psuangler91

I'm watching the live weigh in right now and while most of the fans there are on their feet yelling and screaming, I'm a little disappointed to see a large portion of them sitting on their butts. I understand the older fans not standing up and jumping up and down but the number of men I saw sitting there with blank faces was appalling. I don't know if they're too tough to show emotion or if they just think they're too cool, but this is how I see it. If we don't get up and show emotion for our sport how can we ever expect those who aren't involved with fishing to get into it? Look at a football game! There are grown men dressed like Indians and wearing face paint! I think if we want to help this sport grow we have to start being as vocal about it outside of the community as we are inside. If you're in a club wear your t-shirt or sweatshirt when you're out in public! I wear my team sweatshirt all over campus and I love when people ask me about the PSU Bass club and they say they didn't even know we had a team, because then I have an opportunity to maybe interest someone in fishing and give the sport more exposure! I know all of us here are die-hards, and we all want to see pro angling grow, so whenever we get a chance to be in the national spotlight let's make some noise and show people how exciting this sport is.

I was just wondering if there is a downside to micro guides. I'm planning on picking up two veritas micros this spring, one for flipping and another one I haven't decided what technique I'm going to focus on with it but I get a good deal so i'm buying 2. Is there any technique you would not use micro guides for?

So I got a tour edition for christmas and finally got to use it for the first time yesterday. I'm at school at Penn State but the winter has been so mild the ponds at a local golf course haven't froze over. Me and a couple other kids from the bass team ran out for an hour and a half after class just to shake the dust off. I can't even begin to tell you how much I love this reel! It is so smooth and easy to cast I can't say enough about it. I was casting and pitching a jig from the bank and I was getting great distance. Then I put on a weightless havoc wide load to fish in the thick algae. The reel had no problem casting that light lure accurately and without backlash, even when the wind picked up significantly. I can't comment on the drag yet because unfortunately I didn't get a single bite. The only fish any of us caught was about a 6 incher. I love this reel and I wish i would have bought more of them when I had the chance because apparently quantum isn't making it anymore now that they have the exo at that price point. Can't wait to get back with a more in depth review whenever I finally get out on big water.

Dude I'm 20 and I'm a gear junkie too. Here's your problem, you call yourself an addict when the word you should be using is "connoisseur"!

Thats a great idea, I've always wanted to use the binders but never want to remove anything from the original packaging. I feel so stupid when I don't think of something that simple myself.

wow I feel like pretty much the biggest idiot in the world. I swear that I looked at every sized hula grub on there for about twenty minutes and couldn't find it. Thanks now if only i could get them in 4 inch

I was fishing with a guy once and he let me borrow some double tail hula grubs in 200 clear/bronze and I absolutely destroyed them on that bait! I've been searching for it ever since and I can't find them anywhere! I'd really appreciate it if someone could let me know where I can get them or if it's a special color only a few people get I'd be more than willing to buy a bunch off you. Thanks everyone

Haha had to read the post more carefully to pick up on that one! I agree with roadwarrior. I think it's smarter to buy one with rattles than risk ruining a bait to save a few bucks. Even if your craftsmanship was perfect you could still change the bait just enough to throw off its action.

Looks great, I'd love to be able to do that. I enjoy fly tying and creating things so maybe someday I'll pick it up as a winter hobby. The handle looks great!

Haha I got an A in that class but I don't think I could have passed "The female psyche 101"

Wow happyhappa, I'm pretty sure that's the most insightful journey into a woman's psyche most of us on here have ever read! Thank you, hopefully by next winter my girlfriend will be as happy as you and buying me rods and reels for christmas.

I have an FTO speed bag also, and I have a bag that came with a medium and small tray in it and I removed the medium tray to make room for plastics and use the small tray for terminal tackle.

You guys are right, I guess I am just trying to tell her that I take this seriously and it's not just some saturday morning hobby. If she cares about my dreams she'll understand. Thanks everyone for the advice... and the laughs

haha no she's not a psycho, I was talkin to her about how much I had invested in new rods and stuff over the summer. She wasn't diggin through my garbage.

This was over an entire summer. Probably should've mentioned that. Maybe I made her sound worse than she is. We've been together for 5 years, and I definitely spend more money on her than I ever have on fishing. I just was wondering if there's a way to legitimize buying tackle even though i don't really need it.

I use Berkley Power worms but I'm going to try others this season just to see if there's anything better. I haven't ever tried anything else.

haha if she was like that I would! I've realized that girlfriends are always going to complain but they do it just because that's how their programmed. I don't think they actually even care about what they whine about because she complains for five minutes I say ok you're right and she shuts up. Then I go out and buy more fishing stuff, if she really had a problem with it I guess I'd be single right now. But I'm not so she must not really care.

So he's mad that you caught what he thought should have been his fish or he's mad you let it go and didn't get it mounted? That is weird, sorry to hear that

I'm not sure exactly which was my personal best but they were both around 4 pounds. the first one was caught in Canada on a 9" Yum Dinger T rigged and dragged along the bottom under some lilly pads, He was a monster to me then and I thought he was at least 5 cause I had never caught a fish even close to that before but we weighed it at 3.9. The Second was caught the day before my first tournament during practice. My partner was in the front of the boat and we were both throwing spinners at a cluster of bull rushes on Clear water lake in Michigan. He was hitting it with a chartreuse and didn't pull anything out. Then I took my turn and I had a white single colorado with a chartreuse grub trailer. I threw in between the edge of the main clump and a small bunch of rushes just off that. He hit it right as it passed between the two and I instantly knew it was a good one. I actually was thinking maybe it was a pike. He was rippin drag and I was trying as hard as I could to pull him in without horsin him. whenever I pulled him up next to the boat I was so psyched I lipped him and pulled him up and my partner and our boater were both smilin and high fivin me. I'd say he was 4 and a half but my boater kept saying 4 flat. Anyway, next year I'm determined to get a five.

Accomplishments fished first tournament learned how to use my casting gear without back lashing every 5 casts Goals I want to fish at least 3 tournaments Fish at least 3 days a week Catch a 5 lubber Catch a limit in a tournament The one thing that I would really love to see but isn't about me. Get to see my little brother catch a slob that's worthy of an Ike style freakout! He's spent the last few years watching my dad and I catch nice ones and I'd like to see him get a beast.

There are two local ponds that I fish. Pond A is about ten feet deep at the max and about three times the size of Pond B. The largest bass I've caught from there was 18 in long and weighed between 2 and 3 pounds(estimate). There aren't a ton of bluegill in it but there are lots of frogs and the bass population is healthy but you don't catch a fish on every cast. There's alot of weed growth against the bank and I routinely see bass crush frogs off the surface of these weeds. Pond B is about 4 feet deep at the max, maybe 3 feet and I can cast completely across the pond from anywhere on shore. This is mostly where I take my girlfriend to fish so she catches a lot. There are a ton of very small bass and loads of bluegill(fun on a fly rod!). The largest bass i've caught from there is the one in my avatar and it was about 16" but a real whopper for that pond. I caught him on a popper fly which I landed right inside the edge of a large cat tail clump which takes up one end of the pond. From my experience at these and other ponds I'd say if you find a ridiculous amount of dinks, i.e. you catch one on every cast, there aren't going to be too many hogs in there. Bass need a decent amount of oxygen so a really shallow pond like pond b won't be conducive to growing big ones because a bigger bass will need more oxygen and a small shallow pond warms faster decreasing the amount of oxygen the water holds. I don't know where you're from but for us we go to ponds to catch easy fish and I know I'm not going to pull a monster out of them so I don't really write ponds off, but I hope this helped a little. If you do find one with 5+ pounders I'd keep it quiet. Nothing worse than having a good fishing hole that gets over run.

How do you convince your wife/girlfriend that tackle and equipment are not a waste of money? My girlfriend recently brought up the fact that I spent around $700 on tackle this summer and said I shouldn't be wasting my money! Can you believe that! First of all That's not even that much, but since I'm only in college that's a little less than 20 percent of my total income for the year. Also, I picked up at least twice that amount and set it down because I fought off the bait monkey and walked out of the store empty handed... ok actually one empty hand the other was full of senkos! I'm thinking that if I make a spreadsheet comparing the amount of money i spend on her and the amount I spend on fishing she'll understand that she's probably the larger source of my financial woes. lol Probably not though. Any ideas? I already take her fishing at a local pond and she enjoys that. Now if only i could convince her that me spending more time on the water is good for our relationship I'll be set!

Awe man you're lucky, all I ever find when I have to clean out the garage is snake skins and mouse turds! I was thinking the same thing about that baby torpedo, I have a couple old jitterbugs I found in my grandpas tacklebox that I swear will always outshine my newer topwaters. Just something in the way they carved em I guess

haha Must have been one hell of a spot!

Thanks Lund, I've only fished one college tournament and we were provided with a driver so we didn't have to worry about those decisions. I definitely won't be one of those people who rolls up on your spot while you're trying to fish. I don't understand why someone would think that's ok, I guess that's why I asked about casting at them because I would never fish close enough to someone else that they could cast at me. You'd like to think that everyone else out there has the same idea of sportsmanship and etiquette, but I guess if you look around it's pretty easy to see that some people just feel like those moral codes don't apply to them, or that they can be a jerk all the time and no one's going to notice.