Far Afield
A few basics for catching fish
With Oak Duke

Fishing is often a passionate pursuit, and many of us who write about the sport of angling have spent a lot of time on and in the water.

And we get a little carried away and forget what it was like when we first started "wetting a line."

Our outdoor sports can be very confusing with all the modern paraphernalia, specialized talk and technical techniques.

The simple act of catching a fish with a rod and reel can be made into an arcane, mindboggling experience to a lot of folks.

The sport of "fishing with an angle" can be made to be downright intimidating.

And fishing is supposed to be fun.

"It's always more fun when you've had a fish on," are the truest words.

Sure, we can still have a great time in the outdoors and not catch a fish. But it's always a little better when there's been a fish on your line.

Here are a few of the basics:

The simplest and most successful artificial lure for pond and lake fishermen to use and learn how to fish is the rubber worm.

However, day in and day out, live bait, i.e. minnows, crayfish, worms and frogs will put more fish on your stringer.

Artificial lures are not as messy as livebait, are more consistent, are storable, and are considered by most as more of a challenge. But I like fishing with live bait sometimes too.

Here are a few maxims that experienced fishermen know and I like to tell. You could say they are a few of the "secrets" to catching fish with a rubber worm.

They are:

1. "Stay in contact with the fish." That means, keep the line taught or at least with hardly any slack in the water. It is amazing to see on an underwater video, how many fish will pick up a bait, mouth it and spit it back out. Meanwhile, the eager fisherman on the other end of the line has no idea that the fish is there and biting on his worm.

If the line is curled or there is too much of it on the water, then the angler can not tell (unless the water is clear and shallow) that a fish is sucking down the bait, then spitting it back out. Even if a lure is being retrieved, sometimes bass and pike will come up from behind, mouth the bait and spit it back out.

So for all intents and purposes we can't hear Mr. Fish knocking on our door when our line is limp and loose in the water.

2. "It doesn't cost anything to set the hook."

In order to catch a fish with a rubber worm, a large hook must be driven up into the hard and bony mouth of a bass. Most people do not set or jerk the rod up hard enough, so they have the fish on only for the briefest of moments. Typically, there's a struggle and a swirl, and the best fish of the day is gone - all because the "set" or violent up-thrust of the rod is too wimpy. "You can never set too hard."

3. "Re-tie after a couple of fish."

We get lazy and forget to retie the hook. The little knot at the end of the line on the hook gets stressed and becomes continually weaker, fish after fish. And then the big one gets on. And of course, you guessed it, that's when it breaks off.

4. "What color are they hittin'?" When on vacation or fishing a strange lake, or maybe it's one of those days when the fish just aren't biting. Ask other fishermen what color is working.

There are a lot of colors and shades of rubber worms. And on any particular lake at a given time, one color will seem to work better than all the rest. It's tough to know. Check it out. Be a detective. When on the water, look at the color of the other fishermen's lure and see what they have tied on, not just what they say. My favorite colors are black, motor oil, and purple (with two white stripes.)

5. "Ninety percent of the fish are in 10 percent of the water." Many times we are limited to where we can fish. Find where they are. Sometimes fishermen are doing everything right. But no fish. Why? They are simply not fishing in the right place.

6. "Check your drag before you get a fish on." The drag is a reel's brake system. Checking the drag is like testing the brakes in a vehicle. A reel should allow a big fish to take, or pull out a little line with the reel engaged.

Test the drag by grabbing the line just above where it comes out of the reel and giving it a good yank. If it comes out too easy, then the drag needs to be tightened. If you can't pull the line, then the drag needs to be loosened.

Your drag should be checked every time you are on the water, before the fish is on!

Oak Duke, publisher of the Wellsville Daily Reporter, is the author of two books, "Whitetail Hunting" and "Springtime in the Turkey Woods." He writes a regular outdoors column