01 Wednesday Jun 2016
Posted in Essays, Kayak Fishing Posts
Tags
Bass Fishing, Fishing, Kayak Bass Fishing, Kayak Bass Fishing national Championship, Kayak Fishing Posts, KBF Magazine, Kentucky Lake, Topwater Fishing
Here is the link to my article about topwater fishing on Kentucky Lake, courtesy of Kayak Bass Fishing magazine.
2. Click below to download the entire magazine as a pdf file (it’s free!); the article is listed in the contents index.
21 Saturday May 2016
Posted in Field Reports
04 Monday Apr 2016
Posted in Bowfin, Bowfin in Journalism
The latest issue of KBF magazine mentions the Bowfin in two separate articles and quotes yours truly in one of them. The one in which I am quoted is a feature story by angler Drew Haerer on the topic of fishing for primitive fishes. The article “The Forgotten” (p. 96-99) also features a photo I took of a friend and fellow angler while we fished for Bowfin at Core Creek, N.C., in 2012. You can read it free here:
https://issuu.com/chrispayne94/docs/spring_2016_kbfmag
29 Tuesday Mar 2016
Posted in Field Reports
Tags
There’s a plague in Bowfin Country, and I’m in quarantine. I have the fishing bug real bad this season. As a result, I’ve been fishing after work; yesterday I captured something exceptional on my little video camera. For years, I’ve been watching Ospreys descend from the sky and pull fish from nearby water. They’ll fall in a controlled flight, almost vertically at times, and gently pluck their prey from the surface. Yesterday, an Osprey made a stunning cameo while I was filming some fishing footage. You can see it at the 1:40 mark of this video:
29 Tuesday Mar 2016
Posted in Field Reports
Tags
Spring 2016
13 Sunday Mar 2016
Posted in Kayak Fishing Posts
In mid-March, the White Bass make a spawning run, and the Bowfin are generally mixed in with the schools. We launch to look for Bowfin but the White Bass are so aggressive they usually grab the lures before they reach the Bowfin.
I put a Camera mount on my Tarpon 120 and shot some footage as we locked into a school of White Bass in the lower Eno River last week. We landed about 40 small males before we moved on…..
29 Monday Feb 2016
Posted in Bowfin
Tags
It’s late February, a time for the Bowfin angler to remember the taste of defeat.Winter lulls the senses, and our memories of last year’s battles with fish dissipate – mercifully – with the cold. Yes, we recall the one that got away. It grows larger with each telling. But we forget how we lost it, and that defeat is often an angler’s fault.
Late winter Bowfin are experts in reminding us of our errors.
I will dedicate this blog post to a typical late winter event: the loss of a large fish from the end of the line. First, a few points about how to set a hook in a Bowfin’s bony mouth. Continue reading
05 Friday Feb 2016
Posted in Field Reports
01 Monday Feb 2016
Posted in Book Reviews
Tags
Bass Fishing, Bowfin, Environment, fish biology, Fishing, Gar, In Fisherman, Largemouth Bass, rough fish
Decorous Techniques: A Review of Largemouth Bass: An In-Fisherman Book of Strategies (1990)
Look at the photograph below. It was taken by Dr. Solomon David, a biologist at the renowned Shedd Aquarium. Dr. David is not a scientist to miss the significance of this grouping, which he caught with his eye and then his camera. The fact of the matter is that it represents something many bass anglers wouldn’t easily admit: the Bowfin (Amia calva), Largemouth Bass (Micropterus salmoides) and Spotted Gar (Lepisosteus oculatus) co-exist in the wild. They share waters where they are born, they share food they chase, and they share graves. And here they are, hanging out like three old friends. Very old friends (well, at least the Gar and Bowfin are).
Why the photo, you ask? I posted it because I’d never seen the Bowfin mentioned without scorn in a book about Largemouth Bass. If you listened to Bass anglers, many argue for the eradication of the Bowfin (to be fair, others secretly confess they prefer catching Bowfin, but they chase Bass for the money). Anti-Bowfin-scorn is simply inherited ignorance. And that is where Largemouth Bass: An In-Fisherman Book of Strategies stands apart from the crowd….
02 Saturday Jan 2016
Posted in Field Reports
Tags
The Farrington Road boat launch at Jordan Lake, after the deluge.
Welcome to Bowfin Country 