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You get promoted by your post count. You start as a one star general and work your way to a five star general. On the road trip you must salute those with more stars whenever your paths cross.

i was telling a friend about this and thought i would share with youall. last summer i was fishing a night tourney with an older gentleman friend of mine. he doesnt see too well at night. i was watching my line, all of the sudden he yells he has a bite. i look over and see his line is not in the water, but in fact on the bank up a tree hanging over a limb. it was a full moon so i could see his line rather well. in that instant he yelled he had another bite and while i was looking at his line and getting ready to tell him of his misfortune, i could see a shadow in the same vinicity as where his line ended on the limb. and it was moving! so i begin to say to him i think. . . . . . . . all of the sudden he says " there it is again" trying to hold back my emotions, i tell him i believe you are up a tree and bird has gotten it. of course he says no way(he was not using night line so he didnt even know where his line was) and then again he gets bit and sets the hook! he set on slack line so of course he says "dam i missed" then "heck there he is again" and just before he sets the hook he says " i think he got off". at this point i am crying and trying to tell him hes up a tree and getting bit by an owl!! after a few minutes of him telling me im crazy, he gets another hit, sets the hook, all hell breaks loose! the limb snaps, the owl flies, and that my friends is the gods honest truth!! everytime i tell the story i get choked up with laughter and i STILL think he thought he was on a good fish!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqg3Pg2M9WU

Went out to "Pond X" with a buddy again on a cold March day(3/30/11 last Wednesday), started off with my buddy catching a dink on a suspending jerk bait. Though oh no, they are gonna be hard to catch today. With the temps in the low 40's and rain for the past couple days, we didn't expect much but to have fun! Typically catch them on spinner-baits and plastics, I threw a white 1/2 oz spinner-bait for a while and missed one! He switched quickly to a soft plastic and caught another small one. Went about an hour or so and nothing, so I decided to tie on a Reaction Innovations sweet beaver green pumpkin/red flake and within 20 min BAM, I hook and land my new PB, weighed, took pictures and released to be caught another day! She weighed 8lb 9 oz. ( checked twice ). Didn't catch another fish all day, but we didn't care! Now for the pics..... 3/30/2011 "Pond X" 44 degrees Shimano Curado 7' MH/F 12lb Yo-Zuri Hybrid 1/8 oz unpegged T-rigged Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver Green Pumpkin/Red Flake Had to take enough pictures for the Taxidermist to be able to mount her from pictures!!!! :D

After the Sturgeon being almost non-existent in most of my normal fishing waters this year, I started putting some bits and pieces together, and geeeez ! Did I ever find them ! Tuesday I had the best Sturgeon fishing trip of my entire life ! The bite was just unbelievable ! Of course I was using my micro-lights. Now the thing is, normally when Sturgeon fishing, it's about like throwing big swimbaits for trophy bass. You might get 2 or 3 hits in a day, and if you are lucky, you might catch one. So using two rods usually helps.... but they were hitting so fast, that in retrospect, I'd have probably been better off to use only one rod, and just holding it the entire time ! I missed a ton of fish, while messing with the other rod. Another crazy thing > they bit any stinking thing I through at them ! I quickly ran out of pile worms, so I dug into my box of earthworms I had dug up, for split tail fishing. They quickly ate all of those up. Then I used up the rest of some old, funky, froze and thawed, froze again, and thawed Salmon roe. {hooked a monster on that.... I'll get to that in a minute } Then, when I was down to nothing but a large, dead split tail, from the day befores Striper fishing, I cut the belly out of it, and quickly stuck a very nice Sturgy on that too ! Okay, so here's what I caught... Started out with a couple fat, healthy, and very strong.... but not quite legal keepers (legal size is 46" to 66") of 44" and 45" ! Even with those, I did actually disconnect from the anchor, and chase them around for 10 to 15 minutes each. Then, at 1pm, I hooked one that I could just tell was BIG ! Seemed like it took this one a minute or two, to even realize it had a problem, as it just meandered around under the boat. Finally, it started swimming upstream, against the tide ? (very unusual). It did that for about 1/4 mile, before turning around, and swimming waaaay back past where I hooked it. I used Google earth to determine that I chased it for right at 2 miles ! It took me 2 hours and 25 minutes, but finally, at 3:25pm I landed that monster It measured 75", was VERY fat, and had an approximate weight of 130 lbs ! This is the biggest fish I've ever landed on a micro-light rod Whooo Hooo Caught it on my new Shimano Sahara 1000, with the aftermarket carbontex drag washer, and I have to say, that the drag performed flawlessly ! In fact, not once did I ever reach up to adjust it, during the entire battle ! So, after all of that, with my whole boat, in shambles, and my arm feeling like it might fall off, I was wondering, "What could possibly make this trip any better" ? Hmmmm..... Maybe a nice, solid keeper ? So by like 4 pm, I'm regrouped, and back on the spot. This is when I had resorted to cutting out the belly of the dead split tail I had in the live well. Took all of about 5 minutes. First I got a couple of tiny "warning bumps".... then the classic Sturgeon pulldown... Swing ! Fish on ! Turned out to be a beautiful, healthy, 60" keeper Now granted, it doesn't get dark until 7:30 or so.... but 1) I really didn't have any bait left anyway, 2) How was I going to top this trip ? 3) I had some serious fish cleaning to do, 4) my arm was all but dead as it was. So I called it a day. Now here's the thing, yes, I was on the water for 10 hours, but I spent 1 hour of travel (round trip). Next, I spent about 3 1/2 hours disconnected from my anchor, and fighting / chasing Sturgeon. Then maybe another hour getting the boat into position, poles baited back up, and casted out, etc. So as far as sitting with baited lines in the water, waiting for a bite.... maybe 3 to 4 hours, of the 10 hour trip. And in those 3 to 4 hours, between fish landed, fish hooked and lost, and bites missed altogether, I bet I had 20 Sturgeon bites ! Just unreal ! I can't wait to go back out next week. Couple things I will probably change though... 1) I will only fish one rod to start out with, and if the bite is even 3/4's as hot, theirs no need for two rods. 2) I pretty much know I can land ANY sized fish I hook on the micro-lights now.... it just takes a lot longer. That said, I think I'm going to use my swimbasit rods next week, so I can really feel the power of these monsters So basically next week, I'm going to see how many big ones I can land in a day. Honestly, I think I could land 12 or 15 of them if the bite was the same, and I was using heavy enough gear that I didn't have to cut loose from the anchor (in most cases) Can't post a photo of the 75"..... as technically, anything over 66" is not supposed to be brought onto a boat at all. Then how do you measure it you might ask ? The F&G says you can put marker strips of tape on the side of your boat, then pull the fish up to these markers to get a good idea. {the real reason for all of this, coming straight from a few of my F&G acquaintances, is that if they allowed people to pull these fish onto a boat, their would be people who had no intention of releasing them.... but then, if the F&G approached them, they would always say, "We were just fixing to release it". So basically, this reg gives the F&G a leg to stand on. I've also been told that in most cases, pulling an oversizer onto a boat, for a quick measurement, and snapshot, is not really grounds for enforcement. It's mostly when the "intent" to keep the over-sized fish is obvious.} Posting a photo of such a fish is a whole other situation, as then their is no proof that "one didn't keep it" ! Anyway, here's that really healthy, 60" (about 60 lbs) that I did keep. Just got done eating some more of it this evening ! Awesome ! Tastes like Pork chop. Can't wait to grill some on the B-B-Q'er Sorry for the epic ramble. I've just been stoked about this trip all week ! Can't wait to get back out there Peace, Fish PS > I have posted a post with more emotioncons than this forum allows ?!?! So what are they saying.... I smile too much ? Doh ! So how many smiles are allowed anyway ?

Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Ghoti.

we should have a system here where readers can thumb a comment up or down like on you tube. is that pointless? too much work? just curious. it'd be nice to have that option instead of people posting x2 or x3 or one word comments like "agreed" just a thought.

I hope this doesn't violate any of the forum rules. A female CNN journalist heard about a very old Jewish man who had been going to the Western Wall to pray, twice a day, every day, for a long, long time. So she went to check it out. She went to the Western Wall and there he was, walking slowly up to the holy site. She watched him pray and after about 45 minutes, when he turned to leave, using a cane and moving very slowly, she approached him for an interview. "Pardon me, sir, I'm Rebecca Smith from CNN. What's your name? "Morris Feinberg," he replied. "Sir, how long have you been coming to the Western Wall and praying?" "For about 60 years." "60 years! That's amazing! What do you pray for?" "I pray for peace between the Christians, Jews and the Muslims." "I pray for all the wars and all the hatred to stop." "I pray for all our children to grow up safely as responsible adults, and to love their fellow man." "How do you feel after doing this for 60 years?" "Like I'm talking to a frickin wall."

These are 6,7,8 year old kids. You get maybe a couple practices before the season and then you start playing games. It is supposed to be an instructional league at this age, but they can't learn anything if the other coach is sending the kids like a merry-go-round.

i upvoted this

i added that laughing smiley at the end to convey my joking manner. my head isnt that big. it is a nice feature. filters clutter comments

Bad or good depends a lot on what/where the beavers are doing, beavers are one of the few species that can modify greatly the environment with their actions and it depends what they can affect. Let´s suppose you have a nice cabin and a stream flows through your property, if the streams flows right at your doorstep and suddenly beavers decide to make that stream their home well, then what´s going to happen is going to be bad for your cabin, they are going to build a dam blocking the stream flow which is going to create a pond and ..... maybe your cabin is going to become part of the cover found in the pond several feet below water level, so that´s bad news for you. In another aspect, and supposing they are not going to cause any property damage then beavers may not be detrimental but actually a blessing, they are hervibourous, they do not harm the fish not eat them ( like otters ), they create habitat for the fish ( beaver huts ), they fertilize the pond with their droppings, attract other wildlife ( like waterfowl ), they deepen the pond, the only bad news would be for the trees surrounding the pond.

Got it! Thanks, guys! This is what I was seeing before:

To you it makes sense, to all of those theorizing about what makes sense makes perfect sense, but bass don´t read no bass fishing books, nor visit fishing forums. What does a spinninerbait imitate ( matches the hatch ) ? don´t see a big bunch of spinnerbaits swimming around in any lake and spinnerbaits catch bass and the same can be said about almost every bait available. So worry not about matching the hatch, worry mory about learning to fish your baits perfectly and place them where the fish are, I assure you will catch more fish by doing that than by fishing sloppy and in the wrong place that perfectly painted crank or that life like soft plastic craw.

IMHO you handled the situation poorly. You could have also been cited. Judging by your story and actions, harassment, disorderly conduct, and possibly cruelty to animals, comes to mind. Not to mention being bitten by a dog unfamiliar to you. You're walking a fine line with the owner also. Would you have done the same thing if it were a male owner? I'd venture to say no. If it were my dog and you treated it like you describe, you may have ended up with more than you bargined for. The dog owner desereved being cited, but if I investigated the incident, you would have also been.

Season opener is still 4 weeks away for me - but with all the great sticks on BR who can fish, there MUST be at least a few new entries . . . . A-Jay

I think length of daylight, temperature, and instinct all play a part. If we knew exactly what prompts bass to go on the beds and make other movements it would remove all the challenge from finding them. For now we have to live with the behavioral generalities as we know them.

Over reaction ! I would have found it humorous and probably forgotten about it 10 minutes later. True the dog should have been on a leash and getting the hook away from the dog was good, but I would not manhandle someone else's dog. It was only a 2lb fish, had you just released it the incident would not have happened and the fish would have lived.

Really old video. Welcome to the internet.

Uh.... You're old? Thats all I've got....

Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs are the best! I cannot even tell you how many I have eaten so far this season. After Easter, I go around to a bunch of stores and buy them at half price.

Hmmmm, we're here without much difficulty. Go find an 8 year old kid to help ya log in . I say that with humor because I find kids these days are superior than most when it comes to computers.

You didn't know that credibility is a function of high post count? ;D

I don't think a "me too" post unnaturally boosts post count. I don't care for it since it seems lazy, but for the person asking the question, the strength in numbers might help them decide what info is useful.

I think many of us use the x2 and x3 now and then. It's one thing to use it and really mean it and it is quite another to use it for post count. I don't pay attention like the moderators do but I can't say I've really noticed anyone using this to boost post count recently. But then, I've learned to stay away from things that bother me for the most part on forums. Life is too short.

Faylor Sunset by nate.follmer, on Flickr Ok, I'm breaking my own rule, but since its 'Falls Friday' here's the only picture of water I have haha: Poe Paddy 2 by nate.follmer, on Flickr

Words of advises.....DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS. The AL Title is here to stay no matter what the media says Fear The Claw and Antlers

This thread has run for thirty-seven pages, Do you really believe that anyone in their right mind gives a rats- about what you bought?