Making the most of your time - Fishing Safety rules everyone should know Before you go fishing, you need to make certain that all of your equipment is in safe working order. This should be done before you even consider going out to any waterfront. You need to check several things while looking over your various pieces of equipment. First, you need to check your fishing rod and reel. Both of these pieces should be in top condition, with the rod having no cracks or breaks. If your rod separates, you need to make certain that it is very secure when it is built together. The reel itself should operate smoothly, with the line coiling without tangles. If the line is tangling quite a bit within the reel, you will need to unbind the line and replace it with new. If this behavior continues, you should consider a new reel.

Three Main Trout Senses Obviously, you can't get rid of all foreign smells you may introduce into a trout stream. However, there are a number of easy things a fisherman can do to reduce the likelihood of a trout getting wise due to smell. When using fly line cleaners and fly floatants, use the newer ones that are designed to “mask” the chemical smell. The cleaners and floatants are usually the same price as other “non-masking” chemicals, but can go a long way towards reducing the likelihood of a trout becoming alert to the fisherman due to smell. Also, before hitting a challenging trout stream, it never hurts to leave the cologne and other fancy deodorants back in the hotel room. On a challenging trout stream, an angler needs every edge they can get, and avoiding strange smells to finicky trout is a good way to do this.

The Way Of A Bass Fisherman With a Fly Rod And The Way Of A Bass With A Fly Bass and Flies One reason I believe bass fly fishermen are not as generally successful as their trout fishing brethren is because the bass fisher, as a class, has not put as much study into his waters and his methods. This is not to be wondered at when you consider that fly fishing for bass is, compared with trouting, in its first tooth stage. In other words, if some anglers loudly proclaim that the east wind bloweth when they are bassing with flies it is due, not to the bass but to the angler. True one seldom gets the big, old, granddaddy bass of 'em all on a fly, neither do the bigger trout come to the net by the same route, but the average of the stream or lake can be caught on flies and are on certain waters. Is it entirely because of certain local peculiarities of fish, water or conditions that fly fishing for bass is practiced so successfully on such widely separated waters as, to mention a few: the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers in the Middle West; the Susquehanna, Potomac and Delaware in the East; the Current and St. Francis in the Ozarks; the Belgrade Lakes in Maine? I think not. Bass fly fishing has long been practiced and studied in these places, hence the success.

Wading for Tailing Reds
It doesn't get much better than being surrounded by several small triangles of fish tails protruding from the water ahead of you. Wading and casting to redfish like is....

FISHING TOURNAMENT TRAIL (Kansas City Star)
The Fishing Tournament Trail will be published each Tuesday of the fishing season. To report results, call (816) 234-4319 on Monday morning and leave name, location and date of the tournament and name, spellings and hometowns of the top two finishers and the big-bass winners..