Lets Go Fishing: Best Fish For Beginners

Welcome back to our weekly blog! 

Best Fish For Beginners 

Fishing Tip of The Week 

Product of The Week 

Catch of The Week 

Best Fish For Beginners:

What hooked you on fishing? For most of us, we start with simple gear targeting easy-to-catch fish. In 2023 it might seem like everyone starts with a bass boat, forward-facing sonar, and boxes upon boxes loaded with game changers, but even if cane poles and crickets don't have their own hashtags or pro-staff, they've helped spark a passion for fishing for millions of folks. 

There's something about catching fish one right after another that's fun for everyone but could be life-changing for beginners. While fishing has many intangible benefits, when there's no catching in the beginning, many people move on to other pursuits. For this reason, targeting the right species early on can make all the difference in the world. Below we'll talk about the two best fish species to target for beginners or when taking beginners fishing. 

Before we discuss the two species, I want to explain why a target species is essential. Having a target species allows anglers to do some leg work beforehand to set themselves up for catching. Even a little bit of study can go a long way in putting yourself in a position to catch lots of fish! 

Without further ado, the two species we recommend most for beginners or folks taking beginners are bluegill and the almighty rainbow trout! Both species are plentiful, don't spook easily, and are easy to catch, even for folks just getting started. 

We have to start with what could be the pound-for-pound hardest fighter in freshwater, the bluegill. I'm telling you right now if bluegill grew over 10 lbs, we wouldn't be watching the Bassmaster classic every year; it would be the Bluegill classic! They're everything you could want in a fish if you're a beginner or otherwise. They're ferocious competitive feeders that'll take a bug off the surface, pluck a little crawdad off the bottom, and if you happen to be ten years old and run out of bait in a pinch, a booger will do (look, I'm not proud, but it did work). They're available almost everywhere and aren't shy about their favorite places to congregate. I'm betting somewhere at a dock near you there's a pile of bluegill just waiting for you to catch them.

Bluegill aren't fancy, and as I mentioned above, a cane pole and cricket will keep you busy for hours. A few other bluegill staples would be a chunk of crawler under a bobber. They love dry flies of any kind, and through the ice they won't pass up the opportunity to horf down a wax worm. 

Another bonus about chasing bluegill is anglers aren't hush-hush about bluegill like they can be about other species. You might have to sell a kidney to get someone to tell you where they're catching 10lb walleye, but most anglers will bend over backward to point you in the right direction to catch a mess of bluegill. 

The almighty rainbow trout is stocked by thousands all over the country. As soon as stocker trout get planted into a body of water, they begin to feed feverishly. They keep this pace for weeks, sometimes longer, making excellent targets for all anglers, especially those new to fishing. 

Trout stockings are easy to find on most state fishery management websites, allowing anglers almost guaranteed success. A quick tip with targeting freshly stocked trout is the first couple days, a mass of stockers won't leave the area where they were stocked. It usually isn't hard to find the area where they were stocked as they usually back the stocking truck down a boat ramp.

Check this blog out for a few quick tips on how to find fisheries with your target species. 

Fishing Tip of the Week:

Choosing the right fish hook is always essential to angling success. Although rainbow trout and bluegill can be aggressive and plentiful, selecting the right hook makes a huge difference. Furthermore, changing the hook size or adjusting the hook after getting close to your legal limit of fish to take home can keep you on the water longer and quickly/safely release fish for other anglers to enjoy. 

Rainbow Trout: 

When stocked rainbows are plentiful, the action using bait can be hot and heavy. The three bait staples in a trout anglers arsenal are Powerbait, salmon eggs, and nightcrawlers. Whether using a slip sinker rig, suspending bait off the bottom above a casting sinker, or dangling under a bobber, these baits are perfect for our Baitholder Snells. 

Matching the size of your hook to the baits you're presenting, and the size of the fish you're catching is ideal. When in doubt, a size 6 is a great starting point to catch rainbows using Powerbait, salmon eggs, or nightcrawlers. 

If you're practicing catch and release from the start or want to keep fishing although you're close to your legal limit, you can do a few things to ensure your fish are released as safely as possible. First, you can take a pair of needle nose pliers and pinch down the barb. Removing the barb makes taking the hook out super quick and easy. Another thing you can do to avoid gut-hooking fish is to upsize your hooks. 

Bluegill: 

Bluegill are rarely picky when they stack up like cordwood. They'll hit various baits and don't worry much about line size, casting accuracy, or the perfect hook size. Gills would try to take a chunk of nightcrawler off a shark hook if you dangled it off a dock in the midwest. However, with their tiny mouths, quickly unhooking them can be a pain. Using Aberdeen hooks alleviates that headache before it starts. The long shank on Aberdeen hooks makes removing hooks a breeze, so you spend more time catching fish and less fussing to unhook fish. Another added benefit of using Aberdeen hooks is their light-wire construction which makes hook sets effortless and presents baits more naturally. An excellent starting size for Aberdeen hooks when targeting bluegill is size 8. 

Product of The Week:Product of The Week: 139 Baitholder Snell

When I sat down this morning to write the blog's product of the week section, I had planned to keep it short and sweet. Conversationally highlight the features and benefits, let the reader see how this product can help them be the angler they want to be. How could I do that with the hook that sparked my lifelong angling passion? Goodness gracious, with the snells it goes deeper than the hook too. It's the iconic bald eagle with the rainbow trout cemented into its perfectly engineered talons. The Legendary photo of Paul Mount proudly displaying a mess of trout. Whenever I look at the packaging of the 139's, I'm immediately taken back to the Stone House ponds just outside of Denver. I smell the unique combination of things you only get when fishing in a city pond. It's a mixture of dry dirt, fresh-cut grass, moss, and a hint of fish that makes me want to call into work and go fishing. I can see the organized chaos inside my grandpa's tackle box that made all things fishing possible. Many of the parts of pieces of his tackle box changed, but the staple, the one thing that never changed, was the stack of neatly organized Eagle Claw Snelled Bait Holders. If I don't stop here, I will write a couple of thousand words on how the packaging of the 139's hits me right in the feels, but can you blame me? Like millions of others, these hooks are integral to my family's fishing history and future. 

Now that we're a couple of hundred words in, I should probably talk about why our Snelled Bait Holders have woven their way into the hearts and minds of anglers for generations. Yes, the packaging is as Americana as baseball and apple pie, but that isn't the reason why so many anglers rely on them. They hook and hold. It sounds simple. It is simple, but a symphony of details works together to orchestrate consistent angling success. The position of the Eagle Claw hook point paired with the pre-snelled section of monofilament gives anglers the perfect line pull for sure hook sets that have held for generations. Like all Eagle Claw Hooks, they're made right here in Denver, Colorado, as they have been since 1925. 

Catch of The Week:

Regional Pro-Staff member Joel Kyriazes proudly displays this fantastic northern pike! You'll see more of Joel's photos in the future as they all have one thing in common I really enjoy. He's always smiling! Joel loves fishing and it shows!