As the author of this book, my personal background and career experience offers little appropriate information regarding the subject of this book except that as a graduate Engineer I am a very inquisitive person.

I started fishing fresh water bodies when I was six years old. At that time I fished for trout in a stocked pond and belonged to a fish and game club to gain access to this pond. I did not have the means or the opportunity in those early years to wonder how much I really knew, or more appropriately how much I did not know about fresh water fishing. Over the course of the following sixty four years I learned every day how little I really knew about the science of fishing and when I completed my formal education I began to blend the science associated with this sport with the knowledge and experience that I had been accumulating. At that point I started to become a much better fisherman and of course caught many more fish.

This book is an attempt on my part to pass along to the new fishermen and those who simply want to improve their technique, some information and tips that I have gathered over many years. I have tried to present this material with a mixture of humor, personal experiences and stories and simple science to explain my positions on several important fishing subjects. Much of the material in this book is relatively basic and the book is not intended for the professional fisherman or woman. I have attempted to answer many of the questions that I never knew needed answering when I was young. There is information included that may to some be controversial but it represents my experiences and the resulting conclusions that followed. In almost every case where I departed from conventional wisdom, I sought out at least one other verifying source and that is why I have included a rather large list of references.

It is my hope that I can motivate every reader of the book to become a better fisherman or woman and to use the material to increase their enjoyment of the sport of fresh water lake fishing

                                                                               Having Fun Fishing

Fishing is one of the greatest relaxation sports that was ever invented. Although it is indeed a sporting activity, most of us that fish are certainly not athletes in the truest sense but like athletes, we have to enjoy what we do in order to gain maximum benefit and more important we have to enjoy it to be good at it. There are indeed many professional fishermen and women that take the sport so seriously that they make a good living at it. There are thousands of others that wish that they could be that good or that lucky that spend far more money competing than they will every win in tournaments. This book is not intended for those people, they already know more about fishing than I could ever offer you.  Those of us that simply love fishing or want to learn how to love it are the ones for whom I am writing this book.

To really enjoy this sport you have to look beyond the early rising times and the rain storms and the 100 degree heat of the summer months and recognize the pleasure of sitting on a large rock or perhaps your favorite lawn chair or on your boat as the sun rises to the sound of the terns and gulls and loons. You listen for the sounds of the gently waves washing against the rocks. You recognize the sound of a fish breaking the surface, or perhaps best of all, no sound at all as the sun slowly melts away the mist and the lake comes alive. Without anything else, half the fun of fishing lies right here and not a fish has yet been caught. There have been many mornings that I just sat in my boat with no motors on just listening to the quiet. On other days after a few hours of working around the house, I take my boat out for a couple of hours and just relax with a beverage, just me and the lake. And then there are those special days when my wife and I go out in the lake in the late afternoon with some cheese and crackers and a bottle of fine wine and relax and catch a few fish as a bonus. That my friends is what life is all about.

BUT! I have never subscribed to the theory that it doesn’t matter if you win as long as you play the game right. Any sport that I have ever participated in always made me feel better when we won that it did when we lost. Fishing is no different. I love the sport but I hate not to catch fish, that is not an acceptable outcome for me and it should not be one for you. If I spend an hour on the lake and I don’t catch any fish, I feel that I am doing something wrong so I have made a study of my home lake in an attempt to get smarter than the fish so that I never get skunked. For the most part it has worked for me and it will work for you. Oh, I am not smarter than the fish; no human will ever be that smart.

Let’s start with a promise to ourselves that fishing is not as good as catching. All of that great stuff that I just told you gets even better if you get the thrill of a fish battling you for survival.  The catch involves four stages: finding the fish; making them like your food better than other food, setting the hook and making the retrieve, getting the fish into you net.  Sounds easy doesn’t it, but there are many ways to accomplish each of these stages and I am going to try to show you some, not all of them so that you can be a winner at the sport.

I get a laugh from reading or hearing interviews that are done with professional athletes who make their living at sports and for the most part make a bigger annual salary than any of us will ever dream of making. Almost without exception, somewhere in their interview they will say that all that counts fro them is that they have fun doing what they do. Well, I don’t know about that, if I was earning five million dollars a year I think I would want to be good at what I do and I certainly would want to keep my boss happy with my performance. I suppose that it’s also nice to have fun at it but at those salary levels fun should be way down the list requirements.

Fishing however is different. Many of us work hard at this sport but we do it because we love it and indeed this is a sport that we should have fun taking part in, after all since we are not earning our living at it, what else will be our motivation?

This book can be read in several different ways. Unlike many books, you don’t necessarily have to read every word of the book to benefit from it although I believe that a complete fisherman should be armed with all of the facts that he needs to be a success. I am starting with some of the very basic material that a beginner or advanced fisherman needs to know in order to develop his or her own fishing technique. Later in the book I get a little more advanced with descriptions of some of the more advanced equipment that is available as you progress with your fishing skills.

For this book, I have directed most of the information toward lake type fishing. My home lake is Lake Norman in North Carolina and many of the tests and information that I have collected come from this lake. However, I have tried to generalize the material so that it is applicable to nearly any North American lake. I have for the most part not included much information on stream or creek fishing simply because that is not my personal area of expertise.

I will start by discussing the waters in which you intend to fish. Most readers will not fish a large number of water bodies like I do but will concentrate their efforts on some water that is close to where they live or vacation. The lake is the environment in which the fish live so you need to know about that environment to make your experience more successful. Any fishing experience is affected by outside conditions like the weather so that will be presented as it affects the fish and the fisherman. Next I will describe several of the more popular methods of fishing so you can see which one best satisfies your needs. I will then discuss the fish that reside in these waters, where they live, what they eat, how they multiply. Next I will deal with the real problem of finding the fish and giving them a meal that is better than other meals that are available to them including some recommendations for the type of equipment that can be used without spending a fortune for it. There are also many other topics that I touch upon to help make your fishing experience a more pleasant one. That sounds like a lot to absorb and indeed it is so let’s get on with it.