WI FISHING EXPO FEB 23-25th updates, Ice Fishing Reports, New Book on Fishing Basics

Fish are still biting, but the schools keep moving!!

CEO Alex and his cousin Mason got out for some ice fishing on February 17th on Potato Lake in Rusk County. They managed to get on some large schools of crappies, but they could only catch a few in a row super fast, then the school would move. The speed of their movement was amazing. By the end of our 3 hour fishing day, the lake looked like an air hockey table from all of our holes. Good thing that our Jiffy 4GLite does such a great job, there was probably 2 feet of ice!!! Our auger was near bottoming out on every hole. A Flirty Girty, scented with some JB's Fish Sauce (Crawfish Scent,) tipped with a pink Gullickson's Beavertail did the trick on all 12 fish caught. 9 of them were fryed up at home, while the 3 small fish were released. Mason did most of the damage, reeling in 8 of the 9 keeper sized fish. Alex was too busy running around having fun with the kids on the ice on this beautiful 32 degree day. He did lose one small fish, as well as myself losing one very nice fish, probably a decent crappie. We had some bonus perch mixed in again, and they were tasting fantastic with garlic and butter in the cast iron pan.

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MADISON EXPO ONLY 1 WEEK AWAY!!!

We are doing very well with our lure builds leading up to the big fishing expo in one week. It looks like we are still shooting for 500-600 lures to present at the show to customers. We were worried about our lack of Junebug Bee Whacker buzz baits but our supplier stocked their lure bodies up just in time for us to get a hold of them in time for the show. So far all is well at James Gang Fishing, as we were buried for a bit in bookkeeping, tax paperwork, trade show paperwork, and all of these crazy builds. We got all of the other work done and are well on pace to get all of our lures complete in time for the show. I have a feeling that our Lovertail 2 weedless inline spinners and our Bee Whackers will dominate our sales, much like the show in Eau Claire last spring. Now we are hoping for good driving conditions and a huge turnout. Hopefully seminar speakers Keith Combs & Seth Feider make a quick stop to visit with Alex and get a picture with him at our booth sometime during the show.

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BEE WHACKER BUZZBAIT IN "JUNEBUG"

BEE WHACKER BUZZBAIT IN "FIRETIGER"

LOVERTAIL 2 "WHITE CRAPPIE" LURE BUILDS IN PROGRESS

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BASSMASTER Carhartt College Series

Zach Hansen displays his Louisiana bass caught on a James Gang BABY SQUID BAIT

The UW-Stout fishing team competed on Toledo Bend in Louisiana in late January. The boys managed to catch a few bass in the tourney, but it was shortened due to weather and they didn't place as high as they hoped. I hope they had a blast and learned a lot about fishing deep in the South in the land of cypress trees, which is a huge change from their home waters of Wisconsin. Congrats to UW-Platteville for taking the win against 180 teams from all over the US!

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NEW PAPERBACK BOOK COMING TO AMAZON IN SPRING!

Thanks to all of the positive feedback and crazy amount of views on our blogs and basic "how-to" fishing articles on this website, I was inspired to look into writing a paperback book on the basics of fishing. I feel that the web and the magazine and video world is loaded with advanced fishing tactics, something that I myself am not really qualified to teach since I am not an expert or champion angler. I do feel that there is a lack of basics, though. I am talking about for people that have ZERO experience in fishing whatsoever. If you have never ever fished and don't understand why people like it so much, this is a book to read. It will explain why to fish, what kinds of fish to go after, what equipment you need to fish on a budget, presentation methods, weather variables, etc. Remember this will be presented at a very BASIC level. I would be very happy if young middle schoolers got into this book. Or adults that did not grow up in an outdoors-driven household. This book will be of no value to tournament anglers, or hard-core "fish heads." Those people have much better options, such as hiring a fantastic guide, becoming a member of BASS U TV for the best seminars ever, as well as watching educational shows and DVDs such as Lindner's Angling Edge, John Gillespie's Waters & Woods, Zona's Awesome Fishing Show, and Bill Dance Outdoors. I don't have close to the experience or knowledge of Dale Stroschein, Josh Teigen, Mark Schutz, Caleb Zorn, Marc Jackson, Jim or Al Lindner, Jeremy Smith, John Gillespie, Mark Zona, or Bill Dance. As of today, I have completed 2 chapters and an intro to the book, which will need photos and a complete edit before self-publishing through Kindle in spring. I will have chapters devoted to tackle, locations, Panfishing, Pike fishing, largemouth fishing, smallmouth fishing, trout fishing, river bank fishing for power fish, and ice fishing for panfish as well as pike. I am looking forward to the feedback I receive from this experience and will be interested in doing more in the future if all goes well with it.

BEST OF LUCK ICE FISHING, SEE YOU IN MADISON, WI AT THE FISHING EXPO!!!!