This episode of RadCast Outdoors is brought to you by P .K. Lures, Bow Spider, and High Mountain Seasonings. Fish on! Hey, RadCast is on! Hunting, fishing, and everything in between. This is RadCast Outdoors. Here are David Merrill and Patrick Edwards. Welcome back to another episode of RadCast Outdoors. I'm your host today, Patrick Edwards, and I'm on the road. So this is a special edition of Patrick on the Road. I'm heading out doing some traveling for my work. Wanted to talk a little bit about something that was brought up to me the other day. My friend Seth, he asked me to do a breakdown of when you're going to a new body of water, what are some things that you need to do? What are some things that you need to look at? What's the kind of gear you should take? And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a high -level overview of how to break down different types of water and maybe some ideas of things that you should do beforehand, some things you should take with you, and of course some things you should try while you're there. So we'll go through that, and then we're going to talk specifically towards the end about pike, because he was more curious about the pike fishing aspect of things. So we'll talk about that too. But first, I just want to say a big thank you again to PK Lures. They are our fishing sponsor for the podcast. They've been a great company to work with over the last few years. They have quite the arsenal of products, and if you're going to be going anywhere this year fishing, doesn't matter whether it's open water or hard water, make sure to grab some PK Lures. They've got applications for all of the above for ice fishing season. If you don't have the PK Flutterfish and the PK Spoon and the PK Predator in your box, you're missing out. If you're fishing the open water and the new PK Ridge Rattler, it's a rattling crankbait. You can use it through the ice too, by the way, but it works great in open water. If you're catching trout, bass, walleye, doesn't matter. It catches just about everything. They have some great trolling applications. They have some trolling crankbaits like the PK Ridgeline crank, and then of course their Wobbler Dakota Disc, ReefRig and other trolling systems for walleye specifically. Those things are absolutely deadly. And then year round, the PK Spinajig. How could I forget that one? That one's amazing. So go to PKLure .com if you use Ragcast at checkout, you get 20 % off your order. So let's talk about breaking down bodies of water. Really, there's a few things that you should do well beforehand. If you know you're going to be taking a big trip and you're going to make a big investment, especially right now when you got gas, it's four, some places, five bucks a gallon. You want to make sure that you've done your homework prior to going to this body of water to fish. It doesn't matter whether it's a river, a lake, a pond, a reservoir. You need to do your homework beforehand. So one of the things that I always recommend is number one, get a hold of the fisheries biologists that work at that body of water. They're going to be able to share important information with you, some reconnaissance on what kind of fish are there. What are the typical size? Maybe you're interested in the size classes. Maybe you're going after master anglers and you want to make sure that you give yourself the absolute best chance of catching that master angler fish. The best thing to do is say, hey, I want to go there and I want to catch a big fish. OK, they're going to be able to hopefully key you in on some good areas or at least give you some people to talk to. You can also do some recon on the computer or on your phone. So onX is a great tool. Google Earth, of course, is a great tool. I like to pull it up and just look at what I can see visually from the satellite view. Sometimes you get the bad luck of having a western reservoir after runoff and the whole reservoir looks like chocolate because all the sediments washed down the river, you can't really see like into the water. You can see some of the rocky points and structures, but you can't see much else. But some are super clear bodies of water and you can see really well. So what I recommend is pull it up, take a look at it, maybe drop some pins on some areas that you think look good. And so some areas that I look for is transitions from hard to soft bottom. So if you see like a rocky shoreline where it goes into like maybe a sandbar, that's a good spot. Any kind of point that has a drop -off, if you can see weed edges, transitions are typically where you're going to find fish most of the time. So I mark those and just get an idea of what I'm looking at and just get a feel for the reservoir. I also look at where can I put in, if I'm taking a boat, where's the boat ramp at? Where's the bathroom at? Those are important things. Where's the parking area? Maybe I'm just going to go take my waders and I'm going to fish the shoreline. You're going to have to look for a parking area. You also want to look at the properties surrounding that body of water to make sure that it's public, because if you need special access to it, you're going to have to request that beforehand. So if there's private access, you're going to need to make those phone calls, those emails, whatever it takes to get access to that area. So that's some of the pre homework that I would recommend. I would also recommend you maybe call a local bait shop and just say, Hey, I'm coming to fish for this specific species. What are people catching fish on right now? What's the hot bait or during the time of year that I'm going, if I'm going in September and I'm calling the bait shop in May, say, Hey, in the fall around September, what kind of things should I be bringing to catch whatever fish it is? Right. Could be walleye trout, whatever, but just be very specific. Ask those questions. Those bait shops are going to be more than happy to tell you because they want you to come and buy those lures from them. And I always try to do that. Support your local bait shops, go in there, buy a few lures. That's a great gesture. They really appreciate it when you do that. So do that. That'll get you set up for your trip. Okay. Now let's talk about some of the things you ought to take for most fresh water situations around the entire country here in the United States. These are some of the things I recommend everybody takes. Okay. You should have some kind of suspending crank bait anywhere you go in this country, especially if you're going to fish for anything predatory. So if you're going for bass, walleye, trout, panfish, they all eat suspending crank baits. I've caught them all on it. And I've even caught suckers and carp on them too. So you never know. You may catch one of the less desirables on it too, but a suspending crank is one of my number one things. So you want to have those, you want to have some kind of a jig set up. I always have jigs with me and usually they're the eighth ounce and 16th ounce size. I always have Baraboo jigs because those catch everything from yeah, carp all the way through to trout. So make sure that you have some kind of a jig set up. I also like the VMC Munai jig. Those are phenomenal. And of course, like I mentioned earlier, the PK spinner jig, because it's a hybrid between a jig and a spinner. And you can do a lot of cool things with it. You can swim it, you can jig it, you can do all kinds of stuff with it. I also make sure to take some kind of a soft plastic to tip my jigs with. I like to bring Berkeley Gulp. Gulp seems to work really well, especially on trout. I catch tons of trout on Gulp, but you can also bring the Power Minnows. You can bring Paddle Tails. I like the Walleye Assassin Paddle Tails quite a bit. So make sure to bring something like that to tip your jigs with. And then of course, depending on the body of water that you're going to and what the regulations are, you might be able to buy some live bait, which is great. It's always good to have some crawlers if it's during the summer, maybe minnows, like in the fall, spring and winter. So just check the regulations, make sure that you're doing the appropriate things and fishing with the right stuff. But jigs are essential to have in your kit. I like molded swimbaits too. So like Storm makes a molded swimbait. It's just, it's about two and a half, three inches long. I like to have those cause they're really easy to fish. All you got to do is tie them on, cast them out, let them sink down to whatever depth you want to fish and just slow reel them back, you can reel them and pop them back. But those work on just about every species that I fish for. So those are critical, but also spoons are huge.