How not to launch your boat

Boat launching can be a slightly stressful situation at times. Often you are faced with impatient anglers who feel that you holding them up is going to cost them a fish of a lifetime. If you have to share the ramp with other water users, such as jet skis, this situation can become even more stressful.

I am a proponent of making sure that you are ready to launch when you pull up to the ramp. I can't stand people who drive up to the top of the ramp and begin to get the boat ready - that is what the preparation area is for! I have seen many anglers load the boat up for longer than ten minutes while others wait behind them and it never ends well. Fortunately I am a patient person, but others aren't always this way.

Enough of the serious talk though. While trolling around youtube I came across this slightly disturbing video of a failed launch of a jet ski. It would have been nice to see more people come to the rescue, but I guess there isn't much that can be done - I hope that wasn't salt water!

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Boating Knots: Zeppelin Bend

Have you ever been out on the water and needed a rope of a certain length of rope only to have 2 short lengths of rope in the boat. I know that I have been in this situation and have obviously needed to join the ropes to make the required distance. I am no rope knot expert, in fact I am known for tying fairly poor knots, but even I use this knot!

One of the best knots for this task is the Zeppelin Bend, which can be used to attach two lengths of rope with similar diameters. It is easy to tie and quick to learn - the following video shows the process of tying the Zeppelin Bend very well.

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Best fishing songs

Fishing is a subject that much has been written about over the years, but there have also been some fantastic fishing songs written as well. My personal favorites would have to be take me to the river (not technically fishing I guess) and fishin' blues, but there are many great ones out there.

Do you have a favorite fishing song or do you have a tune you like to listen to when you are fishing. Please leave a comment.

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How to prepare a crab for the table

Despite the fact that most people just love eating crab many people don't really know the first place to start when cleaning one! The process can be made as simple or as complex as you like and many people I know simply boil the crab and break it apart to eat it. Others use a machete to cut the crab in half and remove all the innards before cooking as they believe it makes the crabs even tastier.

This short video will show you one of the best ways to clean a crab and with careful attention you can easily learn this method!

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Basic Fly Casting

Learning to fly cast can be a difficult experience. I know of at least 3 anglers that spent thousands of dollars on fly equipment only to have it sitting in the back of their garage after a failed learning experience. Apart from buying their gear off them the only help I could give them was get on the Internet watch some videos about fly casting technique and start again (for the record none of them listened).

I must admit I learn best by watching other people, which makes me pretty lucky I guess. With the Internet I can watch how to tie a knot, cast a fly, bait a hook etc. and this makes learning new things very easy.

The following is the video I used to help me learn the basic fly casting technique. Remember that youtube has hundreds of videos like this so take a look through, have a practice and find a technique that works for you.

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Strangest fishing baits

A while ago I was looking around my favorite fishing forum and I found a thread dedicated to strange fishing bait people had used (or seen used). I was quite surprised by the number of non traditional baits that people have tried and just how successful they were.

I know in England it is normal to use Luncheon Meat (Tinned Ham) for carp and catfish, in some parts of Australia anglers regularly use chicken for bream and some Americans use only their hands to catch catfish - see catfish noodling!

I have also heard of potato, red meat and cheese being used as baits to varying degrees of success (although the health problems associated with fish and cheese should be considered). There was even a story in my local paper where two Greek anglers were pouring ouzo on their baits with extraordinary results.

What I want to know is have you ever tried a weird fishing bait and if so what were your results? Please leave a comment!

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A bad days fishing is still a bad day

I must still be in a bit of a tizz over my blog disappearing from google and receiving very few visitors (sorry about that).

Sometimes it feels like all the bad days that you have avoided catch up with you all at once. I am sure you know what I am talking about. On these days it feels like you could win the lottery, but you would lose the ticket or maybe eat at the nicest restaurant only to be the only one that ordered the oysters and get food poisoning.

Sometimes these bad days even spread over to your fishing experiences. You might leave the bungs (plugs) out of the boat (guilty), forget the bait (guilty), forget to tie the anchor down to the boat (not guilty) or even worse.

This video shows what can happen when that "even worse" occurs. This video is entitled "how to ruin a Saturday" and just makes me want to cry for the guy!

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