Fishing

Flipping and pitching is full-contact bass fishing. It’s what you do when the fish are up in heavy cover like lily pads, grass edges, cypress roots, or dock pilings and you have to get your rig in there with them. With a Texas-rigged plastic and a bullet weight, it’s a quintessential technique, one...

In 2001, I fished as a co-angler in a tournament on Toledo Bend Reservoir, a massive body of water that straddles the Texas-Louisiana border and eats lower units for lunch. When they impounded the lake in the 1960s, they left most of the standing timber intact, cutting rudimentary and often poorly...

Fall is one of my favorite times to fish for bass. Like many other fish species, largemouth gain a sense of urgency with cold weather coming on and try their hardest to stock up on calories before winter. That means they’ll often behave aggressively toward topwater lures and other fast presentations...

Biologists originally stocked Pacific salmon in the Great Lakes in the 1960s to help control the population of invasive alewives. Fifty years later, those first few little salmon smolts have turned the Great Lakes into one of the greatest salmon fisheries on the planet. Unlike their cousins in the...

As an overworked and underpaid individual with family obligations and a budget, I typically get to fish about one day a week. With the occasional missed week and a few fishing-specific vacations, that ends up meaning I’m on the water perhaps 60 days a year. When I get out there, the goal is to catch...

So you want to be a bass pro? Where you live may play a role in your short-term and long-term success. Geography is not destiny, of course. After all, three of the greatest anglers of all time—Kevin VanDam, Mike Iaconelli, and Brandon Palaniuk—come from Michigan, New Jersey, and Idaho, respectively...

I’ve traveled all over the world to fish, but I call the Northeast home. And what I’ve learned in all those years on the road is that I don’t think I could ever stop calling the Northeast home. Yeah, it’s crowded and noisy, the taxes are insane and the highways are clogged, but it’s tough to beat...

The line between hunter and hunted has always been blurry at best in the 49th state. Every year people get mauled by brown bears, harassed by black bears, encircled by wolves, or stomped by moose. Turns out even the fish are willing to go on the offensive. On Aug. 21, Chris Pollack and four friends...

“Uh, I think we’re out of gas.” I was 13 years old, finally old enough to take the boat out on the lake at my family’s cabin. My 10-year-old brother and I had decided to celebrate this newfound freedom by going out to catch a limit of walleye and were on the return trip when the engine sputtered to...

For coastal inhabitants, the dinner bell rings twice a day with the arrival of high tide. Many accept this invitation to eat with a spear. The further inland you travel, however, the less you hear that ringing until mountains and trees completely smother the noise. It's a shame that those far from...

Editor's Note: This article was corrected and updated 11 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 25. Caroline May Evans is off to an auspicious start of her fishing career. The 4-year-old girl submitted a two-pound golden trout last week for official consideration in the IGFA “Small Fry” record book, which includes...