Fishing for Beginners

Kids just want to see the bobber go down and then reel them in.
Well my 5 and 7 yr old do.
Yours are 11 or so?
Our nephew was 12ish when we went and was pretty self sufficient. He more wanted to just cast and catch something. For him it was easy to put on a daredevil type spoon and cast for northerns. (WI here)

Some things:
If it is the first real times fishing, just use worms and bobbers.
From shore, find areas with shade, trees that have fallen into the water, etc. Morning and evening are the best times, but panfish eat all day long. Find the depth of the spot by using a tall bobber and setting it "deep" to see if it capsizes. Find about 2 feet off the bottom on hot days.

Throw near the overhang/shade but not into it. The initial splash scares fish, throw it out about 5 feet past if you can and reel it in towards the objects, and wait.

NightCrawlers are the best, you want to use half a worm, and double hook them, first at an end, then wrap it around the hook and another one so the end can dangle, wiggle, look yummy.

When the bobber starts bouncing, don't yank yet. Wait until it is submerged and moving. Panfish especially smaller ones nibble and nibble. If you get just nibbles try going deeper on your bobber.

Also keep reeling it in so if you yank you don't just get line slack, being on shore most often the current will push the bobber towards you. Boat is ideal.

I let them hold the poles and then if they get a bite, set the hook and then let them reel it in.
We always release.

But being 10 they may want to cast. In that case, just go outside down a street or whatever and put a neutered heavy bait on the end and let them practice. There are some weighted practice things that look like fish.

Fish are very sensitive to disturbances in the water. Make sure they aren't throwing rocks in the water even 20 feet near the area.

It takes time to improve on catching fish.
But really, it isn't about the fishing anyways.

I went out to Big Pier 60 here in Clearwater today at the spur of the moment. I never fished this pier before and the aerial view from Mapquest or Google earth or whatever it was didn't help much. I got skunked for the most part while the people in the good spot were pulling up Spanish Makeral all day long with bobbers and shrimp.

I caught a sammich-sized sheephead free-lining a shrimp next to the boat marker though.

Good sandwich?

I don't know yet, I forgot today was Easter and I'm already stuffed. I'll eat it for lunch tomarrow. Sheephead aren't exactly a super-tasty fish to begin with, it will last untill then.

I didn't find any worms when I cleaned it which is good. The family of fish sheephead are part of have a higher chance of having worms in their flesh with the larger they are.

Here's a Black Drum I caught under the north side of the Skyway along the rock jetti that's about twice the size of that sheephead, it was full of worms and I ended up using it as fertilizer instead of eating it.

I've done fishing before...cool(^-^)


visit this one http://www.youtube.com/results?search_t ... hing&uni=1

Trying my hand at an 8-hour sport fishing trip at Orange Beach next month. Last time I tried it, we watched all the other boats ride off in the other direction and we basically took a 6-hour tour - we didn't pay. heh

Always enjoyed party boats, hope this pans out for me - I'll hafta post some pics and count sammiches!

I've always wanted to try fly fishing.
One of these days I'll get out on the flats and try it, I hear the pompano like flies and I like pompano.


Try to get there early so you can get a spot on the back of the boat if you don't have to reserve your place ahead of time, that's where the fish-finder/depth-guage is mounted.

Oh wait, sport fishing, like deep water ?

Yep, deep water, a friend and I are chartering one for our wives and ourselves...ok, ok...for ourselves and the wives are maybe going.

I went out on the pier again yesterday, sunburn from 2 days ago and all.
Brought home 11 Spanish Mackerel this time.

I was going to spell out OZZU with fish and take a picture, but I was two fish short and didn't have any newspaper, so I just shot the ones on top in the cooler before I cleaned them.



Here's a tip for cleaning Mackerel.
When you catch them put them in a cooler full of ice and take the time to make sure they stay straight as you put more in.
Hours later when you go to clean them, they will be straight and stiff as a board from the ice, this makes them a LOT easier to clean.
I can filet a mackerel in a few seconds when I keep them like that.

Mmmm, I like me some pan-seared mackerel.

I'm trying to McGuyver together a smoker at the moment.

So far I have a broken electric Wok that I bypassed the switch in to get working again and a few ideas for enclosures.

You'll have to post some pics of your MacGuyver smoker when you get it finished, homemade stuff like that is cool.

The best damn fish I've ever eaten was about 9 years ago. I did a week long canoe trip in Minnesota and Ontario with the boy scouts and one of our adult leaders caught a nice big pike, big enough to feed all 9 of us with seconds. It was only dead long enough to clean it and cut it into steaks before we started cooking it. We just wrapped it in foil and put it on the grill over hot coals, I can't remember what else we did for seasoning or anything though. Man that was some good fish!

I was just about to get a galvanized steel trash can from Home Depot thinking it would make the perfect smoking enclosure. Then I learned that heating galvanized metal can give off poisonous zinc-oxide fumes that can give you heavy metal poisoning and kill you.

I could probably burn the galvanizing off by setting fires inside the can or using acid baths, but if I'm going to put that much work into it I might as well just buy one from Walmart.

Back to the drawing board, didn't get to use this batch of fish to test it, but better safe than sorry I guess.

Just get a kettle grill. They're cheap and it's not hard to smoke in them.

Kettle grill ?