The five Ws (Who, What, Where, When and Why) are the basic questions that can be asked to get a complete story on a subject. If that subject happens to be fishing, asking these questions may help us with our ultimate goal – catching more fish. Let’s break them down……
In my area of Southwestern Ontario, nearby lake fishing consists of the Great Lakes (Huron, Erie and their “little” brother St. Clair) or smaller reservoirs. Weather permitting and with the right boat, the Great Lakes present some of the finest fishing in the world and we are truly fortunate to…
I’ve been trying to plan a date for our yearly trip down to the mouth of the Grand River for channel catfish. As I’ve mentioned before, timing rivers for a successful trip can be problematic, especially without the luxury of a lot of free time during our busy lives. This…
I recently built a Secchi disk (see link for instructions) for water clarity measurements. A Secchi disk has four quadrants painted black and white and is 20 cm (freshwater model) in diameter. The disk is lowered into the water using a line marked in feet or meters and the point…
With the spring fishing season slowly approaching, anglers across the country are starting to keep an eye on their favourite streams and rivers. A big part of river fishing success is attributed to timing – with both water too high and muddied and water too low and clear being problematic,…
Fish movement is keyed to two main factors, temperature and the oxygen content of the water. Fish will seek out areas of a water-body that satisfy both of these needs. While the coldest water can hold the most oxygen (see Table 1) the cycles of a lake can dramatically alter…
Chemoreception in fish, i.e. gustation and olfaction or more simply taste and smell, can play a large role in fishing success. While all fish can likely taste to some degree, taste would not be considered to be a primary means of identifying food for most fish. The one great exception…
When I started researching about hearing in fish I really started to get bogged down in a lot of biology and physics, things like bone conduction, transmission of sound in water and inverse square laws come to mind. After a bit of this I realized that for our purposes as…
As an addendum to the previous post, I’ve gone through a number or sources for the various depths at which the various colors will no longer be discernible underwater. For most freshwater rivers and lakes color loss underwater will be at approximately: Red ~15-18 ft (5 m) (note: after 5…
The various senses that fish use to navigate their watery world are of utmost interest to us as anglers. For each species a particular set of senses will dominate their hunt for food and our knowledge of this can be used to fool them to take our bait. As with…
