Whether you are on a new lake, or on one that you call home, the main purpose is to locate and catch as many fish as possible. Each body of water has an endless supply of different forms of structure and cover in a variety of depths and water conditions. You can use many types of fishing equipments to be able to get a lot of fish in a proper and legal way, so we need to take good care of our equipments used for catching fish.

Here are some bass fishing equipment tips to be remembered:

• Keeping your feet dry. Seal skin sox, a waterproof pair of shoe that can be worn in any shoe. It will help you a lot in putting your boat in a low lake that calls for a need for you to step in the water too push off, by doing this your feet will be dry all day.

• Keeping your rods good as new. It is nice to look at, especially when you always keep your rod clean. Just use a simple prep pad in cleaning the cork handles on the rod. If the cork of your fishing rods is very untidy then it makes your rods look like hundred years older than it really is. Take a very light grade sand paper and sand the cork handles, you will find out that all the dirt will go away leaving you with a brand new looking fishing rod. Plus it will make your rod last longer.

• Hi- tech basin. Handheld computer and organizers such as the palm pilot can be very helpful to the bass angler. You may be able to log conditions, creating your own checklist to avoid forgetting stuffs, and store the numbers of your new friends you've met along the way. You can also download map for your destinations and when you reach home you can easily access all the information to your home computer for future purposes.

• Being prepared. Always carry equipment and parts in the boat just in case some failures or problems occur.

• Batteries. Always check if you have a good connection. Take care of your battery. Always bring a spare for emergency purposes.

• Being organized. Instead of using a plastic filing box, and some hanging folders why don't you just make an article and label them with general bass angling headings and file your articles as you finish them. Subscribing to a lot of fishing magazines and reading a lot of good articles will be able to help you for your future reference. You can put up a mini library that's all about bass fishing.

• Boat bearings. Many anglers forget to check their wheel bearings on their boat trailers. Every spring when you get your boat out of storage, always have your bearings checked. This could save you from a serious accident with your boat

• Rod basic. The most accurate casting is accomplished when bait casting equipment is cast overhand. Bait casting gear is extremely well suited for "targeted" fishing. On some occasions placing a lure under a boat dock, under over lying limbs or between pontoon boats may be necessary. In this situation skipping a lure is ideal. A spinning outfit is perfect for this chore. Be versatile and be able to use both types of equipment.

• Graphite rods. The biggest killer of graphite rods is impact against a hard object. It may not break in that spot the day it happens but there will be a weak spot at that point. Keep this in mind when stowing rods for travel. If you are keeping them on the deck, strap them flush against the deck so that the parts of the deck aren't rapping against it during travel.

If you are storing them in a locker, do the same or put them in a horizontal holding system, where they won't hit the side or floor of the locker. If you are the non boater and your partner doesn't have room in his locker, try to find the spot that minimizes the repeated bouncing they will take if they are laid over the gunwale. If you have to, lay them over your leg when running the big engine. It's never fun to set the hook on a good fish and end up with a three piece rod

Download your free bass fishing tips guide now. Lots of great tips and techniques to improve your fishing. http://www.secretfishingtips.com/freeguide.html

Here are 3 useful tips you can use when starting fishing:

1) Using Bait Correctly

Using lead/lead free weights. Many people use bank sinkers with a number 2 hook.

To avoid sinkers to slide, you would use a swivel that acts as a stop. To protect the knot, you should use plastic beads between the swivel and weight. Using two appropriate swivels could allow you to rig the sliding sinkers.

Worms are a very popular bait for fishing. Remember to buy only fresh bait and keeping it cold avoids them from getting soft and allowing the bait to stay within your hooks.

2) How to fish

This really depends on what type of fishing you are doing. Fly fishing, course fishing, boat fishing all have different tactics.

It is often best to get tips from fellow fishermen doing the same type of fishing. Most fishermen will gladly give you some fishing tips.

3) Fishing from a boat – Deeper water needs heavier jigheads compared when fishing on shore.

A good technique of fishing on boats is trolling slowly with a fishing device called bottom-walker.

Fishing is easy as long as you're enjoying the trip. Bring some of your family and friends along and make your first time fishing a memorable one!

Most of all enjoy your fishing trip!

Download your free fishing tips guide now. Lots of great tips and techniques to improve your fishing. http://www.secretfishingtips.com/freeguide.html

Picture it: a father and son waiting on a harbor over a lake, their bare legs dangling over the water, each of them holding a fishing rod. It's a scene bound to endear children and excite families, simply because fishing has long been used by humans for both relaxation and industry.

Put simply, fishing covers all activities involved in hunting and catching fish and other aquatic animals such as octopus, turtles, shellfish, and squid. Fishing first began about ten thousand years ago. Fishing was considered a game for the lower classes in ancient Greece, but the Chinese regarded the skill as a gift from the gods.The ancient Egyptians were known for their fishing implements and improvised fishing methods, most of which are captured in illustrations in the pyramids, and in papyrus documents.

Fishing today can take on many forms, from the simple boat on the lake, and occasional conversation amongst friends or relatives; to the larger, industrial boat in the middle of the sea, with its gigantic net.

The following are a few types of common fishing methods.

• With the proper skill, and with only a few pieces of equipment, some fishermen can catch fish by hand – without the fish even slipping out! Hand fishing is still practiced in some villages around the world, where shallow waters near rivers, or by the sea, can be a source of fish for the evening's meal.

• Using a spear, a bow, and a keen eye, some fishermen can engage in spear and bow fishing. This requires great strength and dexterity, and it has been practiced for centuries. In fact, with the proper equipment, fishermen can use only a bow and arrow to catch fish!

• Other fishermen cast nets out in their body of water of choice. Such a method, sometimes known as cast net fishing, can allow farmers a larger catch – this, however, can also lead to them catching unwanted (or unintended) animals or even objects. These include dolphins, seals, or even trash.

• Larger fishing vessels engage in trawling, or dragging a large net through the sea, allowing the net to catch whatever it can gather. Like cast net fishing, trawling can catch other animals, like sharks or baby whales.

• A more damaging version of trawling is dredging, where the seabed is disrupted in the hopes of getting more fish to swim nearer to the surface and into the net.

• A common method of catching fish is by using a fishing line, with bait attached at the end. This is done usually for recreational purposes, and involves some skill and "getting the fish to bite." A variation of this method is fly fishing, in which colorful, feathery objects serve as lure, and where a fishing line is cast at a certain angle onto the surface of a body of water. The fly fishing enthusiast often stands knee-deep in the water while this is done.

• Ice fishing is a variation of line fishing, this time done through a hole on the surface of an iced body of water. Ice fishers cut out a hole in the ice to expose the still liquid water, and the fish swimming below.

• Some fishermen lay out fish traps, which are contraptions meant to lure fish and cage them in, so that fishermen may take them out much later.

• Not all fishing methods are mild. Some fishermen, in their wish to catch more fish, use toxins such as cyanide to poison whole populations of fish, which they can then gather by hand. This method, however, poisons even juvenile fish, leaving no more fish for the next generation, and no harvest for the next catch.

Another dangerous method involves the use of dynamite. This is common in the waters of Southeast Asia, where fish often hide in corals.

• Electrofishing is a new, non-invasive method of catching fish. It involves passing electric currents through water, prompting a fish to be lured to the source of the current, then disabling it for the moment so that it may be harvested. Electrofishing, though relatively simple, needs skill to assure that no unintended animals will be harmed.

Fishing is always an exciting and relaxing activity – and it can lead to a delicious dinner too! If it is done with minimal damage to the environment, then there will surely be enough fish left for fishing to endure in the generations to come.

Khieng 'Ken' Chho – Online Fishing Resources. For more, visit Ken's website: http://fishing.1w3b.com/

Here's why, this one will throw you for a loop. Just the other day I was out with a buddy doing, what else, fishing. He had a problem with his line, (it had crossed itself while he was re-stringing his reel the night before) and after we got the line straightened out, he tried to use it anyway. You know, trying to conserve and recycle. It wasn't working out for him. That's not it.

So he decided to remove the twisted and mangled section of his line. My buddy cut the line which left about an eight foot section. He was straight-linin' a chunk o' night crawler. (A snelled bait-holder hook, a split-shot sinker and half a night crawler) He tied the end of the line to the lanyard on the deck we were fishing from and threw the other end in the water. He says "Might as well try to catch a fish while I'm re-string. You never know." Now that's efficiency.

That's when I laughed and re-focused my attention on my fishing. As you might have guessed already, when he was finished re-stringing his rod & reel, he decided to pull his line up and yep, you guessed correctly, he had a bluegill hooked on the other end.

Trust me. I would never have been able to make that up.
Lately I've been researching different methods of using what I have been using in the past. (Mix this with that and that with this) I was showing my buddy different types of combinations I had come across and he just shook his head and laughed. He's and old fashioned kind of fisherman. That's not to say he won't try something new and continue to use it, if it works.
It just blew my mind later when I got to thinking about it. Guys (And girls) buy all this expensive fish finding equipment; life like lures and top of the line bass boats and my fishing buddy ties a line, a hook and a worm to the dock, like ol' Huck Finn and catches him a fish. Go figure.

Just goes to show you, the basics always work.

We happened to be fishing one of the smallest ponds I have ever fished. It's privately owned and man-made. My buddy keeps telling me of giant bluegill and crappie, but I have yet to see these elusive creatures. It's not that I don't believe him; I just haven't seen any caught yet.

The water was a cloudy type of muddy, the weather was 75 and sunny and it was mid May in Indiana. It was beautiful day for fishing. At about high noon, I had a 7-incher dart out from under the tree limbs next to the dock and hit the Berkley Gulp fog that I decided to throw on for the first time after trying about six different lures.

I can now say that frogs work in catching largemouth bass. I can't say if it was just that pond yet or not. I recently fished at Yellowwood Lake near Bloomington, IN and got a hit with it, but when I got it to the dock, it spit it out.
At the little pond, I lost just as many fish as I caught, so who's to say?

Around two or three in the afternoon, I got in a row boat, (Which wasn't fun when the wind picked up) and my buddy got in a paddle pontoon, that's when we started to catch largemouth left and right. Literally. I don't know if it was the change in lures. (We were changing lures about every ten casts or so from the dock) When we found something that worked, we stuck with it for the rest of the day.

Being that the water was muddy and it was a sunny day, we thought the good ol' "Chartreuse Spinner' would be the ticket however, a dark green frog and a blood red worm ended up being the "meal ticket". Dark colors work well in muddy water, especially since there was full sun.

Both were Berkley Gulp brand soft bait. This bait is manufactured with Berkley's 400x emitting sent. This bait has continued to work well since its introduction a couple of years ago. I can't say if all the pros are using it, but that's what I hear.

I don't mean to sound like a Berkley commercial however, since Bass smell and taste simultaneously they're Gulp brand baits work very well.

Back to the story, my fishing buddy was using the 7 inch, curly tail, blood red worm. He likes to use one snelled bait holder hook, weightless. I told you he was kind of old fashioned.

What you do is grab a number one snelled bait-holder hook and run it through the nose, keep running the hook through the center of the worm until you get to the eyelet end of the hook. Then let the barbed end protrude though the side and straighten ‘er out, attach the leader to the line with a barrel swivel and that's it.

You can let it drop to the bottom, which takes a while. Then very slowly work it along the bottom. Or you can start reeling as soon as it hits the water and then use a stop and go method. It depends on how the fish are feeling.

I was using the dark green frog, which is very life-like. I rigged it weightless on a 2/0 offset hook. Sort of like a Carolina or Texas rig without the bullet sinker. Oh yes and with a barrel swivel between the leader and the line. The barrel swivel keeps your line from getting twisted when the bait swims through the water.

I just threw it into the shaded areas beneath over hanging trees. Sometimes I let it hit the bank and then "jump it" into the water, right into the nest and swim it like a frog would, every once in a while letting it sink.

Largemouth bass like to make their nests in the shallows just off channels or drop-offs. This pond has two coves that are essentially channels. I kept my eye out for really dark or really light spots under trees or next to logs and near the drop-off into the channel.

I forgot to keep count of how many I caught that day, but as I mentioned earlier, I lost as many as I hooked.

Until next time, always have happy thoughts and good fishing.

Chris Curley lives in Nashville, IN. with his dog Piranah.

In fishing, trout are one of the favorite "fishing friends" of most anglers. These crafty fish are abundant anywhere. The native habitat of these crafty fish depends on the type of trout.

For brook trout, the native habitat includes the territory from Labrador westward to the Saskatchewan, while the rainbow trout is a native of the Pacific slope from Alaska to California.

On the other hand, brown trout has found its way into the waters of every state in the United States except Florida, Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas. It has been reported in the waters of some of these states, but according to conservation officials, no authentic reports have been received. It is also found in many parts of Canada.

In trout fishing, there are some factors that need to be considered in order to have a successful catch.

1. For trout fishing, the leader should not be greased. It will not sink far enough to cause any difficulty when picking the line and lure from the water, but if it is allowed to float; it will cast a shadow on the bottom of the stream which may scare the trout.

2. The trout is one of the fishes that are usually secured through the use of the dry fly. For trout, the current as well as the pools should be fished. It may sometimes be a bit difficult to keep the fly from sinking or dragging because of the various conditions of the current, but this is a matter that the angler will have to figure out for himself.

3. It is not good practice when fishing for trout to fish directly upstream so the flies, line, and leader will float directly over fish. The fisherman should make the cast from one side of the stream so the fly will only float over the fish.

4. It is important to make the first cast the best. A feeding trout will usually strike the first lure presented if it is cast so that it will float over his private domain. The angler should never fail to fish the lower end of the pool first even if the trout are rising in the middle or upper end.

5. Trout are sometimes very moody or selective and will try the patience of any angler; hence, possibly a fly with less hackle will do the trick or it may be necessary to use a spent-wing fly or a fan wing.

Indeed, catching trout fishes can be lots of fun. The anglers just have to remember these tips in order to have a happy catch.

Download your free trout fishing tips guide now. Lots of great tips and techniques to improve your fishing. http://www.secretfishingtips.com/freeguide.html