Fishes in trees

Last year I had a Calcutta 250 TEGT go over the side of the boat in 20 + feet of water. Ouch. Oh well. Also last year I lost $40 worth of Terminator Twin Spins, in less than 15 minutes, trying to convince myself that they would be a good drop lure in timber. The moral of that story is that Twin Spins are great baits when you are stair stepping them down rock banks, 45 degree incline or greater. Twin spins do not make great drop baits in timber. Live and learn.

A round trip to my current favorite lake is 126 miles. I could cut that by a few miles, but when I am pulling my boat pre-dawn and after dark, I try to stay on paved roads with wide shoulders as much as possible. I am an hour and a half, maybe 2 hours from Truman to the closest decent ramp. (Bucksaw Point) It is another 20 minutes or so to Long Shoal.

You could have some recessive rod breaking gene. Or you may be cursed. I've known guys like you. NIce guys, good friends, I'd give them the shirt off my back, but not another of my fishing rods unless I didn't care if I got it back in one piece or not. The only way to tell for sure if you have this gene is to borrow several of your pals fishing rods and see if you break them in short order. You will be able to tell in a relatively short period of time. It is common knowledge that borrowed rods break quicker than owned rods. I hope you solve this problem. I know a couple of guys who have this problem so bad that they can only fish with Ugly Sticks. They are truly cursed.

The difference is that the boat and the motor come that way, and it is more trouble than it is worth to take them off. With product logo decals, they require a conscious decision to apply them. That's the difference, Oh yeah, by the way, for the most part I do only wear plain hats, my KC Royals ball cap is a singular exception. I don't wear logo T Shirts - ever - for fishing I find the SPF 50 fishing shirts work better anyway. Any logos on other garmets, I have been known to pull out the seam ripper and remove logos that are sewn on. (Do this before you wear or wash them) I understand I won't get them all, but I will get most of them. I am not big on the idea of being an uncompensated human bill board.

I hope you are being compensated for using your boat as a bill board.Maybe I am too old, too old fashioned, whatever, but I just don't get decorating your boat with various companies logos, without being compensated.

I like a Falcon K Wacky hook in the 3/0 size. You can get them unweighted and in various weights. I generally use the 1/16 oz weighted ones, cause I like the drop speed that I get with them more than the unweighted ones. If I am using a weedless wacky hook on a senko, always use an O ring, rather than putting the hook through the bait.

I often try for a quiet or splashless, quiet entry on a cast, but I seldom achieve it. I've learned to not get too worried about it.

One outfit that is always rigged & ready in my boat is my senko rod. There have been various configurations over the years. Currently I am using a Calcutta TEGT with a Falcon Bucoo 6'10" MH. I generally use 14 lb fluorocarbon. I can pitch a weightless senko 40' with this rig. If I wind up and put some muscle into it I can go farther but that generally isn't necessary. You don't have to go light to throw senkos. A 5" senko and a weedless hook will weigh close to 3/8 oz. More often than not I will use a 1/16 oz weighted hook just to speed up the drop process. I just realized I went over your budget. I've got roughly $350 tied up in that outfit.

I don't bank fish anymore, but I think the tackle vest is the best idea if you can be disciplined about how much gear you need. Of course, in a perfect world, what you need is a lackey, to follow you around, tote all your gear and then some and hand it to you with a smile when you asked for it.

Go slow and slobber it up good before you tighten it up. Tying that knot with 65 lb braid might be overkill, I don't know.

If I had a spare $250 + shipping I'd have a Shimano Curado 300E or an EJ. One is 6.4 to 1 and the other is 6.9 to 1. That isn't an option right now, so I'm using an older Calcutta (3 BB model). I believe that the gear ratio is 5-1. It throws 65 lb braid great. I think that gear ratio doesn't matter much, because basically you are always trying to slow roll it and tick the tops of whatever cover is out there. I'm comfortable using a 5-1 reel for this because, basically most of my reels are 5-1. I think that you should use whatever you are comfortable with and can get the best distance out of.

I had an early 90's Bud Erhardt Graphite composite crank bait rod I used up until last year. I used it up until last year, when using braided line put grooves in the guides. Now that rod is on the bench, until I can get some spare money to put new guides on it. Rod got replaced with a Falcon Bucoo 7' Trap Caster. I like it. The casting distances I get are pretty similar to what I got out of the Erhardt composite graphite, but it is definitely lighter and that's a plus.

You can get a decent gram/ounce scale at Walmart for around $25

Can't get a bigger boat? It has been over 20 years now that I think of it but I used to know a couple of guys from Wisconsin ( I was living in Columbia MO at the time) and they both had pretty cool boats. They were 15' plastic/fiberglass ( not sure which) semi-v hulls, roughly 40" or so wide and they were called row-trollers. I think that they were made in Hayward, Wisconsin. Absolutely the best row boat I've ever fished from, bar none. They rowed like a dream, you could stand up any time you felt like it and not feel tippy. They fished 2 guys very well, with plenty of room left for gear. Just saying, that might be a presentation option that is better than a canoe. Those boats weren't cheap, but they weren't totally pricey either. I think that they had $800 to $900 (in mid-80's dollars) invested in those boats.

It has been a number of years since I've had my pond boat out, but as a matter of principle, I always avoided drilling holes in it. For light things like a cup holder, I would use double sided tape or duct tape and not really care how it looked. Bomber 7 - I know that the vertical storage for the fishing rods is kinda practical and saves space, but if you spend any time fishing around serious trees and brush, it is asking for it. Also it is easy to forget that it is there and you can break a rod by snagging it on the back cast. JMO

You start with Buck Perry's slogan, i.e. "The fish are deep. . . .or shallow. . . .or somewhere in-between." Then you apply the In-fisherman formula, i.e. "Fish + Location + Presentation = Success" What this means in real-speak is that you make an educated guess as to where the fish might probably oughta be, according to what you know about seasonal patterns and go from there.

A few years ago, In-fisherman magazine had an article explaining pre-rigged worms and how to fish them. Basically, it is just cast & retrieve, but there are a few wrinkles you can do. How the hooks are set into the worm will determine if the worm spins a little or a lot or not at all. Different days might require different actions. This is one of the few baits where snap swivels help in reducing line twist. Don't be a cheapskate, buy quality ball bearing swivels and a good cross lock snap or something similar. I don't fish these worms myself very much, but I just remember the article.

You could have got a bad spool, maybe one that was too old. I have had mono get brittle - new unused spools that I let set in my new line box for a year or two or three. I've learned my lesson (maybe) and now I write the date the spool was purchased on the package and also the month & year should I use that spool to fill a reel. Now, that being said, I kind of think that 14 lb line is a little light to be throwing half ounce spinnerbaits. I generally throw 17 lb. and I don't think that 20 lb line is out of order for half ounce spinnerbaits. JMO

There is no substitute for trolling motor power. You can't have one that is too big. Get the biggest one that you can afford/fit on to your boat. I'd go at least 70 lb thrust/24 volt. Go 101 if you can fit the extra battery in your compartment. While you are installing trolling motor batteries, do not forget the on-board charger. My experience has been that the on-board charger makes the battery charging operation and hassle free experience. You are running a 37 lb. thrust currently. If the wiring on your boat absolutely won't support 24 volts, and you don't feel like upgrading, then at least go to a larger 12 volt model, like a 55 lb thrust.

If you are walking a lot, a back pack is the way to go. Just get a bigger back pack. I like Jansports because they have a lifetime guarantee if you tear one up, which I have.

Press passes are fun. They are an invitation to a party you normally wouldn't be invited to. Have a good time and network, meet alot of people. Don't get drunk.

The agricultural land close to Maple Leaf Lake is the reason those silt basins are there. They are there to catch silt that would otherwise flow on down the hill into the lake. If not for those silt basins, the east & west arms of Maple Leaf Lake would be much shallower than they currently are. The last time I was at Maple Leaf Lake, I noticed some siltation on the extreme west end, despite the presence of the silt basins. Anyway, I would expect those silt basins to be pretty shallow. They might be worth trying, but I wouldn't get my hopes up. Fish wise, I would expect more sunfish/ carp presence and not a whole lot of bass, but I don't know. Once upon a time (circa 2002, 03, 04) Maple Leaf was a hot lake. You could go there, count on having a 30+ fish day and roughly a third of those would be 15" to 20" keepers. There was a healthy population of slot fish (12 to 15") as well. And that was the problem, over the course of several years, the lake got popular and many people kept the keepers, so over time the quality and numbers went down. It got to where there were 6 to 10 boats during the middle of the week and the parking lot was crowded during the weekend. For me, that was another issue, in that I heard a few reports of trucks being pilfered, so I stopped going there. I'd be interested in hearing if fishing at Maple Leaf has improved any over the past few years, but I still probably wouldn't go there.

I change lures/approaches/ locations/ etc whenever I think I need to. I carry a number of rods with me so that it can be easier to just switch rods than to stop, dig into tackle and retie.

To echo what others have said so far, you might want to re-evaluate how much gear you're toting, based on current seasonal patterns and also on how much room do you have in the other guys boat. As far as storage gear goes, when I was doing the BFL co-angler thing, I found a rod bag very helpful in getting from my truck to the other guys boat with minimum amount of clutter. Some degree of communication with your boater should determine how much gear is necessary before it becomes in the way. Another co-angler tip I often used was to have a medium/large tackle bag and then securely velcro it to the rear deck chair. That way it was only in my way, and for the most part I could spin it around and keep it from being directly underfoot. Also it was secure when we were under way and on plane. Should I decide to get back into co-angling again, I would consider getting one of those rear deck portable rod racks, the back-rack or whatever they call it. They seem like a pretty slick solution to rod storage issues.

I wouldn't be surprised if they used similar patterns across different product lines, or different levels of the same product. If that is the car, then changing product quality levels isn't going to help much. I think that bibs are a much better option for a rainsuit than are pants, especially when you're fishing. When you are wearing pants, and you have to bend over to pick something up and your jacket rides up is a guaranteed method for getting wet. Wearing bibs usually prevents that. If the only issue with the garmet is that the straps are too short, any decent tailor can fix that, probably for not alot of money.