How To Make Sure Your Truck Is Ready For Spring Fishing
Want to get some early-season bass, walleye, or pike on the line? You’ll need tires that are up to the challenge of the springtime thaw, first.
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Ice fishing is fun, but it’s nowhere near as popular as the annual return of anglers to their favorite spring fishing spots. Some of you are dusting off your favorite lures and hitting the same honey hole you’ve been fishing for years. Maybe this is your first chance to try out some gear you acquired during the winter. Either way, it’s finally time to get out of the house and make tracks. You’d better make sure your truck is up to the job with some fresh rubber, and General Tire has you covered.
To Find More Fish, You Have To Go The Distance
If you have a stocked pond on your property, well done—the rest of us envy you. Otherwise, you’ve got some ground to cover before you can start casting. That requires a tire that can withstand long highway trips in between fishing spots.
Most trucks come with road-biased tires because that’s where we log the most miles. It can be tempting to swap them out for a hardcore set of knobby mud tires but resist that urge. I’ve had much better luck with all-terrain tires like the Grabber A/T X that are quiet on the pavement and can handle years of driving before they wear out. All-terrain truck tires help me branch out, regardless of whether I’m covering ground on the interstate or navigating remote trails in Wisconsin’s North Woods.
Remember that towing a boat puts extra strain on your tires. They’ll have to work extra hard to maintain traction every time you accelerate or brake. Tire life will be reduced if you frequently tow a trailer, so rotate your tires more often than you otherwise would to preserve tread life.
As you’re scouting, don’t be afraid to get creative. There are some seriously productive bodies of water hiding in plain sight. A pond in a downtown office park might have been stocked ages ago. A stretch of river running through the city might be so obvious that most anglers look right past it. Identifying patches of public land or knocking on a few doors to ask for permission to access private water could turn a quiet spring fishing season into one for the ages.
This process involves a lot of driving, and it will be a lot more enjoyable if you aren’t watching your tires’ tread disappear with every trip.
Fishing Access Is Messy In The Spring
With spring showers come muddy, nasty roads. It’ll take more than a “4x4” decal on the side of your truck to reach undiscovered fishing holes, especially if you expect it to tackle the spring thaw with a boat trailer in tow.
Again, the versatility of an all-terrain tire shines in these scenarios. I’ve driven my truck through bumper-seep snow in New Hampshire, up rocky desert trails in Nevada, and across some pretty nasty mud bogs in Oklahoma—all on all-terrain tires.
The all-terrain tread pattern on the Grabber A/T X can handle loose dirt and mud, but it’s still quiet on the pavement. It’s three-peak mountain snowflake-rated for winter driving, and General Tire backs it up with a 60,000-mile warranty. There are certainly extreme cases where you’d want something more specialized, but those are few and far between. There’s no reason you can’t run this tire year-round.
Be Where The Fish Are
With spring showers come muddy, nasty roads. It’ll take more than a “4x4” decal on the side of your truck to reach undiscovered fishing holes, especially if you expect it to tackle the spring thaw with a boat trailer in tow.
Again, the versatility of an all-terrain tire shines in these scenarios. I’ve driven my truck through bumper-seep snow in New Hampshire, up rocky desert trails in Nevada, and across some pretty nasty mud bogs in Oklahoma—all on all-terrain tires.
The all-terrain tread pattern on the Grabber A/T X can handle loose dirt and mud, but it’s still quiet on the pavement. It’s three-peak mountain snowflake-rated for winter driving, and General Tire backs it up with a 60,000-mile warranty. There are certainly extreme cases where you’d want something more specialized, but those are few and far between. There’s no reason you can’t run this tire year-round.
