J Francho

If he likes your gear, get a duplicate of what he borrows the most. Then maybe something you'd like for yourself. I think I'd save the rest of the budget for baits, line, and accessories.

If scoring by the whole inch, I'd give it a 39" lacking any reference for the front, the open mouth, and pinched tail. Most of the online tournaments I've judged required a regulation bump board, closed mouth, and spread tail. To me, it's a 40" fish all day. Nice job!

Coming here to gripe about other forums is forbidden. If you have a problem with them, contact their site admin.

I get a fishing related ornament almost every year. There has to be 20 or so on the tree. Some are pretty goofy, but I like them. Not exactly fishing, but this is from last year:

I have pink braid on a jig/worm rod. Girls like pink, so I am targeting bigger fish with my line.

Not exactly accurate. The colors you see on the screen you are looking are created not by primary colors, but Red, Green, and Blue (RGB). The human eye can detect colors on a spectrum, which includes grey scale. the white on your screen is not a shade, but a combination of the maximum values of RGB. Most printing is based on a different set, (C)yan, (M)agenta, (Y)ellow, Blac(K) or CMYK, which makes colors via a subtractive process. But I digress...the rest of your post explains why the leap to what a bass can or can't see doesn't work. This is just stuff I have an interest in from another hobby. This part is true. We only know about the apparatus that detects light, and even this is not fully known. I'm pretty sure they don't "see" the way we do and more that sense triggers a response. I'd be willing to bet all this is in tandem with a lateral line, triggering a strike. I just can't believe a fish has the mental capacity to paint a picture of a pretty bait.

Hobbyist sites are like that. I belonged to a couple photography forums that were way better than any class or book.

Do you have zebra mussels? They should make braid scissors out of them. They don't seem to have as much an effect on fluorocarbon, or other mono lines.

I'm sure some pros are offering advice and that is really awesome, but I bet more come here for the collective knowledge stored on our servers. It's crowd sourcing for fishing tips. Way better than any other social media platform I've been on. You can find a bunch of articles online about the Ned Rig that all basically say the same thing, but on this forum you can find 50 people in one thread talking about the nuance of it after spending a combined hundreds of hours fishing it. And that's just one of a 100 topics you can find in a day's posts. We cut to the chase, skip the filler, and get straight to the meat and potatoes here. If *I* was a pro, I'd be here almost as much as I am now.

There's some places up here that a push pole might be the only easy way to get into a spot, but it isn't stealthy at all.

Always match your socks with your shirt, and belt and shoes with your purse! I'd use blue if it had been readily available when I bought my line. Should stand out well against the water.

I had 15# Power Pro on a spinning rod for around 5 years. 5 Years ago, I loaded it with 20# 832, and it remains. Braid is so overkill and lasts so long, I really haven't had a reason to respool with anything else. As far as preference between the two, I have non - both have worked beyond my expectations. In both cases, the color faded a bit, but after a month didn't fade any more.

Count me in as another Plano Edge vote. I thought the Terminal box was gonna be fussy at first, but after just one time out with it, I really like it. I won't go back to plain utility boxes, and will only be adding to my Edge collection (I have 6 boxes now). I really resisted the whole high end tackle storage thing, but Plano got it right with these.

I don't think anyone can say. I use a jig trailer that looks good to me.

Sorry I missed it, had some baby issues. Everything is fine now.

Prepare them just like bass When I keep steelhead, I slice them behind the gills, and let them bleed out on a stringer.

I use Tatsu and Invisx as mainline. I typically use Blue Label leader, but I have some 8# Gold Label to try out this winter on DD steelhead. If it works on them, it'll be fine for bass.

Okuma Guide Select Swimbait.

Some guys can't catch when all the decisions that come with captaining have to made. They are better at the back, focused on the catching. I know I did much better with a good stick at the front of the boat than when I first started. Took a couple seasons to figure things out, despite early tournament successes.

Demo mode is also fun to turn on for your guest.

I've had Garmin, Lowrance, Humminbird, and Raymarine. I like all of them. The menus on the Raymarine and Humminbird made the most sense to me. I'm currently running two Humminbird units.

Any structure fishing I've done in salt was using a pyramid weight. It was the least likely to get hung up. Not sure why you'd DS a jig. Hook size would depend on the fish, though it was usually a 5/0 octopus hook, 3x wire.

MA record largemouth is 15-8. Herring fed bass get big. It was caught through the ice.

Premium mono sounds like an oxymoron to me. It's like filling your tank up with premium leaded gasoline.

15# Invisx all day, every day!