Average Ontario Anglers
Love fishing? You're in the right place. Join hosts Jesse and Andrew on the 1st and 3rd Sunday of every month for the Average Ontario Anglers Podcast — your go-to show for fishing tips, tactics, and gear reviews tailored for everyday anglers. Whether you're chasing bass, walleye, pike, or panfish, we mix expert advice from local fishing guides and pros with relatable stories and sharp humour that'll keep you hooked. Tune in to learn, laugh, and level up your fishing game.
Average Ontario Anglers
Horrible Fishing Habits
Ever wondered how a brewery could unlock the secrets of the enigmatic American eel? Join us as Andrew, fresh from a musky trip with howling coyotes, recounts a fascinating tale of these elusive creatures, whose life cycles are a scientific marvel. Learn about the remarkable historical contributions of researchers backed by an unexpected ally – a brewery – in unraveling these aquatic puzzles.
We tackle the common bad fishing habits that could be holding you back, from lure fixation to improper knot tying. Our lively discussions are filled with practical tips to refine your fishing skills, whether it's selecting the right lure or preparing your gear to avoid those heartbreaking misses.
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Andrew, I think it's time you drink some water. Welcome everyone to another episode of the Average Ontario Anglers Fishing Podcast. This is a fishing-based podcast in Ontario. You probably figured that out from the name, obviously, but I'm your host, Jesse, and with me today is the man with the mustache and the beard, Andrew. How are you today, Andrew? You look terrible.
Speaker 2:I'm getting over a cold, so I'm going to power through it. Usually in the past, Jesse's the one with the cold, so I cover over the talking. So Jesse's going to do most of the talking for me this time, which is why he is host.
Speaker 1:See, we do plan these things pretty good. People Like when Andrew's sick, I'm the host, when I'm sick, he's the host. I mean, what else could you want? Anyway, this episode we actually have a pretty cool episode. We're actually talking about something that you probably don't want to admit that you do bad fishing habits.
Speaker 1:Now, last week we actually had that live on location episode that we had fishing up in the musky back lake with our buddy norm, and I really enjoyed that episode. That's not a normal episode for us, filming out in the wilderness with coyotes howling. So actually this week we're back in the studio, so to say so. We're excited to get back to our regular programming and, again, the topic this week is all about bad fishing habits. Now, these are things that you may do. You may know that you're doing them, you may not know that you're doing them. So this is going to be a great episode. It's going to help us learn a bit Some of these things me and Andrew have done for many years and we've tried to learn.
Speaker 1:We try our best not to do these things, so we catch more fish, but before we get into that, we actually have, as tradition states, an interesting fishing fact, and to handle that, we have the man with the mustache and the beard, andrew well, jesse kept saying how all my interesting fishing facts are about parasites and you know things like that.
Speaker 2:So I made a concerted effort I postponed the one that was going to do. That was yet another parasite. Was it a parasite? It's not really a parasite, just like a weird like thing that lives in ontario waters. But I'll do it later, so don't worry, you're not missing out. It's just being postponed so that jesse can't make fun of me anymore. But this one is about eels, not the screeching eels from the princess, princess, bride movie, which are awesome, by the way but the american eel is something that we have here in ontario, despite it being called american eel, that's almost borderline a parasite, so you're just barely not doing a parasite.
Speaker 2:Interesting fishing fact I'll let it slide. Eels are not parasites.
Speaker 1:They look like parasites.
Speaker 2:Just because they look like a lamprey does not mean they're lamprey. They are completely separate. Okay, so a little bit about the the eels, american eels. They are catadromus, it means that they live in freshwater but they migrate to saltwater, to the ocean, to reproduce. They're actually born in the sargasso sea, near bermuda, and they travel thousands of kilometers into these freshwater rivers, lakes and streams where they mature.
Speaker 2:Now we're going to get into their kind of breeding site, because it's a bit of story about how scientists found out about how they bred and where they bred. First of all they're going to describe them. American eels have an elongated, snake-like body with a very smooth texture due to reduced scale. So like a catfish is very like slippery and it's a smooth. Eels have a very similar skin to that. Guess how long the eels can reach. They're not crazy huge, but just if you had to wager how big the eel could get, how big would you say?
Speaker 1:um, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I want to say like six feet six feet, a little big about four feet, but say still, okay, a four foot eel, I mean that's pretty cool they're. They are quite rare due to habitat loss and again because they have such a long migration for their reproductive cycle. Whenever we have dams or we put up obstructions in the way, it really hurts their numbers, so that's why their numbers have declined a lot. We used to actually be able to fish them in Ontario, even on the East Coast you can still catch them, but again their numbers are dwindling by a fair bit. They are, however, they're very adaptable, so when they can get areas they're pretty good at getting at traversing over even just like wet grass areas into other sections or bodies of water. So there's something blocking their path, usually they can get past it. So they they're pretty good at finding new habitat when necessary. They're nocturnal feeders and they often hunt by smell and they prey on fish, crustaceans and insects.
Speaker 2:Now what I wanted to get into is this all started when I saw a short video about how a brewery was responsible for discovering the life cycle of the eel. A brewery, a brewery, a brewery. For years people thought like this is going back like ancient times. They just thought that eels spontaneously just arrived. They thought that again we have the american eel and the european eel are the two most popular ones, and they thought there was way more species of eel. Because when you see them in the rivers and the lakes from these other parts of the world, you look at it and they look completely different than the one that you find over in europe. It looks completely different than the eel you find down in the rivers and the lakes and these other parts of the world. You look at it and they look completely different than the one that you find over in Europe. It looks completely different than the eel you find down in the Sargasso Sea. It looks completely different than the one you find in the inland lakes in Ontario. So they thought it was a bunch of different species of eels. Turns out there's two. There's the European and the American. There are others, but those are the two main ones.
Speaker 2:So, like I said, they are born in the Sargasso Sea. For those of you who don't know, it's a sea completely surrounded by water. It doesn't border any land. It's not a landlocked sea at all. It's in the North Atlantic Ocean, close to Bermuda, but it's kind of like a lot of the eastern seaboard of the states it has as part of the Sargasso Sea. The life cycle is cool because they start life in saltwater, then they migrate to freshwater to grow and mature and they only return to saltwater again to spawn. So it's like the opposite of salmon and stuff like that right, they go from the oceans, or trout they go from, like steelhead, come from saltwater and they go into freshwater to spawn. It's the opposite.
Speaker 2:So the Sargasso Sea is the only known breeding ground for American eels. It's very vast, it's a huge area of ocean, it's very deep, so they still don't know a whole lot about them in that area. Studying them is very difficult because it's just such a huge area to cover. But we're going to go over some of their life stages. So the larval stage.
Speaker 2:So after hatching, the eels enter I'm not going to pronounce that word because it's Latin and I don't know. They look like transparent, leaf-shaped larvae. They drift with the ocean currents for several months, traveling thousands of kilometers from the Sargasso Sea to coastal areas of North America. As they get close to the coast they undergo metamorphosis into glass eels becoming elongated and slightly pigmented, into glass eels becoming elongated and slightly pigmented. So now, at glass eels. They start to enter freshwater rivers, lakes and estuaries along North America, including all the way up into Ontario.
Speaker 2:Now, when they're in Ontario, these young eels, they'll travel upstream and they'll spend the majority of their lives in rivers, streams, lakes, feeding and growing, again nighttime feeding. They just live their life, their just purposes to grow at that point the yellow eel stage. So after they're settled in fresh water, they transition to the yellow eel phase, because they have a yellow, brownish hue. During this time they mature for 10 to 25 years, reaching lengths up to 1.2 meters or those four feet. Then again, nocturnal feeders. So they're again. They're going like crayfish after minnows, anything that they can get their mouths around. And when they reach maturity they turn into the silver eel stage, kind of like, you know, a silver fox and when you get old enough but you still keep your hair somehow. Don't ask me, I don't know how that happens. So the eels and the silver eels they have a darker back and a lighter underside.
Speaker 2:This is essentially them preparing to go back to the sargasso sea to spawn. So they undergo some physiological changes so that they can adapt to the high salinity again of the of the ocean, most of the fish that we don't think about, whatever we learned in science class. We put freshwater fish and salt water, they'll just like dry up and it essentially burns their gills and they can't they can't get any oxygen. So there's a lot of stuff has to happen to them to be able to change and go back to full-time salt water living. Some of the things that happen is to adapt to the the high salt levels. They enlarge their eyes and they increase their fat reserves and that's part of the change that their bodies go through.
Speaker 2:After they spawn in this hargasso sea, they die, making this migration cycle. One time in their life they kind of like you know, salmon. They spawn once, one and done. You may think well, andrew, you said something about a brewery before. So what happened?
Speaker 2:Well, because the eel's life takes place across such a huge area, like thousands and thousands of kilometers. They'll travel from where they are spawned, where they are born, where they live their lives, and then all the way back, and they're at different life stages depending where you're finding them. So when they're en route between the two, they're either very small or they're fully grown. There's no in-betweens there. When they are fully grown, you know, or they're being hatched in that sea. You're never going to have either of those two stages on the inland lakes. That's part of the reason why they thought it was completely different species. So they thought, like similar to Aristotle, they thought that eels just spontaneously arrived. They had no clue. They'd never seen them spawn in rivers. They had no clue how they were produced. What's cool is in 1896, giovanni Grassi, he identified larval stages of of eels and that was the first time they had been found, as opposed to the adult eels.
Speaker 2:In the 1920s, biologist Johannes Schmidt conducted research funded in part by the Carlsberg Brewery. Carlsberg Brewery started putting money into just philanthropy, into science, and they gave him a boat, they funded him to be able to go and do this research. They funded johanna schmidt to go like hey, find out where eels reproduce. That was just his goal for his team and they they were one of the main funders for that scientific expedition. Now, in 2009, they're still trying to find out more and more. Uh satellite tagging allowed them to track the precise, precise migration of the eels. But again, the biggest breakthrough was from that scientific study done in the 20s, partly funded by carlsberg beer. So the next time that people say, uh, it's just a. You know, drinking beer you're losing your brain cells. Sometimes they add to your brain cells and carlsberg does taste like eel slime.
Speaker 1:So just kidding, it's pretty good, that's so random. Yeah, it's just some like some breweries like, well, here, take all this money and go find out about an eel for no reason whatsoever. We need more breweries to do stuff like that into fishing. We'll just call up, like you know, moosehead and cream more and just be like yo. I want to know more about the spawning populations of walleye in this lake that I happen to fish. Don't ask questions, just do it and sponsor an event. Yeah, that was interesting. You know what eels are? One of those things that they're like, like I said, they're just like weird. They're not parasites, but they're just kind of like weird water snake, weird gross things. So I don't want to say I'm happy that they're not around a lot, but I'm not complaining, it's all good.
Speaker 2:Apparently they're delicious, like everyone who I've talked to have eaten them. Like I said, on the east coast there's still you can keep them in limited quantities and the guys out there it's rare when they get one but they they love it. They say it's it's the best food you can catch out there in the fresh water. So i'm'm curious. I have had like smoked eel on sushi and stuff. I don't know if that's similar, but I do like that. A black dragon roll Delicious.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Well, I have to say congratulations on doing your first interesting fishing fact about fish in many years. So if you're a new listener, our interesting fishing fact every week is generally about fishing, but it's also about anything that you could, you know, come across out in the nature of ontario when you're fishing, or north america in general. So is a very cool segment that we do every single week. Well, not every single week, most weeks, some weeks we have other cool segments like tnt, which is like what techniques and tips, tips, tricks, it doesn't it?
Speaker 1:doesn't matter To try. We don't know what it is, we just do it, it doesn't matter. So, before we get into the main topic, I was supposed to post this last week but we were in the wilderness, literally. So right now I'm going to stitch in an interview that I did with Mike from Waterwolf Lures when I went fishing with him back in early September, and just a little bit of backstory behind this.
Speaker 1:I was at a cottage up near Moira Lake and Mike hit me up and he said you want to go fishing? And I said absolutely, when Mike from Waterwolf Lures asked if you want to go fishing, you go, you don't say no, you can't say no. So I went and he said well, do you want to fish the St Lawrence? And I was like, yeah, let's do it. So we had a nice long truck drive out to the lake and on the way back. So I brought my wireless mics and I said hey, mike, let's talk about something new and special. So if you're listening to this on Spotify or on Apple or on a podcast streaming service, I'm going to stitch in right now the interview and I hope you enjoy it. All right, so we are actually driving home right now in Mike from Waterwolf Lures truck on our way home from a muskie fishing adventure, and I thought we'd just take this opportunity to talk about a new bait that is coming out shortly or already. And it's not a new bait, is it Mike?
Speaker 3:It's version two. It's 2.0. 2.0.
Speaker 1:Of a very successful lure. And what lure is that?
Speaker 3:That would be the Shadzilla a nine and a half inch Shadzilla. What we've done is, rather than using the traditional dipping method we once used to make them, over the course of about three years finally got a model that worked out well. My good friend Landry Smith from Rover Baits actually carved it and I was very grateful because at that point I think he felt sorry for me when he helped me out. But it works great. I think it's going to be much more durable than the original.
Speaker 3:Some of the pros to having a solid body swim bait. It has better kicking action and more body roll. But at the same time we've softened up the plastic a little compared to what it used to be and even with the shallowest version you can burn it in and that bait will run true all the way back I did notice that because today I fished both the old hollow body version which has been around for what how many decades jeez, I don't know, it's uh, mike doesn't want to age himself, but it's been, it's been out for a while but that that is a classic on a lot of musky waters.
Speaker 3:That a lot of anglers in.
Speaker 1:You know canada as well as us uh have been using for many, many years, but the new one is solid and the action side by side. We were fishing them today. It's insane. It looks really good, has a really good kick and roll to the body. The whole body shimmies back and forth and the tail is a really good kick we had a few fish that really tried to destroy them and yeah, I mean they had good slashes in them and I mean that's almost kind of satisfying when you see your lure like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but in terms of the harness staying in place, which was probably the achilles heel of the Shadzilla they won't rip out. I mean, we use a special glue that actually encompasses the wire and the lead so you'll never rip it out. You'll tear the lure completely apart before you can get it out of there. So, and I guess one other thing that that's really great about it is that it doesn't cloud it. So with the original Shadzilla it was clear, coated with a thin coat of plastisol and if you kept it in the water for a long time and some of the colors, you could really notice how it got cloudy and you'd have to hang it to dry it to allow the moisture to dissipate on that outside clear coat. Well, now they're clear, coated with a special vinyl paint and like the look of the bait changes very little after fishing a whole day.
Speaker 1:So yeah, because we were trolling today and we had them in the water for many hours and they still looked really good. So the shadzilla was a 9.5 inch, a solid body. Really good quality baits, really good action. Today we caught pike, muskie and a big 30 mike caught a 30 inch walleye on one as well, so they catch any big predatory fish and even small predatory fish, as I found out today.
Speaker 3:What did we call your pike? Yeah, what was it? The?
Speaker 1:spinny pike, the spinny pike. It was spinning around just like a wet sock, but anyway, we're huge fans of water wolf lures. You know they're made in Ontario, mike and his wife Mary doing a fantastic job making these baits. Uh, they're classic, you know, in again, like I said, canada and us and pretty much everywhere people fishing for big fish. So definitely check out the new ones and, uh, maybe we'll make mike uh, do a giveaway so he can give away one or two. But I haven't told him that yet. Surprise, we, we can do that.
Speaker 3:Absolutely See what he said. Anyway, thanks, Mike. Appreciate it. It was great fishing with you today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I'm not as smelly as Andrew, so anyone can deal with it.
Speaker 2:Wow, that was really cool, not bad.
Speaker 1:Eh, these are going to be a killer all around Ontario, especially on Lake St Clair this fall, and if you haven't got these yet, I really recommend you keep watching his site until they're available. I know he's kind of leaked it. I don't think they're available yet on the website, but maybe soon. Andrew has one too.
Speaker 2:I do the body roll. Jesse was not joking. The body roll on the solid one is impressive.
Speaker 1:It is impressive. We're actually going to Lake St Clair very soon when this podcast comes out I think it'll be the next week and we're hoping both to catch giant fish and guess what We'll be chucking most of the day the new Shadzillas, yep, okay. So now that, now that that's over with oh man, all that stuff that we have to post, just kidding we're going to talk about this week's podcast topic, which is bad fishing habits that we've all encountered. Now, like I mentioned before a few weeks ago, we talked about annoying things that our fishing buddies can do. Is fishing friend fails?
Speaker 1:This is this episode is more about things that we may do ourselves that may hinder our fishing productivity, but we also asked our Instagram followers what are some of the worst fishing habits that someone can have. Sometimes, you know you get a fair amount of. You know people will comment you know 20, 30, there's like 50 or 60 people were really onto this topic. There must be a lot of really bad habits out there, so we're going to talk about some of them, so I thought we could cover the first one is called lure fixation.
Speaker 1:Now, lure fixation is the tendency to get stuck on fishing one lure all day, not just a little bit the whole day. Now, I'm sure we've all had this experience where we're fishing and if you're obsessed with fishing, usually you bring too much fishing tackle. And if someone says to me, oh you don't need all that stuff, I usually agree with them Like absolutely I don't, but I like it, so I'm going to bring it. But you usually have come across a scenario where you meet some old guy at the dock and he's like all you need is, you know, and then he shows you one lure.
Speaker 1:You know, all you need is a quarter ounce white twister tail jig, that's all you need. Or some lure, all you need is a Meps number three. You know, I'm sure we've all had that situation and in your, your head you're like okay, bud, okay, you know, and that may be true sometimes, but all the time it's not good. So what are? What is one lure, andrew, that you can start casting and you just go into auto mode and you just you keep fishing it all day and you'll realize halfway through the day you're like, what am I doing? I'm fishing this lure and in terrible situations, what? What's one lure that you use? That's like that usually it's.
Speaker 2:Two comes to mind. Um, the one that most matches the description of I'm usually throwing it in. The conditions and I shouldn't be throwing it in is frogs, like after I start throwing a hollow body frog and I'm just fishing it all day and it's, you know, temperature's too cold, the fish have pushed off deep and I'm just like, yeah, but I want a hollow frog bite.
Speaker 1:That is probably one of the most forced bites or baits in bass fishing. I guarantee Cause, like we've had several days, we've had many days when, even in the heat of the summer, say, it's like a cold front rolls in and those fish they're shallow, they're still in like with all the lily pads and stuff, but they're not hitting topwater frog and you may see them boil at it sometimes, and that just you know what that should tell you. That should tell you that they don't want it If they're boiling at it. Believe me, if a bass wants to eat a frog, he'll eat it. It'll get into his mouth. They're not slow. So if they're boiling at it, it means that they are not really that interested in it. But often what happens is we take that boil as oh, they wanted it, they wanted it. And you keep trying and trying, but you have to just realize at that point that you should try something else that's more effective. A bait that I oftentimes will chuck all day is a chatterbait.
Speaker 1:That's no surprise to anyone. You know I usually always have when I'm bass fishing I always have a rod with a chatterbait tight on, and that's not a bad thing. Chatterbaits are extremely versatile. We have whole episodes where we talked about just so many different techniques that you can use and situations where you can chuck a chatterbait pretty much for like almost all the species in ontario, but let's just say for bass. Like you can fish it shallow, you can fish it around cover, you can bounce it on the bottom, you can pitch it, you can skip it under docks, but it's a certain feel of a lure. So generally I mean you can reel it fast or you can reel it slow, but it still has that thumping and the shimmy behind it. You may come to a situation where the fish just don't want to chase. How often has that happened? Your lures that are cast and retrieved spinner, spoon, spinner bait, chatter bait, anything that the fish has to chase they're just not into it that day and that that's the problem. If you get fixated on using the same lure, then it can literally stifle you from catching fish. And I think the one thing for me that I think is everyone's problem everyone does this, I guarantee, even professionals. Is you fish memories? So you're like well, last time I was here I smashed them on the topwater frog. It's like that was two years ago. The fish are different every single day. You can't fixate on one specific thing and one specific spot.
Speaker 1:I always try my hardest because we're just average anglers we're not even that good, but I always try to think of lures as tools. I've heard a lot of professionals say that especially. We went to a muskie seminar and the guy was saying pick a lure that gets to where the muskie are. That's the first thing you need to worry about. It's not what lure is the best lure in that situation. Like, oh, is it shiny? Is it the right color? First thing, get the lure to where the muskie is. If the muskie is deep, use a lure that gets deep. If the muskie is up shallow, use a lure that gets deep. The muskies up shallow, use a lure that shallow. So that's your first thing.
Speaker 1:Make sure you you remember a lure is a tool. If you use the same tool in situations that you don't need it. Like Andrew's a plumber. Like Andrew has a big monkey wrench and he's trying to attach a you know, a pristine stainless steel faucet and scratches the heck out of it. That's the wrong tool.
Speaker 1:What did uh, what did your dad always used to say? Don't be a fool, use the right tool. I don't even know if he said that or not. I'm pretty sure I heard him say that. It sounds like something your dad would say anyway. So the same goes with fishing. Don't get fixated on using the same lure and I know we always have success and there may be a situation where you do use the same lure. Say, you're short casting for Chinook salmon, you're probably going to use one of two lures and be successful. But when it comes to fishing for species like walleye, bass, muskie, where you're fishing different situations, you're not just casting in one spot all day. Make sure that you have a few options and view them as tools and use the best lure for the situation that day, not from two years ago.
Speaker 2:And something just a little side note is edonis have to make a huge change, just as the example Jesse was saying with the frogs. Maybe they're just boiling on it. Something that I've found that works really well is switching to a finesse topwater, often like either a minnow imitator or a insect imitator. They can still have a bit of a presence, but it works very slowly. I'll let it pause, let it sit, and it's more of a, a smaller morsel for them to eat, and when they go for it they kind of just like slurped off the surface. If they're boiling, it shows that they are active enough to kind of come to the surface, but they're not in it for the chase, not in it for a big meal.
Speaker 2:So, downsizing it, you know you can still fish the top water if you wanted, or you can fish, you know, start flipping, um, but it it. Sometimes it's a matter of making that small change of just a different type of top water can be, uh, what's needed. So don't get focused on. I'm seeing some action. I gotta make sure I keep using this until I get something.
Speaker 1:Start tweaking it and start with small tweaks maybe, and you might have success yeah, and and another reason that what andrew said could be the deal that day is because fishing pressure we we've had the privilege to fish a lot of small back lakes that have very little fishing pressure and generally speaking those fish are not picky. You could chuck any lure and catch fish. As long as you're fishing the right circumstance, the right depth, the right speed, you're going to catch fish. It doesn't matter like color or size, the fish don't really care, they're not overly pressured. But if you're fishing heavily pressured water, like, for instance, like the cortha lakes in our area on the weekend, slammed tons of boats, boat launches, full, no parking and lakes in the states way worse you fish those lakes in like texas and stuff. There's like a tournament every day on those lakes. Now if you're fixated on using the same lure all the time, you might not catch as much fish as making those little changes. And I think that's what up here in Ontario, especially guys that fish up North, they're always like oh, you don't need all those fancy baits yeah, you don't up there. But on pressured lakes making little tweaks could make a difference and that's why all those tournament guys are always into, you know, doing little tweaks and, like andrew said, maybe going slightly smaller. That seems to be the trend nowadays is going smaller, like, like bobby was talking about, those little two and a half or two and three quarter inch long tubes, fishing these little tiny baits on the bottom, and that's a change as to the regular three and a halfs that everyone normally uses. So try to be a little more versatile and you'll definitely catch more fish.
Speaker 1:Now the next point is one that we kind of talked about before not having a game plan. We kind of talked about that with Bobby in regards of using Navionics. If you have Navionics, it's a great tool so that you can look ahead and be like, hey, this big lake, or even a smaller lake, I'm going to fish these spots. Now, do you remember, andrew, before we went up to our camping trip a few weeks ago, when we went camping with our buddy Ryan, what we were doing, like for three days, four days before the trip, I was sending Andrew spots on avionics. I was like, dude, check out this hump.
Speaker 3:Check out this hump.
Speaker 1:He's like oh man, man, that looks sick. And we had marked. How many spots did we?
Speaker 2:we had marked, at least we had like six, yeah, like we, like we are our a spots, like we just want to hit these, yeah. And then we had like some spots like on the way you're going to hit this edge or troll along this, this side, but like actual, like fine spots were like I want to fish exactly this side of the point, kind of thing and generally all those spots that we had marked.
Speaker 1:Not that we're geniuses, but, like once you learn how to read Navionics, most of the spots we'd marked, they were actually good spots that we came back to and it saved so much time. It saved us from just looking around, especially if you have a one day trip. You're just going for the day, like just Saturday or just Sunday. You don't have time to look around If you're fishing a new lake, or even a lake that you fish but you're not super familiar with. Having Navionics or some kind of topographic map that you can plan your day and be like, hey, in the morning I'm going to try the shallow shoal with top water and then, as the sun comes up, I'm going to try these steep drops near this. You know this hump with a weed line on it. Have a plan, you'll save so much time. That's what me and Andrew try to do anyway, and sometimes it works. The next point is a bad habit that I am a hundred percent guilty of A hundred percent, and I know Andrew is too, so we're going to throw him under the bus right there, but we like buying lures. But one bad habit that a lot of anglers have is you focus more on lure choice than presentation, and I know if you open anyone's tackle box that is obsessed with fishing. If I open andrew's tackle box, it's full of trays, and in those trays are hundreds of lures, some of which have never been used. Many have been cast once or twice and that's it. And many have rusted hooks and that's another habit we're going to cover later. It's not so much about the lure, it's about how you fish it. Most of the time Now, small changes you can make. Like Andrew said, oh, if you're using green pumpkin and oh, the bass only want green pumpkin with purple sparkles in it. Like come on, no, maybe on, like super pressured gin, clear water, but for most people's fishing you don't have to worry about that. I remember, like during bobby's uh podcast a few weeks ago, he was like green pumpkin, that's all you need. That's that's it like. Keep it basic. So like, for instance I'm going to use bass fishing as an example for this for flipping and pitching.
Speaker 1:When I'm bass fishing I used to bring all kinds of different stuff and now I literally have like three things in two colors. It's like black and green pumpkin. That's literally it. There may be variations of green pumpkin, but they're all green pumpkin. It's like a green pumpkin or like black and blue, or black, dark, natural, and I'm going to pick one of those based on where I'm fishing. If I'm fishing under lily pads, where it's dark, I'm going to use black. If I'm fishing in clear water, I'm going use green pumpkin, use the lure. That's the most natural looking in that situation.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to worry about the small details. I'm not going to worry too much about oh, this craw pattern has three extra tentacle arms on the side. The fish is going to notice. They don't care about that stuff. Fish are not as intelligent as we think they are. I know we give fish way too much credit for being uber intelligent and, oh, they can count the strands of rubber in a jig skirt. They don't. They're reacting to their circumstance and situation and if they're hungry and aggressively eating, they're not going to be picking apart your lure presentation if it doesn't look exact. What they are going to be picking apart is how you work the lure right, andrew absolutely like it's.
Speaker 2:I just think of an illustration, for it is if you go to a restaurant and someone brings you your plate of food and it's all like it's two plates food. One is, like, presented really nice. Another one is kind of all mixed up. As long as they reach your table, you're probably going to eat both of them. You paid for that meal. So it's nice to have something that is like really nice put together. But if you're not actually getting that, if you're not presenting it to the fish where he's going to eat it, if you're fishing a topwater and he's 15 feet down, guess what, I don't care how beautiful that topwater looks, you're not going to catch. But if you can put a hunk of pork rind that's got spray paint on it right in front of his face and jiggle it in the right way, he's like, hey, it's right there, I'll probably eat it. So yeah, it's it's.
Speaker 1:The presentation starts with actually getting it in front of their face and then goes, you know, up and you tweak it from there to get nicer and nicer I always think, as long as the the bait that you're using looks natural, like it's acting natural I mean, it doesn't have to look natural like look at half of the lures that you can catch fish on like a pig, a pink senko, that looks like nothing natural in the water, nothing in nature, soft plastics, yeah nothing in nature is wonder bread it's.
Speaker 1:It's visual, the fish can see it. That's the main thing. It's the right profile. It's the size they want. The color is nothing natural, so don't worry about that stuff. Stick with the basics at first. You know your natural colors, your bright colors. When it's cloudy or low visibility and if the fish are hungry, they're going to hit it. So focus more on how to work a lure. Try to get that down first, and that's something that me and andrew try to do.
Speaker 1:No one knows how to work every lure perfectly, even guys that are experts that are out there. They'll oftentimes watch other professionals fishing and be like, oh, that's how he works it and they learn from that. So you can always learn from your fishing buddies, from YouTube videos of professionals that are doing like vlogs and stuff. Like you watch the videos of Cooper Gallant fishing and you're like, just watching how he fishes, it's very intense and you're like, okay, he's dragging his drop shot like that. Like I don't do it like that, I'm gonna try it like that next time. Pick up these little tips here and there. Learn to present your bait better. You'll catch more fish. Don't worry about getting all the little fine details of your bait perfect because that comes after. So another fishing habit that 100, this percent this is me a hundred percent is fishing your bait too fast. Andrew is like a very patient guy when he fishes surprisingly because he drives really fast, just kidding.
Speaker 1:But I went through the phase when I first started buying a lot of bait casting reels. I'd have like all the fast ones. It'd be like you know, the rocket, nine to one, corrado, eight, five to one, all these like super fast reels, and for me a slow reel was like 7.1 to one, and I realized that sometimes I'd be reeling in my chatterbait and it would just be like boom, like blistering through the water, and I thought I know a fish if it wants to eat it. The way I reasoned was if a fish wants to eat it, he'll come and eat it, but fish aren't always in that aggressive mood. I should probably slow down, because that same fish would hit it if it was slower too, but the slower fish would also hit it if it was slower. But the slower fish isn't going to hit it if it's fast. So I'm just kind of like cutting down the amount of fish that I could possibly catch just by going fast.
Speaker 1:Now, going fast definitely has its place in the right circumstance, but I had to really learn to slow down, especially when I was fishing chatterbait. So what I did, the thing that I did first is I bought a slow reel. I bought a 6.1 to one reel, which for me is slow, and that really forced me to slow down, because every time I crank the handle I'm only pulling in two feet of line, not three or three and a half feet of line. So that helped me slow down to just trying to really just focus on slowing down as I'm reeling in, which is for me, it doesn't. That may not sound like a big deal for you, cause if you're someone that just has that willpower, you're, like this guy's, insane, but for me, I just I go into autopilot and I just crank. I'm just cranking fast, I'm fishing shower bait, spinner bait, buzz bait, whatever I'm just grilling as fast as I can, and that oftentimes is not the deal. You want to be able to be catching fish that you know not only are willing to chase, but at the same time you want to be able to catch the fish that maybe aren't willing to chase at the same time.
Speaker 1:So the other thing that I noticed, too a lot of the guys that we talked to when they were talking about fishing drop shot, ned baits, anything like that. They were talking about how slow to fish these natural presentations really really slow. They were talking about just dragging, dragging the drop shot or the the tubes right on the bottom, because these big fish, they are really really staring at your bait and they want to see that thing acting as natural as possible because they're very wary. They've been caught a lot of times. They're smart. They're big and old for a reason it's because they're smart. So fishing your bait really slowly will actually help you catch more fish.
Speaker 1:Now I thought we could cover some of the what we're going to call preparation pitfalls. Andrew's like oh so this is a bad habit. I have to say this is something that thankfully, the last few years me and Andrew haven't been as guilty as, but before we definitely were. So one of a bad habit or a preparation pitfall is not being ready or prepared to land a fish. Has that ever happened to you, andrew?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. We were just musky fishing and I was middle of talking and actually missed a good strike. You know, or you know, the net gets tangled in the boat because it's like, oh, I'm all of a sudden rushing to try and get it in the boat and, yeah, you're just not prepared at all for it. Unfortunately, that's when it's going to. I'm all of a sudden rushing to try and get it in the boat and, yeah, you're just not prepared at all for it. Unfortunately, that's when it's going to throw the hook yep, every time.
Speaker 1:One thing that I've really tried to do after I lost a good fish last year is I like to, when I'm musky fishing, I like to have the net ready and open. So we have a pretty big musky net. But even for any small nets they're big, they're annoying, it's got a long handle, but I like to have it all clicked in and ready to go fully extended with the bag, you know, kind of bunched up inside of the boat so that when I do hook a fish, especially if I'm fishing solo, I have the ability to not have to worry about sticking my rod under my you know, my leg or my or my arm or something like that, and trying to assemble a net while I'm fighting a fish boat side. I lost a good fish last year doing that because I wasn't ready. It was like right away in the morning the net was kind of half buried underneath my uh, my trolley wheels and I was like, ah, let's make a few casts, this spot hooked a good fish. He got off right beside the boat and, yeah, I could have been avoided if my net had been already assembled and ready. So that is one thing.
Speaker 1:Another thing is you may not even have a net. So I see a lot of guys over the years like I grew up fishing salmon and steelhead and we would fish off the pier three to four times a week for salmon. And so many people, as soon as you hook a fish you'd realize that they just came down there with a rod, that's it. They don't even have a net. They're just hoping that some guy down there has a net and he's willing to help scoop their fish up for them. Don't be that guy, don't be that girl. Don't go down, especially on a pier where there's no other way to land it. Like it's not, like oh, I can, you know, beach the fish and grab it. No, like that fish is seven feet down. You're not pulling up a 25 pound Chinook on 10 pound line.
Speaker 1:So have a net, like Andrew said, have your net ready, be ready and kind of plan in your head, like me and Andrew kind of do this as soon as I hook a muskie. You're like fish, fish, fish. You know you're yelling that the other guy, just you know, reels in his line as fast as possible, grabs the net. He's ready to go. It's great to have a fishing buddy to do that with, but if you're by yourself, you really have to plan ahead. You have to have the net ready. You kind of have to have the game plan going. You have to know like I'm going to use this hand to scoop the fish. I'm going to put the net here, I'm going to put my knee on top of the net so it doesn't fall in the water.
Speaker 1:If you're in a small boat, especially if you're in a canoe or a kayak, muskie fishing gets sketchy, especially when you hook a fish. It is terrifying. It is way more terrifying than in a boat. So make sure you're ready to go. You're prepared, you have, especially if you're muskie fishing, but even bass fishing or pike or anything. Make sure you have all the proper tools. We always talk about it. Make sure you have hook cutters. Make sure you have jaw spreaders. Make sure you have long enough needle nose pliers, all the catch and release tools that you need to get the fish back in the water, swimming away, or if you're going to keep it, that's fine, but make sure you have all the tools to get your lure out of its mouth. You don't want to have a lure stuck in a fish's mouth because it happens. The next preparation pitfall, bad habit. This is a brutal one because we've all learned. We've all learned I guarantee about this that the hard way is having dull hooks right, andrew yep absolutely.
Speaker 2:I've lost many a good fish to some dull hooks he says they were dull hooks.
Speaker 2:I call it lack of knowing how to fight a fish it's amazing how how much just one like rolled hook point on a bait that has multiple troubled hooks, just that one being faulty, can lead to missed fish. You know it's I had I think I mentioned it before. I had my Rattlin' Wrap, the front hook point and the front treble hook was like fully rolled over and I was missing fish after fish and as soon as I noticed it I filed it out straight again and sharpened that hook. All of a sudden I didn't lose another fish on that, on that lure again. So just having one of the hook points dulled if they're all dull it's, it's even worse issue. But if you, you know, snag into something and you're not just not observant when you're fishing, the next strike that you get, maybe it's not a rock that time, it's not a log that time, and that was actually your pb that hit it and it just kind of just bumps off of its mouth like that that sucks.
Speaker 1:The worst feeling ever is when I find especially now, the more that I'm getting into muskie fishing is fishing so much, injuring yourself, casting these lures, putting in all this effort to have a fish grab, finally your lure and it gets off. What?
Speaker 1:and it's not by any fault of of you not saying the hook properly or really improperly. It's just that hook did not penetrate that fish's mouth in the right spot and that dull hook did not get in deep enough and that hook just pops out and the fish swims away just like, haha, sucker. That's the worst feeling. Yeah, make sure you sharpen your hooks. Look up on youtube. There's so many good videos about how to sharpen your hook with a hook file. If you're not into that, buy a bunch of replacement hooks.
Speaker 1:I know this year I splurged. I bought a whole bunch of packs of some really premium musky hooks and I was like you know what? There's a bunch of lures that I use all the time. The hooks on them. They're okay, like, for instance, we were talking about water wolf lures, shadzilla swim baits. I don't replace the hooks on these because Mike actually uses super high quality hooks Like they're. They're really sharp. It's one of the rare brands of of lures even musculars that actually the hooks are really good already. So I just I touched them up a bit, but I don't replace them.
Speaker 1:But a lot of musky lures you'll buy, even expensive lures. They'll have trash hooks on them. You can't even sharpen them. They're trash. So I bought a bunch of um of bkk sandra's favorite but bkk hooks really sharp hooks, absolutely brutally sharp and I replaced a lot of the hooks on the lures that I use all the time and it turns out that this past weekend, two weekends ago, when we went to that back lake, uh, two of the lures that I caught the fish on were on bkk hooks and they were both hooked really good. In fact I had to cut hooks on them. That's how how good the hooks were holding. Unfortunately, I had to cut hooks so I had to replace them again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're not cheap, but, believe me, I'd rather spend three or four bucks cutting a hook and putting good hooks on lures if I know that that one fish of a lifetime or the fish of the year is going to grab the lure and actually get hooks sunk into its mouth. So don't cheap out. A lot of people spend lots of money on the rods, the reels, all these lures, but then they'll cheap out on like split rings, leaders and hooks. Those are the things that connect the fish to you. Don't cheap out on those. Buy better hooks for any situation, for any species. I don't care if you're fishing for crappie or for walleye or for muskie buy the best hooks you can afford.
Speaker 2:It is 100% worth it. And one of those things too, even if you like to buy good quality hooks and replace all the hooks and all your baits like if I tried to do that I'd be spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars to replace all the hooks and the baits that I own but what you can do is you can take the baits that you like using the most, that you have the most confidence in, and maybe it's just time you replace those hooks, because maybe those hooks have landed you a whole bunch of fish already. So maybe it's time let's put some good quality hooks back on those baits that you have a lot of confidence in. That way, you're going to be, you know, actually using the baits that have those highest percentages now and you're increasing the percentage of landing the fish when they do hit it.
Speaker 1:And I oftentimes think I know me and Andrew. Anyway, we spend a lot of money on lures. We've been spending a lot less the last few years, Cause I think what we're trying to do is we used to just buy lures to try them out. We're like, oh, I want to try this, I want to try that. We still do that to a certain extent, but not as much as we used to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that's a lure that you're you know you're going to use. We're trying to focus more on buying lures that we know we're actually going to use, because how many times you look in your tackle box and you're like, oh, I bought this lure and you haven't even thrown it and it's like five years old. So I just try right away and I feel like I've been doing pretty good. I'm like, oh, this is cool. And then I put it back. I'm like I don good quality hooks. Instead of spending 15 bucks on a lure, buy a pack of hooks and replace the hooks on the lures you already have. That is a good investment. Not buying a lure that you don't need or a lure that you already have. Buy hooks that you don't have, buy really good hooks. One thing that I do now is whenever I buy a muskie lure, I kind of incorporate into the price of buying the lure putting on replacement hooks. So I'm like, okay, this lure is $40, but I'm going to put four BKKs on it, so I have to add $7 to this, to this, for the two hooks. So kind of incorporated in and, believe me, long-term I honestly think it's totally worth it.
Speaker 1:So the next bad habit that a lot of people have is blowing through good water. Now, this could be fishing streams, ponds, lakes, rivers, anything like that. One bad habit that people have and we've all probably done this is we'll be fixated on the spot that we want to fish. We're like, oh you know, there's a hump that comes up there and you can see like steep water all the way around and you can see a rock pile come up and it comes up to about five feet of water and the first thing people are going to do is just zoom their boat right up to that spot, stop about 30 feet away and just cast at that rock pile. That might work sometimes, and if the fish are right on top of that hump, that's probably the best, the best way to do it. But a lot of times, especially if you know it's a bright day or if it's slightly hot, the fish may actually roll down that hump roll. Or if it's slightly hot, the fish may actually roll down that hump roll into deeper water, and if that's the case, you just drove right over top of them and you're not going to catch the fish. So one good habit to get into is make a few casts around the area before you get to the spot, and that has to do with anything. Even fishing around docks, logs, anything like that.
Speaker 1:The fish aren't always where you think they're going to be. Sometimes they're a little bit farther out. So, for instance, one spot that I think of, going back to, bass fishing, I guess we're just, you know, we're just missing summer already. You know there's a, there's a lake that me and Andrew fish. There's this really nice lily pad bed, and one of the things that we do, unfortunately, is we zoom right up onto it and we'll fish the lily pad bed. More than a few times we've been trolling up to it really fast and we'll spook a big bass like 10, 20 feet outside of that lily pad bed.
Speaker 1:That was kind of just cruising around the shallows on a cloudy day, because if there's no sun, why should they be buried underneath the lily pads? They use that for sun protection a lot of the times because it's bright. They can't wear sunglasses, right, so they hide under the lily pads. But if it's a nice cloudy day, sometimes they go outside the lily pads and they start, you know, looking around for other things, right? Unfortunately, we just blew right on top of this fish and spooked him. Now we're not going to catch him. So make sure you slowly approach spots. Slowly, stealthily, make a few casts going up to the spot. You'd be surprised how many fish that you'll actually catch when they're not expecting it and it's even like along with that.
Speaker 2:Let's say we love fishing shoreline, whether it's for muskie, pike, bass, walleye, whatever, and for the right time of year where they're going to be in a bay on the side of the lake. What we'll do is, as you approach that let's say the bay is 100 feet wide at the mouth it goes 100 feet back. If you position your boat in the center of that bay, you can make 50 foot casts all around you and you can hit all the shoreline from that one spot. That's awesome. The goal is to kind of get your boat there and fish that whole shoreline.
Speaker 2:But before you approach, sit 50 feet out in front of that bay and cast in the middle where you want your boat, where your boat is going to end up being and the amount of times it will pull fish out of there and substantial fish, because they're sitting on not the weed line, right on the shore, they're sitting on the outside edge of it, close to that deep water. That's oftentimes the biggest fish are going to be sitting. That's where your boat is going to be or would have been. How do you just motor right into the spot? So for the extra effort to just make you know even just a few casts. If that's all you want to do, just make a couple to a few casts where you're going to be putting your boat and then motor onto it and then fish from there again.
Speaker 1:Exactly. And to add to that, oftentimes fish will drop off into deeper water, especially if the lake is pressured. So if you're fishing a spot, that's very obvious, for instance using lily pads for an example again, maybe there's not a lot of lily pad beds, so whenever an angler is driving up the river or the lake in his boat and he sees that lily pad bed, he's always going to stop there. So those fish get used to anglers being there. So they feel a boat coming up, what are they going to do? Well, they might, you know, stick under those lily pads and just tough it out, but oftentimes they make it spooked and kind of drop down into the deeper water. So if those fish are used to seeing boats come up and seeing their buddies just get pulled out of the out of the sky pretty much, they may, you know, try to escape into some deeper water where it's more safe. But if you're smart and you cast in that deeper water first, they won't suspect nothing. All right. So there's another bad habit. This is probably the worst one now. If you're just getting into fishing, this probably affects you more than if you're someone. That's more, you with it is tying terrible knots.
Speaker 1:Now we've done whole episodes on knot tying, but I actually just have a story about this. I was talking to someone that I lent fishing tackle to. They were like, hey, I'm going fishing. They don't fish. They're like I'm going to a cottage, can you loan me some fishing gear? And I was like, yeah, no problem. So I rod reel line. I just threw together a little tackle tray with a bunch of random baits in it. You know, a few crankbaits, sankos, swim baits, stuff like that, nothing crazy. And uh, when he gave it back to me, he's like I'm sorry, I lost three of them. And I was like, um, I tied a knot, two knots, and I cast out and the lure popped off. I was like, what not did you use? He's like just like a, an overhand knot. So I'm like he tied two overhand knots and I was just like, uh, okay, that's like the overhand knot.
Speaker 2:Number one is like a terrible knot having two of them side by side like an overhand knot is a half hitch that's's all it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so like, here's the thing he doesn't fish, he doesn't know. So I'm not holding this against him, but tying terrible knots my dad does that too. My dad ties terrible knots and I'm always like, hey, learn this knot, like learn the clinch knot or something, something simple, and he's like, no, I'm good, it's not hard to learn how to use knots. One time I taught my nephew, who was at the time like eight or nine, I brought some rope and I was like, hey, we're gonna we fish together. So I'm like, you're gonna learn how to tie your own knots. So I taught him how to do like the tri-lead knot or the clinch knot, just something super basic, and within 10 minutes he knew how to tie it.
Speaker 1:It's not hard. I honestly think that if you know like three knots and fishing, you're good. You don't need to know like 50 knots. You can know like three knots and you're good for most things. Don't be crazy. You don't want to lose the biggest fish of the trip, the year or your life because you tied a crappy knot and it happens. I will say so much, even for myself.
Speaker 2:I was absolutely guilty of it because I didn't know at the time. We were told like hey, you should use a braid. So me and my dad, we got a braided line and we keep tying our standard improved clinch knot which we always used for monofilament. The improved clinch knot will slip, guaranteed. It will slip on with braided line on the improved clinch knot. It will slip With monofilament. It'll bite in. It holds excellent knot. I use it all the time for that still.
Speaker 2:But because we didn't know they were like we go to tighten the knot and it just slips right out in your hands like what's going on. So for me, without doing any research, I decided what I'm going to do is I'll tie an improved clinch knot and on the tag end I'll just tie a couple half hitches on the on. It's on itself so that it has a good knot. So it has to pull a knot through the knot. Okay, that'll hold it still. It held for the most part.
Speaker 2:But I tell you I still lost fish. That knot would still slip eventually and it wasn't until that I learned, oh, there's actually knots to use for braid and when I started doing those, some are super easy. The one of them for braid is you tie the improved clinch knot but instead of just one line you fold it over and you tie a loop. You put in that loop of line is one line. You tie your improved clinch knot with that Perfect, it's called the three tag knot and you tie it the exact same way and it works beautifully on braid. So just just knowing a couple different knots for what you're using, to that they become effective, saves you, and I wish you wouldn't notice earlier.
Speaker 1:It can save you hundreds of dollars of lures it's true, and I'd say one other bad habit is especially if you're someone that uses braided line is tying a knot and just forgetting about it. You should retie those knots all the time. I'm not saying every day, but I like to do it every day if we're on a fishing trip. Usually I'll forget the next day to do it, but between fishing trips, say, I have like a jig tied on with braid on a flipping stick. With 50 pound braid, that knot is pretty dang strong. I'm not gonna have to worry about retying that several times throughout the day. But don't just have that tied on and have it on for like three months and just forget about it, because you know every time you set the hook, that knot is where all of the stress of that line is going to when it snaps tight.
Speaker 1:You're going to want to retie that every so often, especially if you're a musky guy. I always, every single trip, I take my leaders off, I check the leaders, make sure there's no fraying, nothing like that. I do that throughout the day as well, but I always retie the knots. Even though it's a good knot and I can look at it and visually I'm like the knot's good, I retie it. I don't want there to be a situation where I'm like oh, I I tied this leader on like four weeks ago and then I lose a fish at the boat side because my knot snaps, like yeah I.
Speaker 1:I would be so mad so I always retie my musky leader knots too. So when it comes to like, I think the whole thing a lot of the points we covered is don't be cheap and don't be dumb. That's the bad habits. Don't be cheap, buy good hooks, buy good split rings, buy good leaders. Check your leaders. Tie good knots. Check your knots. Have a net. Like have these things.
Speaker 1:You need to be successful because all these habits it's not that you were not going to do them normally, like some of these things you just do without thinking like reeling too fast. But when it comes to things that you can prevent, like having dull hooks or tying decent knots, that's on you if that happens. So make sure you have all these things down and you're ready to go and I guarantee you'll catch more fish. So, like I mentioned before, we actually had a pull up on Instagram and I asked people what was the worst fishing habit. Now I'm going to kind of go through some of these and we're going to talk about them Just briefly. Some of these are pretty funny. Some of them are inappropriate and I won't read them.
Speaker 2:That's right. We're a family friendly podcast.
Speaker 1:Yes, our buddy from Zimbabwe, always ready with the comments here. He says one bad fishing habit is getting stuck into one certain technique and not being diverse. We pretty much cover that. In the first point I agree with you. For this guy in zimbabwe his techniques would be one day he's fishing for crocodiles, the next day he's fishing for hippos. I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I agree with you one bad you can tell. Tell Jesse is definitely a man of culture.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm going to have to look up Zimbabwe later, Andrew, next week, for interesting fishing fact it's going to be all about fishing in Zimbabwe. That'd probably be a dream come true. Honestly, Bad fishing habit. Cameron says this. He says not setting your drag before a fishing trip.
Speaker 1:That's a bad thing, like that yeah, so, if you don't know, in a drag on a fishing reel, oftentimes it's discs that are pressed together and they could be made of ceramic, they could be made of cork, they could be made of all kinds of things. Cheap reels just have plastic discs, but when you tighten your drag, these discs compress together. And the tighter you click your drag, the tighter these discs compress together the more friction, the more resistance yeah, now, you shouldn't leave your reels like that when you're storing them.
Speaker 1:So whenever we're done a fishing trip, I know me, I know I don't know if andrew does it himself but I always loosen the drags. Yeah, loosen the drags, and what I like to do is I like to loosen them completely so that it's obvious that they're loose. Unfortunately, a few times I've only loosened them a few clicks just to take most of the pressure off and you'll be casting out. And then all of a sudden I remember it happened to me last year I was fishing a chatterbait and this fish grabbed the chatterbait. I set the hook and the line just slipped out of the reel. I was like what? Because the drag wasn't set. Yeah, was like what? Because the drag wasn't set. Yeah, I missed that fish. Terrible, see, that was the habit of me being dumb, so make sure you do that.
Speaker 2:So that's a good one from cameron. Being dumb is a habit of jesse. Oh, it totally is so.
Speaker 1:Chris says this he says one bad habit is overworking the bait. Yeah, so, as you mentioned, fishing too fast and overworking your bait, that is a very bad habit. That is something that I personally still have to work on a lot, and if you're someone that's listening to this podcast and you're like I've never done any of these things, just turn off this podcast right now. You're lying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you may believe that, but I guarantee if you had a camera on your bait you'd say differently. Because especially when you're using finesse techniques with bottom contact, especially things like ned rig, things like drop shot, there is no way to underwork your bait. If you start, if you think, oh, I need to put more action to it, at that point I guarantee you are overworking your bait and you want that small, minuscule movement on those on those finesse baits usually. So if you are trying to impart movement to it, stop, try not to.
Speaker 1:That's the amount you want this is a good one here. One bad habit is this is what gs12 fishing says. He says reeling too fast. Again we covered that. That is not just for me, that's a bad habit for a lot of people.
Speaker 2:Don't reel too fast, slow down it usually happens to me where fishing is slow and I'm kind of like, you know, getting tired in the day, I'm reeling in, and then I get that strike and they go all excited and then I'm like, all right, I'm all on power, I start casting, I start reeling in, and I realize I am reeling in twice as fast as I was when I caught that fish. Yeah, it's like okay, I need to replicate what I did before. I need to slow down. It takes a while for that kind of adrenaline to wear off before I actually can start fishing normally and not actively be thinking the entire time. I'll reeling, slow down, exactly um will will says this.
Speaker 1:He says one bad habit is switching a lure after one cast. Now I'll tell you one thing I am a habitual lure changer and I've stopped doing that as much because I start only using and packing lures that I actually use. But before I would be like, oh, this is a cool lure. Andrew bought me this lure, it's going to be awesome. I'll tie it on, make one cast and I'm just like what a piece of trash and I'll just take it off. But I think the thing comes down to like what we talked about pick a lure that situationally is good, it's the right profile, work it right, and then just keep casting it and fishing it.
Speaker 1:Oftentimes, especially when you're fishing for musky or fish that there aren't a lot of in an area, you may quickly be like, oh, this lure isn't working, it's like it is. There's just no musky in this particular spot you're fishing. So have that confidence to know and that's the thing we kind of talked about that a few weeks ago with secondhand confidence with some lures you may not have success fishing, say, a particular lure like, for instance, say like this big Shadzilla If you've never caught a fish on one of these, you may think, oh, it's too big, I don't know, like, I don't know how to fish it, blah, blah, blah. But as soon as you fish with someone, someone that catches a fish on this instantly, you're like, oh, those work, I know they work and you're just going to keep on casting it. So having some confidence in the bait you have is a huge deal.
Speaker 1:The best way to get confidence in a bait is to catch a fish on it, but the second best way is secondhand confidence. That's by seeing other people catch fish on it, and it doesn't even have to be in person. You can watch a youtube video and be like, hey, I saw this video. This guy was slamming fish on tubes and and so I bought one and I went out and I know they work and that second hand confidence is going to make you fish more effectively. Confidence is everything. So this is one for Andrew, our buddy. I catch dinks. He says one bad habit is forgetting to poop before you head out fishing. That's a bad habit for Andrew.
Speaker 2:I always remember you know what, though, the sad part is? I don't forget that, and I still have to, so we can't win them all mitch says one bad fishing habit is going musky fishing 95 of the time.
Speaker 1:That's a terrible habit and I don't. I only musky fish, maybe 60 of the time, and even that is a bad habit if you become a straight musk gangler you are.
Speaker 2:You're a special breed and you're either criminally insane or the coolest person ever. But it's pretty hard to have a middle ground on those, I find yeah, more, more criminally insane.
Speaker 1:This is a good one.
Speaker 1:From dawson he says one of the worst fishing habits is right-handed reels I agree you know if you have to switch your hands when you're casting, you're doing it wrong. That's not efficiency. Right there, prove me wrong. I used to be a righty guy, I used to swear by it and it's hard to cast with a lefty, but once you get used to it it's so much better. I will fight anyone on that. When I see guys fishing right hand and switching their hand to reel in, it makes no sense to me, like when I pitch out with my right hand and my bait hits the water and a fish hits it instantly, when I'm flipping and pitching and I can set the hook instantly and have my hand right by the crank right away without having to switch hands right. There alone that one technique it's worth it. But whatever floats your boat, there's no right or wrong. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Whatever, that's a good one, dawson. I appreciate that. That was good. One of the worst bad habits that 705 Angler says not eating when fishing.
Speaker 1:I agree because that is a big deal. I think that is a bad habit for me because oftentimes with me I know with Andrew too we get so into the fishing that we'll forget to eat and drink. What we started doing is being motherly to each other. I'll be like Andrew, I think it's time you drink some water. And he's like, be quiet, I'm trying to fish, you're not my mom. And he'll say to me like, oh, did you eat something? And we'll try to remind each other to eat and drink water because we'll literally forget We'll be fishing. It'll be like oh, we left fishing for, like right at breakfast time, like before the sun came up, we had a cup of coffee. We didn't bring water on the boat and it's now 1145 in the morning and it's hot as heck outside and we are starving to death. But we'll just keep fishing because we're done. Make sure you bring food and snacks in the boat. It's essential.
Speaker 1:Yes, this is a good one from Halliburton Fishing Guide. If you don't follow Brian, definitely check him out. We had the privilege of fishing with him walleye opener this year. It was absolutely fantastic, an awesome guide. We're actually going to have him on the podcast soon. So he said one of the worst fishing habits is avoiding all adult responsibilities and go fishing. That sounds like something Brian would do a hundred percent.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:This one needs no explanation Next, yeah, brian used to say that We'd fish a spot. No, fish would be biting.
Speaker 1:He would just be like next Just rip up the trolling motor and power up the big motor. Yeah, this is a good one. So Joey says a bad fishing habit is always going to the spots that he knows rather than trying new spots. Now that may sound like you know why wouldn't you fish the spots that you already know? But if you're trying to learn a lake like we have a few lakes that we fish, andrew right, and we have specific spots that we go to, and every time we're like you know what, I want to try this spot of the lake. But then we just get totally obsessed with the areas we already know and by the time we're like, okay, let's go to the other side of the lake, it's already dark. So some days you literally have to be like you know what, we're not fishing any of the spots that we already know. Let's go find some new spots, because when you find new spots you're fishing a new lake. Get to know the lake better, you'll catch more fish and then you have more spots to cycle through in the future. And the last bad fishing habit we're going to give to Buck Nelson, william Outdoors who, by the way, is a random guy that we saw fishing on the Pigeon River one time and he was talking.
Speaker 1:He was in a canoe and he was talking about us. He's like hey, I think I know those guys At least there's a guy on Instagram that has a green sports pal and we could hear him talking and he's like yeah. So we drove up to him and I was like it's me. He's like, wow. So anyway, he says that the worst fishing habit is not going fishing enough. I agree with that. That is a terrible fishing habit. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode More of a more funnier one, but I'm sure there's at least one thing that you can relate to that you do, even if you don't admit it to anyone else. I know deep in your mind you know you do those things.
Speaker 2:I'm sure there's at least three things you do. Yeah, I'm sure there's at least three things you do Three to four. Yeah, yeah, there's a bunch that I'll find myself doing still.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So all these things they may sound funny, they may sound obvious. There's so many little things that we can do to improve how we fish and if you can take one of these things in the podcast and improve on that either buying better hooks, tying better knots, doing those things I guarantee you'll be a more successful angler in the future. We'd also like to thank our Patreon members who support the show. There are costs to running the show every single week, so we do appreciate our Patreon members who donate a few bucks a month so that me and Andrew don't have to pay out of our own pockets. We would like to thank everyone else who listens and downloads the show every single week and writes us a lot of reviews. We're coming up on 500 five-star reviews 500 that's insane.
Speaker 2:We need to. I said coming up on, not, we need to get there yeah, if you haven't written us a review, please do so.
Speaker 1:We get tons of messages from people that are like we love the podcast. I listen to it every day on the work on Monday and I always say to them hey, cool, make sure you write us a review. And they're like, most of the time, like I have, that's fantastic. But some of them are like, oh, I won't forget this week and they forgot, I'm assuming, so make sure you do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, jesse has a list of all your names and it's just called his disappointment jar and every time it happens he writes her name down, puts it in the jar. Yeah, you can kind of see on the top shelf behind, no.
Speaker 1:Imagine that. Also. We would just like to say this episode was not sponsored by Waterwell Fluors, but we were talking about the new solid Shadzilla, which are going to be absolutely fantastic this fall fishing on St Clair Hopefully we catch a giant. We going to be absolutely fantastic this fall fishing on St Clair Hopefully we catch a giant. We're always a big supporter of local made baits.
Speaker 1:I was actually at Mike's workshop where he makes these. He was gracious enough to give me a little tour, which is pretty cool, and I kind of said to him I think it'd be pretty cool if me and Andrew came here in the winter and helped you make some baits and he said something while he was laughing about free labor or something, and I was like, yeah, so maybe we'll do a full podcast from his shop. Who knows, that'd be pretty cool. But again, another really awesome Ontario bait water roll flures. We're huge fans of the products. We catch tons of fish on this stuff.
Speaker 1:So do you know hundreds and hundreds of thousands of anglers all around Canada and North America as well. So make sure you check these out. These new solid ones are going to be absolutely killer. I don't know if they're available on the website yet, but make sure you follow them on social media so you can see when they drop. Highly recommend them, even though I haven't caught a fish on them yet, on the new ones, but hopefully by the time this comes out we have. So, anyway, we're going to end this episode with as tradition states as tradition states Sound like Dracula. The quote of the week.
Speaker 2:If you want to understand freshwater fish and their movements, better drink Carlsberg.