While I’m out fishing, I tend to scatter my jigs, soft plastics and other fishing lures in shirt pockets, any open pouch on my soft-sided tackle box, my lunch cooler or just about anywhere other than where they belong. I get too excited to take the time to put lures back in their rightful spot in my tackle bag. I may not find that certain jig until I stick my hand in the pocket of my jacket in June.

This stretch of bleak, dreary winter weather is a good time to make sure the peanut butter and jelly jigs are in your fishing box instead of your jacket pocket. A little organizing now will make for better fishing later.

I love to float streams for trout and smallmouth bass. I enjoy wading for them as well and I enjoy fishing from a boat. After a year of doing all three, my lures for wading and floating for smallmouth bass get mixed up with my trout lures and my boat fishing lures. So, when I am enjoying a summer Sunday afternoon floating for smallmouth bass, I often pine for lures that I left in my boat fishing tackle box, fishing vest or stored with my trout lures.

The best way to avoid this situation is to organize your lures by the species of fish that you’re after. Try using a small chest equipped with plastic drawers to separate your crappie, trout and smallmouth bass lures. Grab a marker and some masking tape and label each drawer. You’ll thank yourself later.

Now is a good time to buy a new tackle bag. The tackle bags with several utility boxes inside them are the best organizing system for your lures. The big bulky tackle boxes from the 1970s and 1980s with extending trays for lures and tackle are on their way to extinction. Every time you knock one of those over or it is thrown in the back of a truck, all of the lures in the trays become mixed together. You often don’t realize it happened until the next time you open the box and find your lures in a tangled mess.

Tackle bags with utility boxes keep different style of lures separate from one another. You can take the same masking tape and marker and label each box with the type of lures in it. A couple of my friends label each box for the species of fish the lures in the box would entice.

This system also allows me to travel light if needed. If I know I am going to share a boat with a couple more anglers, bringing just a couple of boxes and two rods saves valuable storage and floor space. I know I’ve often stumbled, kicked and stepped on many tackle bags and boxes when I am fishing three in a boat. Plus, if I know I am going to fish jigs that day for largemouth bass, I just need to grab my jig box and stick a couple of bags of soft plastic trailers in my pocket and I am ready to go. Or, if I am fishing for stripers, I can just grab my box for striped bass and leave the other stuff at home.

I know some anglers who think that it’s fine to fish with the same spool of 6-pound line for the entire year. However, old line is a major source of tangles, fish breaking off and frustration. Take the time this winter to replace the line on all your reels with fresh monofilament or fluorocarbon. Your line is the only connection that you have with a fish. Why would you want to short-change that connection and risk breaking off a trophy fish?

You can put fresh monofilament line on two reels for roughly the cost of one crankbait. If you buy bulk spools of monofilament, you can replace the line on the reel for about the cost of a soft drink. Fluorocarbon is more expensive, but refilling the spool on a reel with it is still one of the cheapest outlays for fishing.

Take the time now while the weather outside is frightful to organize your lures and put new line on your fishing reels. That way, you’ll have your peanut butter and jelly colored jigs in your box, not in the closet.

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The NuCanoe allows for an angler to stand. Photo provided.

Recently I became a fisherman.
Not a great angler, but I’ve learned to cast a line and every once in a while I get lucky and pull a crappie or a blue gill out of a neighborhood pond.
I was satisfied on the bank, but my good friend and much more experienced fisherman Elliott Hess had big dreams of a boat.
With limited funds and means of storage but a desire for a motorized boat to take him to hidden away fishing waters, Hess was having a hard time finding the right craft.
Until he discovered the NuCanoe.
Designed by Ocean Kayaks founder Tim Niemier, the NuCanoe is billed as an all-around recreational watercraft.
After falling in love with the canoe-turned-kayak that advertises a flat transom perfect for a trolling motor – a fisherman’s favorite – my friend and I loaded up and drove to the nearest NuCanoe dealer.
At first glance, the NuCanoe is simply a sit-on-top plastic kayak with unusual dimensions. Measuring 12 feet long and 42 inches across at the beam – 32 inches at the water line – it looks more like a really short ocean kayak than a canoe.
When we found it sitting in the store amongst the other kayaks and canoes, it didn’t quite seem to fit in. But that didn’t matter because the Indianapolis dealer told us he could barely keep the canoe-kayak hybrid in stock.
The main selling point: it’s amazing stability.
Since my canoeing experience has been limited to one terrifying ocean kayaking experience in the Atlantic when I was 16, I was skeptical as the salesmen told us with confidence that this canoe simply couldn’t be tipped.
And so on its maiden voyage, it was something similar to awe that I felt as I watched Hess swing his legs over the side of the canoe with ease and surprising balance and cast his line across Mill Creek Lake.
He had bought the boat without testing it and as he loaded the NuCanoe on the top of his Jeep and tightening it down with ratchet straps, I could tell he was skeptical as we climbed in and pushed off into the small lake nestled in Red River Gorge.
But any temporary regrets my friend may have felt about his purchase vanished as we sliced across the lake – too shallow for motorized boats – with a 55-pound thrust trolling motor and navigated the fishing waters at 12 miles per hour.
The boat came with two seats and after adding a pair of rod holders, a trolling motor and battery, a live well, a fish finder and a kayak paddle, the NuCanoe proved to be an excellent fishing vessel.
Fitting both of us, a cooler, a couple of fishing poles and a tackle box in with all of the rest, Hess still had plenty of room to stand up, switch seats with me and continue to fish for almost six hours. Comfortably.
Since its maiden voyage, the boat has proved to be worth its bargain $599 sale price. Even at almost 80 pounds, two people easily manage it.
And as it turns out the salesman was right – we’ve all but outright tried to flip the boat over and had no luck.
One of the few drawbacks: we had to drive to Indianapolis to get it. There are no local dealers but boats can be ordered from the NuCanoe Web site, (www.nucanoe.com).
And while I’m still getting the hang of my new hobby, I have just as much fun on the boat reading a book or just relaxing. My guess is the NuCanoe is great for any adventurer – even new ones.

—Blair Thomas

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I’m reviewing coffee makers because whether I like it or not, coffee has become a central component of every fishing trip I’ve ever taken with a friend or family member.

One friend has to stop for coffee before he leaves Lexington. Another drinks several cups before he leaves his house, lets nature take its course, then gets more coffee at every pit stop. I point out that it’s a vicious cycle, and he points out that it’s better than using drugs or drinking too much….. then I stop again for coffee.

My uncle, my favorite fishing buddy, will start talking about how we’re going to procure coffee before he talks about which baits he should stock in his tackle box. He’s not picky: gas station coffee will do. But if I don’t get coffee in this guy before a day of fishing, the already taciturn man will turn darn near comatose.

So it is with reluctance but acceptance that I come to my review of the Keurig B30 Mini Personal Single-Serve Brewing System.

Here are some of the traits that make it better than a hotel-room coffee maker, a gas station brew, or the stuff they pour at McDonald’s.

• It only brews one cup at a time. No washing the pot every time you make coffee. You simply slip one of the coffee “cartridges” in the machine, put a cup underneath, push a button, and a perfectly brewed cup awaits in about 30 seconds.
• There’s no fighting over whether you should brew light roast or extra, extra dark, desert Sumatra blend. Each cup of coffee uses its own cartridge. You like it bold? Go for it. You like it a step above water? There’s a wimpy coffee cartridge just for you.
• You can also use it for hot chocolate for the kids or tea for the English in your group. You can even heat water for oatmeal, soup or raman noodles.
• It comes with a nifty carrying case.

There are, as always with do-it-all gadgets, a few downsides.

• It’s REALLY expensive. I have one of the larger models in my home, and I bought this one for travel. It took me a while to decide that great coffee-on-the-go was worth $79.
• It’s REALLY expensive. Oh, wait, I said that.

In the end, whether you buy this thing depends on how important coffee is to you on a fishing trip, and how much time you waste tracking some down or brewing some up.

I’m one of those guys who wakes up in the morning and appreciates nothing if it delays fishing. Sadly, I have yet to find a fishing partner who can throw a lure without throwing back a cup of Joe first.

So….the Keurig mini is my solution. It takes 30 seconds to brew a cup.

The time you save you spend on the water.

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Similar in size to those used for cigars, the small tackle box came with five compartments: one filled with funny-looking leadheads and the other four filled with small, 4-inch straight-tailed worms. Black worms filled one compartment; grape worms lay in another, while brown with an orange tail and motor oil filled the other two.

He bought the new gear from a man at the boat show who told him all about this new system that caught bass in the toughest conditions. The man said this new technique would excel in the weedy, shallow and clear distillery lakes near our home if he just stuck to it long enough to learn it.

The author, Kentucky Afield Magazine's associate editor, with a big largemouth caught in a pond on a Slider worm.

The legendary Charlie Brewer Slider worm

My dad caught many bass with his new gear, but soon he could not find the small tackle box and rod because I had them on the shore of one of those distillery lakes. I learned to consistently catch bass year-round using light line and 4-inch worms and profited from it enormously. The knowledge gained provided the foundation for my later writings about bass fishing.

The man at the boat show was Charlie Brewer and he died 9 years ago this week. In the mythology of bass fishing, finesse techniques of using light line, subtle lures and spinning tackle to tempt spooky clear-water bass belongs to the deep, crystalline lakes of California. In reality, these techniques belong to Charlie Brewer.

He developed the Slider system to fool black bass in what he called the “tough, mean” reservoirs of east Tennessee, southeast Kentucky and the Highland Rim of middle Tennessee. Brewer’s Slider Worm launched the finesse revolution 20 years before most heard the term.

Brewer returned from World War II to Lawrenceburg, Tennessee and opened a radio and TV repair shop with knowledge gained in the South Pacific. A natural-born tinkerer, Brewer grew weary of the long, fishless hours throwing a baitcaster spooled with black nylon line and a crankbait such as the Heddon River Runt. He figured there had to be a better way to catch bass more consistently when they aren’t active and chasing lures.

Brewer developed a unique leadhead designed to plane in the water, not fall to the bottom like a smooth rock. He also poured his own slender 4-inch ringed worms with an egg sack that tapered to a paddle tail. He cast these worms on short graphite or graphite composite rods with a Tennessee handle for increased sensitivity. He removed the bail from the reels to increase casting distance for his 1/16- to 1/4-ounce leadheads and diminutive worms. He founded the Crazy Head Lure Company in 1970, now known as the Charlie Brewer Slider Company.
The key to Brewer’s system is presentation. The Slider method is designed to find bass suspended in the water column or hanging just above the bottom. Bass in clear-water lakes such as Lake Cumberland, Laurel River Lake and Dale Hollow Lake suspend most of the time during the day, especially in summer and winter. Suspended bass represent one of the toughest bass fishing situations.

The original Crazy Head was a flat-bottomed leadhead that came through the water in a straight line on the retrieve. Brewer later developed other styles of flat-sided heads and bullet shaped ones, but the basic concept remains. The heart of his Slider system is manipulating the speed of the retrieve and the weight of the leadhead until you hit the combination of depth and speed bass want that particular day.

This may require cutting some weight off the Slider head till it weighs just 1/32-ounce or flattening it to slow the rate of fall. Find a likely fish-holding structure, such as a channel point laden with boulders or stumps. Cast parallel to the structure and count to ten. Reel the Slider worm with a rhythmic, but slow cadence and watch your line intently. Keep counting down and reeling slowly until you get a rapid peck or nip from a bluegill, baby bass or crappie. This is the activity zone. Count down a little more on the next cast and you’ll be in bass.

Once you find the depth and speed they want, you can fish similar areas all over the lake and catch fish all day. The Slider worm resembles a minnow more than anything and fish can’t help themselves. It is simple and ingenious. Plus, light to medium-light spinning rods and 6-pound line make 2-pounders feel like trophies. It is simply a fun and relaxing way to catch bass after bass, plus the occasional trophy bluegill, crappie, walleye and even freshwater drum.

Brewer also believed bass anglers do way too much running and gunning instead of fishing. He felt folks should pattern their fish close-by and focus more on technique than covering water. Brewer relates in his touchstone book “Charlie Brewer on Slider Fishing” that some of his best fishing days stemmed from engine trouble that forced him to scour the fishy-looking areas near the ramp. This also saves gas and wear and tear on the big motor.

All you need is a small box or a paper bag with a few colors of Slider worms, some Slider heads, a pair of sidecutter and needlenose pliers and knowledge. Largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass gobble them up with the same abandon now as they did when Sliders first hit the market 30 years ago.

By Lee McClellan, an award-winning outdoors writer and associate editor of Kentucky Afield magazine.

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Although Herrington Lake receives credit as the birthplace of jigging, anglers discovered the same technique also worked well in other lakes for enormous female largemouth bass.

“They would drop the night crawlers right in front of the bass and haul them out of that cover,” said “Kentucky Afield” television Host Tim Farmer. “I was once a creel clerk on Elmer Davis Lake in Owen County and I would see some really big bass come from there at this time of year by jigging.”

While most anglers nowadays have switched to artificial lures and modern baitcasting rods, the basic technique still works at this time of year because the big female largemouth bass need to eat.

“They are spawning next month and feeding up to put nutrients in them they’ll need for spawning,” said Gerry Buynak, assistant director of fisheries for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. “The best way to do that is to get up in the warm shallow water and feed as much as they can. This is the final push to get ready for the spawn.”

In early March, eggs make up about 5 percent of the body weight of a female largemouth bass. By mid-April, eggs account for 15 percent of body weight.

“If you want to catch a wallhanger, now is the time to do it,” explained Buynak, who served as black bass research biologist for Kentucky Fish and Wildlife for 18 years. “Those large 6-pound or bigger female largemouth bass spawn first. They are more vulnerable to anglers than any other time of year, especially anglers fishing from the bank.”

Jigging works best after rainfall colors the water. The murky water conceals anglers, allowing them to slip up on a trophy bass nosing the bank. Farmer shot a segment for “Kentucky Afield” using this technique a couple of years ago. Although our fishing ancestors used night crawlers for jigging, Farmer used a brown jig with a pumpkinseed-colored trailer.

“It was a watershed lake in western Kentucky,” Farmer explained. “There was some color to the water and they were right on the bank. I jerked a big one out of some cover and she rolled on her side. She was huge, in the 8-pound class. I broke the line on that one, but we caught several between 5 and 6 pounds that day.”

Although anglers flock to Lake Barkley, Kentucky Lake, Lake Malone, Cedar Creek Lake and Elmer Davis Lake for big bass, Dewey Lake at Jenny Wiley State Resort Park near Prestonsburg is worth a try for anglers in the eastern part of the state. Dewey Lake has an increasing number of quality bass in its waters. Anglers can catch bass there at this time of year by jigging pockets in the weeds.

“I think most lakes in Kentucky would do well with this technique,” Buynak said. “One of our old creel clerks on Barkley Lake always said if you want to catch a 10-pound bass in Kentucky, fish in March.”

Modern jigging anglers use medium-heavy to heavy baitcasting rods and flip jig-and-pig combinations next to stumps, logs or rocks. They work the jig up and down a few times and then cast to another piece of cover, making sure the jig enters the water as quietly as possible. Trophy largemouth bass in shallow water along shore spook easily.

When possible, cast the jig on the bank and silently pull the lure into the water when fishing from a boat or the shore. This doesn’t spook bass nearly as bad as a jig-and-pig loudly smacking the water in a foot of water. Any bass close by will flee to deep water when this happens.

Bank anglers walking along the bank of a lake or a farm pond may see V-shaped wakes moving quickly out into deep water. These are likely bass spooked by the vibrations coming from your feet hitting the ground. Walk parallel to the shore a good ways away from the edge of the water when bank fishing to avoid scaring away fish. Move in a straight line to the bank to cast.

Get out now and probe shallow cover for the biggest bass of the year. To find waters close to home that hold largemouth bass, go to http://fw.ky.gov/navigation.aspx?cid=769.

—KDFWR

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But, an hour with some grease, an old toothbrush, rubbing alcohol and a quality reel oil will make your reel feel like it did right out of the box. Winter is a great time to do some reel maintenance.

Spinning reels take a lot abuse, especially if you fish for trout or smallmouth bass, or if you float-tube ponds. They get dunked often. Dunking a reel in a stream, lake or pond removes valuable oil and grease and replaces it with crud.

Over the past couple of years, reel oils and greases that form a molecular bond with the metals they contact have appeared on the market. They cost twice as much as traditional reel oil and grease, but they make a reel sing. They are worth every penny. You’ll be astounded at the difference these new lubricants make in the performance of your spinning reel.

Grab a used egg carton to store the parts you remove from the reel. Nothing in the world is as frustrating as searching for a tiny screw in Berber carpet. The tiny ultra-thin washers in spinning reels are nearly impossible to find if they drop on the floor.

Take off the spool first. Clean the spool shaft and add a few drops of reel oil. Again, use the new molecular oil or reel oil, not household oil. Household oil thickens and hardens much quicker than reel oil and can form a layer of crud on reel parts. Check the nut at the bottom of the reel shaft to make sure it is tight.

Squeeze a few drops of oil on the roller guide that wraps the line around the reel spool. Oil the area where the bail spring meets the reel spool housing as well.

Remove the handle by either a screw or by rotating the handle backwards. Apply a few drops of oil on the handle knob shaft and the shaft that fits inside the reel.

Take the side plate off with the small screws to access the guts of the reel. Right in the middle is the main bearing. Lift this bearing off the main gear and remove the main gear if possible. Drop the main bearing in a degreaser, kerosene, rubbing alcohol or lighter fluid to dissolve old grease and sludgy oil. Clean the teeth of the main gear with an old toothbrush and soapy water or degreaser.

Allow the parts to air dry and apply oil to the bearings and a tiny amount of grease to each tooth of the main gear. Check the inside of the reel for crud, sand, dirt, fibers or any other gunk. Do not spray the inside with harsh chemical solvents or use gasoline. This may damage some of the plastic parts and push crud into the inner recesses of the reel.

Grease the spiral worm gear in the bottom of the reel and the gears in the front of the worm gear with a light coating of oil. Grease any part that slides along another part. Use grease sparingly as it attracts dirt and sand and negatively impacts the performance of your reel. Applying too much grease makes the reel feel like it is full of mud.

Put the reel back together, spray the outside with WD-40 and wipe it down. Now you have a smooth spinning reel that will last you for many fishing trips to come.

—KDFWR

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