Provided photo The author landed this spring white crappie on a sparsely-tied Clouser minnow, an effective pattern that incorporates loose clumps of colored bucktail and strands of krystal flash.

The wonderful thing about the outdoors — and one that it took me a couple decades to learn — is that it can be taken as seriously or as light-heartedly as one wants to. You can spend 60 days in a treestand, watching the deer, checking trail camera photos, and tracking the movement of that one buck you want to take, or you can show up on opening day, or as time allows during bow season and call that a win, just being out there or getting a shot at any deer that passes by being considered success. 


The same goes for angling. You can invest in the latest boat, front facing sonar, a kicker motor and a high-end troller and have a lake covered in no time, finding every walleye haunt and honey hole. Alternatively, you can show up with rod in hand, fishing from shore, dunking worms or minnows or casting go-to lures at those favorite spots along a flow and catch what you catch to find your joy. Again, super-serious, dedicated, cutting edge presentations, or what’s always worked, light on gear, and heavy on relaxation are the options — or some mix of the two on a sliding scale.


But where it comes to being a bit lighter, all the time for me, is with spring fishing for just about any species. The cooler waters, more lethargic nature of fish, and oftentimes more subtle bites they provide with the season’s whipsaw of weather, require a bit of tweaking in presentation and this starts with lure crafting or selection, on up to the line and gear used. Keeping this lighter side of a presentation front of mind is often key to more catches this time of year. 


Lighter lures


Whether crafting Clouser minnows for early crappies on the fly, tinsel jigs for early season walleyes, or bucktail offerings for pre-spawn smallies, I tend to go on the lighter side of things, first when it comes to material and second when it comes to weight of my offerings. I’ve found that a sparser selection of hairs or strands of synthetic materials just provide a better presentation in the water. Over several winters of trial-and-error, I perfected my favorite flies and jigs and found that cramming more stuff on the hook shank didn’t necessarily mean more fish. Rather, it was the sparser setups that caught more fish. By giving the materials on the hook more room to breathe as they pulsed and popped from my presentation in the water, they just looked more natural to me and ultimately my quarry.


In regard to weight, especially in cooler, post-frontal spring conditions (which we’ve seen a lot of so far this season) going smaller on lures, and having offerings available in a number of reduced sizes, such as 1/16-ounce jigs versus 1/8 ouncers, and size 10 streamers as opposed to size sixes, gives me the opportunity to go a little lighter and provide a bit less for fish to scrutinize in colder, tougher spring conditions. As long as they’re able to hold their own in the current of moving water and effectively get down to fish in ponds and lakes without terribly long drop times, I’ll typically lean for the lighter option until waters warm and fish feed more aggressively in May and June, when bigger baits will do better. 


Lighter line and rod


As my lures get a bit lighter — both in form and weight — so too goes the line and rods I present them on. When jig fishing for spring crappies, three- or four-pound test is the way to go, and I have rods rigged up that are super sensitive ultralight options to detect those bites as well. On the fly rod, I’ll downsize to 6X tippet from my usual 5x for panfish and spring trout in clear waters as well, which equates to about 3.75-pound test, matching my standard tackle.


For walleyes, I like to downsize to a medium light graphite jigging rod for the yeoman’s work of my spring outings, and will often employ a 6-pound test monofilament line for those presentations, or an equivalent fluorocarbon leader spliced onto a superline, when hitting those gin waters of spring. As long as the bait is ticking along the bottom, and I know my line and drag is up to the task for those fish, I feel fairly confident in this era of my angling adventures that I can do what needs to be done and present things effectively, even if they’re a bit lighter. 


Hunting and fishing can be considered weighty outdoor business, or the activities can be as loose and easy-going as you want them to be. When it comes to spring offerings for fish across the region, however, many of us have our go-to preparations, plans and presentations, that after some time on the water and learnings about how light we can go, we take most of those options quite seriously … in our outdoors.