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• Largemouth bass
• Walleye
• Catfish
• Lures & Bait
• Lures & Bait

21 SALMON WITH HANDLES Not sure if that big salmon you caught is a coho or a chinook? Just grab it around the base of the tail and try to lift it. If it slips through your fingers, it's probably a coho; if it doesn't, it's a chinook. The bony structure of a chinook's tail is much more rigid, making it easier to "tail" the fish.

22 HOW'S THE WATER? Pike and muskies are both classified as cool-water fish, but there is a definite difference in their preferred water temperature, especially among the larger members of each species. Pike more than 30 inches long favor water temperatures from 50 to 55 degrees, while muskies prefer temperatures of 67 to 72 degrees. Another difference: Pike feed actively throughout the year and are a popular target of ice fishermen. Muskies feed much more sporadically in winter and are rarely caught by ice anglers.

23 PICKY EATERS Although most anglers believe muskies are voracious feeders, consuming just about everything in sight, they're actually much less aggressive than pike. Muskies are considerably more selective, and will examine your offering more closely. They'll often follow a bait for a distance and then turn away at the last second without striking. A pike, on the other hand, will attack practically any kind of lure or bait that happens to pass its way.

24 MUSKIES GONE BAD Most stories about the muskie's voracious feeding habits are myth, but there are some notable exceptions, including documented cases of muskies biting small swimming dogs and even attacking humans splashing around in the shallows! In one Minnesota lake, a cordoned-off swimming area had to be closed after a rogue muskie found its way inside the netting and bit a small boy.

25 CREATURES OF HABIT Sure, there's a lot of water out there, but only a relatively small portion of it suits bluegills for their various purposes. If you spot abandoned bluegill spawning beds along a shoreline while you're out fishing this summer, remember their locations. Unlike some other fish, bluegills will return to the same beds year after year, providing water conditions are the same. Mark the spots on a map, and you'll get a leg up on other anglers when spawning season arrives.

26 SEXIST WALLEYES Would you believe that the gender of a baitfish can make a big difference to your fishing success? A male fathead minnow, which has a black head covered with spawning tubercles in spring, is much less effective than the female of the species, which is more silvery. Apparently, the female fathead exudes a more attractive odor to walleyes, pike and other game fish.

27 SCALY CAMOUFLAGE Of all the freshwater game fish, rock bass are the best chameleons, meaning that they can quickly change color to match their surroundings. On light, sandy bottoms, they're usually light tan, but on dark bottoms, they might be brownish black in color.

28 FISH DETECTORS When you're fishing a strange body of water and don't have a clue where to start, locate some fish-eating birds. Herons and loons know exactly where to go to find baitfish—and where there is forage, there will be hungry game fish as well.

29 NO WONDER IT'S SO SKINNY What freshwater fish found in North America makes the longest spawning migration? The winner, hands down, is the American eel. Female eels spend most of their lives in big rivers like the Mississippi. When spawning time approaches, they swim downstream to join the males at the river mouth, then they swim to the Sargasso Sea (a portion of the North Atlantic) to spawn.

30 GOLDENS ARE GULLIBLE Many anglers consider brook trout to be the dumbest, and therefore the easiest to catch, of the salmonids. But golden trout are even more aggressive and have a reputation for being easy marks. Perhaps that helps explain why they thrive only in remote locations and usually at high altitudes, where the only human access is on horseback or by hiking.