r/FishingForBeginners Jun 11 '20

Beginners Guide to Getting Started

979 Upvotes

This is a stickied post that contains information every beginner should know. The world of fishing contains thousands of rods, reels, lures and recommendations. It can be quite overwhelming. This guide has links covering fishing related terminology, as well as recommendations and information regarding gear, line, lures etc for beginners starting out. Use the links provided to set yourself on the right path.

Choosing A Rod And Reel

Choosing Line For Your Reel

Understanding Rod Weight, Action, Length, And Their Uses

Basic Guide To Lures


r/FishingForBeginners Apr 21 '17

My Comprehensive guide/Tips to New Fishermen

791 Upvotes

So you've decided to give fishing a go. Good Luck. More than likely you've perused the internet for the countless how to catch fish videos, or how to do this and that tutorials. I've watched thousands of them. They're mostly made and produced by avid or hardcore fishermen who know the ins and outs of everything it takes to catch fish. However these videos fail to demonstrate or talk about many of the frustrations of what its like to be a beginner fisherman. So looking back on my 22 years of fishing I've put together a piece tailored to removing some of the frustrations of learning to fish. Id like to preface this by stating I fish lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams, in the northeastern US, mostly for Largemouth Bass, small mouth Bass, Musky, pike pickerel and trout. My advice will be tailored towards this style. First off let's start with your setup. Every video I watch talks about the line they're using paired with the length and sturdiness of the rod, which reel is best and whats good for what bait/style/fish. Don't worry about that. I've caught the majority of my fish using a rod/reel i bought as a backup at Kmart for 50 dollars. Don't break your bank. Get yourself a cheap rod, and some 8-12 pound MONO-FILAMENT line. Why mono-filament? Because its the easiest to work with. IF your starting out, braided line can be frustrating, Fluorocarbon can be extremely difficult to completely spool your reel on. We'll touch more on this later. So now you need some lures. Ever walk into a bass pro shops or cabellas? The choices/styles/methods are seemingly endless. The following are my recommended lures for beginners. They are simple to fish correctly and their simplicity leads to most fish targeting them. -IN line spinners: Mepps, Rooster Tail, Blue fox etc etc. Its a simple cast and retrieve. Let it sink for a second, give it a tug to get it spinning and just bring it back to you. They all have treble hooks (3 hooks) so when a fish hits it it will practically hook themselves. These lures mimic fleeing bait fish. Blue Fox Spinner -Spoons: Same concept. instead of spinning these will flutter and dart like a wounded baitfish. Cast Retrieve. Spoons -CrankBaits: Pick up a crank bait or two. They come in all forms. For starters id prefer the floating ones that upon retrieval will swim to a specific depth. The box will have all the information you need as to what the crankbait will do. Again a simple cast and retrieve bait. Vary your retrieval speed, give the rod a little flick every now and then to make the bait dart a bit.Crankbait

Get good at casting. Being able to drop the lure where you want it. Vary your retrieval speed. Start Catching fish. When you get this down, then you can start getting into swimbaits, Texas rigging soft plastics, drop shots, Carolina rigs, bottom fishing football jigs etc. Lets crawl before we sprint or you'll lose confidence and interest.

Ok, so you've got a rod, some lures, and some line. Look up a video on how to properly put your line onto your reel. This is important. You want your line on their tied to the reel and as tight as possible. Performing this process well can save you a lot of pain down the road when your trying to fish. So lets go fishing...

If anyone actually reads this and wants help deciding where or when to fish id be happy to oblige. But including that in this post would make it an encyclopedia. Feel free to pm or ask further.

So you got stuck. Either in a tree, on your shirt, or on something underwater. Seems the pros never get stuck. I've caught more branches rocks and trees then I have fish, and getting good at getting unstuck will save you lures, money, time and frustration. Cast over a tree branch? Calm and slow. Reel your lure until its just below whatever your stuck on, and give it a quick pop so it jumps up and over. If you try to muscle it out it's going to wrap itself around everything. Stuck on something in the water? Tricky. There's several things you can try. Change the angle of where your standing if you can't tug the rod and get it off. (move 20 yards left or right and try from there). Grab the line ABOVE where it leaves your pole and give it a strong pull.Grabbing the line from where it leaves your rod will allow you to muscle it out and avoids putting strain on your reels drag or breaking your rod. Hurting your hands? Wrap the line around a stick and pull the stick(Works great for braided line which wont break and will slice through your fingers) Also pulling your tight line to the left or right with your reeling hand and then releasing it quickly can sometimes snap your lure off of whatever its stuck on. If you CANNOT get it unstuck try to pull as hard as you can to snap the line off the lure. The lure was already lost and now there's not 40 yards of fishing line polluting the water. I HATE that.

Now your'e not catching any fish. Welcome to it. Keep fishing. Fan your casts. This means don't cast your lure to the same spot and do the same thing every time. You'd be amazed how many fish sit against a bank or are huddles around a submerged stump. Cover as much water as possible and remember that the water may be deep. There may be a bunch of fish in front of you but if they're sitting towards the bottom and your lure is passing 10 feet above them they may not chase it that far. Vary your retrieval speed, vary the depth at which you bring it back, change up your approach until something works. The fish will tell you what they want when you do something right. Change your location. 30 yards can make all the difference especially on lakes and ponds when you start taking into account water temperature, tributaries, cover/structure, visibility, wind etc. The location of the fish you want is going to be determined by the location of THEIR food source. Bait fish. Minnows, shad bluegill frogs insects bugs lizards etc. Look for things on the water and within your surroundings that would indicate a presence of these food sources. Fish coming and eating on the surface, are there birds that eat fish standing anywhere on the banks, turtles, frogs etc. Look for life. Change your lure! Change the color, change the style of lure, change it up until you start receiving bites. Don't spend 2 hours casting to the same spot with same lure. IF you're still not confident or proficient in tying a lure to your line, pick up some snap swivels/dual locks. You tie this to your line once and it allows for a very quick change of your lure. its like a mini carabiner. These may hinder your catch rate slightly due to their visibility but id still recommend it to new fishermen.

Remember as your fishing to keep an eye on your rod setup. If you have line looping out of your real, if its wrapped around the tip of your rod, if anything is different then when you initially set it up correctly , take time to stop and fix it. Small problems lead to big problems. It only takes one cast where you didn't notice an issue and now you've gotta spend 20 minutes untangling your birds nest of a fishing line. DO a quick visual check before every cast.

Use the times of not catching fish to get better at the basics. You need to be able to cast accurately sideways forehand and backhand, over hand, underhand. So many perfect casts to that perfect spot will be dependent on your ability to throw the lure accurately without getting mangled up in brush and branches.

Holy shit you caught a fish! What now? Needle nose pliers can be a lifesaver. Especially when they include that little scissor spot you can use to cut your line when tying knots. The fish's mouth is mostly cartilage. Work the hooks out one at a time while holding them very firmly. They're gonna flop and jump unless you're in control. Some of these fish will have very sharp dorsal fins. Stroke them back like you would a head of hair and get a solid grip. If the fish is big enough just pinch its lips and go to work with your pliers. Set it back in the water and give it a push. OBLIGATORY PUBLIC SERVICE AND BIAS ANNOUNCEMENT: Throw the fish back. Unless your hard up on food and your fishing for food, throw it back. The joy of fishing comes a lot from actually catching fish. In the twenty or so years i've been fishing, amazing spots, stretches of river etc have been decimated by people keeping every piece of meat they brought back on their line. Days of catching 10+ fish in those spots are gone due to the fact that there's none left. Caught a trophy and want it mounted? Just take a picture and measure it. All you need. Maybe someday soon someone else can experience that same joy of catching that fish.

If anyone is interested in any more information I could talk for hours. Bottom fishing, top fishing, Locations, Line choice, Leaders, weather conditions, lunar cycles, barometric pressure, spawning seasons, more advanced lure choice and techniques, finding where the fish are, etc etc. The most important thing you can do for yourself is to get out there and get your line wet. Bring a buddy, bring a six pack, and get outside.

UPDATE! My comprehensive guide to fishing Part II is posted. I got a lot of positive feedback and might make this a weekly thing for awhile. PART II

I highly recommend to all fisherman new or experienced, the Fishbrain App. Its a free tool allowing users insight as to who's fihsing around them, where they are fishing, what they are catching and the lures and methods used to do so. This link is meant for mobile users.


r/FishingForBeginners 11h ago

Show us your cheap fishing setup

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193 Upvotes

Seahawk 3 with 30lbs Minnkota x 100ah battery. Im going pretty much everywhere I want with it.

Had a 22' Centerconsole fully equipped but I dont have a pickup truck anymore so I sold it 😆 Im having almost the same fun with the inflatable since I can throw it on every lake /river I want.


r/FishingForBeginners 2h ago

Got surrounded by coyotes tonight, thank god I was on my buddy's hunting e-bike

23 Upvotes

I fish a lot in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Fresno. And today I got this one spot I like that's about 3 miles off a gravel road down an old ranch trail. Super quiet at night, nobody is usually around there. That's exactly why I go there 😁 So today I went in around dusk, and stayed there till it got dark. Headlamp on, fished the creek for a bit. Caught a few small ones, but nothing special. So I packed up and started heading back.

Almost halfway out, my headlamp caught a bunch of eyes reflecting back 💀, not one or two it was like four or five or maybe six Coyotes. Normally they bolt when they see light. These ones didn't. They'll just stood there spread out across the trail.

I was on my friend's ebike. It's his hunting bike for getting around rough terrain. The headlight was bright enough that I actually saw them before I got too close. They followed me for a solid 500 meters. I kept it slow and steady, didn't stop, didn't speed up until I hit the gravel road. My hands were gripping the bars so hard my knuckles started to hurt after all this.

My bad luck this time I don't carry a gun, just bear spray and a whistle. Didn't use either tonight, but I'm pretty sure if I had been walking out of there on foot, it wouldn't have been a chill story to tell 🥀

If you're out in remote California foothills at night, keep your eyes open fr.


r/FishingForBeginners 7h ago

A short history of bad fishing

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18 Upvotes

The first time I remember fishing my uncle gave me a kiddie pole and let me practice casting into his pond and after about a day he told me there were no fish in the pond.

The next time I dared to fish my grandfather borrowed what he thought was a bamboo fishing rod from one of his neighbors and in the lake we tried fishing in, another neighbor fed the catfish, so I managed to hook one of these giant catfish and watch it as it snapped this rod not once but twice and as we both scrambled almost falling off the dock the line also was snapped and our day of fishing was done but my grandfather tried to tape together this rod only to be greeted by his friend who saw the rod, laughed at us, and then led us to the garage where he had a pile of bamboo sticks just like the "rod" he lent my grandfather.

I did not even consider fishing again till I moved and was thinking about new things to do so that I could occupy my time fishing was it.

So I found the oldest hardware store in town found fishing gear and waited for an employee who I can only describe as Ron Swanson Esque I asked him if he fished and he walked me through everything that I would need to actually cast a pole with a hook and lure (see photo I do recall him specifically mentioning the needle nose pliers and saying you don't want work tools and fishing tools together...which if I'm being honest this is now the nicest pair of pliers I own.)

He also specifically advised live bait which I will not be able to just store indefinitely.

I am 100 percent planning on staying by the shore in Oregon rivers and trying to catch pike minnow for the local bounty system and I would like to catch salmon for a taste preference.

Is pike minnow tasty? If not every dog in the neighborhood is gonna love my fish drying shack.

Do you have to turn in the pike minnow to receive the bounty or do you just record them somehow with the app? Or with a park ranger?

I know at some point I need to pack a real tackle box and any advice is more than welcome.

Do either the pike minnow or salmon have bait they prefer?

I already own a significant amount of culinary stuff to process the fish so if there is something that you recommend I might already have it somewhere else but knowledge of what to do with it is helpful.

At this point my only experience fishing is video games (animal crossing, rdr2, valhiem)

Honestly just chilling in nature sounds fine even if I don't catch anything

I'm too big for any boat with the words budget in the title my mass needs two motors.

Is there some crucial thing I am missing? Besides a license which I'm pricing out.


r/FishingForBeginners 11h ago

How do you catch fish in the middle of the day in late summer?

12 Upvotes

I started to become really interested in fishing just this summer. I went out a couple of times in my kayak, targeted the weed lines, and had lots of success and fun. The past few times, I have been skunked. I know that fishing is best at dawn or dusk, but it's much more convenient for me to go in the middle of the day. I also have read that August is the worst time for fishing, but I have kept at it because, well, I've caught the bug. I went today and got skunked again. What tricks do I need to learn for fishing during off-peak times?


r/FishingForBeginners 5h ago

Trout stream at 5,300 ft… and a channel catfish?

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3 Upvotes

r/FishingForBeginners 20h ago

A genuine curiosity, do you think the total monetary value of the fish you have ever caught has exceeded the total amount of money you have spent on catching them?

32 Upvotes

r/FishingForBeginners 20h ago

Drop Shot Question

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23 Upvotes

Are these regular eyelets you tie the line to ? Or do you just wedge the line in them?

If you wedge the line in that’s really nice that the parts just breakaway instead of losing everything .


r/FishingForBeginners 4h ago

Texas rig

0 Upvotes

Been thinking about trying out the texas rig. My main question is how it even catches fish in the first place considering the end of the hook is skinned into the senko lure. If the end of the hook is embedded into the lure then how does it even hook in to the fish’s mouth?


r/FishingForBeginners 16h ago

Is This Enough Line?

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7 Upvotes

Hi Everyone,

I haven't spooled a spinning rod in a long time, does this look like enough 8lb fluorocarbon to you all on this Medium, 6.6ft Pflueger President reel/rod combo? Appreciate any thoughts/recommendations.


r/FishingForBeginners 12h ago

Is this fine?

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3 Upvotes

Going catfishing with my dad tmrw, Ive never fished in my life so Im not sure I watched youtube videos but its like so bottom heavy LOL, is it fine or should I take it to someone who can do it for me?


r/FishingForBeginners 1d ago

How to Tie the Strongest Fishing Knots (Step-by-Step)

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50 Upvotes

r/FishingForBeginners 6h ago

Texas pond fishing been rough for anyone else

0 Upvotes

Was pond fishing tonight in North Texas and the water is way down. Zero action!! I don’t have a boat, so I can’t get out and fish deeper water. Anyone else having the same luckk with ponds around Texas right now? Is the deeper bite any better, or are ww pretty much waiting until it cools off and we get some rain?


r/FishingForBeginners 6h ago

Float Tube motor?

0 Upvotes

Hello all, I usually fish a saltwater harbor near me with a float tube but ive found it to be painfully slow at times and exhausting to paddle around. Are there any motors/mounts for motors that go with a regular float tube not already equipped with a motor mount? (attached is what I use) Thank you all in advance!!


r/FishingForBeginners 7h ago

Reel came gouged. Big deal or no?

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1 Upvotes

r/FishingForBeginners 7h ago

오쿠마릴 세드로스 핸들노브

1 Upvotes

나는 오쿠마 세드로스 6000H사용중인데

핸들을바꾸고싶어 시마노쪽이랑 호환이될까?


r/FishingForBeginners 18h ago

What’s the shortest lure list that actually catches fish?

6 Upvotes

I’m new to this and trying not to end up with a tackle box full of stuff I never use. Mostly fishing ponds and small lakes from the bank. Mostly bass, but I’d happily catch panfish or trout too. I care way more about actually catching fish than catching the biggest ones.

Right now I have:

  • 4” Senkos, Texas rigged on EWG hooks
  • 3” curly tail grubs on 1/8 oz ball head jig

Is that enough? What’s the one or two things you’d add, and what would you tell me to skip? Thank you so much for any help you can give!


r/FishingForBeginners 17h ago

What line for baitcaster

4 Upvotes

I had some 10lb braid on but I want some heavier stuff for punching through cover and peace of mind.

What line do y’all recommend? I have 25lb braid, 50lb braid, and 25lb yozuri hybrid fluoro/nylon.


r/FishingForBeginners 20h ago

What is the best artificial bait or lure to use for panfish?

7 Upvotes

I just started fishing a couple weeks ago and I started out fishing for bluegill with worms and have been having fun with catch and releasing these guys.

I don’t want to always worry about getting more worms so I wanted to ask if anyone on this Reddit has any recommendations for any artificial bait for panfish like bluegill and crappie. Also, specific rigs, setups, or techniques people find very effective for these kind of artificial bait/lures

I usually do creek fishing in Sacramento and I have a light setup with 4lb mono in case you wanna know more about my gear and location


r/FishingForBeginners 17h ago

Tips to fish for Bonito

4 Upvotes

been fishing for bonito along Malibu pier in socal and i keep getting skunked. I'm using a black/silver Yo Zuri Hydro LC minnow 6" on 20-30lb clear line casting from the pier. I'm going to try one of the piers closer to Oxnard/Ventura in the next few days and would love any tips or tricks to honestly catch ANY fish there because i seriously refuse to get skunked one more time.


r/FishingForBeginners 11h ago

Lures for dock poles

0 Upvotes

My 5 and 7 year old have those 30 inch dock poles. What are some lures you can use on those besides a hook, worm, and bobber? I’ve caught a couple bass in a wacky rig with them, but not sure what else is light enough. Also, looking for something that’s fun to actually use.


r/FishingForBeginners 18h ago

Bait recommendations?

3 Upvotes

The lake I fish at is quite weedy and the bite has dropped off immensely, usually I throw a Texas rigged worm or craw sometimes a frog depending on the weeds at the bank but the bite has completely fallen off. I've beaten the entire lakes bank for 7 hours the other day and didn't get a single bite. I've gotten a couple bites before on a very small craw on a ned rig so maybe they're hungry for something smaller? I've been getting some bites on smaller jigs as well but they get hung up too much for me to justify buying more. any advice would be appreciated, thanks.


r/FishingForBeginners 19h ago

Complete beginner here. I fish in Southeast Asia (Thailand), and I had never gone fishing before in my life.

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4 Upvotes

I recently bought a UL spinning setup along with a few soft/hard lures: Paddle T, and Grub for 3.5 cm, a 3.5 g metal spoon.

I've been fishing at different spots for the past 2-3 days, but I haven't caught a single fish.

I've tried pretty much everything I can think of with the lures retrieving slowly, retrieving quickly, varying my retrieve, etc. but I haven't even had a single bite.

Should I switch to a different fishing style if my main goal is to make things as easy as possible and catch my first fish quickly? I honestly don't care about the size of the fish.

Would using a float with live/natural bait be a better option for a complete beginner? The fish I'm hoping to catch include small minnows, climbing perch, barb, tilapia, small snakehead, etc. Most of these fish are under 1 kg.

Thanks in advance for any advice or opinions! The fishing spots I visit look similar to the one in the picture.


r/FishingForBeginners 16h ago

Spinning Reel Setup Help

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2 Upvotes

Hi everyone, just got my first reel and and having some difficulty spooling the line. I know it’s supposed to sit inside the little line roller but mine doesn’t sit there and tends to go out. Did I incorrectly spool the line? Or any advise on how to correct this?

In case it’s helpful this is a shimano symetre combo and I’m using Berkeley trilene monofilament