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08 Oct 2024 ~ Update Past couple of weeks have been mostly uneventful health wise for Lynn. This is most often a good thing. She continues to have Chemo once every two weeks, and dialysis twice a week while having her blood drawn & tested prior to both of those procedures. Also waiting in the wings is her eye surgery scheduled for next week. And so like I said, none of that is really new. But what is new and quite the phenomenal turn of events, Lynn's last two kidney function blood test results indicate that Lynn NO LONGER REQUIRED DIAYSIS ! I dropped her off for her scheduled procedure this morning and not 5 minutes later, she called the truck and said "come pick me up, I'm coming home." After almost putting my rig in the woods banging a U-ey, I may have fractured a few posted speed limits getting there. Either way, we're both walking around in a daze, while counting our blessings. Clearly we don't how long this will last, but it's a sign of slightly better health and that can never be taken for granted. Stay healthy & Safe. Thank again A-Jay

Here are my bass totals for my last four trips: 25, 20, 22, and 19 this morning. A significant drop from my 35/45/55 totals in late May, June, and early July, but still plenty of fun. Yeah, I'm consistent. I am amazed at the thickness of the 16 to 17 inch bass. That class of bass is feeding so heavily. See? She looks like she'll explode if she eats another shiner, but that's what she was trying to do in eating my popper. I caught 17 of the bass on a Yo-Zuri popper, to which I'd added red trebles and an extra split ring. I caught the other two on spinnerbaits. I hooked a lot of the Yo-Zuri bass in four to five feet of water abutting shallow water. My landing percentage is MUCH improved from earlier in the year thanks to three changes: 5/0 instead of 3/0 underspins Not flipping my rod right to left or left to right in mid-fight. I keep it on the side where I hooked my bass. A focus on my mechanics as I'm fighting the fish. I land at least 80% of my bass now and many mornings, 90%. And I land pretty much every four-plus-pounder I hook. I cant remember the last time I lost a big gal. Here are some of my longer fish: I caught my biggest bass about a foot from a shady shore on a sunny morning. It was a rocky bottom, so I was expecting a smallie. According to my length to weight chart, it was a 16.31 five-bass bag. And here's my pretty pic! It's calm in this pic, but the wind sure picked up and gave me quite a workout. However, the bass still kept hitting my little popper in the chop. As always, thanks for going fishing with me!

Got a tip from a friend there were some fish schooling, my goodness were they ever. They were so violent, I was even able to feed one a spinnerbait. Got surrounded and even splashed by fish crashing thru shad. I took some video of far away fish schooling after I had already gotten several, should have ran some video when I was sitting in the middle of the blitz but I couldn’t stop casting long enough

Little guy and a three pounder both on spinnerbaits. Buddy of mine pulled up a largemouth a bit bigger than mine and a handful of perch on a beautiful fall day.

In a recent post, Glen made the statement that he thought line stretch was over rated, and it's one of those things that bass anglers worry about, but don't need to. After all my years fishing, I agree with this. I fish with mono and co-poly lines. I can't say that line stretch has ever been a factor. And, I'm not sure that I've ever actually felt the line stretch on a hook set. Do you feel that line stretch is over rated?

Last cut of the season.

The LV500's I accidentally ordered came in today. Zebra MS Ghost Minnow.

The line stretch using mono on a spinning reel is very noticeable to me. When I go to set the hook, its like pulling on a rubber band. This is where braided main line makes an enormous difference. On a baitcaster, the difference may not be as noticeable.

I launched late for me this morning because I'd flown from Sarasota to Maine yesterday and was tuckered, but I needed to be on an empty lake after the hustle of Florida's Gulf Coast. I caught 22. I landed an 18-incher on my fourth cast to a beaver dam (Thanks again, @Glenn!) using a little, chrome Whopper Plopper. I know Glenn has caught many bass from one dam, but that one bass literally beached me on the dam by pulling my canoe. I couldn't find a pattern after that and caught some here and there, but in the final hour, I located a wolf pack in the middle of the pond and landed three and then found some tight to the pond's north shore, catching another nine. I caught nothing small and even the smaller ones were thick with muscle. See two of the smaller ones here: ^This^ bass has the build to be BIG one day. My last two were similar in length and even thicker, but my camera was dead at that point. I actually laughed out loud when I landed the last two. They were crazy thick. I caught longer bass too and my five-bass bag was just over 15 pounds, using my length to weight scale. Here are the longer ones: I know it's not as a big a bag as @gimruis's nor are any of my bass as big as the ones that @DaubsNU1 and @The Baron have recently landed, but when you've spent two of your last three days in airports and on airplanes and the third day in Sarasota traffic and then you're back on your pond wrasslin' bass, there's nothing sweeter. Oh, I also caught two smallmouth. Those hippity-hoppity brownies are also fun. Here's one: And, of course, I took a pretty pic too! My main lure was a Dobyns Beast spinnerbait with a Crush City Mayor in chartreuse and white. Hooray for coming home!

I'd say that each type of line has it's own characteristics. Like so much in bass fishing, each basshead might prefer the way a certain type line performs in a given situation. When it comes to line stretch in my own fishing, there are some deals that demand a type of performance where one line might out shine another. One example is when I'm throwing soft plastics for plus size bass with single hook baits. Could be brown or green bass, just Big. Baits include but might not be limited to Big Swimbaits for LMB, and just about anything plastic for SMB. Out on the end of a long cast (or deep) when the bass can completely engulf the bait and get it far enough back into it's crushers, it can be a futile tug of war trying to get that bait to move in it's mouth enough to get a good hookset. So in this deal, I often feel like FC & Mono do 'stretch' at least a little. Still never makes me switch to braid (hate braid on a casting reel anyway) but I also dislike having my bait thrown back in my face. Happens though. My solution has been LONG LASTING SWEEPING HOOKSETS where I keep max pressure on the fish for as long as I can. The theory (insert hope) is that the bass eventually releases the bait just enough for that hook to find a good home. Finally, those of us who used mono on glass rods for a couple of decades in advance of the invent of braid and graphite - might feel differently than a newer bass angler who has only fished braid on graphite sticks and then switches to mono or FC. Different world. Finally , and this is something not talked about much, but I believe in some scenarios when fishing mono/fc, it's possible to out cast my hook setting abilities. So I'm at least aware of the possibility of some line stretch. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. YMMV A-Jay

It’s starting to get bad here with constant lightning and tornado warnings starting. (There’s one over The Lake now) I’m shutting everything down.. You guys in it’s path please take care of yourselves. Catch you all on the flip side. Mike

I’ve done a few stretch test on different lines out of curiosity and found that they stretch about 6% under a load that is 25% of the line test. That’s usually where I set my drag so any stretch beyond that doesn’t matter to me. I found no measurable difference between mono and fluoro within the margin of error in my test. There are a lot of variables. What one company calls 10# test can be very different from another companies 10#. 6% stretch is nothing to worry about. At some point in the recent history of fishing the notion that line stretch is bad became a thing. I think it’s more of a positive than a negative but 6% doesn’t make much difference either way. If you’re noticing a lot of stretch in your line you are probably pushing the limits of the line which is a bigger concern in my very humble opinion. 🙂

In every "study" done showing how much each line stretches. One end of the line is attached to an immovable object while the other end is attached to a mechanical device that applies more pressure than my rod-n-reel ever will. To this dumb Coonass its just interesting information.

Mobasser, I have to agree with you. In all my years, I've never noticed any line stretch. Maybe it is the lines I use or the stretch is so insignificant it's a theoretical issue some marketing department started. I cant honestly say I've ever said "I missed that fish because my line stretched to much." Now I can honestly say "I missed that fish because I was sleeping on the job.":)

Swing heads at sunset today ~ A-Jay

I went this afternoon/evening for about 4 hours an hour from my house. It was warm and windy out, but I knew there was going to be a weather change coming. I got on the water and could see the cloud deck coming in the distance. There was no rain associated with this change, just a drop in air temps, thick clouds, and a major wind shift from the south to the west. I crushed them on both a spinnerbait and a newly acquired tungsten evo chatter bait. The terminator spinnerbait was probably a little better, but I caught the biggest largemouth of the season on the evo. In total, I landed 19 largemouth and 5 pike. Every bass was at least 16 inches. I took photos of the 5 biggest, which included an 19, 20, and 21 incher. I weighed the 21 incher and it was 5.97 pounds. Some of you may remember a 20.5 inch prespawn largemouth I caught back in May, which at the time, was a second best PB. This bass today replaces that one as a second best PB. The only one I have caught bigger was way back in 2006. Quite often, these rapid changes in weather produce a bite window and the fish become very aggressive. That's exactly what occurred and I timed it right. I think the fish are moving into more of a fall pattern now too here, finally. I expect the next 2-3 weeks to be very good before I hang it up for the season.

For most things I like my line to stretch. Better than my line snapping!

It's here. Oiled and greased it up and stuffed it with 65 lb braid and it's on my Fred's Magic Stick just waiting for me to be done with work so I can toss this grey ghost Bobby's Perfect Frog on it 😎😎😎😏😏😏🎣🎣🎣🐸🐸🐸

Praying for y'all 🙏

I don't believe that it's stretch as much as the belly of the line. Braid is extra thin so there is very little resistance when moving the belly of the line, fluoro sinks so there is less belly in the line, mono is thicker in diameter than braid and has more belly than fluoro. This was definitely noticeable for me when attempting to fish deeper water with mono/copoly vs braid.

Catt I agree. I don't know if there's a true way to test line stretch in actual fishing conditions. You feel a strike. You set the hook. Your rod is moving, and the fish is moving. How do you measure line stretch in this scenario? I don't think you can.

Methyl Ethyl Ketone That some bad ass stuff right there!

You mean like cigarettes?

It's hard to think that the Patriots are the worst team in the NFL, possibly so. Just lost at home to an injury riddled Dolphins. Cleveland vs New England would be a classic pillow fight 😅

More TW stuff from the 40% off sale. Never fished the Okuma stuff before, so figured what the hey. They also had a promo where you get free cork knobs with a purchase of the X-Series reel. If I don't care for the round knobs of the Hakai, I may replace them with these (if they fit). The Castaic squarebills are solid baits. And at $2.50 each, even better. I have one lake in particular where bone colored cranks do great. The Keitech Cameron is a great crawfish imitator. You rig it backwards (you can go weightless or nail weight) like the Fat Ika, and it does a nice job gliding away from you. Popping it off the bottom then letting it fall really does look like a swimming crawfish. Of course being Keitech, it's very soft and not too durable. Decided to give the new Z-Man Chattershad trailer a try. Got the smaller 3.5 to rig on the Mini Max. I'm guessing I'll trim the skirt a tad.

I hit the Columbia out of Stevenson on Sunday the 6th. After my last poor outing I was really hoping to have a good day. The wind first thing was out of the East and seemed a bit stronger than forecast. It was still fishable but I was getting bounced up and down pretty good. I started out throwing a popper (first time this year). I figured with the sloppy conditions I would need to throw a plopper or a popper so I though a popper would make an easier target in the waves. I really have no idea if that theory holds any water since i did not get so much as a sniff on topwater all day long (not that I threw it much after the initial attempt). I figured, that's OK the fish must be kegged up out on the tip of the point in the rocks. Once again my instincts proved to be worthless and I did not get a sniff on a drop shot, Ned rig or wobblehead. I was starting to get a bad feeling, like the bad luck from the previous weekend was still stuck to me. The next two spost I hit also proved fruitless - and bass-less The bad feeling was getting worse but I said to myself, "I just need to fish harder and more carefully". I made it to my fourth spot, which is usually always good for at least a fish or two. I started probing the deep rocks slowly with my wobblehead jig and Zoom Z-craw. Eventually as I was lifting the jig up to ease it along I felt a thump. I reeled down and swung back to nothing. I cast back out and felt that thump again and slammed the hook home. Oh man, this was a big fish. I leaned hard on that fish when the unimaginable happened. Pop! I broke that fish off. I could not believe it. I felt truly cursed. I had just replaced my line on that reel during the week with a supposedly abrasion resistant fluorocarbon line. When I reeled the end of my line was in tatters. After 2.5 hours I hook my first fish and it breaks my 12lb line. That was the low point of the day. The line was badly scraped up and had little bits peeling off. I have never had that happen before. I was so mad!!! After I settled down I figured that if that was the case I was going to have to check my line often and retie constantly. So that is what I did. I am happy to say that I did not break off any more fish but I probably retied 20 or 30 times during the course of the day. So after tying on a new wobblehead I went back to work. I missed the next two fish as well. I said to myself, "come on John, just catch a dang fish". Finally at the 3 hour mark I had yet another thump on the wobblehead and this one stuck! It was not a monster (maybe 14 or 15") but it felt as if a monster weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I was not going to get skunked! I continued to fish that spot without any more action. The next spot also did not produce but I really felt like it was going to happen for me and that kept my focus razor sharp. I finally made it to one of my favorite spots and that is where the magic started to happen. I caught 3 bass on 4 casts including a nice 2lb 13oz fat girl. I knew I was going to be OK I kept fishing around that same general area (there is a hump and point that almost kiss) and picked up a bunch more including my day's best fish, a 19" 3lb 10oz beauty. The only down side is that part way through fishing that spot my camera froze up (a bandaid appeared on the screen for a while and eventually cleared itself) and I missed filming several fish including another 18.5" 3lb 2oz chunk. I have to say that I did not mind that too much but this is the second time this year that has happened. Not sure what the issue is but I ordered a new SD card. Anyway, after I eventually tired out that spot I went looking for more piles of fish. I was brimming with confidence and knew I was going to catch more. The next spot only producedd one fish but then I noticed a waypoint that I had not yet fished this year. It was a spot I had forgotten I had ever marked. Well, I may have forgotten but the bass sure did not. That spot was LOADED! I was getting bit on every cast. It was a long skinny point that topped off around 30' and fell off into 60' all around it. At the very tip it jumped up to about 17' and then fell off in a cliff like fashion into 60' of water. By this time of the day the earlier East wind had died and it was really calm. I was able to easily position myself and was just catching (or missing) fish after fish. The only thing that slowed me down was constantly retying after pretty much every fish. They weren't monsters but the were pound and a quarter to two pound fish and those are a blast to catch. I ended the day with 19 bass but If the wind had not picked up suddenly and ferociously I think I could have caught 30 easily. Once the wind picked up I just could not hold myself on that spot and fish. After about 15 minutes of not being able to feel the rocks that were holding the fish I decided to call it a day. Every fish came on the wobblehead. I did periodically try a drop shot and a Ned rig but never had a bite on either of those (but I would quickly switch back to the wobblehead so maybe I did not give them a really fair shake). The water temp was 63 and the bass all came from 15-30' of water. Overall, I was completely elated as I pedaled back to the ramp into the teeth of the now West wind. I did not mind paying the wind tax at all after a day like that. I think the best days are the ones that start off bad and end good. Nothing like overcoming adversity and a bad start to kick bass! Here are some photos and the video from the day (including some tribulations at the beginning).

Like anything there are some tricks to get it right. Have done it a few times and they came out OK. Getting the cover on right and keeping it tight are the keys as you add the snaps. Some extra hands and non marring clamps will help a bunch. Don't be afraid to put the cover on and off a few times before starting the snaps, you need to get a feel for how the cover fits before you start making holes !! Good luck, hope you have lots of friends....lol...

Just pick up each one and see how you feel. Nothing, who cares, or meh, out it goes. If you get a good feeling, memory, or or start to think I could ___________, it's a keeper.

God bless y’all..

I hope it is not as bad as predicted. Everyone stay safe, best of luck.

Starting to rain in earnest here now. The wind is light so far.I’ve heard some contradictory reports. Of course, the storm won’t arrive until late tonight. On the insurance side of things, The company we used to have doubled the cost in one year. We just couldn’t afford it , so we switched to a less expensive company, and reduced the coverage. For us, it’s the only option outside of no insurance. So far , we’ve been fortunate and blessed not to have had a claim. Even though 2 tornados just missed us. I have an adjuster friend and a lawyer friend. Both of them fight insurance companies to get people the full amount they deserve. Hopefully, I won’t need them. @DaubsNU1 Your niece may need to contact an adjuster that will help her get what she deserves. If that doesn’t work, an insurance claim lawyer would be able to help. Please keep updates coming in from your areas of Florida. Praying for y’all.

I haven't seen any of that on our end of the river yet, but if you are that means it's getting close. Wait...what? 🤣

More pics of the fly rod. also finished a spinning rod. 7’ M on a CRB blank. Trying out the microwave guides and also trying out reversing the grip so that it is unlocking with the main grip above the reel as opposed to below it.

Yes. I’ve fished with monofilament my entire life until the last few years when I started experimenting with Fluorocarbon, copolymer, braid, and braid to leader. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Apparently neither did the fish I caught. Now I do think that every type of line has its pros and cons. I also think it’s up to the individual angler to decide what works best for them in their own particular situation.

MEK, Sulfuric Acid, Nitric Acid, the list goes on....there's a whole schmeer of things you can get over-the-counter that are dangerous. Heck, gasoline is dangerous - one spark and "POOF"...and they let kids dispense it willy-nilly into their go-carts and power-bikes.

I have a small box that clips to my belt loop for bank fishing. I drilled several 1/8" holes through the box, to allow air to circulate and keep things dry. If a hook becomes rusted too much, I throw it away.

Wow!! I’m so happy for her!! Mike

Patriots are 1-4. The Hawks barely beat them 23-20 early in the season when they were healthy. SF beat them 30-13 two weeks ago, injuries and all.

Prayers for safety and sanity, seems to soon for another.

Bass AND muskie?

And it attracts fish 🤣

I was lake director at my local club. When I took over, there was a 13in. Minimum. You guessed it, an abundance of fish under 13 in. And very few over. I instituted catch and release on all bass. Three years later the fish had grown, but now there was an imbalance of forage to bass. Now there is a three fish limit in bass 12in. and under. Six years later we were able to hold weekday night tournaments because the fish were now approaching 3lb. and above. 12 years later and you’re allowed one trophy fish a year, but they strongly suggest CPR.

A few swimbaits are designed to minimize hook rash, but most are not, and you can't limit the rash by swapping hooks. Sure you can swap to dull hooks, but then you aren't going to catch many fish. I'd imagine those hook rash protectors work, but I've never had interest in using them. If you watch Millikens videos, you'll notice his big glides are beaten to death, messed up brush tails, etc. Honestly seeing a expensive swimbait with a bunch of rash is a badge of honor. It means you actually fish with them. Regardless of hook rash, if you catch fish on them, you're going to get messed up paint jobs. Don't sweat it, they're just tools.

Fresh water shouldn’t cause plated hooks to rust. What causes rust is something creating an electrolyte like salt or scent from soft plastics or acid from OB exhaust . Air circulation your friend to keep the hooks/lures clean and dry. WD-40 was invented to prevent rust by displacing water, use it. Tom PS, dryer sheets prevent rust.

If you don’t have flood insurance which is totally different than a standard home policy you’re on your own. Many folks even those who live in a flood zone don’t have it because they either can’t get it or can’t afford it. In some cases it’s 3 times more expensive will insane deductibles than a standard home owner policy. Will Do Mike

I wish self insurance was…. Legal? We would probably all have enough money to fix our own stuff if we didn’t have to pay insurance bills and then subsequently have to fight with the company to get them to pay out

I hope everyone makes good decisions. It’s now a category 5. If you need a place to stay I run a hotel in GA. DM me. You can even bring your boat.

I found my ultrasound picture!