There are very few heated fish cleaning stations at marinas or access sites around the Great Lakes. Many marinas and access sites don’t even have a dedicated facility to clean fish.
My fishing season starts long before the cleaning station is open and I’ve seen and used plenty of innovative ways to clean the fish I catch before heading home. Over the winter I got a new one – a tailgate sized cutting board.
I’ve used the tailgate of my pick-up as a work bench many times and as a fish cleaning station a few times. It’s the perfect height, but the downside of using it as a fish cleaning location is the clean-up. Even when laying the largest sized cutting board I owned on the tailgate, there was always some blood or other, slimy fishy-stuff that drips off the board onto the tailgate.
Sure, that can be cleaned up, but doing so without spraying or sloshing water into the truck bed or onto the gear stowed in the bed is tedious. That’s why, when I saw the tailgate sized cutting board from North Lake Outdoors, I realized this two-foot by four-foot cutting board was the perfect answer.
When my fishing partner and I were back at the dock with our limit of cohos (including a bonus brown trout) in early March we lined up our fish on the board for a hero shot and then I went to work. By positioning the board with an inch or so overhanging the open tailgate the blood and slime just dripped off onto the asphalt. When finished, I leaned the board against the open tailgate, dipped a bucket of water from the lake and cleaned the blood, slime and scales off the cutting board, gave it a final rinse with bleach-water I’d brought from home and stowed it in the back of the truck for the next trip.
North Lake makes a slightly smaller 48” X 19” model and a “miniature” 16” X 32” board – all made in America, all made from food-grade polyethylene. Check them out and order one for yourself at www.northlakeoutdoors.com.
“**it Happens,” but luckily, most of the time, for most people, with a bit of planning, “it” can happen – more or less on schedule. Most of the time, a quick stop at a restroom before heading out for a day on the lake does the trick or a more or less comfortable delay until the end of the trip makes the time actually on the water **it-free. Then there’s the other times when the fishing schedule didn’t coincide with your body’s schedule. Suddenly, it’s time.
If you are fishing on a sizeable boat that has “indoor plumbing,” problem solved. For most of us on smaller boats hopefully, there has been some advance planning about this. The answer is having some sort of portable potty on board. A stiff-sided bucket is about as simple as it gets – there are also portable toilets costing a couple hundred dollars. Both are somewhat appropriate for various situations.
For most Great Lakes anglers, there are several other options – and luckily, a solution towards the less expensive end of the available types is often suitable. One of these is a portable toilet sold by Lee Fisher Sports. Basically, it’s a toilet seat that fits on a five-gallon bucket. Buy the seat only and hope it fits nicely atop a bucket you already have; but beware, all buckets are not identical. Buy the seat and the five-gallon bucket both from Lee Fisher and you know the top will fit the bottom. If your boat doesn’t have a storage area that will fit a five-gallon bucket LFS has 3.5-gallon buckets (only 11.5 inches high) that the seat will fit and the shorter bucket may store more easily.
I got the ISMART Portable Toilet “combo” to put on my boat – their deluxe model – which features the bucket, closable lid, TP holder and sturdy pair of handles. When **it happens on my boat, the deluxe model is what I want.
You do as you wish, but my ISMART Portable Toilet is not a multi-tasker. I don’t use the bucket assembly for other purposes. I have a storage area in which it fits and I keep the TP, some heavy-duty can liners, a bottle of hand-cleaner and some paper towels stowed inside the bucket for when it’s needed.
This unit is listed as an “Amazon’s Choice” at Amazon.com but I encourage you to visit www.leefishersports.com just to check out the hundreds of other fishing and outdoor products they carry.
When you think of a camo sweatshirt, I bet you think of a cotton or cotton/poly pullover with the logo of your favorite bow or firearm stitched across the front. Forget that when it comes to AFTCO’s Reaper line of hoodies and pullovers. Most important, the Reaper isn’t a cotton or cotton blend, which violates my ABC (Anything But Cotton) rule when it comes to picking fishing clothes. Cotton is comfy, but when I’m out fishing, something is likely to get wet. The weather is likely to be very warm or very cold and I don’t want to be wearing cotton garments in either extreme..
The Reaper Sweatshirt is made from a poly-microfleece material (whatever that is) – what I do know is it’s soft, warm and comfy. The exterior is a decidedly smooth tight weave finish with an inner fleece. That means it more windproof than a cotton sweatshirt and in my opinion, about 50% warmer but the poly material doesn’t absorb water/sweat like cotton would.
So far, it’s been my “outer” layer worn over a performance cloth shirt as my base layer for chilly fall mornings. Later in the fall and for winter work, it will become one of my middle layers over a heavier poly base layer and a heavier coat or parka on top. I’ve worn it on every trip in the ice-out and early spring fishing for Southern Lake Michigan coho as a mid-layer on cold mornings and as a top layer when the spring sun warmed things up midday.
I’m not a fan of “hunting camo” for fishing, though the Reaper Camos are available in a brown camo “Shadowgrass” pattern, green camo OG pattern and a gray/green, “Bottomland” hunting patterns. I am a fan of “fishing” camo patterns however because I’m a “messy” fisherman and by the end of a busy trip, I’ve got (pick one) mud, blood, grease or other dirt on my exterior clothes and the camos help disguise what would be a prominent dirty spot on a solid color garment. There are three dark, fishing/nautical patterns as well. I chose the Navy digital blue pattern. A side benefit is the poly-material is stain-release, so a regular trip through the washer, has it back to looking like new.
A couple of neat features is the built in face mask which is great when I’m speeding to a fishing hotspot on a cold morning. When it’s not in use, the facemask gives the garment a sort of turtle-neck like collar which makes it warmer all day. Anytime I’m wearing a hoodie, I inevitably end up with “stuff” squirreled away in the pouch-pocket on the belly of the shirt – cell phone, keys, spare change, small tools, etc. The Reaper’s pouch has small “hook and loop” tabs that makes the pouch a bit more secure.
The Reaper’s are available at retailers, at numerous online outlets including Amazon.com and of course at www.AFTCO.com.
One of my most exciting finds at the 2024 ICAST show was at the Rapala booth when I spotted a new lure they call the Gold Miner. At first I thought it was another variation of the Rapala’s Deep Husky Jerk, Pradco’s deep diving Bandits and others of those types of lures, but then I noticed one thing that set them apart. The lip at the front of these lures are larger than most other deep divers and indeed they do dive deep. Like a miner digging deep to find gold nuggets or veins of ore, the Gold Miner easily dives to 30 feet to get down to walleye gold in Lake Erie and other deep lakes.
I was able to score some of the Gold Miners and put them to work during Lake Erie’s Fall Brawl in early November last year. The marks on our screen showed far more fish deeper than 30 feet than in the 20s. The only way to get our Bandits and other deep divers down to them was to go with the 50 + 2 method and even then we were putting out 100 feet of line after clipping on the Snap Weight.
Gold Miners haven’t yet been added to the Precision Trolling Data app, so we were deploying them the old fashioned way – trial and error. The first thing in the morning the Gold Miners started scoring with only 100 feet of line behind the planers. By mid-morning we were setting them back 120 and our final fish at high noon came on a chrome/blue Gold Miner set back 140 feet.
Check out the array of available colors at www.rapala.com. They will soon be available everywhere Rapala lures are sold (if they can keep them in stock.)
A cell phone became a reality in my life at the same time I earned my first USCG Captain’s Credentials and I needed a way to contact my customers on the road or on my boat. My first phone models were flip phones or other thin-line models designed to slide into a pocket or just secure in the glove compartment. About the only thing I could do with it was call someone, if I could get a signal. Many of the places I fished had sketchy service once I was more than a mile or so from the marina.
That’s changed. From weather radar, to weather forecasts, to apps to contact the Coast Guard, BoatUS, my boat insurance company and other features, I need to have my phone front and center. A phone stuck in my pocket is no good, especially when I layer on and off outer garments depending on the weather changes during the day. A quick pat down when I need the phone reminds me it’s either buried three layers deep or it’s in the vest or sweatshirt I took off when the sun popped out.
In my car and truck I use cheap phone holders to keep the phone in easy view for general use, more so, when I have the mapping feature activated to guide me to new destinations. It took a couple of tries before I found one that would fit the space on my dashboard, that would stick where I wanted it to stick and one that wouldn’t fall off the next time I hit a bump.
Trying to find a phone holder that would work in my boat was even more taxing. The potential mounting locations were fewer. I have an open cockpit so areas out of the weather or spray are few. The first phone holder I tried on board snapped off as I slammed over a particularly big wave. The best bet was to stick the phone in the cup holder on the dashboard, except when it was holding my morning coffee or a bottle of water.
All’s well now that I have a phone holder kit from Scotty Products. I had a lot of faith in this product before I even got it out of the packaging. Scotty has been a pioneer in making fishing and boating gear (mostly from plastic) for over 70 years – good products that stand up to the use and abuse fishermen dole out both on the West Coast and on the Great Lakes.
The kit (#139) is just as tough and with more traditional suction cup mount or positioning arms that can integrate with their ball mounting system (often used for rod holders or electronics mounts) I found several options of where and how to mount the phone support. The mechanism that actually cradles the phone tightens with a wing-headed screw, not just a weak spring like car-models I tried. I haven’t hit a wave so far that moved the positioning supports or dropped the phone.
I was able to position the phone support between two other screens permanently mounted on my dash in what was previously just wasted space. I cleaned the fiberglass and the suction cup and pushed the little lever that forced down the suction disk creating the vacuum that holds it in place. It’s remained in place through wind, waves, heat and humidity. No duct tape needed.
If you want more info on this or other Scotty Products, go to www.scotty.com. They don’t sell direct from their website, but they do have a nationwide list of retailers shown on the website and Scotty Products are also available from numerous online sellers including Amazon.com
I edit a column for Great Lakes Angler Magazine called Basics and Beyond in each issue. The B&B column features tips about fishing and gear hacks submitted by readers that they use to make their life easier. Few of these tips are more frequent than the ways GLA readers have devised to store their fishing rods back home, on their boat or in their vehicles. Most of these tips feature rod storage designs made from everyday items usually used elsewhere including PVC pipe, clothespins, pool noodles, milk crates, five gallon buckets and other supplies. There are many ways to produce innovative projects to safely and compactly store fishing rods and reels.
Face it, there are plenty of people that don’t have the time or tools to complete DIY projects. Some don’t have the skills. Luckily, there are plenty of commercially made rod racks or other storage solutions. These vary from flimsy racks that I’d never recommend to pricey racks that I’d never advise anyone to purchase.
One I’ve found that does pass my muster is the Trac-A-Rod system from Dubro. I call it a system because it comes in two-foot lengths which will hold six rod and reel combos so it’s easy to customize it to most any space you have available. If you have a large space available and lots of rods to store, they also come in four-foot lengths. I’ve put two of the four-footers to put on the pole barn wall where I store my boat.
When I say, “any space” it’s because the Trak a Rod systems will fit on ceilings, walls (either vertically or horizontal) and on any kind of surface. The actual hangers fit into an aluminum track so they are adjustable to fit combos of any size.
If they are going in a storage area, the color of the tracks or hangers isn’t an issue most of the time, but in a den, man-cave or more public area, choose from silver track/white holder, silver/black, black/black or my favorite (as a Purdue grad) the gold track/black holders. Trac-A-Rod Fishing Rod Racks are available direct from www.dubrofishing.com, at retail outlets and many online sources including Amazon.com.
I don’t leave some of the gear I use just about every trip on or in my boat between excursions. Things like clothes, raingear, sometimes footwear or gloves are removed and either laundered or at least allowed to dry thoroughly between trips. I learned long ago if I pulled out a jacket, hat, camera, or other gear stowed on board, it’s often not as “fresh” as when I stowed it in cubby or compartment.
Anytime I hop onboard someone else’s boat I know I’ll need to take along some of my personal gear. Whether it’s day trips on my boat or on someone else’s, I rely on a roomy day pack to keep my personal gear organized and dry. Last summer my Gill Voyager Day Pack was been my constant companion.
In the early season when days start out more wintery than spring-like, I shed layers as the day warms and when I do, I stuff my morning parka, bibs or other gear into the Day Pack just to keep it out of the way. In the summer, I always have rainsuit in the Day Pack and perhaps a spare sweatshirt along with a boonie hat to keep my ears shaded on sunny days. There may be some homemade cookies, a couple bottles of water or some new lures in the bag when I load it from my truck to the boat.
On away trips I stick my camera, batteries and often my wallet in the zipper-close inner pocket to keep things safe and organized. I bring my own Type V lifejacket, some ziplock baggies and my favorite fillet knife. All this and there’s still room for a couple of 3700 Stowaway lure boxes if I think the extra tackle would be helpful or appreciated.
It all fits – usually – the bag will hold 25 litres (almost seven gallons) worth of gear and I don’t worry about packing it overly tight. The Day Pack is made from a tough, seamless PVC tarpaulin fabric. If I don’t need that much space, I can just give the roll top closure an extra turn or two to shrink the bag and insure it stays perfectly waterproof. I just toss in the bow or stuff it under a seat and don’t worry about it until it’s needed.
It has sturdy, backpack-like carrying straps, handy when carrying it from the parking lot to the docks or even from the ticket counter to the gate in airports. The day pack makes a great carry on for air travel.
Want to try a Gill Day Pack or any other Gill fishing products for yourself? Great! Fishing Toys readers can score a 10% discount by using the Code: CAPTMIKE10 at check out when you purchase at www.gillfishing.com. They are also available at some retailers, at many online sellers and Amazon.com.
Do you get a chill down your spine when the weather people start putting words like frost, snow, wintery mix and wind chill in their forecasts? I used to, but I’d much rather start thinking of words like, fall brawl, early ice, late season fishing and even first ice. Those positive thoughts are now more in my mind than worries about chills down my spine since I got my Great Lakes Pro Insulated Suit.
Great Lake anglers don’t hibernate during the cold months. Certainly, the designers at Whitewater know this and being a Michigan based company where not only is windchill is understood, so are winter forecasts with words like lake effect, blustery and accumulation. They live there and understand the problems inherent in many winter parkas, bibs and other outdoor gear.
There are dozens of hi-tech parka and bibs makers, these days, but few of them seem to offer winter suits that check all the boxes. Some are long on insulation, but so bulky it’s hard to do much more than just stand there. Some are not so bulky, but not so warm. Few of them are waterproof. Many seem to concentrate more on flashy colors and patterns.
When I’m out for walleyes in late November, on the ice or in my boat fishing cohos in early March, looking spiffy is less important than being warm and able to move – whether it’s setting a line or drilling a hole.
Don’t think the Great Lakes Pro suit looks clunky. It doesn’t; but instead of being bright red, blue or other colors, it’s black. Perfect for me. On sunny days, the black color helps keep me warm. More important, after a few trips, it doesn’t look like it’s overdue for a trip through the washing machine.
Unlike many parkas and bibs I’ve used which use the same amount of insulation top to bottom, Whitewater’s Great Lakes Pro is built around various levels of insulation in different parts of each garment. There’s more insulation in the back of the parka than in the front. The sleeves have even less because it’s more important to have more insulation in the torso than in the hood, arms or in the legs in the bibs. That increases flexibility in the right places while maintaining warmth in others.
The best winter bibs have reinforced knees to keep them from wearing out and an additional bit of waterproofing when kneeling next to a tip up or kneeling on a boat’s floor to unhook a flopping fish. More than just an extra layer of cloth, the GL Pro bibs have reinforced the knee area with a rubberized waterproof fabric. That makes the knee area with totally waterproof while the rest of the suit relies on the a Durable Water Repellant and an internal waterproof/breathable layer sandwiched between the exterior fabric and interior lining. That little patch of waterproofing doesn’t really hurt the garment’s breathability rating (13K) or it’s waterproof rating of 30K.
I’m a “pocket” person in that I like outerwear with plenty of pockets. Nothing worse than having to dig deep into mid-layers to warm my fingers for a minute or grab my cell phone, key fob, camera, pocket knife or most any other item I might need during the course of the day. The jacket has five pockets, all are zip closed for security rubberized zippers for extra water resistance. The bibs have six pockets, interior and exterior.
Another thing I noticed immediately was the suspenders on the bibs are stretchy which I’ve found to be a great feature since whether I’m wearing several layers under the bibs while ice fishing in the open or just a hoody inside on warmer days, I’ve not had to adjust them. They stretch to fit. I love the silicone grip surface on the underside of the suspenders that keeps them from sliding off my shoulders when I’m in the middle of doing something.
I’m now going into my second season with the Great Lakes Pro suit. It was my top layer, rain or shine when I got it in late winter and through most of the spring. I told my customers, “On southern Lake Michigan, winter lasts to Memorial Day, so bundle up.” They don’t always remember that warning, but I do – and though I relish autumn’s Indian summer, I know by the time the next issue of GLA is out, I’ll be using my Great Lakes Pro parka and bibs nearly every day.
Whitewater’s Great Lakes Pro tops and bottoms are widely available at retail and online sources. Check them out or purchase them (along with other Whitewater products) at www.whitewaterfish.com.
There was something missing on my boat last spring, a fish cooler. Often called a box or the fish box. If you don’t have a fish cooler on your boat, chances are you rely on stuffing the fish you catch and keep into a livewell or into a built-in fish storage compartment. My boat’s livewell must have been designed for perch fishing. It won’t hold a four-person limit of spring cohos and is certainly too small to hold a decent four-person bag of Lake Erie walleye.
So I “bagged” the fish. Actually, the fish went into Smith’s Products Insulated 36” Bait and Fish Kill Bag. Why not use my old IGLOO cooler? It takes up a lot of space.
Formerly, when my cooler was my only choice, I “made” space for it. It was a piece of necessary gear, so I economized on other gear to make everything fit with room left over for the fish box and the fishermen. Not now.
At the beginning of the day, the Kill Bag takes up almost no room. It doesn’t fold perfectly flat, it is insulated – front, back and bottom with closed cell foam, but a cooler is the same size whether it’s full or empty. Before the first fish is caught I add one or two small (7-pound) bags of ice – depending on air temperature. At that point the bag is about 1/3rd the size of my old fish cooler. On a good day, by the time it’s got 18 or 24 walleyes in the bag (or 15 or 20 cohos), it takes up about half the space of my fish cooler – and there’s space left over to hold a king, a big brown trout or several plus-size walleyes if the fishing was extra-good.
I had four concerns when switching from a hard-sided plastic cooler to a soft-sided kill bag. Would it be tough enough? Would it be hard to clean? Would it keep the fish cool and fresh? Would it be large enough?
The Smith’s bag is constructed (inside and out) with a heavy-duty, marine grade tarp-like fabric. I wasn’t overly concerned the sharp fins on the walleyes I put in the bag would perforate the interior lining, but that thought was in the back of my mind. So, after several walleye trips, I took a flashlight, put on my reader glasses and examined the interior closely so see if there were any visible holes. None were found, nor did I ever detect any leakage around the bottom seams from melting ice had dripping through the inner skin and leaking out the bottom. Additionally, the seams are reinforced with strong nylon strapping material made from the same material as the detachable carrying strap. Plenty tough.
Both the interior and exterior is slick-finish allowing fresh blood to just rinse off and even dried-on blood to wash clean with a minimum amount of scrubbing with a soft brush. Once it’s rinsed clean, I just invert it with the zipper open and to let it quickly dry. Cleans up easily.
Cooling ability? One sure indicator of how well it’s insulated is how much ice is left at the end of the trip. If all you have left in your fish cooler is melt water, it’s not doing the job. On my early spring trips when the air temperature and the water temperature (thus the fish temperatures) are in the 40s, that small bag of ice was still more ice than meltwater after a long half-day of fishing. Once the weather and water warmed, the second bag of ice still did the job.
The 36” Bait and Fish Kill Bag is Smith’s middle size offering. It’s perfect for how I used it. Later in the season when king salmon and lake trout figure heavily into the catch where I fish, it wouldn’t be large enough. However, Smith makes a 48” kill bag that is advertised to be larger than my Igloo and there’s a smaller, 30-incher (called Mr. Crappie) that will hold several limits of perch or crappies.
Though the 30 and 36-inch versions are called “bait and fish kill bags,” I don’t think they’d be a good replacement for a bait bucket. Perhaps in a special situation, they’d be ideal – not on my boat. They do come with drain plugs at the bottom, however, to allow melt water from the ice or minnow water if used for bait to flow out the bottom. Available at www.smithsproducts.com at retailers and several online outlets including Amazon.
Other than when I’m ice fishing in extreme conditions, when I’m fishing I always have a long sleeve shirt or hoody made of what has become known as performance cloth as my base layer – or only layer. In the summer, these shirts keep me cooler than if I were wearing a short sleeve shirt and give me 50 UPF sun protection against UV radiation. In the earliest part of thefishing season and late fall fishing, these same shirts are a part of my layering system that allows me to add or subtract coats, vests or jackets as the conditions change from morning chill to midday levels. It all has to do with the moisture and water vapor wicking properties of performance cloth.
Basically, the fibers of performance cloth is woven from is made of some sort of plastic. The HUK Waypoint shirts I own are actually made from recycled water bottles. Others, like the Apex Vert ICON are made from other forms of plastic, but the fact the base material is poly-something or other means it can’t get wet. Each thread can get wet on the outside, but unlike cotton, woolor other blends of natural threads, the base materials won’t soak up wetness. Instead, because of the tight weave, when moisture is produced from perspiration or from the natural production of water vapor escaping from a person’s skin, none of that wetness is captured by the material. Instead, through capillary action, it’s pulled into the cloth next to the skin and wicked outward. In the summer, it evaporates, cooling the cloth and cooling the wearer better than just sweaty skin or wet tee-shirt material will do. In cold weather, as a base layer, it still wicks moisture away from the skin and passes the moisture on to the next layer – hopefully all the way through each layer, where it leaves the wearer warm and cozy inside.
I’ve had the Waypoint shirt for over a year and it’s still one of my favorites. This shirt looks and feels more cottony-soft and I like this, especially in the morning chill. Once the temperature climbs, the fabric still performs with moisture wicking and cooling effects. Many of these performance fabric shirts are slick-feeling, more like silk or satin than familiar feel of cotton.
Most of HUK’s performance shirts come emblazoned with the HUK logo on the front, back or sleeves. Some people don’t like wearing shirts with logos or emblems.If that’s you, take a look at HUK’s Waypoint line.
One of HUK’s newest versions of the performance cloth shirts is the Apex Vert ICON is an upgrade to their popular ICON shirt line. It is one of those “slick” feeling materials which I think enhances the “cooling” feel on hot summer days and the AVI has special panels on the sides and backs that accelerates the moisture-wicking and the cooling feel. I prefer the hoody versions of these shirts since it gives me more neck protection from the sun and eliminates the need for me to wear neck gaitors most days.
I used to shy away from “hunter” pattern camoshirts, but I now embrace the gray and blue shaded nautical camos. I’m not trying to hide from the fish, but I’m a sloppy angler. It’s not uncommon for meto end up with fish slime, fish blood and other stains by the end of a day onthe lake – stains that show up like a blood trail in new fallen snow on pastel, solid-colored fabric. I still get the stains, but I don’t look like a serial killer by the end of a fishing trip.
Both of these HUK performance shirt lines are available in both solid colors and camo versions. HUK performance wear is widely available at many retailers and online sources including Amazon.com. See all the choices or purchase directly at www.hukgear.com.
FISHING TOYS 