Fish jumping but not biting can be more frustrating than fishing water that looks completely dead. You know fish are present, the surface keeps breaking, and yet every cast comes back untouched. The important part is not simply seeing a fish jump. It is working out why the fish came to the surface and whether…
Do pike have teeth? Absolutely. Northern pike have an impressive collection of sharp teeth designed to grab slippery prey and keep it from escaping. Some are large and obvious along the jaws, while many smaller teeth are found farther inside the mouth. For anglers, those teeth matter for more than appearance. They can damage fishing…
The pickerel vs pike question sounds simple until a long, toothy green fish comes over the side of the boat. Chain pickerel and northern pike have the same general body shape, belong to the same fish family and can look surprisingly similar at a glance. Fortunately, several features separate them reliably — and you do…
The best barometric pressure for fishing is not one magic number. A pressure trend that accompanies favorable weather changes is usually more useful than whether the barometer happens to read 29.8, 30.0, or 30.2 inches of mercury. Anglers often pay closest attention to falling pressure ahead of an approaching front, because the changing cloud cover,…
Fish biting but not getting hooked is one of the more frustrating problems in fishing because it means fish are interested, but something is going wrong between the bite and the hook taking hold. Feeling repeated taps, seeing a float disappear, or watching a lure get hit without actually hooking a fish usually means the…