tyrius.

When you click on the quote button in the thread (instead of the reply button) you'll get a quote author=XXXXXXX link=###### date=##### (where those X's is a string of letters and numbers which must represent a specific user). This displays the author and provides a link to the quoted post. I don't know if you can type a name there. The attempt is below. And no it doesn't work.

But hooking them and pulling them out of the water is GREAT for them!!! :

Buy yourself some soft bait glue and then you can REALLY start to reuse your soft plastics in many new and different ways.

Are we really going to start this again this year? I'm a big fan of Rage Tail stuff, but the entire "rage" on the second generation stuff (annies, etc) got old quickly when all most people could do was listen to other people (who were lucky enough to get them as samples) tell stories about them.

Sorry, gotta go with four. White Chart/White Bluegill or Green Black

Use a heavier weight. Dropshotting from the shore does work.

I'm in for Illinois.

I use snaps, but do not use ones with a swivel. And don't buy them solely bases upon size. You have to be aware of what the pound rating is on the swivels too. If you're weakest link becomes the snap then you're going to have a lot of "failures".

Too bad they all lost already and MSU beat two of them. Also, no college team could've kept up with UNC in the first half. They were shooting the lights out. Given the players that they had, UNC should've went wire to wire as No 1 and been undefeated.

My job exists solely because people do NOT believe accountants! 8-)

Same, same, same

See hookemdown's post. The hourly rate that people throw around (typically those from the side of the argument that want GM to be pushed into bankruptcy) is current hourly wage + current benefits + pension costs + retiree benefits. So, it MAY cost GM $76 per worker hour, but the person standing on the line isn't getting paid $76 an hour.

Citica or anything at that same level (Revo, etc). I see no reason to spend a ton of extra money on a reel when this level of reel will do anything you need (unless you're throwing swimbaits or something which requires large diameter lines). I'd rather spend my money elsewhere.

If the pile is in a white porcelain bowl, then you're probably not going to have much luck fishing it!

Just to clarify the whole bonus situation. These bonuses are not performance based bonuses. They are termed bonuses as they are paid in one lump sum, however, they are actually more like the employee's salary. The corporations rig the employee's salary so that they pay them a small percentage of their salary throughout the year and then pay a large percentage of it in one lump sum (the "bonus"). This is done to provide an incentive for that employee to remain at the company. That's why they call them "retention bonuses". BTW I'm not arguing whether or not those people should have received their bonus, I'm just trying to clarify the situation a bit because the news reporting has been pretty bad about the whole thing.

I'm going to keep this non-political. GM and Chrysler have labor costs and financing costs that make them unsustainable. This is due to decades of bad decisions of both the management AND the unions. GM's unions and the bondholders have given in very little in the latest round of negotiations. They likely simply assumed that a democratic president would continue to bail them out. Now they have to go back to the negotiating table and come up with some real cuts or the bondholders are going to be left with basically nothing and the employees will lose a LARGE number of jobs (much larger than if they don't go bankrupt). The bondholders are currently sitting on bonds worth about 22 cents on the dollar. They will likely need to come down close to that value. The unions will likely need to start giving up retiree healthcare, members will have to start paying a portion of healthcare expenses (co-pays, deductibles, percentage of the actual cost), work longer before they retire with a full pension, relax some of the work rules (only certain people can do certain tasks, etc), and many other frivolous things in their contracts. Chrysler is toast. There is A LOT of work to do. Oh and the GM situation is VASTLY different than AIG. AIG insured many of the banks losses. Without those insurance payments those banks would have folded or had to be bailed out themselves. Once the banks start falling that would cause other banks to fall. This would happen because banks lend vast sums of money to each other and the losses that would be incurred in that situation would be catastrophic for many banks. Then as those banks failed the FDIC would've had to come up with money to cover the deposits so no matter how you slice it the government was going to be on the hook for a LARGE sum of money. And it's easier to try to stop the problem before it gets out of hand so they bailed out AIG. GM will survive a bankruptcy, the banking system wouldn't have.

Just because you drop some brush randomly throughout the lake doesn't mean that fish will use that brush pile. If it isn't in a good place then chances are that you wasted your time in placing it there.

Agreed, but I don't fish tournies so I may be missing something from that "culture".

I guess a better question would be is it sporting to drop brush piles and use those piles to win tourney after tourney expecting everyone else to "respect your right" to those piles? My answer to that is no. If you drop brush piles in a public lake it's a public spot and everyone can fish it. The person who dropped the brush pile has no more "right" to that spot than anyone else. Now the way that you found the spot may not be the most "sporting", but I don't see a huge deal with fishing them. On the other hand, if you really want to stay off that spot then I'd find some buddies and have them set up on those brush piles on the day of the tourney. Then those locals would be forced to compete without their advantage and you'd really see who was the better angler. Or you could have your buddies go out the night before and just hammer those spots. 8-)

Sorry to here that, it's absolutely terrible. My parents lost their house to a fire just over two years ago. They had lived there for 25 years and it was a total loss. They were inside watching tv while the fire started in the garage. My mom heard something exploding and went to look and saw the flames. The parents and my sister got out with only one handful of stuff. They now have a brand new house and brand new stuff, but it was definately a tramatic experience that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

If I were to hazard a guess then I'd say that it isn't the right rod for that bait. You can probably get away with it, but don't try to do super long snap casts. My recommendation would be to get a new rod for larger cranks, I'd go with a 6'6" or 7' MH BPS Crankin' Stick, but don't buy it unless it's on sale.

Also, what's the lure rating on your rod? The Clackin Rap is on the larger size (7/8 ounce) so a medium rod may not be strong enough, but it depends on what the ratings are.

Line strength is dependent upon where you're going to be fishing it. I mainly fish ponds where the cover is weeds and I use 10lb mono on my cranking setup. If I were fishing around more brush I'd go up to 12 lb, but don't know if I'd go much higher than tat. I also plan on trying out some flouro or copoly soon.

Maybe where you live but, AT&T has the ultimate reception round here 100% garanteed ask my fishin buds with Verizon who ask to use my phone bacause theirs has no reception! Maybe, but in general Verizon has the best coverage. Not in the Chicago area either. AT&T is much better here.

Braid is LESS abrasion resistant than mono. If you're worried about abrading the mono too much then use flouro, but since this is topwater you'll probably be better served with a copoly.