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BLACK HILLS TROUT AND BASS

I grew up fishing western South Dakota bass ponds within sight of cool Black Hills, mountains filled with trout ponds embedded in ponderosa pine timber. I enjoyed fishing trout streams in morning, and then driving beatup '57 Chevy pickup a short distance after lunch to fish hot afternoons in my favorite bass pond - Mirror Lake.

It is best of two different fishing worlds: after a few hours of hot bass action, Mirror Lake trout begin tofeed aggressively in deep natural artesian springs bubbling up water that that rained 500 years ago, now filtered throught schist, shale and clay.

I am a shore fishing expert on Mirror Lake, but I knew there had to be a better way to land those largemouth bass lunkers lazing in far reaches of cattail bog. I found answer at 2001 American Fishing Association ICAST show in Las Vegas.

The new inflatable SeaEagle catamaran canoe/kayak is slim, light, inexpensive and paddles with stealth. Bass see only a gray SeaEagle cloud gliding effortless overhead.

Bass, cattails and a SeaEagle catamaran go together naturally. I can get in close to cool cattail cover meeting murky reed free deeps. The big boys bask in cattails, and then they dart out for juvenile sunfish and bluegill baitfish, before dashing back into their lair.

Cattails produce enormous amounts of oxygen during bright, sunny days, and bass love oxygenated protection, as do baitfish. Cattails reverse oxygen generators at night, or on cloudy days, devouring oxygen, driving bass and baitfish into deeper water.

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If you should find yourself in Alaska chances are that you've come to enjoy scenery or perhaps do some camping and sightseeing. It is also a likely bet that you've come to do some fishing as well.

The Kenai Peninsula is definitely a good place for that. The Kenai and Russian Rivers confluence, in heart of Kenai Peninsula (some 80 miles south of Anchorage), is one of most popular places in world to catch King and Red Salmon and though availability of those species is very high during peaks of their respective runs, so is competition. Known as "Combat Fishing", to uninitiated this can be quite a spectacle. Usually fishermen are arrayed less than 3 feet apart from each other, are standing out in river in two to three feet of water, and are fishing that little stretch of glacial green directly in front of them. At times in my travels across peninsula I have seen them lined up like this, along emerald shore of Kenai River where it meanders next to highway, for over a mile. There is very little casting, line set at a certain length and angler simply pulling his line out at base of his rod to keep it taught as he constantly dips his lure upstream a few feet then taking up slack as current drifts it past him. If he (or she) is lucky enough to elicit an aggressive strike from salmon, there is no question as to nature of his screaming reel. "Fish On!" is howl this elicits, and hopefully all surrounding fishermen are neighborly enough to bring in their lines and stay out fighting angler's way as he commits to his own personal combat with what can turn out to be a 70 pound King Salmon. Not clearing an area and retaining fish that are other than mouth hooked is strictly frowned upon and likely to get you chastised by locals and those in know, even possibly turned into Fish and Game in case of keeping snagged fish. This is serious business to most of those involved, and I highly suggest you play by rules.