Fishguy

When it's really hot and humid but not sunny I make sure to have plenty of fluids - a cooler full of water bottles, 'cause I'll fish 6-8 hours straight, plus my trusty bandana. If hot & humid and sunny, I wear my Tilley hat, long sleeve +30PF shirt and full length ultralight pants and sun gloves (tips are cut off) + bandana around my neck. I can dip the bandana in the lake and re-tie it around my neck anytime and squish water out of it onto my legs / arms / back as well. I fish from a boat and catch a lot of my bigger fish between 11am and 3 pm. I look overdressed, but I'm actually cooler than many people with no shirts on (specially when sunny). Dan

Just curious about something, so thought I'd ask around to see if this just happens to me. When I set the hook and fight a bass back to the boat, I unconciously ram the but of the rod into my gut, just below my rib cage, for leverage. If I'm onto a lot of fish, I will usually come away with black and blue bruises on my stomach where the rod but has been resting (make that stabbing). Of course I don't feel a thing when I'm fishing - but after a day or so I have some real beautiful shades of blue, yellow and green on my stomach. When I go workout at my local gym I get sympathetic looks from the other guys in the showers (I can see the jokes coming already) and I tell them that I was contact fishing bass wiht real attitudes. My wife thinks I'm nuts for doing this to myself. So, am I the only one to wound himself fishing like that?

I guess it all depends on a couple of things. How deep is the water that you're fishing and what color is it. I fish senkos in clear water lakes - a good 10 feet of visibility and in mostly shallow 1 to 4 feet of water. Once my Senko has entered the water I watch the line like a hawk 'cause 90% on the strikes will be on the fall. If I don't get bit on the fall I wait about 5 seconds then begin a real slow retrieve, raising my rod only about a couple of inches to get the bait off the bottom and falling again. I repeat this until my line is halfway back to the boat then I start over. So I'd say it takes me about a minute to work a senko per cast. Other people will say to let it sit there onthe bottom for a longer time - and they're right about that too, but this is my preference - and it works well for me. A word of advice here: as good as a senko is at catching fish just about anywhere in the water, your odds will increase big time if you toss them near, or into cover, such as shade, holes in weeds, stumps, logs, rip rap, and so forth. Hope this helps. Dan