Bluebasser86

@August I stand and fish in mine very easily. I'm 6' and about 210 and carry more gear than I need but it handles it fine. I fish in a lot of very strong winds with big waves and it's not an issue as long as I'm not trying to cut across the waves.

Boat captained for the high school boys Saturday. Wind was bad and lake conditions were bad, but they put a couple keepers in the boat and managed a top 5 finish. Sunday, I took the boys out for a few hours. I should have taken them somewhere else to avoid the crowd but I didn't against my better judgement. The lake was crazy busy, not my cup of tea. We caught a few fish and enjoyed the nice weather. Finn and I teamed up on the big fish of the day, 4.11 pounds on a Ned rig.

You could easily get an Oldtown 120 Sportsman without the peddles and add a motor for under 2k. I have the peddle version, it's a very stable boat.

It has "wiggle wart", instead of "Rapala" stamped on the underside of the bill, which that one does.

Lots of good old baits. That's a good yard sale find.

Tubes for smallies are popular here, but big flipping tubes for largemouth have fallen by the wayside big time. I have to custom order my favorite colors of tubes in the bigger sizes. Pretty much my only option in a big, flipping tube is whatever store brand BPS has in stock at the moment.

They've wreaked havoc on one of my favorite smaller lakes. Use to be full of grass, now there isn't a strand of grass in the lake. I need to start making night trips out there with my bow and trying to take the lake back. Only a 200 acre lake, myself and a couple buddies could make a big impact in a summer I'd imagine.

They're a pretty good hook, but I have had quite a few points roll on me.

This year has been very poor for me so far. Have not fished nearly as much as usual, and have not had a lot of success when I have. Have not broke even 5 pounds yet this year, which I normally do many times in January alone. First kayak tournament of my circuit year is next weekend. Hopefully I can shake the funk then.

My pond in the jungle. It's tiny, you can see in the picture, not much bigger than the turn-around at the end of the dead-end road it's situated by. It's easy to cast all the way across in any direction and can't be more than 5' deep anywhere in the thing. Pretty sure the state killed it by clearing the trees off the dam and pushing a lot of them into it, basically filled the thing in. It use to have fish like this in it though.

Got my boat out for the first time in 6 months or so today. Doing the boat captain thing next weekend and the kids aren't going to get to prefish so I tried to go do it for them. Lake was super low and very muddy. I don't understand why they keep making these poor kids go back to this sorry excuse for a lake. I fished the marina for an hour without a bite. Tried to run to a different spot but got a constant beep warning when I did. Oil level was pretty low so I'm thinking that's what it was since it was peeing water just fine. Half-hearted tried the marina a little more before putting it right back on the trailer having had 1 bite from a big drum. On the way home, I stopped by a lake that never has any tournaments because it's a "bad lake", so I could remember what it's like to get a bite.

Mom and little brother were at a birthday party this afternoon, so Lake and I went fishing for a couple hours. Too windy to be on the water, so we stood on the bank and catfished. I was trying to catch something for bait with nightcrawlers on the bottom, but Lake ended up catching a channel cat and his first ever sturgeon on them instead.

There was a tournament that was either won by or almost won by a couple kids fishing Vision 110s with a piece of a Styrofoam cup suoerglued to the top of the bait. They were using upsized hooks, which caused the bait to sink. The foam was counteracting the added weight. Usually a thinner bill will create a wilder/more pronounced action, so you could try sanding a bill down thinner. Of course it risks weakening the bill or changing/ruining the action altogether.

@TnRiver46 it's a constant battle fighting the hairballs floating around on the hardwood and hair on everything in the house, but they're great dogs.

Mine get a small, square Milk Bone treat each morning when I let them out in the morning. They also get plenty of scraps when I'm cooking dinner. I grate cheese instead of buying it in a bag, got to pay the cheese tax whenever I get the grater out.

They'll still be the Kansas City Chiefs, it'll just be KCK instead of KCMO.

I was wearing one, the DD22 hit me with so much force the hooks drove through the hat and into my scalp. I can't fish without a hat.

I wasn't the caster but the cause of the backlash, Dad snagged me in the top of the head with a deep diving crank and blew up his baitcaster. So I kinda did backlash the reel, even though I wasn't casting it. That would be the worse one for sure, it was really painful.

Well I'm way behind on my reports, but I guess better late than never. Day 1 Launched at Sizemore Landing with about 12 other kayaks. I was the only one without a motor so at 0630, I watched everyone else blast off, then hopped in my kayak and started kind of kicking around and scanning since I hadn't fished this area at all in practice. As soon as the sun started to lighten the sky after lines in, the schooling started. I hadn't had much luck getting the schooling fish to bite, but I had a different bait ready for them this morning and it flipped the switch for them. The Rapala Crush City Freeloader on a 1/16oz Hover Head just slowly swam through the schoolers did all the heavy lifting in the morning on day 1. I started with a 16" fish. Then went back to back with 16.75" inchers. A 17" fish and a 13 incher rounded out my limit. It all happened so fast, I had no idea what I had, what time it was, what had even happened really. I culled the 13" with another 17" fish. And then culled the 16" fish with another 16.75" fish. It was about 0830 at this point, only 1.5 hours into the day and I was already into the mid 80's on my limit, which was my goal for the day. My buddy Jon and his son pulled up in the boat to watch me and then another boat pulled up. I thought I was going to have someone park on top of me and fish because it had happened so many times, but it turned out to be Mark Cisneros from Bassmaster. He introduced himself and told me he was going to take some pictures. My heart was already going, but I knew what it meant having the camera boat pull up on me, even if it was early in the morning on the first day. Trying to fish when I knew they were there watching me, I haven't been that nervous since I drove my first born home from the hospital. Jon took a picture of the camera boat, taking pictures of me. Some action shots, unfortunately the bite had died by the time they got there and I only caught 1 tiny smallmouth while they were there. Now when I tell you that my bite died, it was stone dead. If I only knew how close I was to the motherlode though. I fished until 1330, with 1 more dink largemouth to show for it, before I decided to move to another ramp where I had 1 short stretch of bank across from the ramp where I'd done well in practice. I caught several more there in the last hour and hooked 2 that felt good, but both just came off my jig for some reason. I ended the day in 20th, but it was a tight race and it wasn't out of reach. I never looked at the scoreboard, couldn't make myself do it, but my wife took a couple screenshots. Sorry about the audio on this video, but there may not be a day 2 video so this is all I've got for now. I did go out for a few hours yesterday on Easter and caught myself an overinflated football. 17.5" and 3.75lbs on the Strike King Rodent with a Gamakatsu Nano Alpha 4/0 EWG Superline hook.

I don't use the Beetlespin, but I do kind of a DIY version. I like to use a black/chart 1.5" crappie tube on a 1/32 or 1/16oz ball head clipped to a #0 or #1 jigspinner arm on an ultralite. Catches anything that swims but the standard fare really loves them (bass, bluegill, sunfish, crappie).

French Pearl OB Wakin React PM Twighlight Chart Back Spawn Cherry

I'm pretty good at guessing, but it's a lot harder on a video than in person. I don't understand challenging the size of someone's fish who obviously has weighed their fish though. I posted a short of a 22" fish my buddy caught last week that weighed a little over 6lbs and someone commented that it was "More like 2lbs". It doesn't really "look" like a 6 pounder in the video, but they never do when Jon is holding them. Jon is 6' 4" and well over 300lbs, he makes everything look smaller. I saw the fish in real life though, it was a toad and just a hair shy of 22", every bit of what the scale said it weighed. I don't know why people need to challenge a fish's weight like that.

@J Francho I will check that out. Does it have to be formatted first for that program to work or does it work without being formatted?

My Micro SD with my second day of my Bassmaster Kayak Classic footage isn't working. It worked a few days ago when I initially viewed the footage, but now when I try to use it, it says it needs formatted. I don't want to do that and lose the videos. I tried using a Recova program and wasn't able to pull any files with it. I tried switching cards, computers, leaving the card in the camera, no dice on any of it (GoPro says "error" when I put the card in now). If anyone has any ideas, I'd really appreciate it.

I use it on my spinning reels and have really been happy with it. It's a very good, all around braid. It cast well, color holds up well, doesn't "fluff" or unravel, holds up well around any cover that I'd expect it to, basically does everything I'd ask a good braid to do at an affordable price.