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love those conolon rods!! i have several...different actions. they fish great!!

i decided to go to all vintage mitchell reels for my own enjoyment. went online and bought a bunch of them and learned how to rebuild them. i never could afford one when i was a kid. i have had the best time doing this and they are great reels still even though now some i use are 40-50 years old. plenty of parts around for them. this was the mac daddy of fishing reels for a time in the 40s -60s. here is a pic of some ready to go.

bad experience for me with inflatables. i wont have one again. good luck to you and be careful. check out the sea eagle boats.

all metal construction. exf 35 retail maybe $45 or so. why should ANY reel be equipped with a crappy bailspring? what does the part cost them to make...maybe a nickle..how about a dime? it is one of the most important parts of the reel for goodness sake. just want to know why they keep breaking. how many times has anyone here broke a bailspring on a reel 4 times in less than 2 years, and that is not fishing every day! maybe 3 or 4 times a month and only during the spring/summer.

have several of these reels. must have broken 4 bail springs already. why is this?

if you do not know the area you are fishing like the back of your hand, then you better take some one with you that does. Pick a full moon night for your first night out on the lake. You will be glad you did.

look at the bank. contours, land type, rock formations etc. continue out into the water. just follow them with your eye.

Knew of a fishing host in a small tv market over in alabama. went out with the camera crew to a small private lake and when getting set up about daylight caught a 10+ pounder! not enough light for the camera, so he just put it in the livewell and when the sun came up he and the camera man "staged" the catch again. Now is that dishonest...he did in fact catch the fish.......sort of like instant replay! as for the lake this guy "never" fished....that is not right!

my brother gave me some just today! he used them a lot an swears by them DONT set the hook!!! lol

Fish water you are familiar with. Unless you know the shore line VERY well then wait for a moonlit night. Once you get your eyes adjusted , the moon will give you all the light you need. Buy you a clip on hat light, a small LED flashlight you can keep in you top pocket and a large flashlight on the floor next to you. Fishing at night is so much fun. You do not have to be so precise and picky as you might in the daytime,so says doug hannon. I fish texas rig worms and beat the banks, dont waste time fishing back to the boat, just work back from the bank maybe 10 feet. There are always fish coming in shallow during warm months to feed and hunt. When you get a hook up, reach up and flip the switch on your hat light. When you need to change bait or tie on another hook use the LED flashlight in your pocket...just stick it in your mouth like big cigar and point at whatever your tying on. Be careful with the insect repellent...wash it off your hands so the scent is not on your lure. Take a stick or a gun or something to deal with night time creatures like snakes or whatever your afraid of...lol. Fishing at night is the best....nobody is there, but the fish. The lake that you think is worn out and boring or pressured...is a whole nuther' lake at night.

Murphy starts with a smaller worm to locate fish. When he finds them, them he uses this method. He starts out looking for fish and for the right color if he is on new water. Also when the fish are biting, as much as he does not like to just pull up stakes and leave a good spot, he always went looking for new spots when the bite was on.

His book "In search of giant bass" stays in my "reading room" and i read it all the time. Anyone here use this painstakingly slow presentation, and is successful with it? I want to dedicate some time to really giving it a good try. Any advice??? I just don't know if I have worked on my patience enough to spend 15 minutes to retrieve a plastic worm after a cast!!

Wave a diamond ring in front of it. Females will try to bite it, males will keep tight lipped. ;D

Again here is the story...my brother lives on this 50 acre lake in alabama. He has multiple myeloma (blood cancer) and a bad heart. He has just been hanging on for the last few years. We did not get to spend much time together over the past 30 years or so. When I found out how sick he was I started driving over from Atlanta to see him at least every other week just to hang with him and give him some company and reconnect with him as brothers. He was a heck of a good fisherman, bass tourn. trophies on the wall.... That lake is full of nice fish, bass crappie, cats, bream and well managed. Private only to the homes on it and not fished much at all. The bass are so finicky!!! They have so much to eat and the Fla. strain of bass that is stocked there have a tendency to shy away from lures after about 8 to 10 years so the research I have read goes. He is too sick to fish anymore with me, so while he sleeps i hop in the little pontoon and fish. I tried every type of lure and presentation and just stayed skunked or just an occasional fish for years. The only for sure bite was when the fish had the shad herded up and were busting though them. You could throw ANYTHING though them and get a bite. It is remarkable to watch them get on the outsides of the shad and herd them into the shallows against a bank and then as if a switch goes off make their runs through them. Anyway one night I am on the dock and just decide to hit the lake in the dark. Best move I ever made!! Found a color...black over red shad in a worm called Big Bopper by Netbaits. Looks like a ribbed Senko with a curl tail. I just started beating the banks. Texas rig, cast to the bank and twitch it out about 6 or 8 feet and that is all! Dont even waste my time fishing it back to the boat. I keep a hat bill light on my hat. I raise up my rod almost straight up and just twitch and wait a sec. With the rod tip up, I can feel any "tic" that is telegraphed down the line. Get a hookset, turn on the hatlight and get the fish in. After a while you learn to ignore the hits on the line from the bats that fly around...the rod is a sideways tic from them. Anyway I began to catch fish that way at night on a regular basis and then during the day I also caught fish the same way. I want to start trying a big black spinner bait at night, since I have heard of guys using that approach with good luck. Anyway I am catching them on a good basis getting skunked just very rarely now. I know that there are big bass in there from having caught a 10 pounder one winter and having talked to some of the people who live around the lake. It is not that I am tired of catching what I am catching....I just want to devote some time to targeting big bass and doing what I need to in order to try to get a big bite. I do believe that you can catch a big fish no matter what you use, but that is not the norm. You have to really concentrate on them, and be willing to spend amounts of time with no return just waiting and hoping for that bite. I am to the point where my patience is good enough to try. I was not there before.

Thats ok man...life is like that. Fishing takes the edge off of it for me. Best to you in this butt lick time that a lot of folks are going through. No hard feelings at all. Tomorrow is another day.

Here is a stringer of harvested fish. This is the neighbors dock. If you look in the background you will see a blue barrell in the water. This is where I have to keep my fish over night. If I leave them on the stringer next to the pontoon, there are some HUGE snappers that will eat what they can hold....maybe an otter too. Like I said, the lake is underfished and the management company sent out a letter to the residents asking them to please remove as many fish under a couple of pounds as they wanted. It has taken me two+ years of fishing to get to the point where I can be assured of catching fish all the time. I was skunked so many times you would not believe it, looking at these pics. I learned why my Dad was never a bass fisherman....always fished for crappie and catfish....he wanted to bring home fish to eat!!! Bass were a challenge!

another one....All large fish are always released.

nice one...4 or 5... i need a scale

more fish so the BS sniffers will believe Letting a nice one go well over 5. Anytime you can stick your whole hand in his mouth to get to the hook....that is a nice fish!

You guys here know me. I did not fish for 35 years when I started back a couple of years ago. Everything I have learned that has gotten me to this point I learned off this board and from my brother who lives on this lake. I have reached a plateau fishing there....went from catching squat to being consistent. Now I want to move up and i appreciate the info here!!! Slow seems to be the word.....bigger offereing too. I am going to anchor shallow on the drop off I know of at the old railroad cut and set the front of the little 10ft pontoon boat facing the drop off and then I can cast in three directions covering deep and the ledge from three sides of the boat. I might even use two rods and let one just be a dead stick, turning the reel handle once every 5 mins or so. I am going to start out with some big Manns jelly worms that they just came back out with...BIG....I have a couple of different colors. Here is a another fish....

One of many....ye of little faith..

You can sell the snappers around where I fish. People love to eat them. Dont let that BIG sucker bite you!!!!! Take your finger off!!

The lake stays fertilized and such....the pond management company introduced the threadfins and they remain plentiful. My brother who lives on the lake said that before they introduced the shad, that he would always find crawfish pinchers in the stomachs of harvested fish. After the shad, none. The management company sent out a letter to the residents asking them to please harvest the smaller bass they catch or just toss them on the bank. I have only found shad in the fish that I have harvested. Also fish that eat a lot of crawfish will not have as sharp a teeth from dealing with the harder crawfish. These bass have incredible sharp teeth. They are only feeding on shad mostly. Great tip about the morning fog patches.

I am aware of what one of the guys who lives on the lake calls a deep "hole" he catches big catfish there. I will try to chart that area and see what it looks like. Maybe that is one of the springs. I thank all of you for your help and suggestions. I have one place that I know of for sure where there is a very sharp drop off from about 7 feet to almost 20 feet. It is an old railroad cut that ran through where the lake is now. These two places are going to be the first areas I am going to target. From what I have read, big bass like to always have some deep water that they can get to. The 5 pounders......when you fish a 50 acre lake for several years, you learn where these fish hang out. I can almost count on catching one at several areas of the lake, around docks and structure that I know about. They seem to just live there year round. I have probably caught them over and over.

Hellbenderman.....the lake is not pressured at all.....very underfished.