Joe Cermele

1 month ago | outdoorlife.com | Joe Cermele

Across the Upper Midwest and Northeast, winter is steelhead season. Starting around Halloween and lasting through February — if your feet and hands can take it — anglers flock to Great Lakes tributaries to catch these brute fighters that are packed in to spawn. This game is so popular that it’s come to be associated with “combat fishing.” Crowds can be big depending on the river you hit, and it’s not uncommon to get shut out of a choice run or have to jockey for prime position.

1 month ago | yahoo.com | Joe Cermele

Across the Upper Midwest and Northeast, winter is steelhead season. Starting around Halloween and lasting through February — if your feet and hands can take it — anglers flock to Great Lakes tributaries to catch these brute fighters that are packed in to spawn. This game is so popular that it’s come to be associated with “combat fishing.” Crowds can be big depending on the river you hit, and it’s not uncommon to get shut out of a choice run or have to jockey for prime position.

1 month ago | outdoorlife.com | Joe Cermele

Just a few weeks ago, I made a six-hour drive to Western Pennsylvania to target brown trout on a very famous tailwater. The day before I departed, of course, a massive line of storms swept through dumping buckets of rain across the entire state. Almost every river I drove over and along was cresting its banks and chocolate brown. The good news was that because we were fishing a tailwater with flows controlled by a dam, our river wouldn’t be chocolatey.

1 month ago | fieldandstream.com | Joe Cermele

We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more ›Streamer flies can mimic a variety of forage, but none is more common than baitfish. Unlike dry flies that match floating insects, and nymphs that look like aquatic insects in their larval stages, streamers are designed to fool trout looking for a bigger meal that packs plenty of protein.

1 month ago | outdoorlife.com | Joe Cermele

If you stop and think about it, a bass lure is only a bass lure if you’re throwing it for bass. Take the same bait off the lake and chuck in the bay and suddenly it’s a redfish lure. Throw your favorite smallmouth lure in a stream and now it’s a trout lure. There are really no rules in terms of which lures go with what species, but we tend to stay in the proverbial lanes. You don’t want to be the weirdo throwing a hollow-body frog 30 miles offshore. Or do you?