Bluebasser86

I paid $300 for my johnboat with a pretty solid trailer and a fair amount of equipment. The boat needed work but it was useable the day I brought it home. My kayak is nice but nowhere near top of the line and was $2,500 shipped to my door. The initial cost can be pretty high for a kayak, but maintaining and continued use is way cheaper.

I have weekends off now. My depthfinders don't work on the boat anymore except for the GPS feature so if that's important ?‍♂️

Small baitfish or chunks of larger baitfish work best, like 3-4 inch bluegills or shad. A small, stout #1 or 1/0 hook will be plenty. Straight braid and a stout rod will help drive the hook.

Couldn't tell you when the last fish I've seen over 5 pounds was, probably April I think. Not being able to afford to drive to lakes that hold big fish pretty much has made this fishing season suck.

I use to take my 80lb Golden Retriever, and this wasn't even in my big kayak I have now.

Green pumpkin/red flake, watermelon/purple, and black would get me by for any shakyhead fishing I do.

I night fish a couple lakes filled with docks. Typically, they move off the docks and spend more time roaming the shorelines between the docks at night on those lakes and the shorelines that are void of fish during the day can be hotspots at night. Bladed jigs, spinnerbaits, 10" worms, and jigs make up 95% of my night fishing baits. No topwaters because I don't like dodging missiles I can't see in the dark when someone misses a fish and sets the hook on the explosion. I about ate my BIL's 130 plopper last year when he insisted on fishing it in the dark and swung on an explosion that missed his bait.

Pitboss

I use to tear them up on the Banjo Minnow when I was a kid, caught a few on the frog also. The worm looks like it might be a Mann's Mannipulator worm. It could be a Culprit, but check the tail because I think both these companies but their name right on the tail.

Finally getting some rain today. Had to stop before work and see if it was getting them moving a little bit. I was moving slow getting ready, so I only had 30 minutes, but managed to get 1 on the FishLab Rat and one on the Fishlab shad.

They actually come with those now I believe. I found a small, chartreuse gill colored one with wide gap hooks recently.

I'm excited about the Zman panfish baits ? There was a couple crankbaits I liked. The rattling Frittside will be one I'll add to my box, the Spro Chad Shad is going to be another. Really liked the looks of the Spro Essential spinnerbaits and some of the new Berkley hardbaits also.

The hook is likely too small so you don't have enough gap to get the bait rigged right or clear enough of the plastic to get a good hookset.

It's easy for me, the Rage Bug catches fish and the D Bomb doesn't. No idea why but I can put a D Bomb in all the fish holding places in the world and they don't touch it, but switch to a Rage Bug or one of my other favorite beaver baits and I'm back in business.

That's a strange one, doesn't look real healthy so I'd venture a guess that it's some kind of illness.

Yeah just one of those foods that doesn't seem to agree with me real well. I guess it works out because I can't ever find morels when I look for them anyways.

I culled several times in a kayak tournament earlier this year with a split shot rigged mid sized Rage Bug, enough to finish in the money. When they called me up to get my prize and talk and I said a split shot rig saved the day, I saw several guys just look confused and one even came and asked me what that was afterwards. I guess I didn't realized it was that long forgotten. There was a couple kids fishing derbies yesterday but we went to the one put on by my old high school that now has a fishing team. I have only fished the lake it was at maybe twice so didn't know much but we set up just inside the only point on the lake going back into a little feeder creek cove with some cattails and grass. Both my boys were there as well as my 2 older nieces Lily and Zoey. There was little bluegills swimming all over right in front of us and a prize for first fish in all the age groups, so when the horn blew I had the girls drop their worms right in front of them and pretty much instantly doubled on 4 inch bluegill. We had an score keeper in a tent right behind us and both got on the board before the tournament was a minute old, so they both ended up winning "first fish", in their age groups. I set Lake up with a #10 mosquito hook and a BB sized split shot with a piece of nightcrawler and he was perch jerking as fast as he could go for awhile. I guess the Tournament Director actually called to make sure his score was right because he has 8 fish on the board in the first 5 minutes. I was casting Finn's for him but he was doing the rest, it was pretty much just cast and hand it to him and he could go ahead and reel the fish in. I also brought a rod to set out for catfish and saved a couple of the tiny sunfish they caught to put on it. First one barely hit the bottom before a little 12" bass ate it, Lily got that one. I put a bobber on it and floated the next one over the grass and a nice 15.5" largemouth ate it and did everything it could to get away but Finn finally beached him. Lily got tired of catching bluegills and wanted to fish for bass. She's never fished much so I gave her a wacky rig and told her to try the back of the cove in front of the cattails. Wasn't long before she was carrying her own bass back, a 16" fish that was the second biggest fish in her age group. She was extremely proud of catching it on her own. When the 2 hours was up, the girls got their prizes for the first fish in the groups, Finn won most fish in his age group with 36, and Lake won the most out of everyone with 46.

Rock stacking is a thing people seem to like to do for some reason.

Sorry to hear about this Hammer. Hope she gets feeling better.

Pretty much any kind of mushroom has that effect on me.

I've had a couple hooks gets wedged perfectly around their jaws and landed them. The hook shank through their jaw sideways, bend around the side of their top jaw and point of the hook on the topside of their top jaw with the barb dug down into it. Seems like my Ned rig hooks fit their jaws pretty perfectly and they have a tough time letting go of those stretchy Z-man baits as it is.

Where would a bass be waiting to eat a rat? Right below a low water waterfall seemed like a good spot. This one seemed to really like (hate?) the FishLab rat when it came over his head, really smashed it. Then this little champion pulled it down.

If anyone has an extra one laying around. Just got mine back from Lowrance after it quit working for the second or third time and forgot to take the mounting bracket off and they decided to keep it so I need another. Just the little plastic piece that snaps into the back of the head unit.

Welcome!

Lots of cherry tomatoes and a few beefsteak and romas. Got a few cantaloupes and 2 watermelons on the vines. Jalapenos are producing a lot but they're very small for some reason. Cilantro did well but it was our first time doing it and didn't know you have to keep cutting it so it went to seed and was no good anymore so we pulled it. Also did a tomatillo, which looks great with lots of blooms, but turns out you have to have 2 of them for them to produce any fruit so I guess it will just be a pretty plant in our garden.