Freshwater Fishing
Building anglers, keeping anglers
A simple and enjoyable way to contribute to quality fishing in the future is to introduce people to fishing and keep them fishing. […]
Gettin’ Fresh
Freshwater Fishing
Habitat for fish and anglers
It’s no secret to in-the-know anglers that good habitat benefits fish. For largemouth bass, good habitat often means woody cover and aquatic vegetation. […]
Freshwater Fishing
The sunfish clan
I’ve provided information about the biology of bluegill and redear sunfish, Mississippi’s two most-popular sunfish, in the two previous columns. […]
Crappie/Bream
The sunfish clan – Part II: Redear sunfish
The redear sunfish has many names. Topping the list is bream and redear bream, but other frequently spoken names are shellcracker and chinquapin. […]
Freshwater Fishing
The sunfish clan Part I: Bluegill
Mississippi waters provide homes to some good populations of sunfish. And there is a cadre of anglers that would rather fish for — and eat — bream than any other fish on an anglers’ most-wanted list. […]
Freshwater Fishing
Freshwater drum – The fish that gets no respect
Freshwater drum are the only exclusively freshwater member of the drum family, the same family as red drum, speckled sea trout and weakfish. […]
Columns
Winning the weed wars
The time when aquatic vegetation starts growing in ponds is about a month off. Because prevention is usually more effective and less expensive than cure, it’s a good time to be thinking about vegetation management. […]
Freshwater Fishing
The biology of the bass spawn
It’s March, so the bass will begin spawning in southern Mississippi. By the end of the month, assuming normal warming trends, the bass spawn will be in full swing in central Mississippi. […]
Fishing
Recognizing and dealing with barotrauma
You might know barotrauma by a different name, like “hyperbuoyancy” or “overinflated swim bladder.”
You might have even seen pictures of deepwater marine fish with bug eyes or their stomachs pushed out their mouths. Maybe you have witnessed it yourself. […]
Freshwater Fishing
The LMR is 10 KPH – One of America’s least-fished waterways
“LMR” is lower Mississippi River, the 1000-mile stretch from the mouth of the Ohio River at Cairo, Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico. “10 kph” is 10 kilometers per hour, a speed equivalent to about 6 miles per hour. […]
Columns
A good day – How to measure fishing satisfaction
Have you ever pondered what makes a “good day” of fishing? Skipping the clichés, this is an important question for fishery managers because their job is to provide satisfying fishing opportunities for anglers. […]
Freshwater Fishing
Flathead catfish – Homebodies or migratory?
Numerous studies have described riverine flathead catfish as relatively sedentary, some even concluding that an individual flathead might not stray far from a single logjam. […]