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@senile1 Did you ever get to Mt. Evans when you were in Colorado? These are from about 40 years ago, the first one is 1979, the rest are from the 80's. Where he's looking down is a couple thousand feet, almost vertical (he's standing at a bit over 14,000 feet). There were several nannies with kids on the narrow rocky ridge that runs from the peak of Mt Evans across the Sawtooth to Mt. Bierstadt. Bristlecone Pines:

Guys Breakfast....

I too had a bit of difficulty at first. Two pieces of advice, well, three. First, your thumb is key. Matter of fact, while learning, 90 percent of your attention should go to thumb control. Really emphasize the amount of thumb pressure you apply to the spool during the initial part of the pitch. After only a few hours of practice, your thumb will get the hang of it. Second, don't try to look just like the guy on the YouTube video. IMO, everyone will have a slightly different technique for pitching. You will learn yours. After all, you're basically just trying to pendulum lob your bait to somewhere accurately and quietly. It really is that simple. Third, start with a shorter amount of line out. While holding your bait, it should be almost, but not quite even with your reel. I've also found that unless you are standing on something fairly tall, a longer rod makes pitching more difficult. Also, don't go for distance just yet. Go for thumb control. That's it. The distance will come later as you developed your technique. Okay, that was more than 3 things, but I kept thinking of stuff. Hope it helped.

From where my feet are, not my rod, I would say my minimum range for pitching is about 10'. My extreme maximum is probably around 20 yards or more with a half ounce weight. However, unless something is obstructing my cast, it is unlikely I would pitch a bait that far because it is easier to make a regular cast. Ideally, I'm leisurely pitching at targets about 15-25' or so.

Modern, high-quality multi-piece rods are pretty much indistinguishable from one-piece rods other than maybe a little bit of extra weight. Every fly rod I own is at least two-piece; many are four. They get a real work-out in a day of fishing; probably more so than a bass rod. The only one I ever had break at the joint did so because the joint had loosened up during some night fishing with large poppers (think "extreme flailing" ). I've caught countless fish of all sizes, from little brook trout to big stripers and mahi, on four-piece fly rods with no problems, and also with no notice that they were four-piece rods. I honestly don't think many people could tell if they were using a one-piece or quality four-piece rod in a blindfolded test. I still choose one-piece rods for the majority of my fishing but, when portability is important, I have no problem with multi-piece rods. Check out TackleTour's review of the Daiwa Ardito three-piece bass travel rods. I own two of them and use them not only for bass, but even for stripers in the salt. It's pretty inconvenient to keep a couple of 7' rods in the car for unexpected fishing opportunities! Tight lines, Bob

A lot of the lakes that Ned fishes around here are lakes with weeds or mud bottom. I use a 1/16oz almost all the time and adjust retrieve speed to stay just above the weeds. A part of Midwest Finesse Fishing is catching fish off "nothing" banks that other anglers ignore, which are often mud/silt/clay bottom banks with little cover but may be good feeding areas due to an abundance of invertebrates that live in it.

Obscured by clouds, this is a shot of Mt. Ranier in late July, 2011 when my wife and I hiked in Mt. Ranier National Park.

With rain in the forecast there was a narrow window to get on the water. Air temperature was balmy 38 degrees when I hooked up the boat and headed for the Tract to do some fishing. Tide had been going out for about two hours, water temperature was 54 and change as I dropped the boat in the water. I covered a lot of water junk fishing and the bite got better for numbers later in the day as the water warmed. However, my better fish came in the first half of the day. The 5.2lber absolutely crushed a square bill, and my biggest was a 6.8 which smoked a slow rolled spinnerbait. As I was fighting them, one of my the first thoughts was why did I leave the net at the house.... Good Fishing all, JB

Cold this morning and a little windy, but we found a calm pocket behind a long point. She grabbed a blade bait on bottom about 15 feet deep. 23.5" long and 6.3lbs. Another couple weeks and she would have been alot heavier. Still, She's my new longest LMB! Shes my second citation largemouth of the year. PB by weight is still 6.5lbs (23") from a couple years ago.

To everyone's credit, it was only the fourth time I mentioned it...

The downfall of the Ned rig is it is a small fish bait. For sure you won't catch any good ones on such a tiny little bait

My favorite rod of all time is a Fenwick Aetos 6'6" 2 piece medium fast spinning rod. I use it for everything from wading small streams to bass finesse in lakes and reservoirs, and I have actually even caught a couple Musky on it. There is no sensitivity loss from my perspective, and being able to put it in my truck so easily is just beyond convenient.

Exsence, Twinpower and Vanquish are all between the Stella and Sustain. The smallest size a Exsence is made in is 3000, which is the same frame as a 2500, but a deeper spool. My#1 DS rod has a Twinpower 2500HGS. S denotes shallow spool. It holds 10 yards of backer and 50 yards of 20# braid. Any more than that and it's just a waste of line.

Learning to pitch took me a while to get comfortable with because I was rarely pitching off of a raised deck. What frustrated me was the idea that I had to really swing the jig with my rod, versus allow the tip to lightly load and pull line on it's own on the up-swing. It's also important to be very comfortable using your thumb as a brake because you're going to want to get comfortable rolling back the brakes in favor of being able to use your thumb through the entire process. Especially with pitching and close roll-casting, your thumb is going to help a lot to control distance, accuracy, and how hard your bait hits the water. Also, learning to finish by raising or lowering your rod tip can help here to keep the line out/loose line on the spool in check.

I found that i adjust my reel way loose to do this. The cast control is basically off and the spool tension is way less than for normal casting. Your spool will never be at high speed so the controls will not do a lot to help your out. Start at a normal tension and then slowly ease it off. Im not talking sloppy or anything but less than normal. The type of spool seems to have a big effect also. The older mag force daiwa reels with the V spools seem to pitch a lot better form me. I do well with a steez 100 spool but the deep megabass zonda spool in my alphas blows up on me every time. I dont know what reel your using but some are better than others.

I welcome you to come visit the Fox Chain of Lakes in Northern IL, my home water. Busiest inland waterway per acrew in the United States. With areas nicknamed The Washtub, and Suicide Alley, navigation can be a bit hairy at times. The Washtub is a stretch of river a number of miles long that may be 50 yards wide at it's narrowest and 100 yards or so at its widest. No speed limits or size restrictions. Most of the shoreline is steel seawalls. Waves have nowhere to go but back and forth every which way. It's real easy to get stuck in a boat wake while "staying with traffic" While not a typical weekend, the traffic here is insane from Memorial weekend to Labor Day

This is a pic from an autumn morning hiking excursion that my wife and I took to Hawksbill Crag in the Upper Buffalo River Wilderness in 2017.

The less developed gland bass have is the ability to detect odors. This doesn't mean they are unable to detect minute percentages of odors in the water, they can and do, it's just not a primary prey detection sense. Cat fish with their highly developed sense of order detection with barbels for example rely primarily on their sense of smell. I used 100% pure anise oil mixed with fresh garlic as a scent for bass fishing for decades, long before commercial fishing scents were availble and it works. I have caught several big blue and channel catfish fishing for bass using scented jig trailers that I wouldn't have not using scent. Why use a scent when bass fishing? I don't believe bass are attracted by the scent we use, they definately can be repealed by offensive odors. My theory is why not use a scent that doesn't alarm the bass and may cover orders that can. If a bass strikes my lures and holds it in their mouth a second longer, that gives me an advantage. Tom

I just placed the Invoice paper work to the building principal today to start a bass club in my high school. I am from northern NJ and went through the TBF and started a Student Angler Federated fishing club. NHBull, I would suggest you go to the site that LadiMopar suggests: http://fishinginschools.org You will find a "Join Now" menu. Make sure to print and read all of the directions they provide. I just placed 10 student anglers in their system yesterday. It costs $25 per student. My school is willing to pay for all of them. TBF provides insurance as well. However, your boat insurance is the primary insurance that will be used while students are on your boat. Good luck

What helped me at first was just letting the weight of whatever you have tied on dictate the distance. Lock your elbow to your side and leave it there. When you let the line go that's in line with the reel, just use your thumb to control the spool. That's it. In time when your thumb memory kicks in, as you let it go just use you wrist to give you the distance. After a while you'll be able to pitch with both arms and you won't even have to touch the line. Keep at it, you'll get it. Mike

I've had both for many years and I don't see any difference between them.

I just bought a 130 and really like how it cast and fishes so far. Haven't caught anything with it yet, but neither did any other jerkbait we threw Tuesday. It will be awhile before I get a true test of it, but pretty excited to get a Booyah Toadrunner to at least give a test run. One concern, the hooks look a lot like Trokar points, which I'm not a fan of at all. Hopefully I don't end up with a sliced up frog after the first couple fish.

I'm most effective pitching under 60 feet. I practice a lot though. One side of my deck in the back yard is raised about 2 feet off the ground so it's perfect to simulate the deck of a boat. I practice my 20'-40' pitches the most. I try to be able to place whatever bait I'm using inside of a small coffee can every pitch. I also practice with different weights. Anything from a 1/4 ounce finesse jig up to a 1 ounce punch rig. My sweet spot is a 3/8 Texas rig. Enough weight to get the distance, but not too much weight where my mechanics get lazy.

What's that in American money? Like a buck fitty?

Yep ... It includes four little Presidents for ice fishing. The monkey and I are on a first name basis. Lastly, don’t ask about casting reels. I’ll have to take my socks off to count that high ... ?

When you think you have a feel for it then learn sitting in a chair. That's what pitching is like out of a kayak. If you have a boat disregard.

It was a bit difficult to figure out at first. I watched all the videos, had good friends try to teach me. Couldn't get it. But I kept practicing and one time it just clicked, the motion, the timing. After that the actual pitching became very easy. Practice helped with accuracy and silent entries. So my advice is just start pitching and pitching and pitching. To targets ON THE WATER, being in your yard kinda helps to figure out the mechanics of the cast but until you're pitching to targets you intend to pull fish out of, it's just not the same.

Practice Practice Practice

Bass anglers like to fish from a raised platform . Pitching and the underhand lob cast are much more difficult when not at an elevated position . I have claimed to be a poor caster but I get a lot better when I'm on a raised platform and not casting while standing on the floor of a jon boat .

how much did that one cost you?

Put the blades on a couple days ago!

If they'll take a straight retrieve, GREAT! But, often they need to be triggered. I always talk retrieves in my videos as I fish; They can be pretty important. There's a Late Summer one that describes fishing cranks in vegetation, and describes and shows how to set up "the rip". In the one above, that Choporoz brought up, the water was cold and the pauses were critical. In general. motion tells the fish the lure is "alive"; the pauses let them know they can catch it. As you can probably imagine, the colder, or less aggressive, the fish are, the more important the pauses are. There's another, the Mid Fall cranking one, that shows this even better. There's another component too -horizontal vs vertical- which affects speed control too. Only two fish in the Mid-Fall video broke this long pause pattern: but both struck on the "initial descent", which is essentially a more vertical, and therefore slower retrieve speed (in the horizontal). Hope this helps. I'm also working on one that will address presentation directly.

I think most will tell you that they want the bait to hit stuff; pilings, poles, trees, rocks, etc. When pulling through open water, I try to mix it up a bit -- varying speeds, stops, etc. I recently watched new vid from @Paul Roberts and he was clearly getting hit on the pauses. As to colors....IDK....I've only been bass fishing about eight years and I generally have no clue about crank colors. I just am never convinced that bass get good enough look at them to care. I do tend to go with more red in the fall, but that might be that I'm just fishing memories of one good day years ago.

Arrived at KY Lake yesterday to prefish for KBF National Championship. First prefishing spot only took about 30 minutes to find my first toad!

Took the old lady on a hike

Remember, March 21st is the first airing of the Hank Parker Outdoors show with yours truly doing my best to represent you guys.

Dobyns Fury 735C

Daiwa Tatula 721HFB 7'2" HF and 150$ tops. Amazing rod.

Surprised nobody has posted these yet..

Most of my senko style is wacky. I just use 2/0 Owners Wacky Hooks or 4/0 Gamakatsu Finesse Wide Gap Hooks with custom weedguard I made out of cabin fever moment.

Once we got past the bar, it looked like this.

Step one...Purchase Pflueger President 6930. Step Two...Fish and enjoy that you got a reel that will do everything want it to for a long time without breaking your wallet. End of Story

True - but I'm not launching the Lund in anything close to that ~ That's a ton of fun in the right rig though - A-Jay

I start with the club that gets me the distance and trajectory I require from the tee to the desired spot that gets me a good lie for the next shot, taking the conditions into account...Oh, wrong site, sorry, but same answer...

Well, I guess that all depends on where the wires go through. I will say that all of my wires were either behind aluminum panels that needed rivets drilled out and removed to get to, or encapsulated in the two part expanding foam that the manufacturer used when the boat was first built. I had to rip out most of the foam so rigging new wiring was as easy as laying it in there then pouring new foam. If I was keeping the old foam, I imagine I could have put a slice in the foam to lay the wire in, like putting in one of those invisible dog fences, or using a long drill bit and drilling a channel. But I am unfamiliar with fiberglass construction, so I don't really know if your boat has the foam in the cavities.

This Rocky Mountain Goat was hanging out near the bottom of an "out and back" mountain trail as we came back down at Glacier National Park. It didn't seem to care that we were only about 20 yards away.

This seems to happen fairly often when someone fishing for trout with powerbait hooks and lands a monster largemouth instead. There was a 15.5 pound fish caught in California back in January by a guy fishing for trout with powerbait and 4lb test. Makes me wonder if the bass didn't see a trout distracted by colorful morsel and in their attempt to suck up the trout, got the powerbait instead (or maybe both).

Man almost DD on trout setup, what a surprise. Congrat to her. The thing is how long it took her to land that bass. I'm worried about the health of that bass and if she gonna be able to spread her gene. BTW, She might got a small trout hooked without knowing it. Same story I hear over and over at DVL where I guy try to catch trout and suddenly got a big bass on the line.?