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Awesome day today on Istokpoga. 2 over 7lb and a bunch of smaller ones. I lost a monster punching mats too.

I went in to my local family owned sporting goods dealer to get a new mountain bike seat for my son and walked out with two Tatula CT Type R's. They were on clearance and I was able to apply a preferred customer discount which dropped them to further to $87.99 apiece. Not bad.

No bites to be had at the first pond I dropped in on. Spent about 1.5hours there. Went to my current hot spot and threw the wading boots on. Landed one on the first cast, then 4 more in about an hour. Largest(bottom right) was probably in 2.5-3lb range. T rigged junebug Yum Dinger...again.

Didn't catch any picture worthy bass, but this rainbow was a nice unexpected gift and looked more like a steelhead than the trout we usually have around here. Weighed in at 4.5 lbs.

Was prefishing yesterday for a tourney and first thing in the morning caught a very nice walleye. Now usually the last thing I want to do is keep a fish for dinner but my inside voice was saying my wife would really really like some walleye. Hardly ever bring one home as I don't care to clean fish after a day on the water but....I did it....points....got lots of points.

As I sit here after taking a shower....putting on some "DMSO" and getting ready for breakfast an hour early before I have to take off to the lake for the last club tourney for the year I wonder how many of you set your alarms and get up before the alarm early to head out. I'm greatful the good Lord still lets me be excited for the little things in life. I've tourney fished for over 35 years and I still love the hunt and all that goes with it....well....maybe not the parking lot stuff in the bigger ones!! May your day be blessed.

Caught way more bass than I expected to yesterday, considering I set out to chase wipers. Those weren't cooperating like I'd hoped so I chased the green ones while looking for lost baits. Found 14 baits, including a Pompadour Jr, and caught one of the fattest/thickest bass I've ever caught on a homemade finesse brush jig. Only 16 3/4" long, but 3.26 pounds. Caught several nice ones on a wart my buddy painted up for me.

Best part about visiting in laws on Thanksgiving is hitting their private pond after lunch. Here’s 9 of the 11 I caught in a couple hours. All roughly the same size. Can’t count the number of missed hookups. And the two I caught today Once again, working the t-rigged Yumdinger(junebug).

So I am outside with the leaf blower cleaning the last of this years leaves out from around the house, and my wife comes out side and says " I just ran some stuff thru the clothes dryer that had a lot of lint. I cleaned the trap but was wondering, since you have the leaf blower out maybe you could use it to give the vent a good cleaning." So I go inside but can't get the leaf blower at a good angle. My wife says " could you try it from the outside?" I said " sure, just make sure the door on the dryer is closed" So I go out side to the vent, My wife gives me the thumbs up from the window, and I let her rip. A few seconds later I hear a pounding on the window, I look up and my wife is looking real mad and signaling me to come inside. She is standing there in a cloud of fine lint. Apparently when I turned the leaf blower on it blew the dryer door open as she was standing in front of it. I guess Mistake # one was using the leaf blower. I'm thinking mistake # two was laughing, and I'm pretty sure mistake # three was offering to use the leaf blower to get all the lint out of the house. I'd love to say I made this up but sadly it's all true. Jim

Thoughts Anyone ? Mike

Go to the pond at night with a flash light and look for crawdads. Buy or build a crawdad trap they cost sbout $5 or less to make. A 36"x24" mesh wire hardware cloth makes a good trap. Roll the wire into a tube 36" long and fold the wire ends to hold the seam together. Fold one end to form a funnel about 4" -3" dia opening. Flatten the opposite end and fold. Attach a cord and you have a crawdad trap. Fish heads make good bait or a couple strips of bacon rolled up with a tooth to hold it together. Drop the bait into the trap funnel and put the trap in the water along the bank and tie the cord to a stack. Leave over night and you should have several crawdads in the trap. Open the flat end and dump them out. Crawdads change colors, they should be very dark if burrowing into the mud. Tom

IMHO, If a bass is in the mood to eat, and sees a crayfish, he will not pass it up because it is not the right color. Even if the bass has never seen a crayfish before, if he thinks it's edible, he'll eat it. One of the most popular bass baits of all time is a worm. How often have you ever seen worms swimming in your local waters?

I'm going to be in the minority with this take, but I'd actually recommend being cautious about pursuing an MRI/CT right away unless someone suffered a traumatic acute injury with significant neurological symptoms (e.g., cauda equina, gross strength loss, etc). There is very little to no correlation between severity of symptoms and findings on diagnostic tests for low back pain, and a lot of medical professionals start chasing MRI/CT findings instead of just addressing the symptoms. Retrospective studies show people getting advanced diagnostic tests for an acute onset of low back pain take longer to recover from their injury and cost significantly more money to treat. Research also shows there's one thing that determines whether or not someone will get a fusion. It has nothing to do with severity of pain, symptom distribution, neurological findings, size of herniations, etc... the one thing is your zip code. If your local specialist likes to perform fusions as a treatment option instead of the absolute last resort as it's intended you're much more likely to get one whether or not you actually needed it.

I think size has more to do with it than current. I fish for river walleye as well as on Lake Michigan. If the walleye are under 20", there's not much of a fight. Over 20" hold on to the rod. If it's all about the fight, nothing beats early spawn kings on bass gear.

It wasn't a new bait to me, but a new way to use it. in the past I fished Chatterbaits fairly fast in shallow water. It would catch active fish ,but not many quality fish. after reading posts here, I slowed way down and fished them deeper along weed edges. the average size of fish went up dramatically. The slow rolled Chatterbait has become one of my go to baits.

My goal is to control the bass with whatever tackle I am using and by doing that you minimize losing bass. Letting bass fight too long isn't good for the fish, horsing them into the boat isn't needed and not a good idea with big bass, bouncing bass into a boat with carpet damages their skin/slime coat. Tom

I like to get my fish in the boat. If I was purely in this for the fight, I'd be targeting something other than LMB.

Not bad first hour in the late afternoon. Waded about thigh deep until my boots took on too much cold water and my feet started to freeze. I may not even touch a crank again until Spring. The t-rig is so productive right now for me.

Water temps 44 degrees and change, but they're still biting. We'll be catching them with ice on the lake in about another week to 10 days.

Just bought a Tatula SV 6.3 had it out to break it in. Rod I put it on was 7' MH/F Helios used a 3/8 SPRO Hair jig Slow going five hours just one fish.

Caught this tank yesterday. No scale or measuring tape(didnt have my normal bag,nor did I expect this size catch). Laid her down for just a second so I could take a pic to show scale. She swam off beautifully and I packed up and drove home feeling high.

Slow day but caught a couple nice ones! Too bad the largemouth was all sickly looking.

Just noticed this thread. No reason to venture out of the San Diego area to bass fish. Dixon, El Capitan, Hodges ( closed until Feb.), Jennings, Lower Otay, Miramar, Morena, Murry, Poway, San Vicenre , Sutherland (closed until Mar) and Wolford lakes. Miramar is extremely clear water and the bass fishing during cold water period is tough. If the lake is low then the tulies are out of water, most of the catchable bass will be near the dam and that's off limits. I would use a slip shot rigged 6" Roboworm in MM111, with 5 to 6 lb mono on spinning tackle. The are some giant bass in Miramar so a 8" ROF 5 dark trout Hudd swimbait would be a possibility if your son has the right tackle. Wolhford is a good cold water lake and fishable from shore and also has some giant bass. Slip shot rig using 8 to 10 lb mono, spinning or baitcasting with larger worms like Uptons Cutoms 9" Dragon tail in DV craw would be a good choice. San V the bass go deep so you need boat or rent a boat, all the SoCal finesse presentations work at this lake. Tom

^^^this^^^ never buy 1 jig! Tom

@BrackishBassin Having a basic understanding of a bass's prey is a solid plan. There are 'several' different species of crayfish spread all over the place but there are some basic life cycle traits that most will inevitably follow. Here's a couple of links with perhaps more (or less) information than you may have been looking for. http://www.crayfishfacts.net/crayfish_life_cycle/crayfish_life_cycle.html http://www2.ca.uky.edu/wkrec/CrawfishBiologyHistory.pdf btw ~ It's probably time to pick up a few more jigs. A-Jay

There's a trick to it. Push up and past the point of the keeper, then push down and around the keeper so the bait stretches around each side of the hook. Once you push hard enough you'll feel a "pop" and often see the keeper stuck through the back side of the a just a tiny bit. Once you get the hang of it, it's really easy to rig and change out baits also.

Vexus sounds and looks a lot like Lexus. Tom

A week ago tomorrow N.C. State beat It's rival unc 33-21. I was at the game and can safely say it was one of the most satisfying wins In memory. No, the ACC Isn't the SEC and there's no debate about that , although we do have the defending national champion in our conference. College football Is very popular nationwide and Is only gaining in popularity. Go WOLFPACK!

Sunday fun day!

This is the same 25 days of xmas page that's been used for 2 years. It's never taken down. The TW xmas page from 2012 is still viewable. It's not this years page and there is no way to view future items yet until the sale is published. For those wondering how to do it, it isn't rocket science. When the actual 25 days of xmas page goes live, in chrome for example, you can right click on any door and inspect in image source. It will reveal clickable hyperlink to that says sale. Click the link and a new window will open /w the image/text of what you will see that day when the door opens on the actual TW site. In recent years the sale has usually started late first week of December. There are items that are usually always on the sale like Seaguar X% off, Rico blems, and TW apparel but for the most part the sale is just large discounts on already on sale items.

I did not. Rather difficult to march with a piano.

Of course. And as long as you keep your music to yourself, no problem. If you "share" with those who don't enjoy your music, then it's a problem. This doesn't seem to be all that complicated. None of us owns the lake. It's simply about courtesy.

I feel like these are going to be expensive....

Les Miles Agent called UT. He wants the job badly. Since Mullen went to Gainsville SEC recruiting has went crazy. Fields looks like he is flipping to the Gators, flipped two UCLA O-Lineman and the #2 WR from Miss St. That might be a surprising team next year. Jimbo to A&M is almost a done deal with FSU already interviewing Taggert Canada will stay put I also see Greg Shiano going to UCF to replace Frost.

I didn't join this forum until after I bought my Lund but one of the biggest things I've learned from it is I'm really freaking glad I bought a Lund

Hedgehog studio avail oval knob cap.

Lost one today that was easily over 10lb. But we still had a blast catching them on lake Istokpoga.

Fished from about 3 on today . Post front conditions. Not a cloud in the sky. Worked hard to get 8. Most were caught on a 10 inch grape shad culprit. Its funny, but as I woke up this morning I was thinking about using this bait today. No hawgs, ( I lost one though ) but all decent fish.

New PB ?

Got some border patrol smallies this evening

Made it to Hedges around lunch time. Didn't have any more black/blue hair jigs, so I went with 1/4 oz. brown/orange. Shortly after launch I landed a big fat yellow perch on my perch blade bait. Four more came to the boat in the next few minutes. One fatty was 13" long. I was in 18' but casting towards shore and letting the blade bait sink to 10' +-. I moved around some and struck out with a green/red Hula Grub on a drop shot so I switched to the jig. Lowe and behold I pulled in a nice perch on it. Crazy thing is, I've caught more non-bass on jigs than bass when using them - what's up with that?. Worked a couple different jerk baits for a while without a nibble. Although I couldn't find any smallies, the perch were active and helped me achieve my goal of MA fish in 10/12 months without drilling any holes in ice. Water temps were 47.x when I arrived and 46.x when I left. Now I have to catch at least one more bass before New Years....

i started having problems with my back about 15 years ago. i was doing alot of running at the time and i noticed some pain, running down the back of my left leg and in the bottom of my left foot when i stood. i was 45 then. long story short, pinched nerve, probably from years of abuse in my early days digging ditches for the local water works. periodic chiropractic care and core strength training has helped me avoid the knife.....so far. i still hit the gym most week day mornings and try to keep myself in decent shape, for a gray headed feller. but, i re-injured my back around a month ago and i’m back at the chiropractor once again. not too severe, but still, third time in the last 15 years. i’ve been doing carpentry work since i retired in 2010 and it’s probably about time for me to realize the inevitable. i have always held the belief that a man should be working and that hard work is good for you. well, that’s my story, happy back health to all of y’all.

New bait/technique/presentation for me this year was the good old spinnerbait. I'd never caught a fish on one before, so I bought a couple this spring and caught half a dozen or so river smallies on them this summer/fall. It's not going to replace my small paddletail swimbait anytime soon but it was fun to catch them on something new!

The SK Rage Bug on the Freedom Head was a solid performer for me on smallies. Early season shallow, mid season deeper and especially this fall, when this bait was all I fished for almost a month ! A-Jay

New to me this year was the Berkely Dredger . I caught fish on all five sizes and the deepest was at 22 foot. Thats the deepest a lipped crankbait has caught bass for me . Previously my record was about 17 foot .

Fish what you’re comfortable with and what works for you. Wasn’t that long ago that 6’ and 6’6” rods were the norm. If you’ve tried 7’ and it’s not for you then don’t waste your money on something that isn’t what you want.

Another successful trip to Lake Shawnee with a jerkbait today. 48-49 degree water temps. I probably caught 10 lm with 2 trout, one FAT 2.5 lb white bass, and a yellow perch mixed in

Finally got my baits in from Phil 2 custom painted lunker punkers

Looks like a Huddlebug by Huddleston? Took a day off from work yesterday and made a long drive back home to see family and got a picture of 4 generations of Westgate men.

Here's some.