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Come on over to Lk St Clair. They've been biting since April

If I recall correctly, these worms were found doing unspeakable things in an adult movie theater back in the 90's. Embarrassed, they disappeared from the public eye and have rarely been seen since.

boared this cool evening, so I tried it a couple of hours got 16 bass from mother to daughter. mom about 4 lb. and one foul hook giant bluegill. then one of them figured out how to stop me, he tied my worm in a knot! my wife said come in and eat as well. i like the worm story better tho man them are some hogs!! wow! that will make you forget about the cold.

Good one this morning -- 20", but kinda skinny (no scale on me). On a Green Pumpkin/Purple Siebert Fogy:

19 years of military experience earns you the right scribble if you choose! Semper-Fi

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

Was just thinking here this morning how I am truly blessed to be able to fish a Tuesday night wildcat this year with my son. It's been many years since we have been able to fish once a week due to life's bumps but this year we have been able to fish four so far and hopefully will be able to fish more. We've been doing pretty good too and it's so uplifting as it reminds me of when he was growing up and we were in a club..(gosh...memories of yesteryear). Tight Lines

Are we getting pretty crazy in fishing world, pitching reel, cranking reel, top water reel, finesse reel what else? Swimbait reel? Chatterbait reel? Jerkbait reel? Oh how about Ned rig reel? May be we enjoy more of having fishing gear than actually fishing.

Colors that match the local sunfish and blue gill.

At the Elite tournament on Lake Havasu back in 2015, Tim Horton found a bed fish that looked to be a large male. He spent about 45 minutes on it, finally got it to bite, and brought to the boat a 3.5 lb Redear sunfish. If a former AOY can make this mistake on a lake with crystal clear water like Havasu, I don't feel so bad when I make a half dozen pitches to the shadow of a rock...

For painful, I would have to say getting a treble hook stuck in my thumb between the skin & the nail while the fish was still attached to the other treble. The pain came from the fish flopping & jumping, I had to press him against the side of the boat to get him to stop moving in order to begin unhooking both of us. Once he was gone, the pain of the hook in the thumb wasn't much, so I clipped the hook down to a small section & continued fishing. It was 6:00 am and I wasn't going to waste the morning going to a doctor. Went later that afternoon to have it removed. Less painful but more exhausting was getting stuck knee high in some mud at the back of a small lake in Georgia this past March. I tried to take a short cut across a feeder creek, marshy area & found out why people don't take short cuts there. After struggling for 15 minutes trying to extricate myself, I ended up laying flat across some branches and pulling my legs out of my boots (& then pulling the empty boots out of the mud). The anxiety of being stuck was increased because I had seen a small gator about 15 minutes prior to that, not more than 50 yards from where I got stuck. Dumb Californian out in the Georgia backwoods...

Saw some crappie hanging around thought I would give them a whirl. One managed to be nice

27" #7.5 Channel Cat from two nights ago. Fresh chicken livers w/ a couple spays of Gulp!Alive! Shad scent because I'm just crazy like that. Like catfishing when I want a break from beating the banks for bass.

Don't over think hook setting, if you feel something different like the lure getting heavier, lighter, something bumping the lure reel faster and sweep the rod back firmly. In time when you learn to use various lures and tackle types or presentations you may need to alter your hook setting, for now the reel and rod sweep set works over 90% of the time. 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

Different lures are treated differently . Crankbaits , spinnerbaits ... I do a rod sweep when I feel a fish on .Topwaters I set the hook when I feel the fish not when I see the hit [ this is difficult to do and I mess up topwater strikes frequently .] Texas rigs and jigs I set the hook after taking most of the slack out then hit them hard .

Last night I had 5 minutes to cast a few from shore, and on my first cast with a chatterbait with rage craw trailer I got a 6.0 pound largemouth. Weighed it, snapped a few pictures and started casting again. Only 8 casts later I set the hook on another big one but broke it off. Lesson learned...always re-tie after a good fish. Still a great start to the season!

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

So my question: Where they bass or carp?

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.

Well it was a tough one out there today, these two photos are a pretty accurate portrayal of how our day 1 went. Our largemouth bite completely dried up, at 1pm we had landed 3 short fish (have to be 15") but I managed to stumble upon a school of smallies when one stole the pincers off my baby rage craw on my jig. We followed up with the silly TRD bait and proceeded to land 10 brown ones in the two hours of fishing we had left. Only 3 were legal, many close, including the deformed one pictured below (that is a wacky hook he is holding in his lips not a lip piercing I am still not sure why that occurred). Our three fish put us at 6-5, 64th place out of 160, so we have a whole lot of ground to make up but it could be worse. Hopefully there are plenty more brown ones where we left them! I will be losing sleep over the 4lbs of brown menace that spit my hook at me for quite some time

LOL, floored at about 70mph, eh? You musta loved that scale I have lost too many digi-scales to Davey Jones' Locker over the years that it pains me to buy another. Yet I did, via eBay, and it is a simple luggage scale (recommended on the forums) and I also bought a grip like in @A-Jay's photo. It works well, but the other day it got wet and suddenly stopped. It's back working now but I was so thankful to have my super-accurate Boga with me that day.

A-Jay

If you want the best performance, exchange the unused transducer and unopened transducer mount package for the HDSI transducer XHS 9 HDSI 180 T. That is handled through Humminbird Customer Service. It is about $85 including shipping. It does not add any features, just produces sharper images since it is 2" longer than the standard transducer for that model.

I caught the nastiest catfish I've ever seen at Lake of the Ozarks. He shook the hook as he landed on the dock and I didn't want to push him in with my hand so I kicked him in. With my bare feet. Ended up with a 3 inch long gash that bled for a few hours and took weeks to heal. It was also on the bottom of my foot so I had to walk like an idiot everywhere I went.

The question is impossible to answer! The number of lure manufacturers over the decades is near impossible to list. Who determines popularity?

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.

Lol it helps. I don't think there has been a day that my nose hasn't been running out there yet this year.

Well that depends on how much you want to spend. I can say I really like my fenwick hmg, it runs $99. If you're wanting something a little less maybe a Berkley Lightning shock rod. I have no personal experience with them but many members here recommend them.

Tatula CT can be had for $98 on eBay. I have 4 that I bought on there and love. All brand new from reputable sellers. American Legacy Fishing also has the 8:1 CT type R for $119. That plus a Tatula rod for be a killer combo for just over $200.

Why not just add a prop to the back of a Heddon Crazy Crawler? Upgrade the hooks and you should do just fine. The notion that a particular lure is "the" one that you've got to have, may keep the manufacturers in their Mercedes, but will do little for your success. Fish aren't that smart.

guilty as charged over here too edit: slone is an idiot ? that is all

I had to poop with no toilet paper...multiple times

"Any suggestions?" Get out there and give it hell

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.

Pompadour has several advantages over a buzz bait when casting longer distances under windy conditions, it's heavier, more aerodynamic and has treble hooks. The treble hooks are a disadvantage in floating weed cover and can be a problem. Big bass will eat a Pompadour! Good lure, well made and been using the Pompadour now for 3 years. Tom

My name is Phil Kelley. I moved to Lake County from South Florida 20 years ago. I am a retired tournament fisherman and professional guide. My website is http://www.lakecountybass.com I live on and fish the Harris Chain of Lakes and will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

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

Don't got no slit ---> voilá, now it has one.

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

X-Acto knife. Tom

the older of the Bassets... protesting that mama left him and he is so alone. He refused to be consoled for a good three minutes, then forgot what he was protesting and went to torment his brother. Who needs teenagers when you have drama queen dogs

The Keitech SIF isn't split belly, but it does have a notch in the back to hide the hook. I run them through thick grass all the time without any issues. If you insist on a split belly, the big/skinny/little dippers from RI are great baits as well.

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

Your Pop-R weighs 1/4 oz. You can keep your Pop-R and double the weight by moving up to a Magnum Pop-R (1/2 oz) Roger

The magnum pop-r is a little heavier than the standard size, and is very inexpensive. It was my top producing topwater last year besides frogs. The pop max is another good option if you as willing to spend that much, I have the smaller version of it (the pop x) and is it is a super versatile bait. You can pop it, walk it, make it spit, it is like having three lures in one.

They are hanging out drinking beer smoking cigaretts, talking about the next fish they are going to spawn with, leave em alone and let them get their PIMP ON