Fishing’s Dark Side
Published: Thursday, January 12, 2023 12:00 pm
By: Dan Armitage
Despite the title above, no, this isn’t an editorial on last fall’s Lake Erie walleye tournament cheating debacle that is garnering national news as I write this. January and February are not only our darkest months across the Great Lakes, but January also marks the start of the annual boat and sport show season across much of North America. For me, that means for the next 90 days, I am booked nearly every weekend to lead fishing seminars at boat and sport shows around the Great Lakes. One of the most popular presentations – and my favorite to offer – is a children’s program called “Kids Fishing Fun.”
During the seminar, I show kids and the parents who take them fishing how to use a cane pole, live bait, and simple techniques to hook easy-to-catch Great Lakes species such as panfish. I usually have an invaluable stage prop behind me in the form of a 5,000-gallon “Hawg Trough”-type mobile aquarium designed for fishing demonstrations. Having live fish swimming around behind me takes some of the pressure off trying to hold the attention of five- to 15-year-olds over the course of the 40-minute program – and gives me the opportunity to show the audience how real fish react in different situations, around different structures, and to various baits and presentations.
One of the lessons I share includes why those fish are often concentrated in one part of the tank while leaving other areas of the uber-aquarium void of anything with fins and gills. Over the course of my talk, someone usually asks why fish are in some places in the tank and not others, but I’ll be sure to bring it up regardless because it illustrates an important factor when it comes to fishing success.
I begin to make my point by asking the audience what they do when the sun is too bright. The answers I get range from wearing a billed cap to donning sunglasses, squinting or shutting the eyes, or simply moving inside or under some shade.
Borrowing an audience member’s ‘gimme’ cap and another’s sunglasses, I use an anatomically correct stuffed largemouth bass to demonstrate that you need external ears to wear sunglasses and a fish’s head is not the right shape to consider a cap – to the laughs of the younger members in attendance. When I share the point that fish don’t have eyelids like ours and therefore can’t even shut their eyes to shield them from the rays of the sun, the fish are left with the final option to avoid uncomfortable brightness – a method fish and man do share: they move “indoors” or to available shade. Then I turn to the areas of fish concentration in the tank to illustrate my point and note that the places where the fish are congregated are the darkest, shadiest part of the tank.
I go on to explain that the same thing happens in the open waters where we fish and that a key to finding – if not catching – gamefish is looking for places that offer shade. I suggest that, given the choice, they drop their baited hooks on the shady sides of stumps, rocks, docks, and other structures that block the sunlight.
Next, I toss a handful of live minnows into the fish tank and let the kids watch where the baitfish go. Most make a beeline for the same structure that harbors the gamefish. The minnows instinctively know that they have a better chance of finding a place to hide from the predators where there’s cover than trying to out-swim them in the open water. Again, the same is true in natural situations – and another reason why gamefish often hang out in the cover (and darkness) of shade: to wait for unsuspecting baitfish to swim past.
That’s why on your next Great Lakes fishing trip, I recommend you pull up to any bridges, docks, or other structures that offer shade and wet a line on the dark side. It can be tossing an artificial lure or casting a bobber suspending a minnow or worm. Just try to match the bait and its size based on what the gamefish you are seeking typically find there and feed on – and hold on.
You can catch my kids' fishing act at several boat and sport shows around the Great Lakes this winter, in Cleveland, Indianapolis, Novi (Detroit), and Grand Rapids, MI, to name a few. If you attend one of those expos, please stop by the Hawg Trough and say hello!
A version of this article appeared in the Winter 2023 issue of Great Lakes Scuttlebutt magazine.
About the Author
Dan Armitage is a popular Great Lakes-based outdoor writer. He is a certified Passport to Fishing instructor and leads kids fishing programs at Midwest boat and sport shows, and is a licensed Captain with a Master rating from the US Coast Guard.
tags: Fishing, Kids & Pets, Off Season
