Wired2fish

For a guy who didn’t start fishing seriously until he was in his 50s, Andy Kilen is certainly making up for lost time. Now, 76, he has his own boat, fishes whenever he can with his grandson Gabriel, and loves to cast for northern pike and largemouth bass. But no day will match the one he experienced in late May. Fishing with his grandson, on Lura Lake in southern Minnesota, he began casting an orange spinnerbait over the top of a weed bed.

The urchin is bass fishing at the moment — and will remain at the forefront through next year, if the Wired2fish team’s predictions comes true. This once-in-a-generation bait is dominating the sport due to its effectiveness at catching bass across a wide spectrum of conditions. But with a completely new bait genre comes all sorts of challenges and learning curves, from how to fish it to how to store it. As more anglers finally find urchins in stock, the latter becomes increasingly important.

Wired2fish is proud to partner with Island Optics to give away its new Breaker RX sunglasses with prescription lenses. Five lucky winners will each receive a pair of sunglasses. Here’s your chance to win yours right now! The lightweight Breaker frames feature an 8 base curved wrap lens with removable side shields for extra coverage. They also come standard with adjustable, no-slip Gator Grip nose pads. And the polarized lenses give you a more enhanced view than the naked eye offers.

Last year, public access to Burt Dam, a popular stretch of Eighteen Mile Creek in New York, was challenged when a “No Trespassing” sign appeared along the trail to the waterway used by anglers. The signs called into question access to one of the stream’s most popular sections. The Town of Newfane announced Aug. 14 that public access to the fishing grounds below Burt Dam has been protected through a permanent public access easement recorded with the Niagara County Clerk’s Office.

A fishing trip to Cedros Island in Baja California took an unexpected turn when a group of anglers spotted something in the Pacific that none of them expected to see nearly a mile from shore: a dog swimming alone in the open ocean. Arturo Chacon, owner of Tag Cabo Sportfishing, had traveled to Cedros Island with 11 friends for a week of fishing with Cedros Outdoors Adventures. The day started around 5 a.m. as the group prepared to head offshore.

Z-Man Fishing first brought the Original ChatterBait to market over two decades ago, and has since released a couple dozen iterations of this iconic bait. And whenever you think there’s no way Z-Man can reinvent the wheel, they once more tweak something else about the build and — voila! — a whole new generation of anglers falls in love with the bait. I believe they’ve done just that once again with their latest creation, the ChatterBait EVO HD. Here’s why I feel so strongly about it.

Paddlefishing is a lifelong passion for 48-year-old Trevor Swisse of Sidney, Montana. He’s fished for the oversized, plankton-eating fish since his teenage years — mostly in the Yellowstone River not far from home. “Not as many anglers cast and snag paddlefish as they did some years ago,” Trevor told Wired2fish.

There is a moment every summer when an angler looks at the weather forecast, checks the river gauge, and realizes that the fish might be having a worse day than they are. Unfortunately, this seems to be happening more often than ever, and in more places. Across the West, fish and wildlife agencies are increasingly asking anglers to stop fishing for cold-water species when rivers get dangerously warm.

Dan and Scott Stevenson, two brothers from South Shore, Kentucky, are die-hard muskie men. They’ve fished Canada’s well-known Lake Manitou in southern Ontario for three decades. And they know the famed and sprawling 40-square-mile muskie lake well. The pair of retirees had caught smaller muskies during a trip in the first week of August, including a 45-incher for Scott.

Running at 40 MPH into a 10-knot wind on a cloudy 44-degree December morning is not what this former Florida boy is used to. Our guide Joseph Clark asked me and my buddy Bruce whether we wanted him to slow down to throw on another jacket. “I’m good,” I lied. “Except I wish I had a ski mask!” The flimsy Buff wasn’t doing much. “I’m already wearing everything I brought,” laughed Bruce. “We’re not running much farther, I see a few seagulls up ahead,” Clark said.