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Yesterday my bride and I celebrated our forty-fourth wedding anniversary. After all these years she's still my best friend and confidant. We've watched our kids grow up and bless us with their children; and then have their children bless us again with a great-grandchild. It seems like only yesterday when I asked her to be my wife, and to my great fortune, she accepted. Our life together has not always been a bed of roses, but she has stood by me through thick and thin, and Gawd how I love her for doing so.

I fish when I can. I don't let weather dictate too much. The only thing which keeps me from the water is when I can't punch a jig through the ice. LOL

Thank you to Glenn and the staff for providing the BassResource.com community and to all the members that participate, contribute, and support myself and the other sponsors. Happy Thanksgiving! Mike

New PB from November 2013. 10-lb-2oz.

I do because I have to fish when I have time. I can not wait for a perfect day and time. If I did I would never be able to fish.

My most thankful moment happened yesterday. My bride and I celebrated our forty-fourth wedding anniversary. It's great to spend that amount of time with your best friend. My second most thankful moment occurred early this year when I took my kid fishing for the first time. On her second cast she caught about a two-pound bass. She's forty years old.

My most thankful moment this year had to be the moment I finally caught up to my boat on a cold, breezy, rainy day in April after falling overboard. Without my PFD and knowing I was alone on the water, well aware that I am out of shape and the cold water would sap what little strength I still had, when I finally grabbed the transom and was able to hoist myself aboard (with the help of the power trim) I can honestly say that it was not only my most thankful moment this year, but in the top ten of my life. Thank You Lord!

Kent, at least answer the kid's question. The sponsors you mentioned are great and I know they "keep the lights on around here" and all, but at least throw the dude a bone with some info. Gall, rule of thumb is less action in colder and more in warmer. Funny thing about fish is they don't know how to read so that logic often doesn't apply to them. I'd take something like a Ragetail and something like a tube. Hop, drag, drift the deeper sections this time of year until you find active fish or you're so cold that your fingers are ready to fall off. I went out last weekend and the water temps were low 40's at best. It was a slow day for smallmouth for sure.

Me too! I like Glenlivet 18

Don't be afraid to ask him what he expects from you.

When I fish a tournament with someone and we use there boat instead of mine, I try to do the following: Launch and retrieve the boat throw the boater some gas money............the amount depends, and if were going out of town to another lake, I give him some gas money for the truck too. Pay 1/2 the entry fee Try not to bring too much stuff, but I usually fail in this area LOL That is for team type open tournaments............the only kind I fish. And I expect the same in reverse if we use my boat. Now if were out fun fishing, and I invite you to join me............it's free, your a guest, and I am going fishing anyways, no need to pay me.

are you searching with the Internet or ur toaster?

I figure if i am going to become a better angler I need to learn to catch fish in any type of conditions. And there is no way i am canceling an outing when the weather is good because it is post front. I have thoguht twice about not going out when it is 40 and rainy but then i just change it up and actually go takethe long rod and chase trout in the mountains on most occasions. They are more likely to play nice when the weather is bad and i am moving more so staying warm is a little easier.

All the weather does for me is help me to decide what type of clothing to wear. The only exception is wind but then it just changes which bodies of water i will be targeting for the day.

Well I'm looking at a Winter Wonderland here so you'll get not sympathy from me. But I'd say, Yes by all means, hit the water. Enjoy the sun & fresh air. But I will add that if you have historically struggled to get bit under similar conditions, you may want to utilize a different technique and / or presentation than what has not worked in the past. One way to look at is you can catch nothing doing anything - might as well try something new. Who knows you just might bump into a few. During the conditions you've mentioned the fish are often in a neutral or even negative mood. This does make trying something new hard to believe in and results could be less than hoped. Not knowing much about your particular waters or fishing style makes it hard to provide viable suggestions. But stay positive, at least your fishing . . . . . . The other way to go is to pick one presentation and only one and stick to it All Day. I'd recommend that it be something that you enjoy doing and have a high level of confidence in. For me - I'd be tying on a jig / craw and soaking that bait anywhere and everywhere until I got bit. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Good Luck A-Jay

Are we really talking about a Calcutta D? This is a $300-350 that has barely been out a year, probably still under warranty, and has a reputation of being a Sherman tank. Something isn't adding up here.

My most thankful moment this year was when I took all my family for perch fishing. My kids had a lot of fun and one of them asked me to be my fishing partner for next year.

Jay, i think the unsaid topic might be that ur setting the guinness book of world records for posts. are you searching from the forum pages? searching from the home page will not yield forum results (only articles). I got 12 pages or 285 results from searching 'mirco guides'. you're a nice guy with youth, energy and enthusiasm. use it to dig, expand and explore.

Well, Jay and A-Jay, I just tried out the search function using "micro guides" in the search and came up with pages of info. Jay, I noticed in your last post that your spelling and punctuation sucks, so you may want to concentrate a little more on the words you enter into the "search" box. Just a suggestion.

The search function is your friend.

Went out today for about hour and a half around 4ish to my main spot. Started with the frog at all 3 ponds and not a bite. Then I put the frog rod away and broke out the crank rod... good decision. First cast dink on, second cast fish on probably just under 2lbs. Then the third cast BOOM fat girl on! Reeling her in she showed herself once went back under and then showed herself again and that was the last I saw from her she shook the hook on the KVD 1.5. I was told to always switch out the hooks on these cranks but I never have, live and learn. So I leave the main pond and go to the back pond for a few casts with the frog, I never cranked at this one because it's not really made for it a lot of submerged grass and hang ups. Threw out frog in my normal spots where I catch fish and nothing, usually I will see a wake come towards it but not even a curious fish today. I go back to my car a figure hey frog didn't work at the other ponds and the crank did so what the hell I'll try it. Threw out the crank couple times and kept pulling in grass. Cast out again and was reeling it in not really paying attention because I didn't expect to get anything but a dirty hook. BOOM threw me off guard and she almost took the rod out my hand! She put up a nice fight and then I get her to shore. She INHALED the crank never had a fish do that when using a crank before I usually have to worry about them barely being hooked. I think this must have been her first meal of the day the way she took it. 21" to cull one of the 19s Had to take a pic... that color has been killing the fish GET YOU ONE

Kit caught me shoveling snow this morning. I may be grounded for a week !

So opening a small tackle shop lacks common sense but selling wieners on the street is a solid investment. Interesting. Perhaps one could combine the two. Locate at the local lakes for lunch selling an assortment of finger foods and soft plastics. He could call it Dogs & Hawgs. A-Jay

This is basic real estate 101, location......location ......location, meaning there has to be a lot of fishermen in the area and the location is easy to find. From a business standpoint I can't think 1 reason to open a small scale tackle shop, except having passion over ride common sense. Between the start up capital investment, the on going business expenses and personal living expenses is a ton of stress. Every business has it's ups and downs, but the thought of waiting 3 years to become profitable kills that idea from the git go for me. The internet is great tool but for a small tackle shop I'd say don't count on too much on line ordering, a web site to point out location and directions is fine. I'll forego my own business resume except to say in 40 years I've always owned one and it wasn't easy. From a personal standpoint I much prefer a business where I can solicit as opposed to waiting for people to walk thru my door. Interesting side bar that I was not aware of. Watching the History channel yesterday Modern Marvels was focusing on the mobile food catering business. I always knew about the blue collar lunch trucks at job sites, but didn't know about the gourmet and specialty foods, these trucks cost a lot of money to set up. What I found interesting were the hot dog vendors with a cart that was fairly inexpensive and making upwards of a 100k a year. I see them in Florida and it appears they are working their own hours and I always see people stopping to buy a dog.

Dawgs and Hawgs has the potential to be 20x more profitable than the brick and mortar. I would set aside some serious time to think that concept or similar bait truck idea out if I were you. Lower start up, higher margin and you go to the customer instead of waiting for them. Plus you could do it on the weekends and not quit the 9-5 until you were ready.

Can't fault a guy for trying lol Jay, Just keep working at it you will get it. Maybe try some cheap 25lb mono to mitigate the cost and pain of back lashing expensive line.

One day I was drifting down the Shenandoah in the kayak fishing with 30# braid. Got hung up in a tree overhanging the middle of the river. River was moving pretty fast this time of year and soon i was downstream while still hooked to the tree. My dumb arse grabbed the line forgetting it was braid, wrapped it around my hand and gave it a tug to try and break off. Braid didn't give, tree didn't give and kayak kept going. I was about half a second away from cutting off a finger when I was thankful I had line clippers tied to my chest. I was even more thankful they cut the braid on the first clip. That was the last time I direct tied braid on a float trip, always use a 10-12# leader just so I can break off if needed.

Well Jay, I don't know what to tell you. Do what you must. I did a search and there were several pages of info available. Occasionally that bugger is a little temperamental. I'd encourage you to give it another try. But there are 42,600 + members here, and many are very willing to help. Several already have and their posts are only a click away in the search function. Back to your original topic - micro guides. Some anglers swear by them and some do not believe that they make a difference at all. You may have to try some out and decide for yourself. But if you do - please post your results here. So others can use the search function and read about it. Good Luck A-Jay

One probably won't immediately see the difference between micro guides when comparing to another rod without them. It's not apples/apples Using guides with better strength/weight ratio only makes sense to take full advantage of quality blanks with the same characteristic.

You dumped the calcutta d in the trash? Send it to me I'll pay the shipping

This past Sunday, November 17th, my friend Brandon and I decided to make a day trip back to Maine. Brandon is relatively new to bass fishing and had never caught a 5 lb bass. He also had never fished a jig either. The weather forecast was for light winds overcast with a day time high of 49 degrees. We met at 530 at my place loaded up the boat and we were on or way to Maine. To get to Maine from where I live in Vermont you have to go through 3 mountain passes including on e in the heart of the white mountain national forest. The roads were pretty slick up in the higher elevations. It was time to take it slow and easy. There was over a foot of snow in the mountains, it looked more like winter then late fall. We were lucky to witness and amazing sunrise. When we arrived at the launch the weather wasn't to bad, chilly but not terrible. We unloaded the boat and headed out onto the lake. It was very foggy. We had to break through over 100 feet of ice to get out to the main lake which luckily was still open water. After we were done breaking through the ice I looked down at the depth finder. The surface temperature was a balmy 36 degrees. By far the coldest water I had ever fished from my boat. The fog was still thick but with the aide of my gps we made it to our first spot. I set my friend Brandon up with a Jig and trailer. I gave him the first few casts on our first spot. NO hits so then I took few casts as well with my jig. After some time Brandon got a bite on his jig. The fish came up to the surface and sure enough it was a lunker. Brandon got reel excited and was standing up trying to high five while he was still trying to fish the fish. I had to tell him lets get it in the boat first. The fish tired and I netted it. It ws the biggest bass Brandon had ever seen or caught, a 6 lb 4 oz largemouth. After fishing that spot for a few more minutes it was on to the next spot. It was nearly identical to the last spot. We fished it for a few minutes throwing jigs, cranks, spinnerbaits and chatterbaits. I was just about to move when I figured I would take one last cast with a weightless worm before moving on. The worm never hit bottom and the fight was on. After a couple tense moments when the fish was stuck on bottom I landed my biggest bass of the day a 5lb 0oz. A few more casts later and we were onto the next spot. The weather conditions worsened. It was still very very chilly out and it had begun to lightly rain and a slight wind had picked up. Our next couple spots produced zero bass. I could tell my friend Brandon was starting to get cold. We were determined to tough it out no matter what. I let Brandon have the next few casts on our next spot. On his third cast he hooked into another good fish. After a lengthy battle he landed the second biggest bass of his life a 5 lb 12 oz largemouth. The bite slowed for while after that. We both started getting even colder. After driving for 3 hours to get to the lake we were fishing there was no way we were leaving early. Brandon didn't have much luck the rest of the day. He did catch a couple pickerel. I landed 4 more bass a 3-12, 3-11, 3-2, 3-0. It was slow fishing numbers wise but we knew it would be like that and the water was 36 degrees... We called it a season at about 3 o'clock. It had been a successful mid November trip for sure. We landed 7 bass for a total of 30 lbs 9 oz. It was a good day to finish the year on. Once I got back to my place I looked up the weather and the daytime high had been 38 degrees. No wonder we were cold. I had a very productive fall with some of the biggest bass I have ever caught. When everyone else had called it is deer hunting or called it a season that is when the big bass bite.

And there ya go. A-Jay

NO . . . . . . . . Yes . . . . . . . . . . Maybe . . . . . . . . . . . . Come on Jay - do a little research man, that what makes this site so darn good. You just enter a topic (Like Micro guides for instance) into that little search box up there and hit go. And you are provided with tons and tons of honest, experience based information, so much that you can hardly believe it - and for FREE ! Give it a try. Please. A-Jay

I'm like others on this thread In that I'm thankful for having a fiance' that completely understands that to me fishing Is more than just catching. She has a taken an Interest and whether we catch fish or not we ALWAYS enjoy eachothers company, laugh a lot, talk about many things , and generally are grateful we are able to spend that type of quality time together. The one thing she laughs about Is the day she caught her first bass I couldn't have been happier. It literally made my day!

That was very touching and remarkable, thanks for sharing, awesome.

Replacing a cam shaft isn't necessarily difficult but it does pretty much men taking the motor out and taking all of the front end off to access and replace. Usually you replace all of the items you took off if they weren't recently replaced and timing chains etc... As far as 4-5k for replacing the motor, it doesn't sound bad to me but it would also depend on the type of motor being used to replace it with. is it one out of a junker or a recent rebuild etc... I also wonder why you need a new camshafts. Unless you have a gazillion miles on it or there is some other type of manufacturing defect they don't just wear out. The other thing is I am guessing the blue book on that vehicle is probably 8-9k at most so you have to decide if that 4-5k is best spent fixing this one or trying to sell it with the issue and using that 4-5k as a downpayment on a newer vehicle

7' MH Fast casting - The workhorse. jigs, T-rigged plastics, C-rigged plastics, bubba-shots, deep cranks, lipless cranks, blade baits, spoons, spinnerbaits, frogs 7' M Fast casting - light T-rigged plastics, shallow cranks, chatterbaits 6' 6" M fast casting - wacky, topwater, jerkbaits 6' 6" ML spinning - open hook jighead fishing of all kinds, dropshot 6' M spinning - skipping rod Some of those aren't what I would normally use for those applications, but could if I "had" to.

That's craZy you must have came down with that Michael Jackson disease since I saw you yesterday, are you ok? Lol

What little water isn't frozen, is 36-38 degrees. I hate this state. Nice job, Deaknh03, on the one you got today! I will accept the skunk, as a sign. to MOVE!!!

I would consider a St Croix Premier 6' UL for a rod. You can probably pick up another President or Shimano Sedona for around $50 on black Friday. If you check the big online fishing tackle retailers on Black Friday, you may even be able to bump up to a St Croix Avid and Shimano Sahara for about $150, and that combo will last you as long as you will want to fish it. And I know from personal experience that rod can handle bass over 6lb.

Yeah Donny Bass/Mikey Keyso caught 32. Dillon McMillan/Durand Locke 2nd with 27. Fell off pretty quickly after that...Brandon/Jared McMillan with 22. Me and Leo weighed 15. Had a couple +8lbers around beds, but the +20MPH winds Sunday made sight fishing impossible. Actually felt pretty good about what we caught, didn't leave too much weight out there but it obviously wasn't going to be enough. Bass/Keyso also won the Saturday tournament with +26lbs and big fish. Those guys are on a tear.... https://www.facebook.com/hawgtech#!/photo.php?fbid=594982693870970&set=a.400118190024089.76626.400113070024601&type=1&theater

Andy, that looks like an awful lot of snow for Baccarac.

Forget about shoveling - if you want or need a little exercise practice your hook-sets A-Jay

Casting would have been ok but not shoveling snow.

It happens all the time while ice fishing. I keep my catch in a bucket behind my seat in my shanty, I don't throw them on the ice, cleaning frozen fish is a PITA. Even though there is no water in the bucket, 8+ hours later many of the them are still alive when I go to clean them.

Weekend started off slow with Czar and DS. We were out from 6:30 to 11:45 ish and got into some fish hitting up about 5 or 6 different spots. Missed a big one where DS caught his PB on a frog and caught another one on a frog at Wells. All the other fish that morning came on KVD 1.5 (craw and bluegill) and Shad Rap (bluegill). Then I went back out around 3-3:30ish to my golf course, I don't even know why I drive to all these far places when this spot is right up the street. Got into a bunch of fish biggest being 21" that came on the black frog, as usual. I caught 6 on the frog, if I remember correct, and missed a whole bunch more. Then I caught 3 on my Shad Rap but they were all dinks. Sunday I went out around 4ish to the course again and they were on but my hook set wasn't. I had one giant, could have been the biggest bass I caught there easily. I did a oops cast and was just reeling it back in and wasn't paying attention. I hear and then feel her explosion and I set the hook. She stayed deep shaking her head and then she graced me with her presence on the jump as she shook the hook and took off! I had a bunch more misses stayed there for about a hour hitting up the 3 different ponds that I usually have success in. I had two or three retrieves in different ponds when the fish hit it more than 3 times one hit it 4 times in a row (may have been the same fish or could have been 2 fighting for the frog IDK) I left there and found this other spot that is on my way home. I stopped there for only 20mins or so before it got dark and ended up catching 10 all dinks biggest was maybe 1.5# all on a shad rap. Today went out for a few hours with DS and Czar I got skunked but they caught some fish, I didn't see any of them so they could be lying lol just kidding DS sent me a pic when I was on my way. I had one fish bump my KVD at DS PB spot. Funny I casted out and was reeling in fast and then BOOM BIGGEN!!! My rod tip is bending and I feel the fish... then I reel in and realize I was snagged on a rope LMAO. I swear I thought I had like a 6lber or more and the fact that when I was reeling the rope was moving and giving resistance so I thought it was a fish hah. Fortunately none of them saw me because they were fishing the pond across the street but I told them about it lol. Then we went to another spot and I had two hits on the frog but missed em both. Here is the 21" only one that did anything for my number. one of the prettier fish that I have caught

No, Saturday I had to help my dad, yesterday was the wifes friend and boyfriend, which I went to school with, came down for the day. Him and I went out on the boat while the girls did crafts and stuff. Whys it got to be me? Maybe its you? I guess you just don't "float my boat" anymore.

Only if you want one.

Seaguar InvizX is one of my favorite lines. Have it on my bait casters and spinning reels. Very low memory and abrasion resistant.

Im thinking all ya need is a Rod and Reel that will cast far, strong as hell, and lets ya know when you got a fish messing with the bait..... Now all that is a crazy time finding it... because its perfect. but the price tags of these rod and reels today. You can find the best but is it all worth it?.... "healthy addiction" this fishing is. I miss the days when I could take a zebco and a powerbait and catch bass after bass without even wanting more and better rods and reels.