By Bob Jensen
Fishing the Midwest Fishing Team

(photo by Bob Jensen) Mike Frisch with a swim jig bass.

The 2022 open water fishing season is over for this angler. Unless something very unusual comes up on the open water scene, I’m waiting for ice. It wasn’t that many years ago that there were usually only a couple of days between my last open water trip and my first foray of the season onto the ice.

Priorities and experiences change, but one thing that hasn’t changed for me is the enjoyment that I get in looking back at previous open water fishing seasons. I’m guessing that most anglers enjoy reviewing past open water fishing seasons also. Following are a couple things that I’m remembering about recent and not so recent open water fishing seasons.

How fishing techniques evolve constantly surprise me, but it shouldn’t. Change is one of the only constant things in life. I remember several decades ago when my Dad and I would work shallow water cover in the spring for largemouth bass. Almost always we were casting spinnerbaits, and almost always we were either pretty successful or very successful.

At the time, I couldn’t imagine a more effective technique. Flash ahead 40 years. I’m sharing a boat with Mike Frisch. We’re throwing to shallow water cover for largemouth bass. The layout looks exactly what Dad and I used to fish. The only difference is, Mike and I don’t have spinnerbaits tied on.

The hot set-up in recent years has been a jig! A jig! It used to be jigs were used for slow presentations, and they still work when used slowly. But Tour Grade Swimming Jigs tipped with a Rage Menace plastic and worked almost like a spinnerbait are so productive that we’re using them more and more every year. I wonder what we’ll be using in 10 years in place of the swim jig? Maybe back to spinnerbaits?

I remember all the time that I used to spend chasing walleyes at night in the fall. Sometimes I fished from shore in my waders; other times I trolled. The shore fishing was often predictable. If there were baitfish in the area during the day, the walleyes would be there at night. If there was a light breeze blowing into the area, action was better. The walleyes would almost always show up at about the same time every night. We caught lots of walleyes from shore at night then and continue to do so.

I remember another time when I was fishing alone at night trolling on Leech Lake in north central Minnesota. It was very windy. I should not have been out there, and I certainly should not have been out there by myself. But the walleyes were biting, and there were a good number of big ones. I was pulling crankbaits. I hooked what was at the time the biggest walleye I had ever tangled with. I got it to the boat, but when it came time to net it, there was no way to do so.

The rolling waves made it hard for me to stand up, and the up and down of the boat in the rolling waves made netting the fish impossible. When it finally came unhooked, it just laid there a minute, giving me a very good look at it. It made the eight pounder that I hooked and landed shortly after look not so big.

The thing that we need to keep in mind is that fishing seasons are never really over as long as we can remember them. My fishing friends and I have relived so many fishing trips and fishing seasons from years past while sitting around a table inside or a campfire outside. My friends remember their catches being bigger than they were and my catches being smaller than they were, and that’s okay.

The stories change every time they’re told. I would strongly suggest that we all cherish our fishing or whatever other activity you enjoy as it’s happening, and then enjoy those experiences in your memory on a regular basis.