My winter hobby

[mainbutter]

I'm a 99% CPR fisherman (catch, photograph, release). The photo is my trophy.

I sometimes keep a couple eaters, but for fish caught in the lower 48 states and Canada, that usually only ends up being maybe 5 fish a year.

The only time I fish exclusively for eaters is salmon fishing in alaska. They are too delicious to let go, and I only get to do that one week a year usually when I visit the parents. Last year my dad and I spent 4 days fishing the silver salmon run in Cordova. The salmon that year were pretty chunky. We limited out with 3 fish each every day, for a total of 24 fish = 48 nice big wild caught silver salmon fillets. If you figure each fillet was 3lbs, we approached 150lbs of meat over those 4 days. It stocked up my parents freezer quite nicely for the year, and I got to take home a good bit to have for myself and share with friends.

That trip was also the first time I caught fish with homemade lures. I made a couple inline spinners, a very basic and common fishing lure, and caught at least one salmon on every single homemade lure I brought with me.

I am an "all species fisherman". If it swims, I'll try to catch it. Right now I'm focusing on MN gamefish and making homemade lures to catch 'em with.

Non-gamefish are always in the back of my mind however. I did quite a bit of carp and sucker fishing last season. The problem with those is I'm trying to do as much fishing as I can with homemade artificials rather than with bait.

I'll give them a go on a fly rod, since flies work great for carp and suckers, once I get some practice in learning to fly fish. I got a 4 weight rod and reel outfit for christmas that I'm going to learn to fly fish with this spring, chasing bluegills and crappies.