the camera when something isn’t adding up on sonar, and also just when we’re searching down a break.”
Certain species like perch, are curious and actually drawn to the camera. “We’re looking for the better jumbos, and even though the graph can be full, we drop cameras to stay on big fish,” says Roach. He recalls a recent trip to Winnie where perch were everywhere, but better fish were tough to stay on. Tony says, “There was a blizzard of perch down there, and we talked to other anglers that didn’t do well because they couldn’t tell the difference from small perch to good ones on their graph. We just drilled until the camera revealed more jumbos.”
Tony uses a camera for other scouting purposes too, especially for panfish. “Standing green cabbage will always be great places to look for gills, but it’s hard to determine cabbage from other less desirable lake weeds without a camera,” says Roach. These can be shallower locations too, where the sonar cone angle means a relatively small footprint on the lake bottom. Translated, that means cameras can cover more area, especially when the water is clear. “You can pick up on the structure and condition of the weeds too,” continues Roach, noting that pockets, points, and inside turns in a healthy weedbed are hard to detect in any other way.
Tools of choice for the finding game include lightweight, pocket-sized screens with equally small ducers. “It’s just easier to jump hole to hole with these models vs. the larger lunch-box style versions,” says Tony. I’d agree, in saying that the best underwater camera is one you’ll use. Smaller versions are easier to deploy, so even if the screens aren’t huge, you’re much more likely to use them when searching for schools of fish across larger areas.
Catching
Of course, catching more fish is the primary reason anyone buys an underwater cameras to begin with, but there’s a pile of ways you can extend that idea. At face value, simply seeing a fish inhale your bait gives you a distinct advantage, but this is especially true on tough bites. I recall a bite on Devil’s Lake where perch were thick, but would only eat when a live minnow was set on bottom, made to struggle against the weight of the jig that secured him. Perch would nose down, stare, and eventually pin the minnow to bottom, leaving the angler without a camera non-the-wiser to any perch’s presence.
Tony notes similar experiences with perch, “They’re the fish you love to hate – they can rise to a bait so quickly, like they’re going to crush it, and yet sometimes you can barely see or feel the bite.” Whether targeting finicky perch or other species, Roach is quick to admit that cameras make him a better angler. “Just having one down allows me to study how the fish are biting, and that can change from one hour to the next, or one area to another,” says Tony. “Sometimes we ‘sort’ by only allowing larger fish to eat the jig, and other times we’re using the camera to see what jigging technique will trigger them, it’s an invaluable tool.”
I’ve also noticed how well an underwater camera can train your jigging stroke. I heard Clam-Pro and guide Jason Durham speak about unnatural jigging motions by saying, “you’d look at a hamburger suspiciously if it suddenly jumped to the ceiling too.” I think underwater viewing can certainly prevent and inform that, as any new lure I test comes under close visual scrutiny with the camera. It’s helped unlock key twitches, stops, and swings to popular lures that have always done well for me, making them even better when a fish comes into frame.
Here’s where you can look towards a larger screen camera model, whether lure-training or trying to trick a bluegill. Camera screen size is really the premium when it comes to stationary viewing, and new HD models are great for the wheelhouse too. For select units, HDMI cables can transfer a true-HD signal to TV units in the house, such that picture quality is preserved instead of stretched and blown out when taking it to the big screen. All of which could be argued is more entertainment than educational, but we’ve all grown tired of pixelated views of either photos or video, such that what you get from the experience can be limited.
Whatever your model of choice, I don’t see underwater cameras going away anytime soon. They provide the most cost effective way to get a fish’s-eye view of the underwater world, and capitalize on images that only the human eye can interpret. Learn to use them for both finding AND catching, and you’ll soon consider them just as important as your flasher.
Online Fishing Tourneys - The Future of Competitive Angling?
Online organized tourneys like Shack Slam have plenty of advantages over traditional formats. Click here for more information - https://catchcover.com/shackslam/
Whether you’ve ever fished an actual tournament, or have casually followed the many series of events that happen nationwide, chances are your own fishing has been dramatically impacted. Traditionally, fishing tournaments have been a way for the best and boldest anglers to showcase their talents, all while under pressure posed by everything from fellow anglers to ma nature. The result has been an incredible string of product innovation that follows in its wake, born from incentive and driven need to outcompete. Of course, fishing tournaments can be smaller club or less serious affairs, providing anglers another excuse to hit the water and get better. They exist for almost all species in a variety of formats, from kayak-only, to catch and weigh, all the way to ice events that dot the hardwater landscape.
With the act of catching a fish being so…well…hands-on, it’s tough to imagine bass-slinging or walleye-netting that’s online. Yet, web or app format tournaments are gaining popularity for their simplicity, among other things, mostly in the way that they organize tournament proceedings and bring people together. Darren Amundson, founder of FishDonkey – an app-based automated tournament software – discussed with me some of the reasons for this surge in online tournament growth.
An online tournament works like this says Amundson, “A tournament organizer works within an app to roster anglers, manage entry fees (if any), and determine tournament logistics. From there, anglers connect via a smartphone, and manually photo and video each catch to verify length. Catch statistics are entered on the water, and managed within the software to give all anglers a sorted, running tally of real-time results. If there’s no cell connectivity, catch information is collected and stored in-app to be sorted later.” The process sounds simple, but there are other benefits to running a tech-based tourney.
Amundson started their app in response to some negative bass tournament press they learned about in Austin, TX. “The equivalent of Texas’ DNR did some studies on catch and immediate release vs. catch and weigh bass tournaments to find nearly zero mortality in those quick release versions. The same wasn’t true for fish that were put in a livewell, driven around the lake, weighed both in the boat and off, then released later.” From experience, there are plenty of species in warm water like walleyes, that simply aren’t able to be released after a traditional weigh-in.
Amundson continues, “While there are other catch, measure, and release formats, an online tournament can take place on a number of water-bodies, over any length of time the organizer chooses.” Spreading the pressure then over time and space then, definitely impacts individual resources to a lesser degree, which is something that tournament critics have long been concerned with.
Online tournaments also give anyone the opportunity to organize and carry out a fishing competition, provided local and state guidelines are still followed. “That usually involves that spreading out of opportunity, holding a tournament over a broad area over a longer length of time,” says Amundson. A group of buddies can hold their own event and use software to sort and compare catch real-time. “We track weather, news, stock prices, and everything else via our smart-phones,” mentions Amundson, “it only makes sense to use the technology to allow competition in a smarter, more responsible way.”
However, tournament cheating is a problem as old as the sport, and web-based tournaments are not immune to deceit. For that reason, most online based tourneys require in-app photos and video. “If they alter the photo, or measure the same fish twice, the tournament organizer is notified immediately. No outside images or video is allowed to interface,” says Amundson.
For organizers and anglers who spend large amounts of time and money on day-of logistics, online tournaments are a way to fish competitively with less costs. There are even ad-supported means of funding prizes, and fishing companies may grow to value the content derived from it. “At the end of the day, partner companies get photos of real people enjoying their time on the water, which may be of interest in fueling social media content for brands that participate,” mentions Amundson.
It’s a whole new world out there, and each year sees new events, series, and formats run the rollercoaster of tournament popularity. To me, real-time tracking and organizing, along with the ability to compete with anglers across the country over less-restrictive times and areas sounds interesting. Whether it will replace traditional formats remains to be seen, as huge bass fishing events are more popular, yet volatile, than ever. Still, as the tech improves, I see this being a way for anyone to hold a tournament or compete in one, all while giving anglers the choice to harvest or release within the bounds of existing fish and game regulations. Surely, that flexibility will garner more attention from more interested anglers.