MultiSpeciesFisherman

Well I got her back from the taxidermist. She's a beauty.

Not whales, Wels.

I believe what you are referring to is popeye disease. I am an aquarist and have some experience with it. Here is a good article: http://freshwatercichlids.com/pop-eye-fish-disease It's pretty common for bass in captivity to develop popeye, and this can be observed at any public aquarium or Bass Pro Shops. I'm sure that some of the contributing factors in captivity would also apply to wild fish.

Is there any advantage/ disadvantage to using braided line on a baitcaster? Right now I have all of my baitcasters strung with 17 or 20 pound monofilament, but I have some heavier braided line that I've been considering putting on at least one of them. What do you guys think?

See I've been using monofilament with the frogs so far. There just isn't the amount of weed growth to necessitate using heavy braid. But do you guys think braid is better line for fishing with frogs? I have rods set up with braided line but they are primarily used for worms, lizards, and craws.

I finally decided to start fishing with plastic frogs around dusk, and the first time I tried it I had three really nice strikes but I went 0 for 3 on hook sets. Is there a trick that I'm missing because I'm a newbie? I tried both a snapping hook set and more of a sweeping set but neither worked. Any advice?

I don't think too much about it when I'm keeping fish honestly. We humans have a tendency to really anthropomorphize everything (assign human attributes to them) and most of the time it's really a faulty way of thinking. Fish don't "want" anything. They don't consider which way to die would be better than any other. All they care about is getting away and surviving, but that's a basic instinct, not a conscious thought. Any considerations we take on how to treat a prey item is based on ideas that have been socially constructed by humans, not something that is uniform across all species. That said, I'm not going to go out of my way to ensure the fish dies in a miserable way because I do have a general respect for life. I'm also a realist. I realize that in order for anything to live (with the exception of autotrophs such as plants) something else has to die. I don't necessarily think it matters whether you bash a fish with a rock or let them suffocate. Myself, I tend to try and see to it that the fish dies humanely but I realize I'm doing it to make myself feel better about killing something, not for the actual benefit of the fish. So just act ethically for your own sake is about the only advice I could give.

roadwarrior suggested that I copy this thread from another section of the forum and ask the same question here. So here goes. I cracked the tip of my rod. Not enough to break it off but enough to make it stay bent after catching a fish. I'm sure eventually it will break off. Anyway, is there anyone I can take the rod to to have them fix it? Or are those rod repair kits good enough? I'm hoping for a solution that doesn't take away any sensitivity. Please let me know.

Well it is a Field and Stream rod that I bought from Dick's sporting goods. I didn't buy the warranty because I have like 20 rods and have never broken one. But the combo between the rod and the reel was like $80 marked down from $100 and I'm a married full-time college student so I just don't have the extra cash to drop on buying a replacement. If Field and Stream has a repair or replacement policy, even if it costs a little bit of money, I think it would be worth fixing or replacing under those circumstances. But I can't just throw the rod out and start over.

Where are you fishing exactly?

I cracked the tip of my rod. Not enough to break it off but enough to make it stay bent after catching a fish. I'm sure eventually it will break off. Anyway, is there anyone I can take the rod to to have them fix it? Or are those rod repair kits good enough? I'm hoping for a solution that doesn't take away any sensitivity. Please let me know.

It's possible that it was just a largemouth bass with a genetic mutation. These things happen all the time and it's what drives natural selection. Every species of animal on the planet contains within its DNA every gene it has ever had, but normally only our more recent, "successful", genes are expressed (i.e. the genes that code for a tail in humans are turned off during embryo development leaving us with nothing but a tailbone, and embryos have tails that are about 7 vertebrae long during development). What that means is that birds, which gradually evolved from dinosaurs over time, are still occasionally (very rarely) born with teeth or with less feathers and more scales, and can be genetically modified to be born with these characteristics also by manipulating which genes are expressed or muted. So if a bass has some type of ancestor that had teeth and was more slender, it is possible that this mutation simply "regressed" to an earlier variation. Although mutation does not necessarily indicate regression. The sickle cell anemia gene after all was a response to help fight malaria in Africa. That is why African Americans have this problem. Their ancestors that had only the non-sickle cell gene died due to malaria. The ones who had only the sickle cell gene died because of sickle cell. But the people who had both genes survived malaria and survived sickle cell. That is natural selection. One condition is favored, the others die out, and the new one persists. So this could also just be nature "testing out" a new model. If it was a hybrid of any type, it would either be sterile, or have reduced fertility just like wipers and saugeye. The only reason wipers and saugeye aren't totally sterile is because the two parent species are so similar. A bass and a trout would almost certainly give rise to a sterile offspring considering the species gap. But in this case, I would say it's likely a simple case of confusing one fish species for another lol. I guess it could also just be an extremely skinny bass. But that doesn't account for the more pronounced teeth.

What exactly is a crawler harness/bottom bouncer?

That's more or less the case for me too, but with white bass and catfish added. But I know that keeping these bass will eventually help the fishery, so if they are at all comparable to any of the fish we are talking about, then it will be worth it in a couple of ways.

This can be a tough time of year to fish for them. Right about now they should be either transitioning from deep wood structure out to the deep basins chasing shad, or already established out on the deep basins. If you have a boat, I would try finding a drop off, drifting it with a live minnow, and marking where you caught them just in case there is a bit of submerged structure they are relating to. If you can get on them, vertical jigging wih a small tube jig or a twister tail can get the job done. In the spring, they are much easier to catch. They tend to move into very shallow water, sometimes as little as a foot or two of water, and hang out around brush piles, rip rap, or standing timber. They can be caught on a minnow under a bobber or a tube or twister tail jig.