Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2015 i Field & Stream

SHOTGUNS DAY ONE Las Vegas, Nev., 8:25 A.M.Hallways in the Sands Expo & Convention Center are packed before doors open. Dress ranges from business casual to tattooed tactical. Plenty of jeans and camo ball caps mixed in, too. Uniformed convention-center personnel hold signs on sticks high above crowd reading “SHOT Show,” as if 64,000 people attending a gun and hunting trade show could be anything else. 8:30Step onto show floor. My 16th show, and it’s still like entering the world’s largest Toys “R” Us, with 12½ miles of aisles and 1,300 exhibitors. Smoky Baby white smoke-phase turkey hen decoy in the Flambeau/M.A.D. booth catches my eye. If it shows up here, it’ll show up in woods. 8:45Booth locations change little from year to year. Perazzi is still across from Mossberg.…

ASK PETZAL If you could be transported to any moment in history, what would it be? And what gun would you carry? —AARON DALTON, MERIDIAN, IDAHO A: In recorded history? It would be Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, at the moment when the smoke from the cannon bombardment cleared to reveal 13,000 Confederate infantry lined up for a mile, ready to step off into immortality. I would not be carrying a gun. I would be hiding somewhere. If it were non-recorded history, I would love to see what a T. rex looked like, and I would see if I could borrow a Barrett M82A1 .50 BMG for the occasion. Q: If you had to guess, how many guns have you owned, and how many shots have you taken? —JAMES NOLAN, CARLISLE,…

ADVENTURES IN THE DIMMING GRAY of an evening in mid May, Luke Ackroyd swung a lightweight casting rod over the gunwale and let a pair of jigs drop through cool water to his quarry below. His was an unusual rig. The lower jig was a teardrop of metal with a pair of eyes painted at the bottom end. The upper jig, tied about 18 inches ahead of the first, was a clear hollow tube resembling a squat mackerel. Neither bore a hook. Instead, both ended with two rows of needlelike steel pins. We were in an open boat just east of Nebraska Shoal, the underwater plateau a short distance off Rhode Island’s sandy southern beaches. The seas were light; the wind barely a breeze; the surface temperature a stubborn 48.…

PROJECTS This month, most deer fanatics have food plots on the brain. But planning where fall bucks will eat is only one piece of the puzzle. You can dictate where they’ll sleep, too. Bucks look for specific features in a bedding area, and with a little work, you can create ideal spots near the feed for the perfect ambush. Here’s how. 1 PICK THE SITE Bucks like to bed high, so they can spot danger and escape quickly. Any bench or ridge end 400 to 500 yards off the feed is a great spot. But remember, high is a relative term here; if your deer bed in lowlands, a dry hump 3 feet taller than anything else is fine. 2 CLEAR THE SPOT Deer don’t like sleeping on rocks or…

There are many terms for small fish, none of them complimentary to your angling ability. They don’t fight hard. They draw faint praise from fellow anglers. They look small in photos, no matter how far you extend your arm toward the camera. This fishing season, you’re going to catch a big fish. Not just an average-size fish, or even a “nice one.” The fish you’re going to catch will be one of the biggest in the lake or river. Rather than a dream, this will be one of the biggest moments in your fishing history. And it can happen this weekend if you’re willing to do four things: COMMIT. PREPARE. FISH HARD. FISH HARDER. Ready? O.K. Let’s go catch your trophy. NO, YOU CAN’T DO THAT. YOU’RE FISHING ALL WEEKEND…

SKILLS You may be able to paddle a rowboat around a pond, but maneuvering a drift boat on a swift, boulder-strewn river is a different game—one worth learning if you’re serious about reaching more trout. Besides steering safely downriver, you’ve got to put your anglers in the best position to catch fish. Here’s how the pros row with the flow and get into more hogs along the way. 1 PUT SOME BACK INTO IT Point the bow downstream and row backward, says Ben Scribner, owner of Flycraft USA. “My oars are always in the water, and I’m constantly applying pressure against the current, which stabilizes the boat.” A stable casting platform is the first step in helping your casters make the best presentations, but you also need to be constantly…

GEAR Most of today’s serious muskie hunters have swapped yesteryear’s steel leaders for fluorocarbon, because its low visibility brings more strikes and its tough material withstands muskie chompers. You can buy pre-tied fluorocarbon leaders, but they aren’t cheap. So make your own instead. Here’s my recipe, which will save you a few bucks and possibly the heartache of a refusal. GET THE GOOD STUFF Forget bargain-basement terminal tackle. Start with a quality No. 1 AFW Mighty-Mini Crane barrel swivel. For snaps, I prefer a No. 4.5 Stay-Lok, which is rated to 250 pounds and connects easily to any style of lure. My fluorocarbon of choice is 130-pound Hi-Seas because it’s superstiff and reasonably priced. MAKE THE CONNECTIONS For a 12- to 14-inch finished leader, start with a 24-inch piece of…

NEWS AND STORIES FROM THE EXPERTS IT’S A GAMBLE, sneaking up here in the dark so close to the roost. Yesterday afternoon, after our tom quit gobbling, F&S deputy editor Colin Kearns and I found this sunken roadbed on a ridgetop in the old-growth hardwoods. It was laced with strut marks and flush with tender new greenery and insects. The turkey, we figured, had flown down and strutted right here after first light. Had Kearns and I known about this spot, we’d have killed him yesterday morning. Which is why we’ve wagered an extra hour of sleep and come back this morning for another chance at the bird. We sit against two white oaks in the dark and wait on the first roaring gobble of the day, assuming he has…

THE TOTAL OUTDOORSMAN WE’RE PICKING UP a few good fish, rainbows and cutthroat trout with fat bellies and black-peppered flanks. No one’s complaining, but we also know the fishing could be better—a lot better. I’m running a double stonefly nymph rig when my guide, Dave Deardorff, scratching a few days of stubble, ponders a pale morning dun hatch that’s so light I have to stop casting and squint to see the bugs. “Let’s switch things up,” Deardorff says. He swaps out the stones for a small Yellow Sally and PMD nymph. My next cast feels spot-on. Hopeful. Sometimes the subtlest shifts can make it happen. When you’re drifting down one of the most revered pieces of trout water on the planet, Idaho’s South Fork of the Snake River, it’s pretty…

CONSERVATION THE COHO CULTIVATOR ERROL ANDERSON, CHEHALIS, WASH. Every year since 1983, Anderson has reared up to 100,000 coho salmon from eyed eggs and released them into Deep Creek, his home water. He picks up the eggs at a state hatchery and tends to them daily for three months until the salmon grow to 1½ inches. Anderson took over the volunteer effort because he saw that the number of returning salmon had been declining. He has also improved stream habitat and created spawning areas. “I want to see that the creek has fish,” says Anderson, 77, a retired logger. He released his three-millionth coho last year. THE ANGLER MAKER CAPT. TOMMY LARONGE, BELLEAIR, FLA. A former foster child, LaRonge and his friend Misty Wells founded a Reel Future, a nonprofit…

Ever see those national reports about clouds of insects so dense they show up on radar and coat entire towns? Those living blizzards are Hexagenia limbata, the giant mayfly that hatches at dusk in late spring and early summer throughout the Midwest. What makes these bugs so special is that they draw huge trout—the ones that spend most of their time hunkered deep— to the surface for a sip. But cashing in on this hatch is no sunny wade in the park. Here’s how to stalk the dark of night and score in the swarm. TIPS, TRICKS, AND ADVICE RIG UP This game is about casting large flies in tight spaces and fighting big fish in close quarters. Medium-action 5-weight outfits are standard, but 6- and even 7-weight sticks aren’t…

TIPS We’ve all been there: trout rising in every direction and not a fly in the box that’ll draw a strike. The solution? Carry a small pair of scissors, and when trout get picky, use these three trimming tricks to make your bugs look buggier, and score more hookups. DRY FLIES The problem with many dry flies fresh from the shop is that they have too much hackle; no mayfly or caddis I’ve seen has 80 legs. In hard-fished waters, a low-floating fly tends to be a better producer, particularly in slow pools or during an evening spinner fall. In these situations, try clipping off all the hackle on the underside of the hook shank so the fly floats flush to the surface. WET FLIES Wet flies imitate both emergers…

Leave the little worms and crankbaits home, because a big postspawn largemouth wants a big postspawn meal. Large swimbaits and giant worms are the name of the game—if, that is, you’ve got the dedi cation to throw them from sunup to sundown. Here’s your battle plan, Icy Hot not included. FRIDAY EVENING Prep your tackle now because the action can happen right out of the gate on Saturday morning. Since you’re focusing on big bass, limiting your tackle to gear suited only for hawgs takes away the temptation to play with the little fish. You want a stout 7-foot 6-inch swimbait rod and a baitcaster loaded with 16- pound fluoro carbon. Make sure your drag is oiled, as it will hopefully be spinning. You also need a 7-foot worming outfit…

Early summer. You’re on a family getaway somewhere from Delaware to Cape Cod. You know the drill: kids covered in sand, overpriced dinners, miniature golf. But if you choose your sneak-away times carefully, you’ll have a shot at a 40-plus-pound striper from the beach with minimal effort. While the spring migration is just wrapping up in the southern part of its range, you’ll be in the thick of it here. Follow this plan to hook into a trophy. FRIDAY EVENING Spend some time before dinner walking the beach, looking for a trough in the surf. Watch the way the waves break: If a roller crests, breaks, then flattens again before rebreaking at your feet, you know it encountered deep water. That middle zone is the sweet spot. Mark it and…

Toughness comes in different forms. Ms. Ronda Rousey of the UFC represents one type; I wouldn’t fight Ms. Rousey if they let me use a gun. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. As I acquired experience as a hunter, I began to see that not only were you expected to be observant, persistent, able to control your seething emotions, and possessed of a whole slew of arcane skills, but you were also expected to be tough. LOAD UP The simplest form of toughness is physical. In 2006 I hunted Alaska moose with a lodge owner named Charles Allen and a Canadian guide named James Minnery. Charles was in his mid 50s at the time; I was in my mid 60s; and we faced a difficult hunt in sucking-…

Photographer Tim Romano climbed the foot pegs on an old cypress tree with a rope swing to capture this shot of angler Jeff Rogers carrying his kayak to the put-in on the San Marcos River outside of Austin last November. Typical of early spring and late fall, “the weather had been really iffy,” says Romano, “cold and rainy for the past two days. And the water was off-color, so we weren’t sure if it was going to fish.” Since unfortunate circumstances had brought him to town, Romano needed a restorative experience on this float—and he got it. “It turned out to be a spectacular day. We had fish on with every other cast for three or four hours.” He landed one of his biggest largemouth bass to date, and the…

RIFLES AFTER MANY decades of practicing their dark art in obscurity, snipers are not only trendy but glamorous. But I don’t think any of the gee-whiz reporting on them has given an accurate idea of the inhuman amount of range time it takes to earn the designation Scout/Sniper. A Marine, for example, must be qualified as Expert with the M16A2 rifle just to get into Sniper School. Then he goes through a 12½-week program where he’ll get four hours of shooting a day and burn a total of more than 1,500 rounds. That’s several lifetimes’ worth of ammunition for the average hunter. My point: Good rifle shots shoot a lot. The government picks up the Marine’s ammo bill. You and I are not so fortunate. THE PRACTICE RIFLE Most rifle…

FISHING FOR GENERATIONS, the white bucktail jig has been hailed as the most versatile lure ever. So effective is its ability to catch any fish anywhere, bucktails were once stocked in military-issue survival kits. It wasn’t until 2002 when the bucktail first got a run for its money. That’s when Storm unveiled its new swimbait, the WildEye Swim Shad. I still remember buying my first pack of Shads…and I still remember the thump of the striper that whacked one of the baits within 10 casts off a Jersey Shore jetty. Since then I’ve put up everything from 30-pound striped bass to 2-pound crappies on these soft plastics, and I rarely hit the water—fresh or salt—without a few “Stormies.” They are, in my mind, the new-age bucktail. To realize their potency,…

You want a real, wild trophy trout on the fly—not some pellet-fed, planted, triploid mutant (anyone can get that photo). Your fish has eaten and survived its way to the top of the river food chain, the hard way. So you’d better have your act dialed in. FRIDAY EVENING Be on the Internet scouting for “happy” water. All rivers are not created equal, and they change character every day. Very specific criteria will identify the prime hunting grounds. You need water temps that are between 45 and 60 degrees and flow levels that are strong and stable, or falling slowly, not rising. You want good water clarity, but not gin-clear. Don’t rely on hatch or catch reports from the fly shop. You don’t want promo talk—you want the real scoop…

IN FAR NORTHERN SASKATCHEWAN, Cree River Lodge provides access to more than 200 square miles of some of the world’s most unspoiled pike waters. Last season, three other writers and I got to fish this pike paradise for four days. Within 15 minutes of the first morning, we had a 42-inch beast on the line. By the last evening, using both fly and conventional gear, our group had boated nearly a thousand pike. Twentynine of them topped 40 inches. ¶The action was off the charts, and insanely fun. But it was also an education. I witnessed a volume of pike behavior that a Lower 48 pike hunter might not see in several seasons. Patterns that could take years to unravel on pressured water unfolded within hours. In short, I got…

TIPS Redfish have an exceptional sense of smell, but their eyesight isn’t too keen. That’s why these aggressive feeders will take a shot at almost anything that gets close and resembles food; they’ve got to grab a meal while they can see it. Use this behavior to your advantage when sight-fishing reds. As soon as you spot a fish, draw an imaginary 2x2-foot box around its head from the gill plates forward, extending past the nose. That box is your casting target. Regardless of fly pattern or lure color, if your offering twitches through the money zone, it will get eaten most of the time.…