RAMBLER

A couple of things that made me lose fish. I know about crossing their eyes on the hookset when you feel the bite. What happened to me was I had rigged up a medium action rod that was too soft for a really hard hookset. And, I had bought some monster hooks (maybe 7/0, don't know because they did not have the size on the lable, only Monster Hooks). I don't remember the brand. I checked the point, after the fact, and found they were dull, about like the end of a ball point pen. Rerigged on a medium heavy rod and sharpened the hooks. Next hit I got the hook in the fish, but the lily pads were thick and it wrapped me up in a bunch and tore itself off the hook.

Something I did to make life easier in my 10' flat bottom and might help your flippin/pitchin/tossin, I have an old milk crate that I sat on. It got me up higher than sitting on those really low seats but my center of gravity was still lower than when standing. Be careful. That thing was never as stable as my old canoe.

It seems to me that when using the "crazy alberto" knot, if the braid covers the bend in the loop of the flouro it has never failed for me. Are you winding the braid around the flouro or the flouro around the braid? Putting the flouro around the braid will NEVER work.

A little bit of brake will put some tension on the line and I have had some luck in preventing helicoptering that way. Maybe you won't be able to cast so far, but, which is most important to you?

It ain't a bull fight!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You should check with the property owners before you catch those fish. If they are grass carp, more than likely, someone paid for those fish to be put in that pond for vegetation control.

I've seen the "big boat" and cane pole fishing quite often, down here. It's usually "spec" or bream fishermen. Not every fisherman thinks bass is the supreme endeavor in life. If you want fish to eat, you fish for what you can catch easily. Why go bass fishing all day and get nothing when you can fill a bucket, almost any day, with panfish or catfish.

Why don't you ask BPS? And, when you get right down to it, why should they? It's not a product quality problem.

Keep watching the show. There will be a show where the top finishers tell exactly what they used and how they used it.

That number of that kind of fish, makes me think somebody decided they didn't want to clean the fish they kept and just dumped them. That ticks me off more than taking them home and eating them. Waste lake that is just lazy dumb.!!!

There is a small example in a small environment that will demonstrate what lowering water will do to fish. In an aquarium make a hollow in the gravel (or whatever you have in the bottom) and start syphoning water out of the aquarium. The fish will go to that deeper hole in the bottom. Feed them and they will not eat while that water is lowering and for some time after. I fish in a river, below a dam. When the gates close and the water level starts dropping, you can't beg a bite. I've seen it drop a foot from the time I put in and finally get tired of trying. It's a good place to fish when the water is up or coming up.

I have a follow up question to that. Will most tournament officials let you fish in their tourney if your live well is not adequate?

Get a Humminbird Smart Cast fish finder. The screen is on a wrist band about the size of a large wrist watch and you attach the sonar sensor to your line and cast it to the area you want to see. I think everyone that fishes from shore should have one. I use mine in my boat when there is water I want to read and can't get the boat into the area, such as pockets of water that are almost land locked. It is really accurate and easy to use.

A Johnson silver minnow, with trailer, works really good in the kind of water you described. Trying to learn to not jerk back when a fish blows up on it is hard. It is a natural reaction. Hope she catch on to dipping the rod tip to the fish and then set the hook hard enough to cross its eyes. A heavy rod with braid line is necessary for that kind of fishing. Oh, by the way keep the hooks on the spoon sharp.

Not a soft bait, but, a Johnson Silver Minnow spoon with a white trailer.

I prefer 5' 6" to 6'6" because they are easier for me to handle than a 7'. Also, when comparing lengths of rods, sometimes quite a bit of the difference in length is the length of the handle. I really like to use the 5'6" to 6' rod with a pistol grip. One of my main concerns in rod length is the length of the rod from the reel to the tip, not from the end of the handle to the tip. If you like to cast with both hands (and I do with the longer rods) then a long handle is a good thing to have.

Don't feed owls. While fishing on a small river, I noticed a small owl sitting in a tree watching my every move. Just for the heck of it, I threw a small pan fish, I had just caught, up on shore. The owl dove on it and a flew off with it. In a little while it was back watching and waiting for more. I threw another small fish on shore and it grabbed that one and left. It had evidently been fed before. A couple of weeks later we (fishing partner) and I were fishing the same area. The owl showed up. I decided to not feed it. Had a small fish I was cutting up for cut bait. I felt a brush of air against the back of my leg and I turned around to see what happened. My partner said that owl swooped down and grabbed that cut bait. Another week or so, I did not notice the owl, but, as I pulled a fish in and had it in my hand the owl came out of nowhere and tried to take it from me. I yelled and waved my hand and it flared, right in my face, and flew to a tree and sat and watched until we left the area. But, before we left, another fisherman came through. I asked him if he had seen the owl. Man, did I get an ear full. He said if he did see it he was going to shoot it. Both of his hands were scarred up from fighting with that owl over a fish a week or so before. I never did see that owl, again. I guess the guy must have carried through with his threat. Don't feed owls.

With practice you can become very accurate by the amount of effort you put into the cast. Don't want to cast very far, don't cast very hard. Want to cast farther, cast harder.

Great looking gardens. If you like to try new and different tomatoes and peppers, I suggest a site named "Totally tomatoes". They have over 100 different tomatoes and at least that many peppers. All colors, sizes and shapes. One of my favorite tomatoes is the little Yellow Pear. Prolific and delicious.

Sounds like you found the solution. If the ribbons work, I'd stick with them.

They have one of those in stock at the place I just bought my small Tracker boat. The salesman said that with the supercharger you can get way over 400 hp out of that. Someone was test driving it. Sounds really good. It looks like a sci-fi transformer.

First off, casting close to a crab trap or hoop net buoy is something I never do, so, to answer you question, you decide, but !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

Function over "purty".

I have an old casting rod that the tip ceramic insert came out. Some super glue held it in. But, it may have been a knot that did that. It was before I learned the Alberto knot. The length of leader is always a subject for discussion, but I never use one long enough to reach my reel. I like to us FC leader for Flukes but I never use more than a foot or two. Sometimes, depending on how I'm casting, the knot never goes through the tip.

I like 30 lb PP on a size 40 spinning reel on a 6 1/2 medium rod. I can skip a trick worm in under shoreline brush with this. I actually lost a bass, in logs, using mono (t-rigged trick worm), went back a week or so later and caught a bass in the exact same spot (same bass?) using the braid. It went around, under, and over logs and that braid held up and I landed the fish. It took some patience to work it out of the logs. With 30 PP I can rip a hook out of the lily pads that I would have lost with something lighter.