Basswhippa

A man who knows his limitations. LOL Practice with a decent reel is key. Remember practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Eventually you will want a very good reel with good clean bearing. A few years back Bassmaster had an article regarding a "trick caster". It was during the time that Curado Greenies, Pearl Chronarchs and Silver Calcuttas ruled the fishing scene. (Some things don't change much) The thing that was interesting to me is that the trick caster used an ABU 4600C3 which you could buy at the time for $59.99. He wasn't using a $120 to $200 reel. ABU invented Ultracast so it really is no suprise. Tourny casters today prefer some of their 80's Ultracast designs such as the 521 series/Ultra Mag plus series. A 4600 would be a great reel to start with assuming you need a reel. It is narrow and trains the thumb. Good luck!

Teal, in your first post you quote "LMAO" at your wife who is recovering until she sees the next "bait monkey" purchase. If I didn't know better, I would think that you are actually enjoying watching her suffer. I quoted the above as it is really solid advice. Women need security. Financial problems are the number 1 cause of divorce. Divorces are very expensive and can cut into our very expensive hobby. I have no idea of your finance. For all I know, you may be a multi millionare and your wife is overly obsessed. That said, the above quoted advice is good for all of us. Good luck!

Noticed the lack of detail as well. I didn't particularly care for it! I know all the rods and reels. I can't remember the specs!

Don't take her boat shopping. You'll get a ski boat or at a minimum a fish and ski. LOL Understand. Just the way it is with women.

First of all congrats on your PR. That is a great fish. It is difficult to say. Did you measure him? You can always cut a piece of line and do so in the abscence of having a tape. Well you asked. If I had to guess, I would guess 8lbs and I base this on you saying it was absolutely larger than 7 that was your former PB. I'm looking at the body of the fish in comparison with the length of your fingers. Unless you have particularly long fingers, it looks like a solid 8 or so fish. If you told me it weighed 9 lbs, well, I wouldn't be super suprised, just guessing if I had to at 8. If you told me that it weighed 10, well I would be suprised. Again congrats. Love it when the ladies decide to go shopping. Ha

Nothing boring about those this time of year. Thanks for posting! Congrats on a Christmas day haul!

DBSULLY, I can see that. In general it is light colored, like in your picture. But the fins on the bottom are a little off in my view. They are too white at the top and too green at the bottom whereas most mounts I have seen are more of a solid green, as in your picture of the freshly caught bass. If he would make the bottom fins look like the top fins it would be about perfect. I'm no expert but he looks to have close coloration on the rest of the fish. Well, as with all things, have you considered talkin with the taxidermist? He might offer to tweak the areas you are concerned about. Sometimes on Ebay you will see whole mounts that have been restored, so I know they take old mounts and repaint them. They often look incredible. It would be worth a talk and if it's just the fins, maybe he would do that. If it is more than just the bottom fins I would be prepared to give him some samples of maybe some you can find on the internet. Then again, it's a great fish and you should be proud of it either way and you could always just tweak it in the future.

First of all, thank you for sharing your catch and mount with those of us who like to look at bass mounts, whether skin or replica. Second, congratulations on catching what may be the fish of your life. I see that you are not as happy with it as you could be. What is it you don't like, the way it is positioned, driftwood, coloration? Anyway, if it is the color, you could get it repainted at some point as money allows. Not much you can do about the position, mouth, etc., not that it is bad. It is just personal preference of whoever is enjoying it, including yourself and the taxidermist, as to what the position should be. Congrats again.

That looks like a really old fish, just looking at it's eyes. Congrats on the fish!

Sounds like you got something that is very comparable to a Chronarch for $90. That is awesome!

After all the Revo's(decent reels for a while by most accounts) in this thread have breathed their last breath and have had a plastic clutch/cam break and are rendered permanently motionless, lying dormant and no longer economically viable in a junk reel graveyard (think cardboard box in the dark, dusty and cobweb covered corner of someone's garage) with the unlikely and faint hope that they might some day be awaken from the dead, rising again upon some future yet unproven miracle, you will still be chunking and winding and catching because of your choice of going with a Shimano. There is a reason that every single reel mainenance guys works on Shimano, many of them exclusively. They are worth maintaining over the long haul. I would try to find an E. Take the suggestion of upgrading a bearing and you'll basically have the new Chronarch!

Nice, thanks for sharing with us. Keep taking those little guys out. My pond had some big ones die at turnover. I shoulda been pulling some 14 inchers out!

I will bet he thought twice kicking a wake on another fisherman again. Ouch, that had to hurt. The problem here is that there is no universal definition of "rude". I try to stay away from others and appreciate it when they do same. That said, if Ithere was a major conflict, I'm not sure that there would be any law that could be enforced. It's a bad situation. The best thing to do is to use the golden rule and explain fishing distance ethics to others.

Joe, I was kidding edit. That is Ok. I'm not easily offended. You can't get upset with such comments when you are a pet cemetery mortician. You get a lot of jokes. Not just any backwoods taxidermist can make it in my field. You really have to have superior dead animal skills. There is huge difference in stuffing a critter someone shot out in the woods, field, bush or pulled from the bottom of a lake and they looked at it for a couple of hours vs preping someone's favorite household companion and making it a lap dog look just like it used to for all the years they had it. Sometimes we don't just bury them because the owner wants their stuffed pet back. I had two rush orders on Shih Tzu's the other day. One died of natural causes and the owner put the other to sleep. I know that sounds bad, but it was really old. She wanted them both back into her living room as soon as possible, just as they had been over the last 14 years, so I obliged . It's not like it was a human funeral or something, so normally there is no rush order. She wanted them embalmed and wanted them now! Using hour same day service she had them both back in the living room within 24 hours. If you think taxidermy bills are bad, try a rush order embalm job on your favorite chochalate lab. Regarding the side business, it's just a small lab in the garage. The wife complains as my boiler looks like an overgrown moonshine still and it stinks up the house. That is the nature of blood and stink bait. I just explain to her that Steve Jobs and Michael Dell started out their multi billion dollar businesses in their garage as well. They made billions making people happy. I'm nowhwere near that, but again, on some distant shoreline, some catfish fisherman is having a good time. We are even doing some testing on bass lures and having good success. If you put too much and are using a slow moving bait, you get bass and cats. A customer got an almost double digit smallmouth at Dale Hollow last January on dipped floating fly with a cut in half and trimmed back hematoma colored sweet beaver trailer.

The best part of being a pet cemetery mortician is that it spawned my side business, which is catfish blood bait. This business gives me money to partake in favorite hobby, bass fishing. You would never think it, because it's such an important job, but pet cemetery morticians don't make a lot of money, so fishing might not be an option if I didn't have a side busisiness. As such I have an almost never ending and ever ready supply of dead pets. It is heart warming knowing that even though someone's favorite furry companion is now deceased, that the donation of it's former lifeblood is helping a trash fish angler smile, somewhere, somehow, along some distant muddy pond, creekside bank, bayou bottom or rocky river shoreline, as they are cranking up a bottom feeding catfish. Pot belly pigs are my all time favorite to drain, but they are somewhat rare. Normally thought I prefer dogs over cats, gerbils and birds, not because of their blood's composition but because of the size of the animal. It makes me more fishing tackle money.

I have not had a bass to eat in years. They are a sunfish. Sunfish are very good. I throw over 99% right back in. I will say this, if you are throwing back 14" bass in small ponds, you might want to rethink it. I've had two fish kills on ponds and wish I had thinned the heard of small bass. They take up oxygen and during stressfull water conditions, those 10 one pounders might cost you one 10 lbers by breathing all the oxygen. If you don't selectively havest, mother nature will run her own course and havest what she wants.

If you want the best Lews, go to Ebay and get a Shimano built one.

How far will you drive on a regular basis to get to good fishing. I have no water in the immediate vicinity. It kills me. But I'm two hours from Guntersville, Pickwick, Kentucky Lake, Wheeler, Wilson, Chick, etc. It got me to thinking..... How far do you guys drive to get to you water? Me it's an hour to two hours in any direction. Two hours is about my max.

Between 8 and 9 is my guess due to it being slim at the time you caught her.. Nice hawg!

You mean 8" height not girth..... right? did you measure all the way around the fish? That would be girth.

That is the best explanation that I have ever seen regarding why right handed people use right handed reels and left reeling spinning reels. Excellent post. I threw a 3/4 ounce booya spinnerbait all day yesterday........ I needed a winch. LOL

It is lubed well if not heavily. It is an excellent reel. If you were to want to tinker, you can add a spool shaft bearing vs the plastic bushing and have a reel that is comparable to the $200 ish Chronarch today.

If it is in the condition you describe it could go for $55 to $100 easily, depending on who wants it. I'd guess $80 on average.

I wouldn't count it because of it's size. It is one thing if you are playing around with a 1 or 2 lber at the boat for the fun of it like with braid. You could just swing it over but you are playing around and it gets off. I'd add it to my number for the day. But a fish of that quality? No, not unless I got my hands on it. For one thing a fish 25" long with a 11" girth would only weigh 5.75 pounds anyway. That isn't big but I'll bet yours was actually bigger. You just don't know what the girth really was for the lack of catching it. Go back to the pond my friend and catch it for real. Keep us posted!

7 lbs. If you don't have a good scale, you could take it to a farm supply store. Nice fish!