By Bob Jensen
(photo by Bob Jensen) Fishing in many places is good and getting better.
Fishing has always been a very important part of my life. Some of my first memories are of standing on the edge of a pond with a bamboo pole, no reel, and some braided line tied to the end of the pole. Attached was a round, red and white bobber, a hook, and a splitshot. Not a very refined set-up, but I didn’t know that, and the bluegills didn’t care. Whenever the bobber went down, my excitement level went up. It still does!
There was a time when I was concerned that fishing might not provide the excitement that I had come to expect as a youngster. Every now and then when I would listen to the adults talk about fishing, they would often declare “fishin’ today just isn’t as good as it used to be.” I was concerned that there might not be any fish to catch when I got older. Now that I am older, I think that the adults were wrong. There are still plenty of fish to catch. Some trouble-spots exist when it comes to fishing, but the odds for fishing success are good in many places and getting better in other places.
We’ve learned so much about how and where to catch fish during the different seasons and their changing food preferences from spring to summer to fall. We know more about fish, and we also have much better equipment to fish with.
Today’s anglers are more mobile and versatile when it comes to fishing. Back in the day, we would go walleye fishing. We’d try different baits and presentations, but we wanted walleyes. If the walleyes didn’t want to get caught, we went home empty-handed.
Today, if the walleyes aren’t biting on the lake that we’re on, we go somewhere else. Or we switch species. When the walleyes don’t want to bite, we can usually get some bass, pike, or panfish to eat our bait. The anglers who catch the most fish are the anglers who are versatile and willing to change presentations or species.
In some areas, anglers have been discovering that fishing for bass is a good idea. Largemouth, smallmouth, spotted, white and yellow bass provide action in so many places. How good is bass fishing? In a bass tournament on New York’s Lake Ontario in 2022, Jay Przekurat weighed a five-fish limit all four days of competition that averaged a tad over five pounds each. Most of his fish were taken on a Half Shell plastic attached to a dropshot rig. Simple, inexpensive, and effective.
Some say that fishing has gotten too expensive. It doesn’t have to be. We caught plenty of fish without all the modern electronic equipment and we can still do so. Modern electronics might help us catch more fish, but we can certainly catch fish without them. And putting on a pair of waders and walking around in the river or along a lake’s shoreline is still an effective and inexpensive way to catch some fish.
That reminds me. The walleyes in local rivers should start biting soon. I’m going to find my waders, get some jigs, and see if I can get some of those walleyes to bite. Or maybe I’ll go to the nearby pond and see if the crappies are in yet. If that doesn’t work, I know of this little backwater area where there are almost always some largemouth bass willing to eat a bait. It’s for sure, in many ways, we as anglers, are pretty darn lucky to have the fishing opportunities that the modern world presents.
