BY THE TIME PUMPKIN-SPICE salsa and mayonnaise are back in stores, I’m losing my appetite for smallmouths. I love them dearly, but I spend so many days targeting them in spring and summer that when the temperature starts to drop here in the Northeast, I’d rather don long undies for stripers, pike, and steelhead. I’ve never really had regrets about it either. Until this year, anyway, after I had a chat with Michigan-based guide Mike Schultz. He calls the Huron River his home water, and while the rest of us deal with stuff like Christmas shopping, New Year’s resolutions, and February, he’s still chasing local bass. And no, he’s not twitching a jig painfully slowly in one hole for hours. He’s rowing a raft, working streamers with a fly rod, and sticking some pigs. It all started as an experimental cure for cabin fever but ultimately turned into a fine-tuned game that may completely upend what you think you know about winter bass behavior.
A SNOWBALL’S CHANCE
Esta historia es de la edición December 2019 - January 2020 de Field & Stream.
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Esta historia es de la edición December 2019 - January 2020 de Field & Stream.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
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LIVING THE DREAM
After the author arrives in Maine’s fabled North Woods with a moose tag in his pocket, an adventure he’s been wanting to take his entire hunting life, reality sets in, and he learns a valuable lesson: Be careful what you wish for
Get the Drift
How to make an accurate windage call under pressure
First Sit
An icebreaker outing in a pristine spot produces the rut hunt of a lifetime
A Local Haunt
The author finds a sense of place in an overlooked creek, close to home
A Hop and a Pump
Jump-shooting rabbits with classic upland guns is about as good a time as you can have in the outdoors
Welcome TO camp
Is there any place better than a good hunting camp? It has everything: great food, games and pranks, and of course, hunting. Shoot, we don’t even mind going to camp for grueling work days in the summer. Here, our contributors share their favorite stories, traditions, and lessons learned from camps they’ve shared. So come on in and join us. The door’s open.
THE DEERSLAYERS
Before you even claim a bunk, you need to eyeball the hardware your buddies have brought. In the process, you’ll see that the guns at deer camp are changing. What was walnut and blued steel may now be Kevlar and carbon fiber. The 10 rifles featured here aren’t your father’s deer guns. They’re today’s new camp classics
THE JOURNEY TO PIKE'S PEAK
Last summer, the author and three friends ventured off the grid to a remote fish camp in Canada. They hoped for great fishing, but what they experienced was truly something else
Stage Directions
When early-season whitetails vanish from open feeding areas, follow this woods-edge ambush plan
Rookie Season
A pup’s first year, from preseason training to fall’s big show
