Catching fish with books

The most written about sport in the world is fishing. It’s not baseball, football or basketball, and fishing takes in more U.S. dollars than do those top three, in that order, watcher sports combined. There would be more fishing and hunting news in the newspapers if there was more gambling money invested in school tournaments. Fortunately, this is not yet rampant.

Many sports taught in our schools, both public and private, are not performed once students graduate. Schools are supposed to teach classes on things we will do as adults. In sports, it’s most likely we take up a sport that we’ll never do again after our schooling. Most spend their time playing football in school only to fulfill their pro football careers not on the bench but on the proverbial couch. Yet, these “ballgames” are the gambling sports and in the case of football, the sport getting the TV coverage, are bringing in the money to help support the hardly attended other sports operating in the red, such as soccer, tennis, golf, etc.

Golf, bowling and tennis are lifelong sports. Our favorite lifetime sport brings in the most Wisconsin tourists’ dollars after birding, which includes many anglers, and it is often not taught in schools. So we do our reading in a period I call “school afterlife.”

STEELHEAD FISHING ESSENTIALS; A COMPLETE GUIDE TO TECHNIQUES & EQUIPMENT by Marc Davis, Frank Amato Publications, Inc., $29.95, 168 pages with a 100 minute DVD. Steelhead provide plenty of action both in Lake Michigan and in the tributaries during spawning seasons. They are rated by many anglers as one of the best fighting freshwater fish, and they are tasty. Davis’ book puts anglers in the water with their quarry. The DVD brings in other experts along with Davis to show us the techniques, tackle, and fishing action as it really is.

THE GREATEST FLY FISHING AROUND THE WORLD; TROUT, SALMON, AND SALTWATER FISHING ON THE WORLD’S MOST BEAUTIFUL WATERS by various outdoor writers, with a foreword by noted fly fisherman and publisher Nick Lyons, and photography by R. Valentine Atkinson, The Lyons Press, $29.95, 328 pages. This is a full color, softcover tome that also doubles as a coffee table book. Many of the over 300 photos are breathtaking. The techniques and methods are quite usable in Wisconsin. There’s even an article from noted Western writer Zane Grey, who wrote numerous fishing articles. In this hefty book, we travel the world in search of the best fly fishing, and we bring back these techniques to take fish in Wisconsin. Have a good trip.

L.A. Van Veghel is an Examiner from Milwaukee. You can see L.A.'s articles on L.A.'s Home Page.

HOT BOOKS FOR WARMER WEATHER READING

by: L.A. Van Veghel

Books have always been a part of my life. While I don’t recall much of my youth, because I’m a live for the moment type person, I do know I always had books around me. Even during high school when books were assigned for book reports and I didn’t read them, I still read books. I just read different books. In college, I made an attempt to read an assigned book. It was “Up the Down Staircase,” and it was definitely not one of my favorites. It was such an unmemorable book that today, all I can remember was that the paperback had a yellow cover. I preferred Tolkien, Heinlein, Asimov, MacLean, and even “The History of Medicine.” I read about interurbans, the North Shore, the building of America via railroads, and I read about tropical fish.

Now, I’m not getting out and fishing as much as I’d like. I’m still reading a lot, but I’d like to read more. I get tired now. I have cancer, and I’m getting chemo treatments every two weeks. My finger tips get needles and pins in them when wet or cold. It’s impossible to feel a walleye or a crappie bite when my fingertips are going crazy.

So I read and gather information for a future outing I hope to have. To me, giving up is for losers. Let’s see what’s happening in the fishing book world.

THE ORVIS GUIDE TO PROSPECTING FOR TROUT; How to Catch Fish When There’s No Hatch to Match by Tom Rosenbauer. The Lyons Press, $22.95 & 208 pages. This is a great book for anglers who like to walk in water. Fishing pools, looking for riffles, how to fish with just the right speed and depth through turbulence, finding oxygenated water, and fishing with strike indicators are just a few of the topics in this 8-1/2” x 11” softcover book. The photos show anglers plying their knowledge and techniques. Nighttime fly fishing is also covered, and the author said that night-feeding German brown trout like the big and bushy, palmer-hackled wet flies. Fly tossers who use artificial ants might like the Chernobyl Ant. It’s quite large. I’d like to try an Elk Hair Caddis. Rosenbauer says it imitates moths, caddisflies, small stoneflies, small grasshoppers, and it floats well. This means you can either use this fly in a loud manner or quietly. When the hoppers are jumping into the water, you can make more noise. Trout are less skittish.

FISHING ALABAMA: An Angler’s Guide to 50 of the State’s Prime Fishing Spots by Ed Mashburn. Globe Pequot Press, $16.95 & 200 pages. Even though I might never fish these waters, I can pick up techniques and other knowledge that can improve my Wisconsin fishing skills and results. Lots of the bass fishing techniques we use have come from B.A.S.S. tournament coverage on TV, plus the shows of many present and past bass pro anglers of various circuits. Most of these shows originate from the Bass Belt, which happens to be the same as the Bible Belt, for some reason.

You can easily tell the author is from Alabama, or a neighboring state. “Bream” is used in place of “sunfish” or “bluegill.” The true bream, Abramis brama, is a freshwater, thin-bodied yellowish fish, and it is not related to the sunfish family. It’s not even similarly shaped. There’s also a “sea bream,” and this is really an Atlantic porgy, Archosargus rhomboidalis.

Alabama offers both fresh and saltwater angling. Mashburn does a fine job of covering the region and its fish, no matter what we call them. We have a common angling bond transversing all colloquial barriers. This book provides plenty of black-and-white photos and some maps. Saltwater species and their hotspots are in the middle portion of the book while the freshwater fish reside in the last section of the book. Mashburn begins his fine book by introducing us to the species he covers, plus adding various techniques and baits to use. A listing of state record fish is a nice addition.

FISHING THE TEXAS GULF COAST: An Angler’s Guide to More than 100 Great Places to Fish by Mike Holmes. Globe Pequot Press, $16.95 & 144 pages. Holmes is no newbie to these waters. He’s fished them since the mid-1970’s, including as a licensed boat captain since 1982. He’s widely published regarding this area and the species living here.

Local saltwater anglers have their versions of Wisconsin’s freshwater panfish. Instead of bluegills, perch and crappies, Texas Gulf Coast bait tossers bring in croakers, sand trout, whiting, pompano, sheepshead, “smaller versions of black drum,” plus the gaftop catfish. The author warns the reader not to confuse this catfish with the similar looking buy not edible common hardhead catfish.

Larger fish include the bigger black drum, which Holmes says is “the redfish’s ugly cousin,” alligator gar, tarpon, striped bass, blue catfish, tripletail and the ever popular snook.

The book goes into areas to fish and numerous maps are provided. As in the previous book, both make me want to fish these waters.

CLIMBER’S GUIDE TO DEVIL’S LAKE, 3rd edition, by Sven Olof Swartling and Peter Mayer. University of Wisconsin Press, $19.95 & 424 pages. How would you like to climb Poison Ivy Wall or Rainy Wednesday Tower on a Tuesday?” Well you can in Wisconsin’s Devil’s Lake State Park. The rock here is Precambrian. That means it is about 1.5 billion years old, and the rock was the bottom content of a large sea. This rock is mostly compressed pure quartz sand that we better known as sandstone. Unlike other sandstone, studying this material under a microscope shows that this quartz was compressed over a long period of time, so that wear from water shows as ripples. This makes the Devil’s Lake sandstone sedentary instead of the faster forming metamorphic quartzite.

Reading through the beginning of this excellent book provides a treasure trove of information regarding the Cambrian Sea and its tropical islands, rivers that are only visible as remnants, the Pleistocene Glaciers, plants and animals, and the effects humans had on the region.

Numerous maps, drawings and photos put the reader right at the locations for climbing. Those aren’t white garden hoses hanging from the precipices. Those are climbing routes. The labor of love for the sport still shows in the 3rd edition. I’ve climbed the quarry rocks, but not the steep precipices. This is a great part of Wisconsin, and Swartling and Mayer show you why.

SWEET AND SOUR PIE: A Wisconsin Boyhood by Dave Crehore. University of Wisconsin Press, $19.95 & 176 pages. Every man that grew up in Wisconsin had “A Wisconsin Boyhood,” so why is Crehore’s youth worth writing about, let along read?

The cover hooked me. It shows the author in his red cowboy hat as the young boy fished from a boat while enjoying the company of his mom, -- and her upside down reel – and presumably his dad who took the picture. I thought, “What a wonderful, warm and happy life experience.” This is a time that is even more fun when looking back. Crehore does that in “Sweet and Sour Pie,” and I’m glad he did.

Yep, there’s hunting and fishing in this book. We even find out that Crehore’s dad might’ve gotten the first Rapala lures in the United States. They tried the baits on Hartlaub Lake, and they worked. Both father and son caught bass on their first casts. These fish had never seen balsa baits, unlike today’s bass that learn a lot in their schools.

David Crehore is a past public information officer for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Besides having stories in Wisconsin Natural Resources, his material often appeared in Shooting Sportsman. In his book, he invites you to visit him as a youth in Manitowoc County. Get a copy and you’ll see that time travel is possible.

ALAN KULWICKI NASCAR CHAMPION: Against All odds by Fr. Dale Grubba. Badger Books LLC, $23.95 & 520 pages. You never know what you’ll learn from a book, and I like trivia. I now know that Milwaukee’s famed WKLH DJ Marilynn Mee was Miss Springer Speedway in 1977, but that’s not the purpose of this book.

Alan Kulwicki is Wisconsin’s #1favorite when it comes to racing. Grubba follows the racer’s life from go cart track record setting runs through the small tracks and on through new model stock and Indie cars. Kulwicki still races the small tracks, but he’s also excellent on the big name tracks. Time goes fast, and I’m betting he doesn’t feel like as much time has passed since he set the Junior Reed Class track record at Wisconsin Badger Raceway in 1970. His dad had gotten him his first cart in 1969. Alan set the senior record in 1972.

Fr. Grubba keeps the story racing forward. Plenty of dialogue makes this book read like the finest fiction. The author also took a majority of the photos.

Badger Books LLC prints interesting books on Wisconsin, and this is a wonderful addition to their published works.

THE BOOMER’S GUIDE TO LIGHTWEIGHT BACKPACKING: New Gear for Old People by Carol Corbridge with artwork by Jayna Harrison. Frank Amato Publications, Inc. $18.95 & 102 pages. If backpacking keeps a boomer like me as young as some of the people in the full color photos in this book, I’m going backpacking immediately. With that minor negative comment out-of-the way, I can say I enjoyed this book. As a dog owner, dog step-father, dog head of the herd, or whatever my dog thinks of me – and I hope it’s nice -- , I liked seeing the backpackers taking along their dogs. Going on vacations is often difficult, more expensive and harder to accomplish when people take on the added responsibility of pet ownership. Should we board the animal, or will Auntie Gracie be suckered into another dog sitting job?

If you want to buy a book that is every bit as efficient as you should be when backpacking as a boomer, this is the book for you. Clothing, bathroom items, food container, including the Platypus 1.8 Hoser, camera, fishing equipment, water, food, such as instant oatmeal with raisons, jerky and coffee, especially on those cold mornings, cooking utensils, foul weather gear, light tents, first aid materials, dog food, sunglasses, and all kinds of other things must be backpack tote-able without making your treks into pure, unpleasant drudgery. Corbridge has several tables that make selections easy. She often carries just 30 pounds with her on weeklong jaunts.

To paraphrase Yogi Berra, “Life’s not over until it’s over.” Cancer or not, I’m going fishing this Thursday.

“Fish on!!!”

BOOK MEANDERINGS

by: L.A. Van Veghel

Even though I do plenty of reading on the computer, I prefer books. While they aren’t very interactive, except for page turning and some children’s books having pop-ups, they do keep me focused. On the computer, I might decide to check my emails, as I’ve just done for an hour, or I might opt to look up something regarding what I’m reading. The next bit of info can send me on a well-meaning but poorly focused Sunday thought drive over the highways and the byways of pothole-filled cyberspace. That often flashes a glaring red stop light in front of what I was reading. I stay on my detour.

You don’t have to have electrical outlet, batteries, or Wi-Fi for books. You don’t have to wait for booting up and signing in when you read a book, and you see the whole page, unlike on palm pilots or other tiny-screened eye strainers. Losing a book is also much less expensive and it doesn’t involve losing the stealing of your identity or the loss of valuable confidential work.

While I’m sitting at my desk waiting for my computer to virus scan some six digit figure collection of files for viruses that came from my recent foray into fishing websites in Russia that somehow got confused by the computer and it’s definition of what “fish” means and some disease ridden x-rated website popped onto my screen and spewed its filth ridden viruses into my previously virgin CPU, I’m writing this article.

Okay, now I just completed a secure cleaning of my computer. I have finished the rough draft of the first page for this article. The complete cleaning removed all kinds of stuff by doing its job seven times. Imagine our bosses letting us do something seven times until it was done right.

Okay, now I’m rebooting. Earlier today, I told a lady cousin of mine who is frustrated with setting up her new computer that rebooting does not mean kicking your computer again. I’ve never rebooted a book. I did throw one in a wastebasket years ago. I overloaded on a famous author.

While my computer is doing all of the stuff I’ve stated, it’s almost like not having a computer. I’m writing longhand.

More time passes, and finally…

Hooray! I’m now using the computer, and I’m having fun while miskeying ala big-time in Microsoft Word.

You know what? I just can’t get focused thanks to the hassle I’ve endured in just getting ready to write this book review article. Writing must cease. It’s time to read another book, and from that pleasurable experience, I hope to come up with a winning book review for you. I’m going to go fishing for a good fishing book. Now, where’s my bookworm. Live bait always helps.

Sturgeon stories captured in book due out in October

OSHKOSH – The sturgeon spearing seasons opening Feb. 14 on the Winnebago System got their start 77 years ago as part of an economic stimulus plan aimed at helping feed hungry Wisconsinites during the Great Depression.

That history of how Wisconsin’s modern-day sturgeon season was born is just one of dozens of stories that fill People of the Sturgeon: Wisconsin’s Love Affair with an Ancient Fish, a new book coming in October 2009. Advance orders are being taken now.

A cooperative effort by several agencies, institutions and organizations involved in sturgeon management, the book features dozens of sturgeon stories collected from spearers, decoy carvers, poachers, retired game wardens and sturgeon biologists, Menominee Tribal elders, and others from throughout the Winnebago-Fox-Wolf River System. The book also features the photography of the late Bob Rashid.

People of the Sturgeon can be previewed and pre-sale copies can be reserved at [http://www.winnebagosturgeon.org/].

Ron Bruch, a Department of Natural Resources sturgeon fisheries biologist, co-authored the book with Kathleen Schmitt Kline of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Sea Grant Institute, and Fred Binkowski of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Great Lakes WATER Institute. The Wisconsin Historical Society Press is the publisher, and Sturgeon for Tomorrow, a local sturgeon conservation organization, donated $25,000 to help underwrite publishing costs of the 300-page book. Royalties from sales of the book will support the DNR's Lake Winnebago System sturgeon management efforts.

For the record, the Winnebago spearing season was reopened in 1932 after a 17-year closure as part of a Wisconsin legislative bill designed to provide economic relief to the citizens of the state. The idea for the bill was initiated by the Twin City Sportsmen’s Club in Neenah. State Senator Merritt C. White from Winneconne drafted a bill to open sturgeon to a fall hook and line season, Bruch says. Soon after, legislators from around Lake Winnebago amended the bill to include an ice spearing season on the Lake Winnebago, a season spearers will again enjoy this year.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Ron Bruch (920) 424-3059

READING IMPROVES ANGLING

by: L.A. Van Veghel

The advantage of reading fishing books is that you learn the most in depth information. TV shows are often too basic for anglers who are fishing club members, read a lot of fishing magazines, study fishing websites, fish a lot, or all of the above. Books fill this void.

The Year of the ANGLER and the Year of the TROUT by Steve Raymond. The Lyons Press. 560-pages and $19.95. Raymond has written for Sports Illustrated, Fly Fisherman and Flyfishing magazines. He’s been on ABC’s American Sportsman too. Like me, he’s a fisherman who is also a writer. This means he writes from personal experience, instead of using guides to provide the information. He’s a fisherman, and he writes about his adventures. The first section goes through the season from the angler’s angle, and the second covers the seasons for trout. River salmon are included in this fine book.

Northern Pike; A Complete Guide To Pike And Pike Fishing by Will Ryan. The Lyons Press. 200-pages and $14.95. This angler/writer has written for Outdoor Life, Fly Rod & Reel and Fly Fisherman. Here’s a dandy book covering pike life plus how to catch these toothy rascals. You’ll find out about habitat, pike habits, and pike life cycles. Ryan explains where pike live during each of the four seasons, and he states that biologists are coming to realize that pike are cannibals. This explains why the age old Pikie Minnow has been effective for so many years. Yet, per the author, he’s unable to find any references to why the lure was created to imitate a young pike. For more on this topic, get the book. You’ll like it.

Trout Unlimited’s Guide to America’s Best Trout Streams by John Ross. The Lyons Press. 384-pages and $18.95. The author is the chair of the Virginia Council of Trout Unlimited, and he’s fished from the high Arctic tundra to the grassy plain steppes of Tierra del Fuego and even in the Falkland Islands. There are more than 30 new streams and updated maps in this “Updated and Revised” edition. Two of Wisconsin’s streams make this list. The streams are the West Fork of the Kickapoo River with its “Great browns in the most pastoral of settings” and the Bois Brule. The author calls this river “The ‘real’ Brule with really big fish.” Maps of the areas are provided.

The Orvis® Ultimate Book of Fly Fishing; Secrets from the Orvis Experts edited by Tom Rosenbauer. 352-pages and $40.00 in hardcover. The vice president of marketing at the Orvis Company in Manchester, VT, Rosenbauer has written three other books on related subjects. Here, he has gathered the experts at Orvis to cover fly fishing from the powerful bonefish to largemouth bass to steelhead. You’ll study how to catch numerous fish species, plus how to read streams for smallmouth bass and trout. Even if you don’t fly fish, there is lots of information you can use to improve your catch rate. Bass poppers are discussed, and you can use information on wet flies and nymphs if you are a jig angler. Bucktail flies like the Mickey Finn look a lot like jigs. In fact, professional walleye anglers are finally figuring out that streamer flies on slip rigs will catch their favorite specie. I’ve had streamer flies in my walleye tackle box since the 70’s, back when I was the secretary & editor for The Okauchee Fishing Club.

Fly Fishing In Idaho with photos by R. Randolph Ashton, text by Will Godfrey and an Introduction by Terry Ring. Stoecklein Photography & Publishing. 170-pages and $35.00 in hardcover. Ashton, the photographer, takes the headlines here. This fly fishing book is what is called a coffee table book. There are some fantastic fishing photos. Great scenery, cool looking fog photos, and pictures that make you say “I wish I was there right now” are featured. Godfrey, the writer, provides one page descriptions of the area’s waterways and fisheries. Ring, the Introducer, grew up fishing these waters and became a guide. He’s the owner of Silver Creek Outfitters in Ketchum, ID. You’ll enjoy photos from such picturesque names as Big Wood River, Copper Basin, Fall River, Teton River, Medicine Lodge Creek, and the famed Snake River. Mountains, picturesque pines, fall colors, and colorful trout show us why areas like this must be preserved.

Rod Crafting; A Full-Color Pictorial & Written History from 1843-1960 by Jeffrey L. Hatton. Frank Amato Publications, Inc. 305-pages, $45.00 softbound and $65.00 hardbound. No, this isn’t a boring book. It’s full of facts and data, but it also contains some great anecdotal writing. For instance, the author states that in Fred Mather’s 1897 book “Men I Have Fished With” there was an angler named Reuben Wood. This gentleman used to make up fishing terms, for example, whenever Wood caught a big fish, he’d call it “An Old Codwalloper.” Casting reel bird’s nests were called “Wrinkle-Hawks.” He called long-stemmed pipes “flugemockers.”

Not all of the rods are fly rods. There are bait-casting rods, such as the Von Lengerke & Detmond 8’ 3/2 Bait-casting Rod circa 1898-1899 by T&E. This rod featured soldered hardware. The Fred DeBell of Denver Fly/spin Combination Rod 2/1 7; circa 1940’s- 1960’s had reel seats for both reel types, and it could cast current light jigs such as Dick Smith’s Panfish Grubs, Inch Worms, Doll Flies, etc. The author claims the rod isn’t a great spinning rod, and it requires heavy fly line to load the rod. Hatton states that the rod is “just adequate for either purpose at best.”

We covered a lot about fly fishing in this article. If you can learn to read the water, match the hatch, understand the seasons and how they relate to fish and their prey as do successful fly fishers, you’ll increase your fish catch no matter what sport fishing method you choose.