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Took my hero out in the Old Town this morning. Today was the last day of fishing for this year on our favorite 'Paddle Only" lake. Weather was nice for this last day of August, a mix of sun & clouds with a pleasant fish catching breeze.. Going on the First & Last day of the of the very short 10 week fishing season at this secluded little lake has been a tradition of ours for the past several years. Making memories & Good Times and today a 6 pound bass, Biggest we've ever caught here. We'll remember this one all winter. Here's some video we managed to get - it's a little rough but captures the memory well. A-Jay

I was just offered a position to essentially manage an entire ski resort. I said yes! Goodbye family business that I've been at for 17 years. It's a massive and unimaginably complicated change but I'm doing it. Mountain life, here I come!

Well, took a drive out to the dealer today. She's just about ready to be picked up from all of the work that was done. Still waiting on a lower cowling that's on back order, and looks like DMV has finally sorted out the paperwork. Apparently, buying a boat from a dealer in LA and registering in CA can be a little time consuming. All in all, I'll be picking up the boat in a couple weeks. Just the same, I've been so busy that it just would have sat in my barn for this time anyway. Looking forward to filling her up with tackle and going out on the maiden fishing trip!

Some wacky rig the lure with a drop-shot presentation.

Commercial fishing, supplier to fish markets Word of warning... Taking something you love to do and turning it into a career or profession can sour the joy you get out of just doing it for fun.

If you don't find a home for your stuff, I am on the WVU bass fishing team and we will be assisting in a kids fishing event in mid september, we could give the things away at that event.

Yeah, as a guy who's taught self defense as well as some combative tactics for police and military for the better part of the last 10 years, I'm going to very strongly urge none of you to actually start shooting at people.

I spoke with a buddy of mine that works for the TPWD and he said they are spraying all none native grass and salvania. Unfortunately this does include the haygrass ???. I sure hope this is not true !! We need the hay grass....

I have no real evidence for what is better but I always like the sun in the morning and shade the rest of the day. When it comes to weeds though sun might not be the as big a factor as say wind. I will be watching for others opinions on this.

Great, I'll take one shopping with me and have him show me which ones he likes...lol.

I've had big bass attempt to, and a couple times managed to, eat smaller bass while I was reeling them in. A smaller bass is just another baitfish to a bigger bass.

For those that haven't seen previous posts, I'm a full time musician who gets the opportunity to play music all the time. My wife, however, is insanely talented but between work and mommy duties, she doesn't get much opportunities to showcase her musical abilities. Making these videos are just a simple outlet for her voice to be heard by someone other than out 19mo old. Haha. We did get to play a show together last week and got multiple requests for this song. Today, while our daughter took a nap, we decided to work it up and record it real quick. Hope you enjoy. Disclaimer - it is a Justin Bieber song. Ha.

I'm the kind of guy who, if you tell me some place is YOUR spot (when I got there first), I will stay there all the longer-whether I catch a $#^& thing or not. Heck, I might spend the whole blessed day there!

Exactly what A-Jay posted... One in action on a smaller pike, a little over 8 IIRC

In most waters, it doesn't really matter much at all.

The biggest bag of last year was at Gardner, when Adam smacked them!

@awohlwend and I hit gardner last night. Had some trailer issues that I needed to get resolved before the weekend. Water was more mossy then what it was last week. We caught several, most of shakey heads on the deep dock bank. Biggest was around 2.5 lbs. Hoping to get into some bigger fish this weeknd SOMEWHERE

I think that the edge of the shade line is a decent place to throw a bait no matter what time of day. I try to be aware of "shade pockets", where objects beneath the water create spaces of shade. For instance, a horizontal branch coming out of a tree trunk 5 or 6 feet underwater will create a shade pocket. Say you have a soft spot in a shallow flat, where vegetation grows to the surface, but harder bottom all around, where vegetation doesn't grow as well. That will create a shade pocket. I have modest success fishing these areas. I think that I"ll do better fishing these areas as I become more intuitive about how to approach these areas and get better at making my first cast count. Unless it is totally cloudy, any given area could have dozens (or hundreds) of shade pockets. Learning to differentiate these into high probability and low probability site is a work in progress. Another work in progress is how deep do you you have to be before shade pockets aren't a factor? I'm pretty sure that water clarity figures into this. Most of the water that I fish have secchi disc readings of between 3.5 and 6 feet - which translates into 7 to 12 feet visibility more or less. Next - another thing I'm working on is which cover ( of all the available cover in a particular piece of water) is most favored by prey species. Predators will sacrifice comfort for dinner. All of this is ongoing, but it is stuff to think about while I'm fishing - moreso while I'm driving toward fishing.

In my spot, they aren't the same...I generally catch 4-5, and leave the spot alone for the day. There's another spot where hundreds of them sit in the shallows, waiting for the DEC to dump the trout fingerlings, lol. It's pretty awesome, and creepy at the same time. Most are around 8-10 lbs. Get some Cortland Toothy Critter knotable fly leader. It works well with jigs and T-rigs, and doesn't seem to repel bass.

Yeah. I have a spot where there may be 50 or more at once, and it's maybe 50' x 50'. They stack up, and feed aggressively. Not my experience. I actually break off less using copoly, like CXX than with braid. It's also different per bait. With a jig or a T-rig, they are suck the hole bait in. You're more likely to get bit off on that, than say a big spinnerbait or other moving bait.

In my experience, pike really seem to like big skirted jigs with plastic trailers. Even small pike will inhale them. I don't know if using a heavy (50+ lb) fluoro leader will mess things up, but you might want to try one. Also, I don't know if you're using the Palomar knot, but when you use heavy lures, the tag end can slip through the knot, so you need to leave a much longer tag end than you normally would.

There a pond in a park i fish and alot of ppl feed the schools of bluegills bread and i was watching a couple nice bass swooping at the school i immediately tied on a blue gill colored chatterbait with a gold blade and a paddletail trailer and would cast past the pod and bring it in close to them and twitch it and let it drop and caught the couple bass that were eating the gills. Biggest went 3.5

Seems like something silly to worry about, if you ask me...

Underspin, underspin, underspin. Just let it fall all the way to the bottom then limp it along back to the boat.

Have you specifically told him to not throw a bait at a fish you missed or were trying to catch? If not, then it;s possible that he's just fishing with his dad and treats you differently than he would others. Generally speaking, family members act and do things different around each other. I wouldn't worry about it much. As mentioned above, tell him what's expected of him and leave it up to him. I don't know your son but I feel pretty confident that he's smart enough to understand a figure out how to do it correctly.

Bone super spook. A top producer up here.

Shade given off by grass will mostly be under it! When flipping/pitching/punching grass I start at the outer grass line & work inward regardless of where the sun is. Do we ignore the northern & southern shorelines?

Agreed. Don't do anything you will regret later. I've been warned off property that I use to fish. And I have always been polite with those who have told to leave. Thankfully nobody has ever pulled a gun.

For bottom contact baits, it really is hard to beat an extra fast action. I've never owned a Shimano Crucial, but I have liked the ones I've handled. It just seems like there are so many very good rods on the market now that it's hard to go wrong and individual preferences are all it comes down to.

Sick! I'll get my board waxed up and ready to roll!

A-Jay

Haha...I wish 50 inchers were common for me. However, when I fish for bass, it is almost always Smallmouth, so I have a better chance of catching 1000 50 inch Musky vs. 1 DD Smallmouth. Nice Fish, by the way! I would be curious to hear the measurement on that one. I would guess that's a nice mid-40's fish, which is a great catch. As far as 50 inchers being rare, finding a honey hole that puts out fish like it has been for you is far rarer than catching a 50 inch musky. That's the true great accomplishment here.

Yes Sir. It's one of my favorite aspects of Turkey hunting..

OK, 10' Jon boat, so the trolling motor is your transom power source? You have a 12V motor and limited weight carrying capacity with the small Jon boat. Suggest single group 29 to 31 size AGM and charge it with a 10 amp charger with automatic shut off feature. VMAX makes excellent deep cycle marine battery however pricey. Johnson Controls owns Intetstate, Optima and private labels for BPS, Cabelas, Sears, Walmart, Costco etc. AGM's in group 29 to 31 are $200+ range, wet cell deep cycle marine are around $100. Suggest you consider placing the battery near the front and use 6 gage stranded wire to extend the battery leads. If the battery and you are at the stern the little Jon boat may sink! Tom

My late father and his buddies use to camp on a lake 6 to 8 months a year, leaving their boats in the water. Everyone of their lower units pitted over the years. that Skeeter is too nice of a boat to leave in the water unless it was on a lift. However it's your boat, so do as you wish.

There's no right answer as with most 'xxx lure' questions. Conditions change daily and even hourly. Sun gets brighter,baro pressure rises,clouds move in,ect. Some days they want it silent, and some they don't. Some days they want a larger offering, and some they don't. Some days they want a certain pattern, and some they don't. Some days they don't want a walking 'spook' type bait at all, and some they do. That's all a part of fishing. Figuring out what the fish want on that given day. If it was that easy it wouldn't be much of a challenge. We'd all just tie on a 'insert color' spook each time we went out and catch 20 + fish that day.

The Zara Spook is 4.5" and is the original plastic model, made to resemble the older wooden Zaragossa. Super Spook is a 5" bait with three hooks and heavy hardware. Super Spook Jr. is 3.5" and the Zara Puppy is 3" If it were me I would buy a bone white and a black shore shad in the Spook Jr. and start there. The size is good and those two colors will cover a lot of fishing. Get familar with the way the bait moves in the water, the sound it makes and then you can adjust to a bigger bait, one that spits, or has rattles. Great baits that don't break the bank.

I like the super spook jr. best. I find the puppy hard to walk; If I'm using a bait that small, it will be a popper or propbait, not a walker.

Just get a Fish Grip:

Last fall while fishing a tournament on a lake here with a pretty even mix of LM and SM the smallies were spitting up these small LM's...It was so frequent that I switched my jerkbait color to more closely match a small LM and my catch rate went up.

Bass "finicky" eaters ? ROFLMAO !!! Baby bass are other bass food. If you are in the "match the hatch" school of thought the only 100% reliable match anywhere in the planet is baby bass pattern.

Get yourself the Fish grip or Fish grip Junior. The fish grip has a slot to slide your scale's hook into.

I just clip off the hook that aims towards the claws and gets stuck all the time. Leave the other two intact. It works like a charm.

SPOKANE ON THE MAP

What test and what type of line? I suspect it had something to do with drag

I like Lucas reel oil. As for Greece, it's west of Turkey and southeast of Rome. Sorry, I just had to do that....lol. Hootie

Your cover will not work with a physically larger trolling motor. Depending on what you get, it should fit unless the bracket makes it sit higher or the shaft is longer. I would upgrade tm's regardless and either go AJ's route with the quick release plate, or take the boat and cover in to an upholstery shop and have them alter the cover to fit. It shouldn't cost that much and then you've got what you need.

Hearing owls is one of my favorite aspects of night fishing, must of been nice to hear so many owls making sounds at once.

Stand by friend ~ Wait until you unknowing slip into an area where one or two beaver may be hanging out. You'll mostly likely know when you do. There will be a sudden & without warning Aquatic Explosion right next to your boat. They will smash that big tail on the waters surface. It's So Very Loud and Sudden that it always scares the Bejesus out of me. (I don't actually know what that means, but it's fun to say) No matter how many times it happens ~ I still hate it ! A-Jay