Fishes in trees

I see the chatter bait as an alternative to a spinnerbait and that's how I fish it. Any retrieve you can do with a spinnerbait you can do with a chatter bait. Most of the time I use a slow roll type of retrieve.

I'm in agreement with dwtaylor. Bass fishing with ultra lights might be fun, but you will put unnecessary stress on any decent fish you hook. If you catch & release there will be some delayed mortality. Plus you'll break your line from time to time. Using ultra light still when you're targeting crappie or panfish or trout is a good idea. I don't think it is such a good idea when bass fishing. JMO

Spinning reel life is a function of how well you take care of it. I too have a MItchell 300 series (301 right hand crank) that I purchased in 1976. It still works. It was my primary spinning reel until 1990. Now I keep it on the bench, a collectors item, but it would still fish good should I choose to use it. As I recall, every year or so I would break a bail spring on this reel. The tackle store in Columbia, MO (where I was living most of that time) had sold A LOT of that brand of reel and they kept the springs in stock. My advice would be to buy one you like and take care of it and it will last until you get old or someone steals it - which ever comes first. Of course, should you fish in salt or brackish water, all bets are off.

Just a thought, if you haven't planned your fall fishing trip yet, consider the Fishing for Freedom event at Truman Lake - Long Shoal Marina, scheduled for October 6 & 7 this year. Google Leavenworth Bass Club and check it out. I went last year and had a good time. This year, I'm going to go a couple of days early and mess around Truman by myself prior to the event. I was just wondering how many Missouri/Kansas/Midwest members knew about or were planning to do this year. The only cost for the weekend is lodging, boat & truck gas. You get a nice banquet on Saturday night and breakfast & lunch on Sunday. It would be cool to see a number of us help out with this event.

First, I'd really try to get a boat, beg one, borrow one, barter for one, whatever. Then, this time of year I'd fish the outside weed line. I'd fish a wacky rigged senko (green pumpkin with purple & black flakes) on 14 or 17 fluorocarbon line. I wouldn't try any other pattern until I had tried every foot of the outside weed edge with this bait.

I think the 1/8 oz U bolt heads are a little light for how I like to fish. I think they are a good pond bait, but waiting for them to drop more than 10 feet is a pain to me - it takes too long. I think that the 1/4 oz ones are a decent alternative to a shaky head jig.

What technique do you want to start with & how much money is allocated to this project? This is a real open ended question with no real starting point. If money isn't an issue, just bust out your master card and go to the BPS or Cabelas or Tackle Warehouse or any number of tackle E-tailers and start ordering. As far as reels go, you can't go wrong with Calcuttas or Calais or Chronarchs. For rods and all the rest of the stuff, you're on your own. No doubt since the ice is broken, other opinions will surface.

BPS & Cabelas catalogs both have lots of different trolling motors in them. This would give you a starting place on models available & price. Sometimes boat dealers or other retail outlets can get you a better deal on specific models due to close outs, overstock, etc. By the way, a foot controlled trolling motor on an 8 foot jon boat seems like overkill to me. I think it would unnecessary weight. JMO. If I was putting a trolling motor on an 8' jon boat and money wasn't a big issue, I'd go with the most powerful 12 volt short shaft trolling motor I could find. A 55 lb thrust Minn Kota with variable speed would be perfect and the weight difference between that and a lesser powered trolling motor, say around 30 lbs thrust would be negligble.

I like the idea of the 5 gallon bucket. If I was worried about the idea of the anchor line not drying, I'd drill a few holes in the bottom of the bucket.

On this same school of thought, there are a couple of other ways to get your bait to drop away from you. You can rid a senko backwards, i.e. tx rig the skinny end and it will drop away from you to some extent. Some sort of nail weight in the tail of a senko type bait will accomplish a similar drop. You've got to mess with the weight to get it right. Too much weight and it will just drop down. Get it right and it will slide down and away from you. Be sure to fish it on enough slack line to give it room to slide and drop.

To echo most of the other opinions in this thread, you've just got to practice son. A side arm cast is probably the easiest to learn, but you ned to learn to be versatile, overhand, side arm, back hand, one handed, two handed, etc. Once you learn these casts, then you'll need to learn how to pitch. It might be easier to learn how to pitch first. I don't know. Different schools of thought. I have a bud (who has never fished tournaments and always fishes out of his own boat) and he will move the boat before he will try a cast he's uncomfortable with. On the other hand, I have fished BFL for a number of years as a co-angler. Moving the boat isn't an option and you seldom get your choice of casting angles, so you learn how to make all kinds of different casts. Better equipment helps. As I get older, I'm learning how to pitch sitting rather then standing. There is a knack to it, I'm getting to the point to where I don't suck at it but there is still room for improvement. Back to the original point of this post, if you're still frequently getting back lashes, you just haven't practiced enough.

Those donut style belly boats are relatively inexpensive and this is the season and water temperatures for them. As for bait choices, I'd go finesse. 3/16 oz Brewer Slider heads, 4 inch worms, 6 lb test. Maybe some sort of 1/4 oz shaky head and a little bit bigger worm. Soft plastic, low and slow is probably the way to go on that water at this time.

I've have had enough bad experiences with Trilene Big Game that I don't use it any more. Basically, I think that it is cheap line. I think if you got a lot of it and you are changing it out every other trip or so you are probably ok. I think that there are better lines out there that don't cost that much more.

Geez, what a terrible problem, all your cranks won't fit into one box. Like Goose52 said - "Buy more boxes." You cold have worse problems. When I open the storage bin on my boat, all my crank baits scream at me "Put me in, coach, please!!" It is very disheartening disappointing so many crank baits, so for the most part, I don't talk back to t hem.

It is only a stereotype if you cop to it. My advice would be to bust out with a dilligaf and that's that.

All I know is that everyone has different ideas concerning what is and what ain't a decent spinnerbait rod. Years ago, I was multiple hundreds of dollars into the search for the perfect spinnerbait rod, then All Star came out with the Zell Rowland Spinnerbait rod. It is a 6'8" rod with just a little more tip than their worm rod. I bought one, then I bought a half a dozen more, and that's what I use for spinner baits. I'm glad I don't have to start that search again, because across the board decent rods are more expensive now. If I had to start over again in the spinner bait rod search, I'd go with the Loomis spinner bait rod/

For the ultimate in inexpensive bank fishing tackle containers go to the good will store and look for the biggest women's purse you can find. Back in my youth I found one that would hold 2 370 size boxes, several smaller boxes and a dozen jars of pork bait. As an added plus in was in a black/lime green zebra print. If you're looking for a cheap tackle bag that you absolutely don't care if you trash up, the good will store is the place to look.

This is one subject in bass fishing that I think I am past. I don't get very upset when I lose a lure and it happens every so often. Between the heavy plug knocker and a long pole I can get most cranks/jerkbaits back. Soft plastics/jigs I am much more likely to break off, more as a time saving move more than anything else. Should I get stuck on braid or 20 lb Abrazx, I've cut my fingers a couple of times from trying to yank my bait out. Now when I get stuck on those lines, I make 3 or 4 wraps around a boat cleat and back it off with the trolling motor. Often I break the branch and get my whole rig back.

I live in a rural area, so I built a metal building big enough to keep my boat, fishing truck, assorted fishing equipment and other stuff.

Spend the extra money and go for the 55 lb thrust with variable speed. You won't believe how much power you save over the course of a day.

Check out the Hummingbird Fishing Buddy series. Some of those models have a first generation style side scanning capability. I have one and it works ok. It does kind of eat batteries, the newer models might be better about that.

Did you just want one rod for all three applications? To me, that is three different applications and I have a different rod for each one of those techniques. I throw a lot of senkos, and I've got a Falcon 6'10" Eakins jib special that works great for that. It has a little too much tip for jig weights over 3/8 or so.

I didn't make this up. I heard it at some seminar I went to. The idea is after several casts you probably know what no hit feels like. So, any time your bait feels any different than that you set the hook. Keep in mind that hook sets are free. No one is going to charge you anything if you set the hook and there isn't any fish. I'm not really good at jig fishing, so I'm not the final answer to this, but I know that it isn't all line watching and it isn't all feeling the jig, but it is a combination of both. I'm at that stage of the learning curve where I'm trying to make myself fish the jig more, with mixed results. By the end of the summer I might be a better jig fisherman than I am now, maybe.

20 bags is nothing to keep unorganized. I routinely keep over a hundred bags of various soft plastics in my boat and I'm unorganized more often than not. I make efforts to get organized, I really do. Currently I try to keep similar types of soft plastics together in gallon zip lock bags, and then I keep the different gallon bags of soft plastics in a soft tackle bag. (It will hold 8 or 9 gallon bags) I keep three of the soft tackle bags in the boat. I also have a medium sized basket (roughly 10" by 15 " by 10 " deep), and in this basket I keep plastics I'm planning to use that day and new plastics that haven't been sorted into the gallon bags yet. Ultimately, it doesn't matter because after a few trips at best your soft plastic collection will devolve into some state of disorganization. That is the nature of plastic worm collections. Keep trying, at some point you will reach some system that will appease you for a while and really that's all you can ask for.

Great, your boat is officially broken in now and you can stop obsessing. I can recall when my current boat was new (2002), I put my first serious scratch on it less than 15 minutes after it was launched for the first time. I thought that was pretty funny, funny enough that I reached into the cooler, popped a top and poured some beer on the carpet, just to get that out of the way. Not very much beer, didn't want to be wasteful, just enough to make a point.