Steve Sarley
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Sarley: Why I changed my mind and started using fishing guidesJun 25, 2025 10:00 am - Guides are great for learning a new body of water. Guides are tremendous if you’re interested in learning a new technique. Guides are excellent instructors if you’d like to have an encounter with a species of fish you haven’t caught before. Here are a few local good ones.
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Sarley: The best way to get kids to enjoy fishingJun 18, 2025 5:23 pm - I hope all of you enjoyed a wonderful Father’s Day. I wish I could have gone fishing with my kids to celebrate. My wife and I have three kids and one grandchild, 2-year-o...
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Sarley: Reader benefits from fishing tip, explains why sportsmen are also environmentalistsJun 11, 2025 4:55 pm - I love getting mail from readers. Connecting with a reader enough to get them to open their keyboard and respond to me gives me a charge that is hard to explain. I love e...
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Sarley: Why don’t more people use ‘wacky’ worms while fishing?Jun 04, 2025 10:41 am - Last week we talked about drop shotting plastic baits, and now we will deal with the technique that’s become known as “wacky” worms. These are certainly not new methods. They’ve been around for a while, but it amazes me that there are an awful lot of people who haven’t tried them out.
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Sarley: Recent developments have revolutionized fishing with plastic luresMay 28, 2025 11:19 am - I started fishing with live bait. I grew into using lures on a regular basis. To this day, I still think that live bait out-catches artificials. I think that fishing wit...
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Sarley: The morel of the story? Time is running out for picking this local delicacyMay 21, 2025 4:44 pm - The best season for avid morel mushroom hunters is coming to a close. Our crazy Northern Illinois weather patterns have blessed the morel hunting community with what may have been the best mushroom collecting recently.
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Sarley: How to master setting the hook while topwater fishingMay 14, 2025 7:01 pm - Let me start my follow-up story on topwater fishing with an apology. Eagle-eyed reader Craig Chisholm caught my error in recommending a lure called the Pop-R manufacture...
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Sarley: Any time is a good time for a topwater lureMay 07, 2025 11:31 am - I fish a lot of topwater presentations for bass because I love the excitement of the strike, but what do I use and where do I use it? The answer to “when” is “any time.”
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Sarley: How the most memorable perch I ever caught came up just shortApr 30, 2025 4:47 pm - The largest I had caught was estimated at 1.75 pounds by Captain Bob Jenkins. Two pounds is the magic number when it comes to declaring a perch to be a monster. I actually thought my fish might be near that weight.
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Sarley: Bears stories will take the place of fish stories this weekApr 23, 2025 10:45 am - I know I said I’d finish the story about the most memorable fish I ever caught, but with the NFL draft this week, I couldn’t resist sharing this story. I’ll come back to the fish story next week.