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Been hanging out in our ship channel for 4-5 yrs.

Instead of playing with the shiny black thing on the right today, I dealt with the big brown pile to the left ( d**n you winter!). It’s all good though because tomorrow I’m off to my parents for four days of chasing huge, dumb northern Ontario smallies, the bass thumb will be good and raw by the time I come home and that’s all right by me.

Waiting on the other couple to start wading today and this happened. What an amazing start!

Seams 3 is the lucky number for the week thanks to the Fat Ika. Lately it has been my jid substitute

Still biting with the cooler weather we had come through the past few days. Back to near 90 again starting tomorrow after a big line of storms moves through. Half on top last night, half not...

My fishing partners!

Some of the best pictures of Pinkie from local guide Eric Rue.

Better than long arming??

Ya wanna learn how to "feel" better? Night fish around the New Moon phase! Removing your sense of sight will increase your sense of feel!

My "office view" on Thursday...

There have been plenty threads about this, and you will always have people on both sides of the argument. In clear water, a fluorocarbon leader makes a difference because of visibility, but there are many reasons besides visibility that they are important. Sensitivity is huge, braid to a leader is more sensitive than straight FC or mono (mono leader on braid is less sensitive than FC, surprises me with that short of a piece of line but it is). The leader also gives the bait a better action than straight braid, since braid floats. Lastly, you will have a much better hookup ratio with braid to a leader over mono, because of the no stretch. I would LOVE to go head-to-head in a clear body of water against one of the guys who says bass can't see braid

For me it's kinda like deer hunting...I aint here to shoot spikes!

we had a low of 57 last night and i could really feel it while cruising across the lake in the little johnny this morning. but i aint gonna complain about it one bit! blue bird skies and a pesky NE breeze, changing to SE, never seemed to bother the fish, just the fisherman. caught close to 25, mixed bag of spots and largemouth. life is good.

I'd say he is pushing 210 lbs, although the farmer tan sometimes makes accurate predictions difficult.

Surprisingly most of the lakes in the area we fish don’t have huge numbers of pike, especially the little ones. But there are some “nicer sized” fish that will find your bait every now and again ?.

Left the green fish alone and went after crappie with a good friend on Thursday. Kids back in school and a weekday made the lake pretty enjoyable. Catching just over 300 crappie didn't hurt anything, either. They were grouped up pretty good though as you can tell in the second picture. .

Couldn't be more wrong ?! The last 10.5lb I caught out in deeper structure jumped at least three times and just as high as any dink I've ever caught. And all the others I've caught penetrating heavy cover sure seemed fast to me while they were making runs away from the boat.

So are you nodding off while you reel in these half-dead DD bass ? A-Jay

Playing hooky from your consulting job - and catching fish off your client’s dock (while he’s at work) with a photo of his jet ski in the background??

The ultimate teacher ~ A-Jay

Rod and casting mechanics are 90 percent of casting distance.

Guess who was on Bass Live today ? A-Jay

Any day I get 3 over 3lbs, it's a good day. It's a good day

The Bubble Blade has two holes added to the blade that gives the bait a different shake to it. A-Jay

What about fluoro with a braid leader? It’s different and something the bass don’t usually see, so it’ll have to work.

When I used HB 998's I would do both of these things, neither was perfect but it's about the best you could do. You can also try to get as many things you want to waypoint on the screen at one time then stop the boat and screen and mark them all at once...Then resume on with your scan - You can accidentally double up waypoints with this method though. This doesn't help with the OP's Helix....But touchscreen units make this process much easier since you can just tap, mark, and clear the cursor in only a second or two as opposed to scrolling a cursor. I have HDS units now and they also let you scroll back over the scan history and mark things after the fact - Can just scan without marking then stop and mark everything after the fact by scrolling back.

To my knowledge, there is no "fix" per se, as most all units are set up this way. Hard to drop an accurate waypoint on a moving screen target. So that leaves you with a couple "workarounds." One is to not mark a boulder until it shows up on the screen right in line (90 degrees to either side) with the cursor. This makes for the shortest distance to move the cursor over the object, then quickly enter the waypoint and continue, minimizing "lost" screen coverage. The other option is to simply pause the boat, popping it in reverse for just a sec to stop forward progress. Then, mark the waypoint, and go back into gear and continue.

Actually catching the 2 digit bass is not big deal as far as the catch goes. They are not fast, they can't jump or jump very little. Sorta like catching a redfish.

I second AJay's comments. If you shop around you can find a good price on the Jackhammer. They are really well made chatterbaits and the Yamamoto Zako's are very effective.

I like the Rage Blade quite a bit myself - solid bait. However, if you haven't tried one already and you can get over the $$ - Get yourself at least one Z-Man/Evergreen Chatterbait Jack Hammer and a bag of the Yamamoto 4" Zako Swimbait trailers of your choice. You'll be glad you did. A-Jay

Nothing wrong with it, although you could get reported to the Better Bassness Bureau! ?

You still have to change the oil and spark plugs on a Ferrari just as you do on a Honda Civic. No maintenance on a machine, and it will eventually develop problems. And eventually all machines break down completely.

You're going to get out what you put in unfortunately. Things will start to wear eventually and you will notice sooner rather than later if you don't maintain your reels to some degree.

I had caught quite a few in the 8 to high 9s several years ago. Next trip my son caught a 13.35 Texas ShareLunker. It made the 8 we had in the other livewell look like a dink. (Fish were biting good on a ledge and we didn’t want to release them yet, but all were eventually released.) my first 10 came a few months later. That one jumped and fought hard, my last DD was 11.3. It tried to jump but could barely get its head out of the water. It went back deep and pulled hard. Unfortunately it was a tournament practice day. Two days later would have made a good paycheck. But Lake level came up a lot. The 28’ deep spot was 40’ deep in the tournament. A couple of weeks ago I caught a 8-9 pounder that wrapped in a tree. That one was more thrilling because we had to work to get it out. the aforementioned 11 is my profile picture. I grew up musky fishing so I have the same mentality for bass. I’ll take one giant over 20 “keepers”. My goal every time I go out is to get at least one 7 or above. Too bad it only comes around once or twice a year (unless I go to Falcon). picture here was my last 8 a couple of week’s ago

Beautiful day on the Rez. I caught 5 and this one was the biggest at 20" / 5.25 lbs.

Ouch. It reminds me of a story when my brother had the largest trout hooked. A lady grabbed the to catch it but unbeknownst to everyone, there was a huge hole in the net. As the lady raised the net out of the water, the trout gave one last desperate squirm and freed itself from the hook, hit and fell through the bottom of the net and fell back in the water. My brother was bummed and I had mixed feelings. I too was saddened, but at the same time, I couldn't stop laughing. Dangit, I'm laughing now as I type this, as fresh as the day it happened, and it was over 10 years ago.

Location - shallow coves - shady banks - under shady overhangs - weedlines (edges of pads), shady or not Rod - ultralight/fast (panfish can be a blast on these) - light/fast Reel - spinning Lure - Crappie Magnet (black and green) - 1/16 to 1/8 oz jig head with 2-inch curl tail grub (bright green, or green/white) I've tried a M/F rod for panfish and really wanted to make it work, but it just wasn't sensitive enough for the light bites and didn't catch much. My go-to panfish setup is now a 7'0 L/F on a nice blank with a 2-inch curl tail grub on a jig head. A UL/F might be better but mine is only 5'6 (short casts) with a less sensitive blank, and the L/F is good to have for that occasional bass. Once in a while a panfish will grab something big. Last trip out I tossed a 5 inch worm from a baitcaster hoping for bass and brought in a chunky sunfish. How the heck that fish thought it could swallow a 5 inch worm is a mystery, but he tried.

Oil, gotta oil em, just a drop is all ya need. I’ve got 20yr old Quantum baitcasters that have not rusted,

I bet it feels twice as good as catching a five lber .

If the only reason to fish was the pursuit of tiny bass then that's when I would quit! ?

What does it feel like to catch double digit bass? It feels pretty good to catch over 10lbs of bass in a day ..... To catch them all at once .... No Idea

In the future you might consider wearing (or Photo shopping) a fake nose and mustache... but otherwise, no, I see nothing wrong.

He's thinking outside the box and fishing the sewers! Or the waypoints he bought from the locals said there were fish here. LOL

Picked up just this pack of plum crazy 7.5" Culprit worms today. Payday is tomorrow so I didn't have alot to spend, plus I've been wanting to try them out. ?

Ordinarily, I wouldn't be posting a picture of a 3.25 lb bass, but this one earned it's 15 minutes of fame as the second hardest fighting bass I've ever caught. She turned my boat 90 degrees and nearly wedged me between two docks. She stayed deep and pulled so hard that I just knew that I was hooked up with a double digit bass. The pictures don't really do justice, but this girl was buff! She reminded me of one of those overgrown bluegill whose body looks too big for their heads. I'm pretty sure that she would have tested positive for PEDs! The only bass that has ever fought me harder weighed over 12 lbs.

So after a month of waiting for my river to clean up so I can see to wade it again, I got one day on it... It rained like a hurricane the night after and its up three feet and solid mud again. I might get to fish it in another month! Either way, my buddy has been getting big into fly fishing and he wanted to catch a smallmouth on the fly. We hit the river Sunday at 7:30 am and he caught his first smallie on the fly rod after about 3 casts! He kinda struggled the rest of the day, trying to get the hang of fishing different lures in the current while wading, but I think he got a dozen or so. We only fished maybe 3/4 mile stretch of river in 8 hours, but it is loaded with 8-12" smallies and has the occasional 2-3lber cruising around. I did what I always do, and went with a bag of senkos, some blue and chartreuse keitechs, and a bluegill plopper 90. Got one to hit the plopper but didn't hook it. I ended up with maybe 18 for the day (didn't really keep a close count after ten) Bunch of short strikes and/or missed hooksets especially on the Keitech for some reason. My biggest of the day came out of a hole that I fish all the time and know it's kind of a hot spot for these brownies to sit in when the current is up. Can't compete with AJ but I SAW one that's gotta be close to half the weight of that last giant he posted! Still had an awesome day. Haven't had the time lately to fish like I want to and the next few weekends will be much the same, but I'm looking forward to a big charter trip out to the Gulf Stream for a day!

Pretty cool find on the river Friday. Buddy that knows a lot about old western history thinks a Bison Antiquus that went extinct about 4,000 years ago! I can tell you for sure, it was real heavy, my kayak was dragging on some of the sandbars on the way back to the ramp that I floated over on the way up. Nearly 3' wide too and as you can see in the second picture, the cap is bigger around than a 5 gallon bucket.

Uh oh! That's not the boat launch Fletcher!

9 oz short of 10 lbs. The sheer power is what spiked my adrenaline through the roof and then when I got her close enough to see her huge form in the water my knees were bout to give out lol The massive mouth and belly when I got her out stands out in my mind. I smiled about it for days and would randomly pull my phone out to look at a picture of her lol just don't tell my wife. I can't wait to catch one over 10!

IT'S LIKE BLAH??? If I ever think a 10+ lber "is like blah" I'll break all my rods and flush all my lures down the pot.