The Map Magazine

Method 1

Equipment

I fish baits at all depths, not just the bottom, in wide-open water. I always set up and fish deep lake structures. Besides an understanding of the contours on the bottom of the lake, being mobile and being able to read your fish locator are the keys. The tools I use are 8-foot heavy action rods, circle hooks, cut and live shad, balloons and the all-important fish locator. I use 30-pound line, large capacity reels, 8-foot heavy action rods, 2 oz. Egg sinkers, barrel swivels and #7/0 circle hooks.

Basically a Carolina Rig, I have a hook with an 18-inch leader tied to your barrel swivel, which is connected to your main line, which is where your egg sinker is attached. My boat is equipped with steel rod holders, a hand-controlled trolling motor, two fish locators, a big dip net and marker buoys. My equipment is not the most expensive but it is practical. The main thing to remember is to keep whatever equipment you use in good condition. Many know all too well about the disasters that can be caused by old line and improperly maintained fishing equipment and big Blues will test everything from your knots to your rod holders. If there is a weak link, they will expose it.

Find the Big Fish

You need to know how to tell the difference between larger fish and bait fish while using your fish locator.

There are two main structures that I catch Blue Cats on: ledges and humps. Blue Cats are creatures of edges and they seem to congregate on the brake lines of ledges and humps. The one-two punch comes when you find these structures with both bait fish and big fish mixed together on your locator. There are very few spots that I will stop and fish where I don’t see either big fish or bait fish on my locator. The ledges that I primarily fish are old river channels edges. The fish can be scattered up and down the edge but the best fishing occurs when they are on the top.

Catching Them

Typically, when I set up to fish these ledges, I run my boat over them and throw out my marker buoy where I see the fish. A little trick to using your marker buoys is to throw your marker upwind of where you are going to fish. If you drop the marker right on top of the fish, you will be bumping it and will eventually move it while the wind is pushing you around. If you throw it upwind of the fish, you can run your trolling motor right up to it without the wind pushing you over it.

Next I bait my rods, staggering them at the depth I see the fish. If the fish are up high, above 10 feet, I use a balloon and live shad on two rods. The other four rods will have half live and half cut shad, which I will suspend over the fish, continuously moving around the marker until the first strike occurs. In the warmer months the bite will usually occur on live shad. The colder the water, the better that cut bait seems to work.

Keep moving the depth of your baits up and down according to what your locator is telling you. An easy way to determine the depth of your bait is to measure the distance between the first guide and your rod’s reel. My rods are two feet from reel to the first guide so when I pull out twenty sections of line between my reel and the first guide, my bait will be approximately 40 feet deep. Stagger the depth of your bait so that you know how deep each is. When you get your first strike, move your other rods to that depth. If no strikes occur within 30 minutes move to another structure. I have set on the same ledge for many hours and caught fish, but I will usually have to move after catching 5 to 10 active fish. If you do not have a trolling motor you can use anchors, but it requires many sessions of heaving up heavy anchors and can soon kill the fun of ledge fishing. When water is at its coldest, the anchor method will work better due to the inactivity of the fish below.

In other words, the warmer the water the faster the fish will spook out from under your boat. The colder the water the less chance the fish will want to move away due to their comfort zone in the water column.

Make sure to read Part 3 of this article to learn about Capt. Jeff’s second non-typical technique!

You have permission to publish this article free of charge as long as you are not selling it and that you include the author bylines immediately visible with the article and, if published in an electronic medium such as on a web site, you provide a link back to www.ozark-lodges-fishing-trips.com in the author bylines, both where the web address is listed as well as well as with the text “Lake of the Ozarks Catfish Fishing Guide Service”…

Jeff Williams runs a Truman Lake Hybrid Bass and Lake of the Ozarks Catfish Fishing Guide Service offering lodging and guided trips in Missouri. To book a trip, learn more tips, or find out how Capt. Jeff would fish your own local waters, call 1-866-HOOKSET or visit http://www.ozark-lodges-fishing-trips.com today!

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“FISH ON!!”

I yelled, as my seven weight fly rod bent over and the line played it’s magical tune of “zinging in the rain”. It was hard to tell just how big the fish was or if it was a Rainbow or big Dolly Varden.

Hooking a big upper Kenai river trout in fast water doesn’t leave much time for species identification.

“Hang on to it-we’ll chase it and go land it in some calmer water.” said Allen, who was behind the sticks of our 20 foot Willie drift boat.

We had just entered the Canyon section of the upper Kenai river and while my three other compadres fishing with me on the boat had already hooked some BIG Rainbows and Dollies, I had yet to catch what I will call a “quality” upper Kenai fish. That of course means insulting every trout on every other river in North America, since the eighteen inch Rainbows and twenty inch Dolly Vardens I had already caught were hardly chopped liver!! It’s just that I had watched numerous twenty-four inch fish caught in the morning and listened to Allen comment on how this was the best morning of fly fishing he had had on the upper Kenai this year. Again, don’t get me wrong-I was catching my share of fish- but this was the kind of fish I was waiting for.

Ziiiiinnnnggggg.

I stood up in the front of the boat, and Allen gave chase in our wide bellied river pursuit vehicle.
I held my rod high and reeled to keep a tight line on the fish.

As we drifted towards the “river right” bank, we heard some crashing in the trees. In my peripheral vision I saw some movement, but kept my eyes fixed on my pulsating rod tip. Allen nonchalantly mentioned that we had a Brown bear over on our right, kind of like a guy mentions seeing a 1957 Chevy.

It’s neat-but nothing to get to crazy about.Keep fishing.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I pass within twenty yards of meat eating carnivores-I like to give them more than just a passing glance.Especially, since most of us on the boat were seeing our first Brown/Grizzly bear in our lives, and not everyone gets to see a Grizzly when they come to Alaska. Not to mention that any one of us would make a delicious mid day snack for a bear with the munchies.

Allen, trying to be the consumate Alaskan fishing guide, was trying to pass it off as an everyday occurence and make you feel like -”Heck, most of us guides sleep with bears”–but you could tell by his watchful back and forth looks–that he didn’t get to see bears that often.

As Allen lowered the boat anchor in a nice back eddy, I turned toward the fish and got back to the task at hand. Pump, reel down, pump, reel down.

About that time, I started to hear some more commotion from the bank, and about the same time as my fish revealed his Rainbow identity by making an acrobatic leap into the air, I turned to see a bear clawing it’s way up a tree.

Good, that’s what I like to see from man eating carnivores!

I turned back at the fish–and then did a double take on the bear.

OH @%$+ IT WAS A CUB…

… and we’re not talking the kind that play in Chicago!!

Faster then I could get the words ” it’s a cub” out of my mouth, mama bear went into protection mode. We all heard brush being knocked down like tackling dummies at the Chicago Bears training camp and then we saw “Mamas” round face,shoulders hunched, claws digging in as she made a charge at us towards the bank.

We all looked over at the same time,and for a brief second, my first thought was: “Oh great, why does this have to happen when I have a nice Rainbow on? I hope I don’t lose this fish.” Of course, sitting twenty yards away in a boat- in the water- gives one a sense of security.

A false sense of security.

That bear took to the sky like “superwoman”. Paws out and legs flying- without even breaking stride- she was IN THE WATER.

You never saw ten eyeballs get so large in your life.

I looked at my fish, I looked at Allen, and I looked at that Grizzly, and thought to myself; “Great, I have three other fishermen on this boat and they all match the criteria that I had required to fish with in bear country. They are all bigger and slower and at this point- between me and the bear!!” BUT, if we had to go overboard-I sure wasn’t confident that I could outswim these guys. Plus, I had a rod in my hand, a fish on the line, and a natural fishermen’s instinct- to not want to lose my trout!! The bear would certainly pick me, because he would get the bonus of having a trout for dessert after having his “Fisherman ala Gore-Tex” entree. I guess I shouldn’t have been too worried,afterall, Allen wouldn’t have wanted to return to the lodge without his “guests”–too much paperwork!!

Right?

Allen frantically grabbed at the anchor rope, while “mama” thrashed about in the water. Meanwhile the rest of us had that “deer in the headlights” look, waiting for either instructions from Allen-or the voice of God- to tell us what to do next.

“I think we’ll fight this fish somewhere else.” Allen said, while grabbing the oars and pulling us away with Herculean strength.

That- is what they call an understatement. Somewhere else indeed!

How about Pennsylvania?

Mama had done what she had intended, danger to cub-gone, fishermen white as ghosts, and Brown bear Peace and tranquility restored to the right bank.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

She turned, and splashed back to the shore…

I don’t know if it was the lowering of the anchor that had startled her, or the banging of the boat, or the splashing of my Rainbow, but we had just witnessed -first hand- how the Grizzly bear protects her cubs in the wild.

Pretty much by going NUTS!!

We drifted over to “river left”, downstream about another 100 yards, and finally landed an exhausted 23 inch FAT Rainbow trout. Of course, the fish seemed an after thought now as all five of us checked our waders for “brown spots”, but after all that, it would have made us cry to lose that fish.

We all “high fived” each other and still couldn’t help but looking back upstream–just to make sure “mama” wasn’t still angry. Allen said that it was the first time he had seen a Brown bear jump into the water like that.

Really.

Then we sat there and all gave our accounts of how the scene “went down”. It was great to hear everyones reaction and different version of the “thirty five seconds of drama”.

We took a picture of that fish- which will be forever on be referred to as the “Bear Fish”, and even though it wasn’t the biggest fish on that float–it will certainly be the one most remembered.

There was no picture of the bear-since everyone was riveted on the real bear on not the Kodak moment.

When we got back to our lodge, Allen told the story of our Alaskan experience and some of the older guides looked at him “sideways” like he might be working on a good fish story or nickname.I could see it now… “Who you going out with today? Grizzly Gillette? Allen the Bear Slayer?… Of course there were four witnesses that were ready to back him up and it wasn’t exactly like we had said we had seen “bigfoot” or “aliens” for heavens sake!!

All in all, I would say we got the true Alaskan experience that day. Nice fat upper Kenai Rainbow trout and Dolly Vardens on a fly, false charged by a Grizzly mom and an unforgettable day in incredible scenery.

As the years go on–I am sure the”Bear Fish”will get bigger, the bear will get closer(maybe even into the boat!!) and the legend of “Grizzly Gillette” will grow tall.

But not nearly as tall as that BEAR!!

A.J. Klott
Author, writer of fishing humor,and “fly tack” peddler.A.J. writes about the people,characters and modern day events that surround the fishing world. His first book is due out in December of 2005.
If you need a laugh or a fun gift, visit his website at:
http://www.twoguyswithflys.com

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