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Elderly couple in church. Wife turns to husband and says “I’ve just done a silent fart, what should I do? Husband says “put new batteries in your hearing aid!”

Holy smokes you guys -- I can count on one hand the number of bass over 4lb I catch per year, and none of my smallmouth make it into that group. Here's my own modest contribution to the Digitally-masked Costume Party and the Smallmouth-Fest going on here (a little under 3lb, from back in July):

Hello everyone, I've been a "lurker" here for a while now and decided to join today. Lots of interesting discussions on here and I'm hoping I can add as much as I've taken from here in the past. I've lived my entire life in central Ontario ( Parry Sound/Muskoka region) and fish for pretty much anything that swims, but bass are my favourite by far. Used to fish quite a few tournaments on the Kawartha lakes and Simcoe about 15 years ago but gave that up to concentrate on guiding for bass, pike/muskie and lakers/salmon on Georgian Bay. Im now "retired" from guiding but now that my son is old enough to show interest in fishing, I've really gotten back into it a lot more. Up here the lakes are usually iced over from January to early April, but after that the boat is in the water pretty much weekly and we hit everything that swims all season long. Anyway, I'm happy to join and hope to swap a few lies and stories with everyone. Cheers,

Have you priced live bait recently? Lures are a steal.

I could do that...but I'd leave the boat ready to go out when I got back... ...just kidding, at least what you're doing makes sense now... I gave walleye fishing a shot, including a week on Lac Suel doing nothing but fishing for them...it's not for me. TOo slow, to passive...to something. That's not a criticism, I see it more as something I lack. I can't stand trolling either. Makes my hair hurt.

I can be on the rivers in less than a half hour. It's also walleye. That's something I'm learning, but on Erie, not the rivers.

Although I would never take the pretty decent fall I've already had for granted, I'm going to be hunting more of these green bass - so I'm OK with leaving this fishery a little early. A-Jay

@cgolf I find grubs sexy. I have a huge ziplock bag stuffed with them. I feel like every time I have one on the line I’m almost guaranteed to hook something. I mostly use 3” grubs so it could be a crappie, cat, bluegill, bass, walleye, white bass.......

599 for the chirp version. Bought it this morning.

yes

This is a great joke. Enjoy!

Do you think the lure manufacturers are pricing themselves out of business? Let’s face it maybe they don’t know the age range of there best customers? To me it would be from 10yo to 25yo. Youngsters are were the meat and potatoes of the business. Think about it one adult who fishes(dad) vs how many kids he has. I think the kids fishing out number us adults. I’m not sure of the ratio. But it’s pretty high. I went and purchased some new baits today at $9/$12 each. I said to myself how can the youngsters afford this? I see custom painted baits on the auction sites within this price range. Why settle for a plain colored bait. Even my bombers look better color wise for $6. Why don’t the bait manufactures target the area where the most buyers are age group wise? we see so many new baits fizzle out sooner than they should over the rest. Do you think there not selling because there priced too high. im retired but still try to save a buck here and there. I’m still above the $0.99 cent meal at mcdonalds. I feel bad for the younger crowd who just wants to fish. i found some nice looking affordable baits on an auction site made in Japan. I was surprised they weren’t made in China. Either way they looked good. But you have to wander your way through some stuff to find a good bait. sorry for the rant.

I’ve actually used the Kastmasters from piers much like you described doing from a boat. Guess I should have read more closely. It seemed like you were suggesting that their usage was limited to people with boats, but I’ve had plenty of success using them without. Didn’t want people to get the impression that they’re useles lures without a boat. They’re actually one of the most productive lures I’ve ever fished, if you’re counting all the species I’ve caught with them. Ah, understood. I thought you were referring to the lure itself as a jigging spoon (which is technically correct), not the way in which it’s fished. I’ve actually used them both ways (casting and jigging) and both were very effective.

Definitely far enough.

I would not recommend St. Croix, I bought a Bass X I’m that same model and don’t love it. Very large, double footed guides, not very sensitive, and an uncomfortable reel seat. Would go with an Irod Genesis, I’ve heard good things about them.

Fished yesterday mid lake area and caught some on drop shot but most were small. Left and went looking in creeks for shad and found a creek with a bunch of shad a caught 20 or so with most of the fish coming on a series 5 shad crankbait. These fronts are starting to get the fish on the move and feeding. Only going to get better !! FOLLOW THE SHAD !!

Fall is finally here in AZ. This 4 lb bass took a Zoom Trick Worm - Candy Bug - tail dipped in Spike It Dip-N-Glow in Chartreuse/Garlic in a foot of water right off the bank. She was busting shad near an inlet Some fun metro pond night fishing!

Agree with the above, fish it first. Sluggo is a good trailer for Scrounger. Tom

My boat & motor are 30 years old but still working. would I like to have a new one? of course I would.

Im running a '79 Glastron HPV160 with '79 Johnson 115.

As a kid I used to catch huge bullfrogs by dragging big nightcrawlers across the duckweed on the surface of a neighborhood pond in NY. Twenty years later I went back to the same pond with two of my kids. The frogs were still there. This time we used barbless hooks. The kids definitely enjoyed the enterprise.

If you look at the market as a whole, the cost of lures hasn't increased, proportionally, any more than rods, reels and other tackle. Even a spool of Stren or Trilene has increased in price around 35%. A lot of that has to do with advertising costs, but another reason is the average wage of that same target group you mention has gone up along with the younger one's parents. Live bait costs, on the other hand, fluctuate based on supply and demand. It was a rotten year for Canadian crawlers. Will we see crawlers at $2 or $2.50 again? That is a lot more likely than seeing a crankbait go from $7.99 back down to $5.99. Many of those lure companies moved their production out of the country only to raise prices anyway.

There's a certain patch of weeds at a pond that I fish that you can't even put a topwater frog near without a real bull frog chasing it down.

Sure, you can spend a ton of money on lures, but hooks and soft plastic baits are cheap. There are also Beetlespins and a bunch of spinner baits for $1.99. Fish in my area aren't snobs - put the right bait in front of them at the right time and they bite I get what you're saying, but you don't have to spend a ton of money to catch fish. I think a lot of us get that mentality that we need just one or two more of the latest and greatest baits to round out our tackle box (kind of like "just one more cast") when we'd be just about as successful sticking to a few basics. But compared to my 11 year old's baseball gear fishing is cheap. But he does chores and odd jobs for neighbors year round so he can treat himself to lures or whatever else he wants.

That's cool stuff... The Chippewa River around here was logging central for a while...the biggest mill in the world was on the river right in town for years. It is cool to be able to run the old channels in Lake Wissota and see stuff like that. Too bad it's mostly the Dead Sea when it comes to fishing....

I forgot to mention, the section of river I fish was at one time a logging route. Really neat how I am able to see the original river channel prior to damming and the logs that had broken free. There's an awful lot of guys who troll the river channel. I haven't had much luck doing that and spend most of my time jigging cliff walls

We used to catch them on floating frogs all the time; a fly rod with a little piece of foam or felt is more effective. They will literally eat anything that moves next to them. My dad caught one last year that had a blackbird in its mouth; not sure how he caught the bird but he still hit me dad’s offering. Were you watching Miliken fishing?

Good question Sean...I typically wear XL (I can't get the shoulders to fit in L), but Simms shirts seem to need to be XXL to fit across my shoulders. The Simms coats and rain gear I have are all XL though...so I'm not 100% sure.

Cabelas has the Garmin echomap 73sv on sale right now. I don't remember the price but it's a good deal.

In the old days I liked straight wines like Merlot or Cabernet... and a “red blend” was just a cheap table wine to avoid. Now today’s blends are tested to take out as many negatives of one kind of grape and get the better parts of others. Not perfect but much improved... I see Co-polymer much the same way ...

Aerodynamics can play a role, though not in this case. As can the actual rod and reel you use, again not in this case.

Last time fishing I set the hook on an anchor rope with anchor attached . Landed that sucker too. 12 lb XL is good stuff .

so I run two units on my jon boat, Helix 7 DI & Garmin 7SV Both are awesome, Helix 7 for down imaging but sonar is so so on it 7SV for side scan and the sonar on it (which i use the most) is absolutely amazing my sonar has caught me 8 fish since ive owned it, pretty sweet once you learn your electronics dont get a small screen!

I got a couple, george. Let's meet up sometime...you can have one. I have little need for three WP's...I rarely used the one I had before.

It has been some time since I shopped/bought sonar, but I always thought prices were pretty well rigged. You might get something thrown in during a sale week, like a ram mount, or charts or something....but I always had a strong sense that there was forced min pricing...or collusion...or whatever, but a $299 unit was NEVER available anywhere for even $298...in my limited experience, anyway

Was able to finish out the regular tournament season on a hot streak with two wins and 3rd. No pictures from a win on the Potomac since the fishing was tough and I didn't expect to win with a small limit. Took 1st on Conowingo with a decent limit of smallies on spinnerbaits. Finished up with a 2-day tourny on Deep Creek...Got 3rd with a mixed bag of SM/LM, mostly on jerkbaits.

Quite a few bags over 30lbs are caught on a shadrap every year out west.

I've spent the last two days doing nothing but reading about different model fish finder/gps units. I have found several used and factory refurbished(full manufacturer warranty) garmin 73 sv for under 400 dollars. Don't know if you want to spend that much but thought I'd mention it since i haven't seen any other side imaging units in that price range.

Hello Jason, I just checked my emails and for some reason it did not come through. Could you please resend it to siebertoutdoors@gmail.com or pm me here? I will get back with you. Thank you Mike Siebert

Can’t tell you about Northstar or Dirty but I use Siebert Jigs exclusively. Since I’ve started using them, I have had no reason to think about changing. The hooks, band and heads are all great quality, and there are a ton of color options. The couple times I’ve emailed Siebert about custom colors or a question about my order, I’ve always heard back quickly, the shipping is fast and track-able. You wouldn’t have to worry about customer service.

my thought exactly.. The set up is a 7' mhf shimano clarus with a daiwa rg 2500 spooled with 30lb 832 i may just end up trying to find a decent rod and reel for about 200 trying to avoid doing that but that what it may come to that setup will be fine.

Agree with your analysis on bill length and weights for the most part. I have some up to 3/4 oz for ledge fishing. For all of them I use the Lake Fork Magic Shad. That segmented body really works with the Scrounger & on vibrating jigs.

Fished a small tournament on Lacygne Saturday. Had a really good jig bite. Here is the video from the tournament.

If a MH spinning rod with 30 lb braid doesn't work for a swim jig, I'd change the angler...

1/2oz should cast as far as you'd ever need to.

Only took one rod with me today but it was worth it as i got this cutie. Not sure how big she is or how much she weights but still a nice fish. Got her on a dropshot trapper hook and wacky rig senko. I'm starting to think this combo i pick up a month ago from a yard sale must of came with fluorocarbon as i've been doing pretty good with it on both bass and trout. However, I don't think there's a way i could really know that.

Took my dad out for a quick trip to Clear Lake last week. Timing with the weather (cold front) was terrible considering how great it's been, but we still had a great time and caught a lot of 2-4 pounders. Every fish was thick with a big ol belly. Should be a great spring considering the ridiculous amount of bait in there... Even saw a bobcat that couldn't have cared less about us being right there

Small lakes have been a little slow with this weather and lack of rain, but managed a couple dozen this weekend including this guy - score another one for finesse fishing

Fall has definitely made its arrival... Look at the build on these fish! FYI these 3 would weigh 10-11lbs together