Nickman

I would have to say the standing timber did intimidate me. I have never fished anything like that, most of my fishing has been grass or lillypad cover in shallow water. Not a tree sticking 30 fee out of the water but in 20 foot of water.

Its about 500 acres with 300 of it timber

Until last year never fished a lake. The one I fished here in mid July has no real bottom contours but standing timber in from 7 to 25 feet of water. How would you fish it. I struggled only catching one.

I bought an older boat recently with a Mercury 115 1982 model. Serial number 6263795. Can anyone tell me whether this has a trim sensor on it you would hook a trim guage to? I have read where some motor do and some don't but don't know how to tell.

Does it work? It seems like fun if not offering fishing value.

For me Mann's quarterback in Pearl

I see people writing about ripping crankbaits through weeds. My question is this. Do you quit on a cast when the bait has weeds on it or keep fishing it. I have generally quit but maybe that is not the right approach.

I bought some Zoom Horny Toad soft baits to use in weeds and grass as a weedless floating bait. Wanted to use them much as the floating scum frog. How do you rig them and will they float rigged. This may not be the bait for this approach. Help appreciated.

I have a sun dolphin 9 foot mini pontoon. I love it, although I would not try fishing standing up. Its fine with one or two. I carry mine in the back of the truck, its pretty easy to pull out and get down a bank alone, not as easy loading it, only about 100 pounds but bulky. If I can drag it without tearing up the bottom its no problem.

Thanks for all the comments. In respose to some of the questions/comments. At this point my equipment is cheap, lower end shakespeare baitcasting reels, lower end berkley rods that are medium heavy with a fast action. Since I am buying all except the old crank baits I am starting off cheap and going up from there. I suspected that it might be panfish that did more nibbling, I have caught a few perch on the worms. I am fishing a variety of places, all small empoundments so far. All range in the 10-30 acre variety. One ringed with lilly pads, one ringed with moss and grass another is a damned valley that drops off from the shore rather quickly. Almost like a strip pit. I don't have a fish finder at this point but after reading here feel it may be necessary to do very well. Mostly "pounding the shores" as I have read here would be what we are doing.

Thanks RoadWarrior, I fished years ago in highschool and then quit for golf and running. Couple of months ago I started again. Worms were not huge years ago and so I never developed any technique with them. Right now I just have the basic ring tailed worms in various colors all 6 inch. Initially I was not even getting bites but that has progressed to bites but a high percentage of misses or at least what seems high compared to my memory of fishing cranks and spinners years ago.

A couple of questions for those that fish worms. This has probably been asked somewhere but I didn't see it. I am newly back to fishing and new to fishing worms. So my questions are these. What percentage of bites you get with worms do you actually hook? And what length of worm do you use most? Currently I am using 6 inch worms and getting lots of hits and lots of smaller fish. But not catching a high percentage of my hits. Thanks

Thanks, Any of you tried the conservation area strip pits south of Mindenmines in Missouri. Shawnee Trails CA

I and my son recently started fishing and we are looking for a few places close to Joplin we could hit when we don't have time to drive to the lakes south or the Conservations areas to the north. Thanks Chris