I used to think that top-water baits were a specialized fishing presentation appropriately used ONLY under the best of conditions:  A warm, calm, sunrise with a few wisps of steam rising off the water?  Sure, there is nothing funner than catching a fish on a top-water bait, but my thinking was that there were usually better ways to catch more and bigger fish.  Throw a top-water bait first thing in the morning and maybe you could get a surface strike …

If you fish for bass even a little bit, you know how effective rubber worms are and your tackle box likely has 23 different varieties, styles, and sizes in 123 different colors.  You hard-core bass anglers do not need me to tell you how to rig those rubber worms, but on the other hand, there may be some folks reading this that are newer to the fishing game, newer to the bass-fishing game in particular.  Someday I am going to …

Tomorrow is the day!  Time for the first of our annual carp carnivals! If you want more information on the whole carp fishing game, how about a little Carp Appreciation?! This event will go, rain or shine, the carp don’t care.  I tell folks that when we are holding events like this, we are basically just out there having fun and we hope that you bring the family and have fun with us!

The year of our Lord two thousand and seventeen was a really big year in Nebraska.  Sure there was some little thing called the sesquicentennial, but that is not what made it a big year.  What made 2017 a BIG year was the 20th anniversary of our Aquatic Habitat Program!  It was so big that NEBRASKAland Magazine got around to doing a story about it: Aquatic Habitat Program Celebrates 20 Years To maintain, restore or enhance the capacity of a …

Judging from the messages, e-mails, phone calls, and just general “chatter” I have heard this morning, I can tell you the channel cats are getting close to spawning.  Why do I say that?  Because every year about this time there are a bunch of mistaken identifications of “funny-looking” catfish.  Simply put, male channel cats get fat heads and darker colors during the spawn, and some folks not used to seeing that mistakenly believe those fish are “blue cats”.  So, if …

I have not made a Friday post on KVD lately, well, he’s up to something again. . . . Seriously, I am not sponsored by anyone, I am not endorsing or “pushing product”, I just think the videos are hilarious.  If you want, check it out, Mystery Tacklebox. It’s the weekend, remember it is supposed to be fun, and GO FISH!

The internet is a funny place, but you know you can believe everything you see and hear there. . . . Recently, I was admiring some photos and the stories that went along with them about some really nice muskies that had been caught and released.  Yes, I was jealous especially knowing they had been caught from a Nebraska waterbody.  Somewhere in the discussion that followed someone asked, “Which state?”, as in “surely those had to be caught from someplace …

It has been awhile since I have teased you with photos of some of the big fish that our field biologists have had their hands on.  Time to change that. . . . We do a lot of our fish population sampling in the fall, but there is also some that is done in the spring and summer.  Again let me say that when pointy-headed fisheries biologists are sampling fish they are NOT just trying to catch the biggest ones, …

I gotta admit I am not a big fan of late night talk shows anymore.  I don’t know, maybe it is just because I am getting old, but they just don’t seem as funny, as entertaining anymore.  I long for the days of “monkey-cam” and velcro suits brought to you from the home office in Wahoo, Nebraska! However, fishing did make it on one of the late night shows this week.  Here is what it looked like: https://youtu.be/cV5JWW1jVZM I don’t …

Wow, it is June already!  I have been sitting on a few state record applications, time to tell you about them!  I will start with the first to cross my desk this year. . . . Tiger Trout If you have followed Nebraska’s record fish you know that we have had quite a bit of activity for tiger trout in recent years.  Realizing that there may be someone new reading this, let me bore the rest of you with some …