Tag Archives: fishing gear

I have never fished for steelhead.  Someday?  Maybe, but not yet. However, as a pointy-headed fisheries biologist, I will tell you that rainbow trout and steelhead are the same fish, Oncorhynchus mykiss, a steelhead ain’t nothing more than a rainbow trout that migrates to the sea.  That line of distinction becomes even more blurred when one considers that inland rainbow trout have been documented to have the same migratory behavior.  In fact, some of the inland rainbows most famous for …

Long range forecasting of the weather is filled with uncertainty, so I will not pretend to know how soon it is going to start getting cold.  The calendar is soon to read “December” and chances are there is some cold weather in our future, but how soon we will have enough ice for ice-fishing is anyone’s guess.  In Nebraska “normal” is the average of the extremes, and I have been on the ice as early as Thanksgiving.  However, most years …

I do not do it often, but now and then current events and “pop culture” compel me to make some comments.  Recently, I heard about something called “fidget spinners“. I guess fidget spinners are the new fad toy.  In fact I heard a TV news report that school teacher’s desk drawers are beginning to look like the teacher’s desk drawer in A Christmas Story movie–full of fidget spinners. Purportedly, fidget spinners help burn off nervous energy. I found something on …

For the fun of it, I have shared a video or two here on my blog with drones being used to catch fish.  Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet. . . . If you want, here is some more information and publicity on the product, Engadget:  The PowerRay underwater drone finds fish and films them in 4K. I believe the product was supposed to be available February 2017, maybe you can get one now?  Here’s the website, PowerRay Underwater Drone. …

I hope many of you have looked at the title of this blog post and wondered, “What in the world is “barotrauma?””.  Barotrauma is the pointy-headed fish biologist term for what happens to some species of fish when they are quickly raised from relatively deep water to the surface.  Most species of our freshwater fish have swim bladders–internal “bags” of gas that the fish use to regulate buoyancy.  Fish living at depths of 20-30 feet or more only have a …

I have not played with underwater cameras a lot, some, but not a lot.  Most Nebraska waters are productive enough that even under the best of conditions visibility is limited.  However, visibility is best during the winter, under the ice, and all ice anglers like to play around with new gear.  There is no doubt that underwater camera technology also has advanced by leaps and bounds in recent years, New Generation Underwater Cameras.  If water clarity allows, and on the …

I am old enough to remember when we basically had 2 and only two choices in fishing line–monofilament and braided dacron (By the way, I still use some old braided dacron, and it is a great line for some fishing situations).  We used to think we had hit the jackpot when we could walk into Gibson’s and find a huge spool of 8-pound test monofilament for 99 cents.  As I got older and wiser I discovered that there were much …

Discarded fishing equipment such as abandoned line, hooks, weights, etc. continues to be a major problem for the environment and a major threat to an array of wildlife in and around the water. It can maim and kill birds and other wildlife! Look what happened to this cormorant! Just yesterday at Carter Lake in northeast Omaha, avid birder Jim Ducey of Omaha, NE brought to my attention yet another graphic incident involving birds getting tangled up with discarded fishing tackle. This …