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They said they missed me. I said "Tell me about it ! " A-Jay

checked my trail cam today and captured my first bobcat .

Been raining here and things are quiet....I went outside during a break and in my shaky ways decided to burn a lot of branches and old wood. Well...got it burning well with the aid of Citronella .... this stuff doesn't flare and seems to work well on wet wood. Anyway...out there by the fire....wife and her sister left to observe from the windows and comfort of the home. Rain came...Was standing there just soaking it in you my say.....was awesome...reminded me of why I like fishing in the rain...so so peaceful. Now I'm wishing I could drive so I could go fishing..... Can't have it all......:) May your day be blessed.

"Ideal" jerkbait conditions for me are anytime I can fish them effectively and they are getting bites. While I do fish them more early & late season, there's plenty of opportunity to score with them during the warmer water periods as well. I do find Some wind is often better than flat calm. And I'll throw a jerkbait over, around & near cover, just not in it. Coincidentally, I got on a decent jerkbait bite yesterday and the wind was up & down all day (but mostly up) A-Jay

Today was a lot of fun despite the heavy rain. I caught this guy and a couple of weird ones.. I caught a yellow striped bass and a silverish-gray walleye. I wish I got a pic of the walleye though. It was about 6-7lbs. No brown or green at all. I have never seen anything like it.

I thought they quit making lead 20 years ago? LOL! I started using tungsten a long time ago and there is no way I could go back to lead. My buddy was throwing a 1/4 oz lead weight the other day and I thought he had a 1 oz punching weight on.

Guys do not congregate at blast off by the ramp. Get in boats and head out to a starting area away from the ramp. Blast off. At weigh-in, only one guy from the boat takes fish to weigh station that is manned by two guys at the maximum. Then you can trailer your boat, parking it away from the weigh-in and ramp area, and either wait for the results or go home and get the results emailed to you if you are not in the money.

I guess I've never heard the rules for fishing a jerkbait. I fish them year round, flat calm, windy, sunny, cloudy, about the only time I don't use them is heavy cover and muddy water. Cloudy days are usually some of my best jerkbaiting days.

Only I dictate when I throw a jerkbait. I don't let time of year, water temp, water depth, water clarity, wind direction, sunny skies, cloudy skies, rain, air temp or Ott DeFoe tell me when to throw one. Basically, I always have one tied on and I am not afraid to throw it, LOL.

Not sure what the whole situation is but I think you'd be better off driving the car once a week to keep both the battery charged and fluids circulated throughout the vehicles various systems.

Yup. When it rains or when a storm hits, I make a cup of coffee and go out on the porch to watch it, or I go to the shed and open both doors and watch it. After 43 years of marriage, my wife still doesn't understand. I suppose that's what I get for marrying a city girl. (Gotta love'em, though.) ??? jj

It's great in sizes above 1/2oz, I don't really see the benefit in smaller sizes though. I lose too many sinkers to zebra mussels to fish it on everything.

I think the jerkbait is one of the best lures you can use for bass and you can catch fish on them during all seasons with open water. Have caught bass on jerkbaits on cold windy days just like I have caught them on calm sunny days.

....one lake can produce numbers and another can produce quality. My "home lake" gives me insane numbers. Rarely do I catch less than 25-30 in a 5 hr morning; with days reaching 60-70 in a 6-7 hr day. But most will be 1.5-2.5 lbers, which I'll take all day. But it's nice to get some quality fish now and again, so that's when we head to lake B, which is what we did today. My neighbor with a 5-7 And me with a 5-3 And a good smallie We only boated 6 fish total, but most were better than average fish. And that's how it consistantly is in those 2 lakes. If I want numbers, I go to one; quality, I go to the other. Just odd how it works every time. Oh, and my beer you can stand a spoon up in to finish the day

"I will hug it, and love it, and name it George."

I refuse to watch The Tiger King -- I might be the only person in America, but the one thing I despise more than dramas is reality TV and I get the impression that The Tiger King is essentially a hybrid of both, so not my bag.

Good advice from Mick. You wont go wrong following it. Allow me to add a point or two. You have selected a spinjig blank. A medium power spin blank is usually equivalent to a med- light power casting blank. The NMB843 may be a better choice for an all around casting blank. Call Mudhole and ask them. The Fuji ACS seat is not well liked. If you have a rod with that seat, and you like it, go ahead and use it. I find it to be very uncomfortable. Many do. I think it depends on hand size, and how you hold it while retrieving. For my money, the most comfortable casting seat out there right now is the Fuji PTS seat. You will need a Fuji Perfect Fit carbon fiber insert tube, which is epoxied into the seat, and an arbor to glue inside the tube. If you want a foregrip, buy the seat with the hidden thread hood.Fuji also makes other Perfect Fit pieces togo with this seat. Get the carbon fiber sleeve to go over the hidden thread hood, and the cap and base trim rings to set it off. You may also like a trim ring to fit at the back end of the reel seat. Mudhole can help you with this. Give them a call. They have some helpful, knowledgable people. Also, you are going with the ACS or ECS reel seat tell them where, on the blank, you want the reel seat to fit. They will then send you the correct size seat for your build. About guides; nine would be about right for that blank. Get one more just to be sure. I use all BLAG guides for most of my builds. I keep sizes 6, 5.5, 5, 4.5, and 4 in stock. For your build I would use a 5.5 first, the one 5, and the rest 4.5. A 4.5 will pass a well tied leader knot. Also a BFCAT tip guides. For the blank you selected get a tip with a 5.0 tube size. The tip size listed in the rod specs is the tube size for the tip guide. if memory serves, the grips you selected have a 3/8” bore. This will need to be larger. These can be difficult to ream by hand, and remain concentric. Here’s a tip. Use drill bit 1/32” larger than the original hole. Do not chuck the bit up in a drill. Twist it through slowly by hand. Then increase drill bit size by 1/32”. Repeat until you get it to fit. I go a bit larger then use a thread wrap or drywall tape to fill the gap. By drilling without a drill, your bore hole will remain in the center of the grip(concentric). good luck.

Colder days it's latex gloves with half-finger, knit-wool gloves over. The latter are fairly cheap and I have 2 pair to swap out if the first gets wet.

That guide set has a first guide that is not the optimum height for casters, according to Fuji. It should be a 10 mm, possibly followed by a KB6, then all the rest of the guides can be one size. I would use 5.5's, but For casters I use a Fuji RV6 for the first guide, then Fuji KB's and KT's all the way to the tip with a Fuji SIC LG tiptop. The specs for the blank tells you which tip top tube size to get. I think building on top in the traditional way is best for a first build, and I use 9 or 10, usually 9, guides + a tiptop for a blank like this. I like 5.5 ring size runners for casters, but you can go smaller, but 4.5's are pretty darned small. I would use 4 or 5 KB's (bigger foot than KT's for the middle of the rod) then KT's to the end. Alconite or SIC are fine, I wouldn't spend the money for Torzites for a first build. The Fuji TRVSG RV guide is a light colored finish that will go well with the light stainless KB's and KT's or the light titanium guides. It's available in a dark finish that will go well with black guides or the dark CC Fuji guides. The running guides are so small that exact finish matches is not a problem. IMO The ACSM seat is a good seat that is not hard to build and Mudhole can tell you which bore size is right for that blank. Mudhole can help with the grips. For most casters used for bass fishing you don't even need a foregrip. Use the Mudhole site to familiarize yourself with the building processes,, tools, materials needed. There are many excellent videos on line, too. Mudhole has some and Flex Coat has many. I'd say your specs are close to right, but I would not buy that set, but would start with the RV 6 or KW 10.

why with all the bad rep about Dicks would anyone order a rod from them period period period

Well, this red thing turned out interesting, at least for me. Red bite is still on in Texas in the hyper-clear hill country water. Hooked a stump with a chatterbait this morning, turned out to not be a stump. Have switched to a delta red rage menace to make it brighter red... haven't experimented enough to tell if there is a real difference between that and the falcon red. Of course, it's all worked well enough long enough it's hard to go back and test whether they are caring about color at all anyway. Reddish and orange-ish jig trailers have been winning the days over GP too.

I also use 20# braid and don't have this issue. First fix? Take it all off and re-spool it with some tension - loose braid on the reel can cause this.

That has been said on here plenty of times.

Hello folks... Last yr I purchased my first boat after taking some 25 yrs off from fishing. To top that I was trying to learn how to throw a baitcaster... In the past yr there has been a whole lot of firsts and personal best for me, yesterday was not different... I have become fairly efficient with a baitcaster now day and found the Lews to be go to reel. Last yr I ended the yr with a 5 lb channel cat.. not a big deal until you learn I participated in 5 cat tourn and got skunked every time.. Any ways yesterday I fished a new lake and caught 5, again nothing to brag about except I was fighting winds up to 30 mph... the white caps had white caps and I had to hide in the coves and behind rock bluffs. Caught my first crappie, 14" about 2 lbs and my first sm mouth larger than a pound... in fact I caught 2 beautiful sm mouth, one almost 3.5 lbs & 5 lbs making it my personal best bass and SMB.. Oh and I was using a old 2 pc Shimano med light spinning combo with 6# mono with a ned rig... talk about a fight. I have a another Cat tourn to go to Saturday... Will catching a cat during a tourn be another first..? Hahahaha Anyhow, What a difference a yr can make given a chance.

Walleye are awesome predators that get a bad rap as fighting like wet socks but big ones, especially river fish, fight really well. They don’t make crazy runs like other fish but they have a unique way of fighting that is really hard in itself. I hooked this 27” in 2’ of water in really fast current while I was fishing for big browns. Was using a g loomis e6x 7’1m xf with 10lbs braid to 10lbs mono so not super light and it took me a good 2 minutes to get it to shore and you can see how small a river it is. I have caught a couple mid 20” walleye while throwing 10”-16” musky plastics like a Poseidon swimbait or a Mag Bulldawg. Walleye have about as big of a mouth for their size as largemouth do so they can eat really big baits. In general you see people using small baits for them because they are going after eaters which are usually 14-18”. Paddletail swimbaits are one of the single best walleye baits in rivers and lakes and will catch them year round. One of my confidence baits when targeting them is a 4.5 regular keitech swing impact not the fat to find them, and then switch to a 4.3 or 4.8 fat to try to get a bigger bite. I have caught them on 5.8 and 6.8’s but I get consistently bit more often on the smaller ones. I live within 30 miles of pool 4 of the Mississippi which puts out some of the biggest walleye in the country every year so I definitely do my share of targeting them.

Looks like Kistler is running another sale. Zbones are down to $385. Even at 30% off, that's still too rich for my blood. I just moved up into the $200 rod bracket. Frankly, I don't even want to know what I'm missing at the $500+ price point.

I went fishing today and was using 4" zoom lizards... I caught 3 Eastern Newts that were trying to get it on with my bait. Each time I had to untangle them from my bait... Apparently I had the wrong bait for fish.

Just to add, you can find tungsten weight via the interwebs if you look hard enough..Not as fancy as some of the high priced weights, but get the job done.

They definitely need more oxygenated, cooler water to reproduce naturally. They also need shallow rocky or gravel areas to spawn. They sometimes go into tributaries to find moving water as well. If the bottom is all mud, weeds, or sand, they cannot spawn. Most of our lakes up here in Minnesota are actually stocked with them about every other year as opposed to natural reproduction. The big heavily fished lakes here are the factories that produce massive numbers of natural reproduction here. People are borderline obsessed with walleyes here and I don’t really know why, other than the fact that they taste good. I personally would much rather bass or muskie fish.

Dobyns Sierra 734c

DuPont got out of the fishing business over a decade ago and sold the Louisana Stren plant to Vicious line company and Nylon (Polyimde) production to Brazil. GE sold thier plastic division in NY to Saudis about the same time. The problem was EPA regulations got to be severe. Phillips followed and the combination of suppliers moving off shore or no longer in production on some thermal plastics created a crisis in the aerospace business and a few highend engineering are no longer availble. When you considered no new engineering plastics have been developed the passed 20 years meeting defense contracts regulations that require using only approved American suppliers, no off shore materials, contracts had to be modified. Today very few fishing lines are made in America, it's difficult to meet regulations. Your Dupont Stren no longer exist. Tom

Took my little fishing buddy to the same lake I was at last week. Fishing by myself last week, I caught 109 bass and 1 sauger in 8 hours. A ton of them were 6-10 inches long, but a 6 year old doesn't care. I was just hoping they'd be biting like that still, and they were. I tried hard to get a bigger bite, all I ended up doing was catching a lot fewer small ones (still ended up catching over 50 by myself on the day). My biggest fish of the day might have gone 2lbs, and I got another sauger on the same bait as last week. Lake liked the sauger because it had teeth ? He caught 13 and lost several more by the end of the day, all of them completely by himself.

Had a trip this morning and we caught 40 fish in 13-20’. Most on swimbaits. Had had a couple good fish up to a little over 5lbs. Went back at 4:00 and fished until 7:30 and caught 90. The evening bite was on fire! I had one over 7lbs and probably 50 or so over 3lbs. The last spot I pulled up on I caught 54 fish off of and only made 4 cast that I didn’t catch a fish on.

My wife had the blues today, I imagine a combination of the day long rain and being stuck inside for so long. I did my best to try to cheer her up with a good dinner followed by a homemade S'mores pizza for dessert.

The small ones were active today, these are the 2 biggest. 3-01 and 5-05

I was able to get back on the water today after a wild weather day yesterday kept me inside most of the day. It didn't take long to beat the seasons best. I caught the 7-3 on Monday and beat it today with a 7-8. This one took a baby brush hog in green pumpkin with blue flake on a 3/16 oz lifted jigs ned head about 9:30 this morning. Caught quiet a few but nothing over 3 aside from her.

i couldnt find them today. all i managed was a couple trout... yes trout on squarebills

I haven't loaded them on but I have no doubts - it's rated up to 15' some inches I believe and the Voodoo is the longest at 13' even. After dragging it up the hill, I am real glad they were out of the harbor freight trailers. Without kayaks on it it was heavy enough.

No, I don't. I had good luck on Cape Cod this March by fishing them to their max depth, meaning if I was in 8-10' water I threw one that dove to 10', cranking it slowly while still varying the speed and pausing it periodically. My best performing flats are Yozuri 3DR Shads. Maybe I'll play around with weights... thanks for the tip. Time for RED cranks, lipless, and squarebills. Just ask Matt Allen and Tim Little!

I have a bunch in the corner of the garage too, and don't really know why I keep them. I never sell or ship any rods. Guess I'm just a packrat.

i forgot Pork Chop ?

Got a couple of daiwa bg2500 reels for 75 bucks or something from sportsman’s outfitters. Not sure what they have left but seemed like a good price for a well reviewed reel.

Scheels online spring fishing sale going on through beginning of May. 20% off most things including Megabass. I stocked up on dark sleepers and got a few Chasebaits mudbugs to try out.

Nice - good luck Adam ... hoping you get bit !!

When the Red Sea split, they said it was an East wind. I ain’t so sure Moses didn’t have a 3/4oz spinnerbait tied up. If they’re flying kites at the boat ramp, may want to shut’er down.

In case some of y'all don't make it to the "everything else" forum very often, @Oregon Native and his buddy had a day that included an 11!

The hoop yeild strength of a light weight spool far exceeds any force mono line can apply. Whoever is filling you with BS the mono shrinks onto the spool should be called out. Mono will deform and cold flow but it doesn't stretch and shrink. Just tune up the Pixie and the appropriate rod. Tom

Cold 39* to start, windy, blue bird skies. White tandem willow spinnerbaits and Rage craws.

Finally got some good weather and was able to get out and catch a few, including this years big one. 7 lb 3 oz on a 7 M Crucial with a Stradic 3000 spooled up with 20 lb 832. She bit a baby brush hog in green pumpkin red flake on a 3/16 oz swinging jig head. Wish I would have caught her a couple weeks ago, but I'm happy. Here's a couple pics. My buddy gives me a hard time saying I try to make them look bigger lol

Braid for the most part is bought based on working dia. Not strength. Smaller lines have issues with dig in wind knots tip wrap and other fun stuff. I have not had these issues with 40lb. If your only worried about strength the 20 would do just fine. I don't always provide all the reasons for my choices, but those are why I don't like 30 and bellow on a full size bait caster. I use braid for moderate to heavy weeds where it's strengths are best used. You will determine what size is right for you and what you prefer.