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I was fishing Lk St Clair yesterday and the swimbait bite was on. For those of you looking for a Keitech rod I use a Daiwa Zillion 7'7" MRB I find this a perfect swimbait rod. With the regular action blank I just keep reeling through the bite and the rod will load up. I like the 7'7" rod to be able to launch long casts. If the Zillion is out of your price range check out the Daiwa Tatula option from Sportman's Outfitters for $109 and free shipping you can't beat that. I have included a link to it below and a few pics of 4+ pound smallies for your pleasure http://www.sportsmansoutfitters.com/daiwa-tatula-freshwater-baitcast-fishing-rods/

As some of you have probably noticed I occasionally drop a letter from a word, or misspell something a 5th grader should know. LOL, "Winy Days", I did go to school, BS from UAB in Computer Science. Nineteen years of military service left me almost completely blind in my right eye, anything that requires vision is more difficult. Not complaining, happy to be on this side of the grass and still fishing. Crossed my mind that maybe sharing how we adapt and still participate may help someone else enjoy the sport with a similar disability. Mine is being blind in my right eye. Having one eye makes balance in a boat and depth perception when casting more difficult. Daylight is not so bad, night time is tough. One of the things I do at night is cast underhand (pitch). Pitching doesn't help me hang up any less, but when I do hang it's not fifteen feet up in a tree and I can get my lure back. Pitching at night I find to be more accurate for me, pitching a 1/2 oz bait I can pitch it far enough to be effective. Flipping also helps with the depth perception, on a 7 ft rod I can tell how far the bait is going to go by the line remaining in my left hand, then I only have to judge the left right. Balance at night I keep my butt on the seat. I still catch a few fish and have placed or won several local tournaments this year, so I'm still in the game. I think that there are a lot of people out there with disabilities that can still enjoy fishing. Maybe discussing how we overcome our own limitations can help someone else with a disability enjoy a great sport.

Caught this buck last week. Wish I had a weight scale, my biggest catch ever!

Caught this one last week right before a storm blew in. Unfortunately the picture doesn't do it justice, there is a pretty aggressive alligator so I had to be quick. She weighed in at 6lbs 10

I set the hook like a girl . 5 years ago I tore the trapezius and rhomboid muscles off my left shoulder blade among other things. They have since been reattached but I am still limited as to what I can do with my left arm as well as the whole pain thing. Anyway, I used to have a jig hookset that would rock the boat. Now, when I set the hook it's reminiscent of Elaine from Seinfeld dancing.

Thought I'd just share how enthusiastic I am about this lure. I got it about 3 weeks ago and it's become my go-to lure. I've got a whopper plopper 90, and the pompadour just gets bit more. With daytime temperatures in Phoenix getting above 100 degrees daily I've been transitioning to night fishing. The pompadour really shines at night. I fish ponds, rivers, and canals here and the Pompadour works in all of them. In fact at night I've found the only lures that work in the river or canal at night is a noisy topwater like the plopper or pompadour. It's heavier than most other topwater lures so it casts really well, and you can roll it slow and it still does it's action, whereas my plopper 90 needs to be run faster to get it's proper action. Anyways, great lure. Thought I'd share my experience.

I have spent the past three days on Cherokee Lake practicing for a 3 day college tournament. It has been a tough one for sure, I haven't found much of anything. I think I can scrap together some fish but it won't be easy and I sure wish I had something better going. 170 boats registered for the event so I'm sure things will get a little tight tomorrow! On the bright side, I have caught all three species two days in a row which I think is cool!

I personally wouldn't bring that many rods. I'd limit myself down to 3 maybe 4 max. I don't want to flood someone elses boat with all my crap.

Ask the boat owner BEFORE you load your gear how many rods he wants you to bring. He may not feel the same as the people who post here. His opinion is the only one that matters.

Finally got this out, unfortunately it was a very unsuccessful first mission. 0 fish and 1 lost swimbait equals big disappointment. Still fun though, with this combo.

I have no excuses for spelling and grammar errors and make them too often because I don't take the time to spell check or proof read what I am posting. I understood the winy days post and didn't give it a second thought, when you live in a glass house you don't throw stones! Tom

The new $115 premier moved onto dobyns 736cb, the new $32, 7"6' MH Veritas with Curado 200hg. Being a discount shopper, I am into these 2 set ups for a combined $475

Which you choose to use I think, is mostly dependent on where you are fishing. Most of my time is spent fishing smallmouth on Northern lakes and rivers. Not a lot of slop fishing, mostly open water with smaller baits, so I use spinning gear the majority of time. If you have been watching MLF, a lot of their shows have been on Northern lakes with a lot of smallies. Those guys were using a lot of spinning gear. When they are doing a lot of flipping and pitching and working heavy cover, it's all baitcasters. To repeat what has been said, use the best tool for the job you are trying to do.

I've been fishing for 50 years and I can't always tell the difference between wood and fish. If I took that mindset and worried about snags, I'd catch FAR fewer fish than I do. As I tell every 'less experienced' person that fishes with me, "Just set the hook"....I NEVER get upset about having to maneuver to un-snag (mine or my partners')...If you aren't there 'in the wood and rocks', you aren't getting to the fish. Maybe I should qualify that just a little....I just MIGHT get upset after repeated snags in wood that's above the surface

Here is a picture of my version of the Bitsy bug, it is a weedless banana jig mold. The jig in the pic is 1/4oz but the way I added the wire keeper can be done to any jig mold. Put you hook in the mold and then position the wire keeper where you want it and carefully close the mold and hold it tight to keep the hook and keeper in place. Place the mold in a bench vise or use a C-clamp making sure to use wood on each side of the mold so the vise or clamp doesn't damage the mold surface. When you have the mold in position tighten the vise or clamp until the mold is completely closed or close to it and then remove the mold and open it up. What you should have is a solid imprint of the wire keeper so the only thing left to do is to take a needle file or small Dremel engraving bit and just make the imprint on each side of the mold slightly deeper to allow the mold to close easily, it actually took longer to type this than it does to make that simple modification, I hope this is easy to understand, good luck.

I'm glad I found this pics forum. I caught this Chain Pickerel on Friday, the day before New York Pickerel season opened, but it would have been undersized anyway, not meeting the 15 inch minimum, so it lived to see another day.

The 'Berkley Split-Belly' was a soft swimbait that provided what you're looking for, but it was not well-received by anglers and has been discontinued. Rather than an open split, a few soft swimbaits come with a top slot where you can hide an exposed point. One such swimbait is the Gambler Big EZ, which I throw. I use braided line so I bury the point in plastic for maximum weedlessness, and ignore the top slot. Roger

My wife and I bought a buy-back pony at the Chicoteague auction in 2013, this is a picture of her and her foal this year.

Caught this 19.5 inch, 4.2 pound largie on beautiful Lake Geneva (WI) on Monday.

only got two this evening, one 2 1/2 and this right at 5 lb lady!

Last September my wife and I moved, part of the draw of the house we picked was a retention pond in the back yard. It was kind of pretty, with ducks and geese and best of all, no neighbors! My wife was so happy for me to have a place to fish, but honestly I didn't think it would hold fish. I checked it out, saw a couple of little bluegill and figured ok, maybe I could go catch a couple of stunted gills from time to time. First month of the house and I never fished it. When I finally did go down to fish it, I did so more to say "Yeah, I have a house where I fish in my backyard" than really catch fish. Then I caught my first fish, a bluegill on a fly rod, and the thing was an absolute slab. I proceeded to catch several more, and also had something huge break me off. Turns out that there are huge bluegills, 10+ pound carp (I'm going to get one soon here), and bass. For example, last night I just walked around the pond, maybe 20 minutes, and got 4 or 5. I never guessed this pond would produce 4-5 fish like this in a 20 minute around:

My oldest grandson Dylan, First year wrestling award and all district first team! Way to go buddy! Proud of you!

So Yesterday morning me and a buddy planned on going fishing but we had lightning and it rained all morning til about 11 am. So I just said forget it then it all cleared up but I didn't want to go home so he let me borrow a rod. The first ten minutes we caught one. After that it was back to back cast. We were both throwing a junebug powerworms I think it was around 7 inches T-rigged. In the first hour we were at a total of 34 bass because I had just called my mom. Then another hour passed we were at 52. twenty minutes later my buddy pulled in a five pounder it broke off at the bank he freaked out. Then he looked in the water and it was just sitting there doing nothing. So i reached in and picked it up. We had caught some four pounders that night but nothing at five it was awesome. we ended with a grand total of 68 bass. I will never forget that night of Iowa pond bass fishing.

Well, the whole thing boils down to "sort of" to answer the kayak role question. I started down the road of baitcasting with Quantum Accurists, which I could never get dialed in right but they were serviceable. Got a Lexa years later and loved it. Decided I wanted to go all casting - part in conjunction with a terrible case of fisherman's elbow - so I bought 2 Chronarch 50e reels, upgraded to 7.1:1 and set about learning to cast the lightest baits I was using for spinning. Got pretty good at it, but over time I started thinking about why I was doing this. I was skipping into an area I love to target and ended up grabbing my spinning rod, which made it look easy. That kind of started the unraveling of casting for me. I love(d) it, was good at it, if I do say so myself, but spinning was just a lot less work overall. Yes, techniques do play a roll, but I was able to do 98% of them with a BC. I get the whole "it's another tool in the toolbox" and "best tool for the job" thing, but I fish for love of the sport, outdoors, and relaxation. I'm not making money, fishing tourneys and so forth. I fish techniques I like and produce fish spinning gets me there more easily. I'll still use my one remaining Chronarch for stuff, though. I still like it!!

Caught another 36 in three and a half hours yesterday. Caught about twenty of them on the whopper plopper while it was still cloudy, and the rest on a shallow shad rap. I decided to try the shad rap when I was throwing the plopper over a bar sticking out from the side of a point, which comes up from 22 feet to 7-8 feet on top of the bar. Had a bass come up behind the plopper and just swirl underneath it four casts in a row, so I picked up the shallow shad rap (there was a patch of weeds I was fishing over that topped out at three feet beneath the surface) and threw it back to to it. Turns out they just wanted something a few feet down instead of on top. Caught the other 16 or so fishing the shad rap just above the grass, ticking it occasionally. 11 keepers, with the best five weighing 13-14 pounds. Water temperature is up to 70 here, and the water clarity is about a foot and a half.

Plastics, when I feel the bite and see it move I'll lower the tip, reel up the slack and WHAM-O! An awful lot of the time, bream will tap-tap a soft plastic, so I like to see it move or feel pressure. Bass will hold soft plastics a good while. Trebles, soon as I feel the fish. That goes for topwaters too. Don't yank the bait away before feeling the fish. If you swing and they don't have it, you'll pull the bait away from the bass's area of awareness and they won't find it. For the plastics, it's a hard, upward swing for me. For trebles, buzzbaits and spinnerbaits, it's usually a rod sweep to the side and keep reeling, keeping the pressure on the bass. I don't want to encourage the bass to jump with a lot of line out, thus the sideways sweep. This is all just my opinion, collected over the course of about 35 years. Practice will get it right for you.

Use diffrent presentations then the other two fishermen this should help you catch the fish your fellow Anglers are missing. do your best to avoid Crossing Lines offering to provide some gas for the tow vehicle or Beverages and lunch is a great idea.

If you think there is one there, reel down and set the hook.

I'd call that dinner for two! That's a nice size sunfish.

zoom lizard.

Well, what they didn't make super clear is that you can mix and match brands for the buy 3, get one deal. I just ordered 2 of the Lunkerhunt frogs, 4 bags of keitech swing impacts, 4 of the z-man chatterbaits, and a few different jigheads for $57 before tax. Should have been right at $80 before the deals kicked in.

definitely wear sunglasses in close quarters like that. some people have bad spatial awareness

This may come off "bad" as my first post, but this statement rubs me a little. If your fishing on a lake with numbers of quality fish, then someone who catches 40 could be catching 40 good ones. One of my friends caught and released 54 four plus pound fish out of one school on KY lake last summer. BTW, hello to everyone. I love visiting this site

I fish 3 out of a boat a lot Each person must be aware of each other before casting!

WOW, you left me a slew of openings, but my best choice is the exit Kidding aside, that bluegill is a humpback and a half! Roger

d**n weird talking southerners to to be fair y'all talk more normal to me than my wife and her family who are from Michigan, dontcha know!

No one is allowed in my boat if they can't swim

A young guy from North Dakota moves to Florida and goes to a big "everything under one roof" department store looking for a job. The Manager says, "Do you have any sales experience?" The kid says "Yeah. I was a vacuum salesman back in North Dakota ." Well, the boss was unsure, but he liked the kid and figured he'd give him a shot, so he gave him the job. "You start tomorrow. I'll come down after we close and see how you did." His first day on the job was rough, but he got through it. After the store was locked up, the boss came down to the sales floor. "How many customers bought something from you today son?" The kid frowns and looks at the floor and mutters, "One". The boss says "Just one?!!? Our sales people average sales to 20 to 30 customers a day. That will have to change, and soon, if you'd like to continue your employment here. We have very strict standards for our sales force here in Florida. One sale a day might have been acceptable in North Dakota , but you're not on the farm anymore, son." The kid took his beating, but continued to look at his shoes, so the boss felt kinda bad for chewing him out on his first day. He asked (semi-sarcastically), "So, how much was your one sale for?" The kid looks up at his boss and says "$101,237.65". The boss, astonished, says $101,237.65?!? What the heck did you sell?" The kid says, "Well, first, I sold him some new fish hooks. Then I sold him a new fishing rod to go with his new hooks. Then I asked him where he was going fishing and he said down the coast, so I told him he was going to need a boat, so we went down to the boat department and I sold him a twin engine Chris Craft. Then he said he didn't think his Honda Civic would pull it, so I took him down to the automotive department and sold him that Ford 4x4 Expedition." The boss said "A guy came in here to buy a fish hook and you sold him a boat and a TRUCK!?” The kid said "No, the guy came in here to buy tampons for his wife, and I said, 'Dude, your weekend's shot, you should go fishing.........

he was probably saying "WAKE bait." A crank that runs close enough to the surface to create a large wake.

Fish grips work, just requires handling the bass to clip it on. Plastic grocery bag with handles work and easy to put a bass into and they are free. Tom

The previous Aetos was the bomb, in my opinion fished above its price point. No experience with the new one. I'm sure it is still quality. They Fenwicks are under the radar rods.

X-Acto knife. Tom

I have a Cleveland Browns colored rod and a few Brown and Orange jigs to match. This way I can be disappointed on the water too

I think what often happens is folks get over comfortable in the water. Water is unforgiving. When people know they're going in for a swim they're in control of a lot of the variables. When it's going in at 65mph or even just tripping over the trolling motor it changes things. It's easy to crack your head on the way in and no matter how good a swimmer is they can't swim if theyre unconscious. I'm not being critical cause I'm as guilty as anyone else.

Bass behavior can be very simple and predicable and complex at the same time. Bass are bass but not all bass behave the same. Largemouth bass in ponds or very small lakes have a different predominate prey source then LMB living in a large lakes. LMB behave differently than smallmouth bass and spotted bass behave differently than either LMB and smallmouth bass, but all these bass are predators that must hunt prey to eat. In a predators world there is a pecking order, the best hunting areas go to the top predators. Add to all this is inactive bass are extremely difficult to catch, they are not interested in hunting prey at that time. Active bass are hunting bass and looking for prey, easier to catch. Where are the top predators located? Wherever the prey is located. Bass roam to hunt certain types of prey and hold to ambush other types of prey that come near them. I have watched pond/pit bass cruise the parimeter of their domain and watched those same bass suspend under cover waiting for prey to come near them. Bass in small ecosystems have grown up there and know every inch of their home waters. It's up to you to figure out where the bass are located, what prey source they are feeding on and when they are active. Tom

I figured I'd show you guys my lil bass slayer lol it's a 1991 16ft Lowe with a 40 Evinrude and a 54# thrust motor guide, we put new carpet in it, put a deck in the back and just got the garmin striker 5 for it, it's pretty cool

First whopper plopper fish

The 'Ol Tried & True. 68 Special in rainbow trout to call those big girls out of their deep holes

Do yourself a favor. Either turn your head around to look at the trailer when backing OR use the mirrors. Trying to use both will confuse the heck out of you. Pick one and stay with it. Don't switch back and forth.