Fishes in trees

In my opinion, 17 or 20 lb Berkley Iron Silk is the best rattle trap/square bill/ spinner bait line out there. I'm talking half ounce baits here, I don't throw that many traps/square bills/spinner baits under a half an ounce. It is so abrasion resistant, I've thrown square bills around sunken thorn trees all day and never bothered to re-tie. That being said, it isn't without its issues. It does have memory issues. This is solved in two ways. One - plenty of KVD line treatment. Two - each outing you need to break it in gradually. Start out with shorter casts, graduate to medium distance casts and after 10 minutes or so you can let it fly and go for max distance. Don't try for max distance right out of the box - it will most likely tangle due to the memory issues. I know that it was originally marketed as a jig line - personally I think that there are better jig lines out there. It works for me great as a medium/heavier cover reaction bait line. If it makes any difference, I'm using this line on a Calcutta 200 TEGT or an older Curado D. I've owned these reels for a few years now, and they are among the few reels that don't ever get loaned out. Adjustment is tricky on these reels, once I've got it how I like it I'm not big on other guys messing with them.

Your only option is to experiment and see what works for you. Try different brands and shapes - one will work better for you. I know lots of guys use the wide gap hooks. I got away from those somewhat last year and was using the regular bend Gamakatsu hooks on my home made jika rigs, rather than the wide gap ones that you commonly see on commercial jika rigs. Using full size brush hogs, I don't feel like using the narrower gap hook cost me ANY hook ups last year. So, that's my advice - pick and choose and make up your own mind.

Senkos & o-rings - it is important to use the correct size. 3/8 OD by 1/4 ID is the correct size. If you are spending more than a penny a piece for 0-rings, you're spending too much. orings.com got me phone numbers of different regional suppliers, one of which was in St. Louis, relatively near me. 10 bucks plus shipping got me a nearly lifetime supply of o-rings at a penny a piece. The woman on the phone apologized for the price being high, but because it was such a small order it was the best she could do. I disagree with the notion that using o-rings tears up senkos any more than any other hooking method with senkos. I've had senkos last all day - 10 or 15 fish before then disintegrated fishing them o-ring style. Last year I tried 2 o-rings, criss crossing them and running the hook underneath the x that is formed. I didn't that that it worked that much better than one o-ring, but I did like how it set the hook up perpendicular to the bait, so I'll probably continue using that set up for the time being. I have a dedicated senko rig. A 6'10" Falcon Bucco rod, the Bucco version of the older Eakins jig rod, a chronarch 50 reel and I generally use 14 or 15 lb fluorocarbon. Hooks - currently prefer the Falcon weighted wacky hook - the one with the 1/16 oz weight molded on to the shaft of the hook and a mouse trap style wire weed guard. I like the slightly faster drop that the 1/16 oz weighted hook gives me.

While you are out fishing, I'd recommend keeping the soft plastics in the bag that they come in, keep the various types of soft plastics grouped together in gallon zip lock freezer bags. I'm not a big fan of storing soft plastics loose in plano boxes. For longer term storage of soft plastics, Every so often Walmart has plastic shoe boxes on sale for around a buck a hit. $20 gets you many boxes so your collection has some room to grow. For longer term storage, you also need to consider shelving, that goes on sale from time to time at Walmart, Lowes & Home Depot.

If you fish some, then you haven't worked all the time. As far as having "nothing" to show for the past 10 years, you're the only guy who can judge that fairly. If that's your honest judgement about the past 10 years - ok then - who am I to judge? So, you're 30 years old and you haven't gotten your own boat yet? Think you're the only guy in that spot. Have you given it any thought, that maybe it is currently your duty to go fishing with other guys, help them load their boat, help with expenses, etc. Have you considered how much you are learning through this activity? When you finally do get your boat, there will be many steps on the learning curve that you can skip, because you've witnessed buddies make the errors/decisions/ etc. Currently, I have a semi-decent boat (2002 LOWE WF 180 with a 100 HP 4-stroke) I got that boat when I was 49, after I had secure employment for several years. It is paid for now - I am 62 - still working with no plans for retirement. I guess what I'm saying is lighten up on yourself. If you are employed - you are re-engaged, so that means that there is one woman on the planet who is considering hanging out with you for the long term, and you get to go fishing occasionally - you are ahead of the game. Sooner or later, if it is important enough to you, you will get your own boat - be mindful that life has a way of throwing curves at you from time to time and those are difficult to hit. If you've got buds who are tolerant enough to let you fish out of the back of the boat - then that's good enough right now. A last aside - when I was in my late 20's - early 30's I was underemployed - down and out some of the time, semi-broke most of the time. What saved me then was I found a place, through a friend of a friend of a friend, that was a very private 40 acre lake, and the old lady who lived on the lake took pity on me and let me do odd jobs for her from time to time and in return I could fish her lake as much as I wanted to and keep all the fish I could catch. (The lake was semi-stunted with LOTS of 10 to 12 inch bass and taking them out was the best thing for the lake, over all) Anyway, sorry you are currently bummed, but overall, it sounds like first world problems to me and stuff that you'll overcome, given a modest amount of effort. Thanks for letting me rant.

My best luck for fishing coontail is to fish the deep outside edges. On occasions I've come across a visible hole in the vegetation and on rare occasions, gotten bit when I pitched a tx rigged worm into the hole. I'm pretty sure that there are other ways to fish coon tail vegetation but I'm not very good at it. Like I said - outside deeper edges with a half or 5/8 oz home made jika rig and a brush hog, zellemander or some other creature bait. I use fairly heavy line for this - 17 lb fluorocarbon - brand varies, currently Seaguar Abrazx.

Just for the record, the ROYALS are the American League Champions. They came really close to winning the whole thing last year and if it hadn't been for Madison Bumgartner ( or however you spell his name) they might have won. ROYALS ain't going away. ROYALS are going to hang around and make it interesting again this year. ROYALS pitching - starting pitching is suspect (everyone's starting pitching is suspect - bullpen is phenomenal and looks to continue to be phenomenal ROYALS defense - outstanding - Lorenzo Cain could be the best center fielder in baseball, currently. You can make the argument that Eric Hosmer is the best defensive first baseman currently in the game. Alcides Escobar is in the conversation as one of the best short stops in the game currently. Sal Perez is in the conversation as one of the better catchers in the game, currently. Royals offense - come on guys - let's be real. I just pray that they re-define small ball for this decade and score just enough runs to win every day. 2015 Game #1 10 to 1 doesn't suck. Personally I think that after the ROYALS got 5 runs up, the white sucks threw in the towel and sent in a couple of rummies in to mop up. So the last 4 runs were more of a function of sloppy bull pen work on the part of the white sucks than anything else. The best thing to take away from this game is Moustakas got his first EVER opposite field home run while the game was still in contention. GO ROYALS . . . . LIVE ROYAL . . . . . BE ROYAL

This is for all the guys who live in the KC metro area. Also those who live within reasonable driving distance of the KC Metro area. Rogers Lures in Liberty, MO is closing out a bunch of stuff to make room for new stuff. I got a couple of Strike King Wake Shad baits a 2 for 1. Xcaliber (I don' know how to spell that bait company name, exactly) EE Shad jerk baits 2 for 1 (works out to $4 a hit) Lots of other cranks, some might be collectible in the future at 50% off. There is a reasonable collection of Timber Tigers (which has been picked through, by me and some other Timber Tiger believers) at 50% off. There is a whole end cap of Rapala Baits (mostly tail dancers and flat slash baits at 50% off. All Netbait plastics are $1.99 (maybe less, I don't remember) All YUM baits are 50% off. Point is, if you need to/want to upgrade your hard bait or soft bait collection, now is a time at Rogers where you can do so fairly cheaply. If you life within a reasonable driving distance of Liberty, MO. , take a day trip and you can score some decent tackle deals. p.s. I don't work for these guys, I'm just an addict who spends a modest amount of money in their store every year (and has for the past couple of decades)

I have several opinions on this subject. First, you can never have too much trolling motor power. Second, buy what you can afford. In your case, I'd upgrade to a 24 volt when I could afford it - the 8- lb thrust Maxxum or Fortrex would make a huge difference in your ability to position your boat while fishing. It isn't just that you can go faster, you can hold better in the wind, your batteries will last longer and also, a variable speed motor lets you go slower when necessary than a standard 5 speed trolling motor. If you are going to upgrade from a 12 volt to 24 volt trolling motor, make sure that your wiring harness in the boat can handle it.

The short answer is yes, learning to fish a drop shot is worth it. The only time I don't consider a drop shot is in very stained/muddy water (secchi disc reading of 2 or less) The waters I fish in week to week are very seldom that stained. I generally carry 2 rigs - a spinning rig for a more finesse application and a pitching stick with 20 lb Abrazx fluorocarbon for more gnarly cover areas. I use the bubba drop shot probably 4 times as much as I use the finesse rig. If I fished lakes with lighter cover, I'd go with the finesse rig more often.

Son, I was you once - i.e. a broke college kid who liked to fish and was short on equipment. There was decent fishing relatively close to me, but I didn't even have a means to get to the waters. Here is some advice. Take it - leave it - or modify it. Somewhere on campus - maybe in your major - maybe not - there is a professor or maybe someone in the administration side of the college, who likes to go fishing and would just as soon not go alone. They absolutely don't' mind taking a student along fishing. They absolutely don't want one who is just there to brown nose for grades and recommendations. They want to hang around with a nice kid who likes to fish. They are getting older, they can still do all the boat maintenance, and so forth that is necessary, but time is an issue and they feel it after washing/waxing/ cleaning the boat, etc. If they have wives, they have more fishing tackle than they need. If they don't have a wife they have ALOT more fishing tackle than they need. My advice to you is to find that guy. In my case, I made several life long friends with guys who were 20 years or so older than me. They helped me out with gear and stuff when I was young and broke. I helped them out by doing the heavier lifting/ helping load and launch the boat/ drive the boat when they wanted to drink/ etc. (Sometimes professors have serious work stuff on their minds and all they want to do is get out on the boat, have a beer or two and not talk to anyone) So, anyway, if you're a broke college student who wants to go fishing more than you do and could use some help gear wise - there's a plan for you. I would tell you to join your college fishing club, but maybe/probably you have already found out that isn't a club for totally broke college guys. This guys have plenty of gear (or they have dads or grand dads who have plenty of gear) and they have enough disposable income to travel some and do the tournament thing. It might be something to check out, but be mindful that any collegiate club sport requires some personal financial commitment. Hope this helps you form some kind of plan.

To start with, deep means different things, depending on where you live. Your electronics will tell you where the thermocline is and I generally don't fish much deeper than that, because for the most part there isn't enough dissolved oxygen below the thermocline for fish to be comfortable. There are many exceptions to that rule. In Table Rock Lake and other highland type reservoirs, bass are regularly targeted in 30 to 40 foot depths. I've read about guys catching fish deeper than that,though I've never personally seen it. In Truman lake, which has some highland lake features, but is more of a flooded river valley & forrest, you seldom hear of catches in 40 foot or deeper water. You will hear of fish suspending 20 feet down in 40 foot of water and I think that is directly related to the thermocline. If there are any divers in your neighborhood, they will be able to tell you exactly where the thermocline is, they tell me that the thermocline is very obvious when you're diving.

The short answer is yes. Where I live and fish there are often better choices. I wasted some time last summer (mid July) trying to make a slash bait approach work over a kinda deep (7 to 9 feet) weed bed. Buddy fishing off the back deck catches several slot fish and a 15"keeper, using a rattle trap style bait, and then another keeper on a fluke style bait and I'm still Ofer with the slash bait. Other days they have worked though. Try and find out if it works for you. The lesson I learned from that is for me, the vast majority of my keeper fish came off deep weed lines, transitions from weeds to rocks or weeds to clay or weeds to sand, whatever - the point was deep weed line transition areas. I shouldn't have wasted time trying to fish an expansive weed bed that was a little too deep and the water was a little too stained for me to see the holes/ect in the weeds.

I've thought that those rain suits looked neat, but no one in my neighborhood carries them. BPS don't, Cabelas don't. local tackle shops don't. I'm out of luck until StormR decided to upgrade their distribution network. One a side note - I really like my Cabelas Guide Wear, as cold/cool weather rain gear goes. Any rain suit you get, I'd recommend trying it on before purchase, just to see how it fits, how much layering underneath it is necessary and so forth.

I haven't t-rigged on drop shot rigs for a couple of years now. I've found that using the Gamakatsu wicked wacky hooks and nose hooking the baits works great and I fish in pretty gnarly cover sometimes. When I was going with a hook that I could texas rig, I thought the Lunker City Texposer hooks worked the best for me.

I like Berkley Iron Silk for throwing square bills/ rattle trap style baits. The square bills I throw are generally around half an ounce. 17 or 20 lb test works best for me, for what I throw and where I throw it.

If you broke it, it is probably fixable. Send it to DVT and he'll fix it. It has been a couple of years now, since I sent him a 7 Ball bearing Calcutta that had an annoying click in it since I bought it. He fixed it and it doesn't have that annoying click and its been a few years now. I have other reels that I need to send to him, but I'm waiting until I get some disposable income that I can allocate to that purpose. UNtil then, feel free to cut in line and send your reel in. As I recall, it didn't take very long.

That is very organized. How does it stay organized after several fishing trips. That's my issue, on a slightly larger scale. I have a 30 x 40 fishing shed and a dedicated fishing truck and it starts out organized, but after several trips, it isn't any more. I've been officially a geezer for a few years now, so I don't see that changing - soon or ever. Hats off to you if you manage to get organized and stay organized.

If you're going to bubba drop shot and want to tx rig your bait rather than nose hook, the exposer hooks work good for that purpose.

To echo WIGuide's response, I fish Terminators quite a bit and I don't have that issue with them. I'm not a big fan of trailer hooks, but I doubt that is the cause of your issue. No clue what is the cause of your issue. Maybe try casting them "more carefully" without so much snap on the cast - I don't know.

The easy solution seems to be to buy a bunch of those hook covers, which are around a dime apiece when you buy them by the gross. (Something like that, I bough a bunch of them several years ago and I've forgotten how much they cost) I'm pretty sure that you could go to work with a Dremel Moto-tool and a cutter bit and modify the dividers so that you could store spoons. A similar rule applies though, in that if you modify the dividers so that they'll hold spoons, a 3600 box only has so many dividers. You could fit more in a 3700 sized box, which fits better in a 3700 size bag, so maybe the 3700 size bag wasn't too big. Is it better to have the room and not need it or to need the room and not have it? How big are these spoons? Those big 5" or so structure spoons that've been popular the last few years? Might be time to re-think your storage. On a positive note - it is a first world problem that most likely can be solved by throwing money at it. Bottom line - I go with the hook protectors and see how they work first. BPS & Tackle Warehouse have hook protectors, other vendors probably do also.

I made a list of the different techniques I currently use spinning gear for: Ned Rig - Slider finesse rig - finesse drop shot rig - jerk bait rig - deep diving cranking - standard shaky heads (mostly 3/16 & 1/4) - carolina rig - weightless soft plastic rig/skipping rig (tx rigged senkos/flukes & fluke types, soft magic swimmers/tubes). Plus I have 3 or 4 all purpose spinning rigs, borrower rods, if you will, that I use to lend to anyone that fishes with me. Each one of those rigs is a different length and action, varying from 5'9" to 7'2". It turns out that I'm no help deciding which is better, 6'6" or 7'. The passage of time continues to amaze me. Back when I was a hippie meat fisherman, I carried one rod, one reel and two spare spools an extra 6 lb test and one with 8 lb for really heavy cover. My tastes have changed over the last 30 years. Funny what having a job and disposable income will do. My only advice is to pick the one you will like the best. Most likely, it won't be the last rod that you buy.

Professional fund raisers have formulas for determining if a particular fund raising project is worth while time-wise. You need to estimate/guesstimate costs versus risks versus rewards. Depending on what league they fund raise in, that number is anywhere between $500 to $5000 for every hour that they invest in the project. That goal isn't always reached. Many people tend to under value donated time. A fair question is how much money are you planning on raising? If you have 50 boats at $50 a pop, that's only $2500. If you are planning on raising awareness as well as raising money, then that's a separate issue, with its own cost/risk/reward analysis. In Warsaw, Mo, the Shriners do a big charity tournament every May. They've done it for a number of years. 60, 70, 80 guys work on it off and on all year long for the one weekend payoff. Setting up a tournament is a BIG chore. Plan your event out carefully. Speaking as a guy who has fished a couple of dozen charity tournaments over the years, you remember the ones that were poorly run far longer than you remember the ones that were well run. In most (at least many) anglers minds, the cause becomes firmly connected with the event. I wish you the best of luck with your project, if I were closer, I'd probably help. I hope I gave you some stuff to think about without being too much of a downer. I just know that tournaments are a lot of work. I see how much labor goes into putting on a BFL tournament, I've witnessed how much work goes on in a major charity tournament, like the Warsaw Shriners put on and I don't think that putting on a charity tournament, albeit on a smaller scale, would be a whole lot less labor-wise.

I have a couple of old Gambler ones that I like. They have more of a football head as compared to an Arky style head, also they have a brush guard like a regular jig. The skirt color is a brown/green pumpkin/chartreuse/blue color, kind of resembling a bluegill? Anyway, that's what they called the color. Gold Blade and a white BPS Cajun trailer with chartreuse tips. I keep telling myself to get a supply of the blades and make my own, as I have a plethora of old jig heads around my shop, in various weights, but I haven't done it yet.

I've been out in some gnarly early spring an late fall weather in my Cabelas Guide Wear and it has always worked great. Some water will always get in, through the neck, the sleeves under your wrist, act. Given that, my guide wear has worked great. I bought mine loose enough that I can wear layers underneath it to deal with the cold. No matter what brand you buy, make sure that you get one that fits the way you want it to - makes a big difference.