SudburyBasser

I predominately fish smallmouth bass because the lake I frequent only has smallies and I have tremendous luck with a wacky-rigged 6" watermelon Senko (in fact, the smallmouth in my avatar was caught with that exact presentation). Not to say other finesse presentations don't work but I slay them with the Senko -- and I'd probably do better with a smaller Senko but I do occasionally hit LMB lakes and I don't feel like carrying multiple sizes.

I think I might be okay for a smaller cooler.I buy what's called a conservation fishing licence in Ontario which limits you to two bass per day. Given that I go out with my brother-in-law that means probably four fish maximum and they don't get to be as big as the lunkers you Yanks can pull. So theoretically I would need a cooler that would comfortably hold 10 to 15 pounds of bass. The reason why I'm concerned about cooler size is that it is a pleasure craft so I can't build into the boat and space is at a premium -- on top of the cooler we have two tackle bags and a bunch of rods. The last thing I want to do is start tripping over a cooler. I'll have to check out coolers tomorrow to get a better sense of size...not to mention what my brother-in-law mandates.

Slim day. Bought a pile of 4/0 and 5/0 hooks as I was running low. Also bought an aerator for a live well I'm building for my brother-in-law's boat. Make work project until bass opens up in a few months.

Okay, I ordered that aerator that flyfisher linked to at BPS. How big a cooler do you think one would need to comfortably hold 5 bass? The 80 to 90 quarts that James 14 mentioned above seems a little large, no?

Truer words have not been spoken. For years I fished simple...one rod, one spinning reel, some lures. Had myself a fantastic time every time I went out whether I caught anything or not. It's only relatively recently that I made the expensive turn from hobby fisher to enthusiast. Still have a good time whether I catch anything or not. The point of fishing is to enjoy yourself, the camraderie of your friends and the completely untrue stories you tell of "the one that got away".

The internet has been around since the 1960s in one form or another but it wasn't the only online communities back then. There were also things called BBS (Bulletin Board Service) where you called in and did a lot of the stuff that we do on forums like this today. The most famous were things like CompuServe.

Apparently "newbie" and its many variants actually came from British public school slang for "new boy", not the online world. I've heard the word since the 1980s in the online communities though the experts say it came from an Internet newsgroup.

No, it gets better...it's an outboard.

I some how missed this on BPS when I was looking for one the other day. You have my thanks sir!

We do use the boat to primarily fish and frankly we're lazy and don't want to keep dumping a heavy anchor to keep on spot.

Shame I don't have NBC Sports or I would have PVRed it. I will say that I'm happy to have WFN now because I really enjoy watching Lunkerville. Would love to have you up in northern Canada sometime!

Although all I seemed to catch last year on the floating Rapala minnows were rock bass, I have had a lot of luck with them in years past. I still throw them and when I built my shore fishing bag last month I made sure there was one of them in there.

A theoretical question: I was talking to my brother-in-law last night and he mentioned that he wanted to put a trolling motor on his boat. Ordinarily I wouldn't question that but he's running a pleasure craft, not a boat primarily designed for fishing. The spot where one would traditionally install a trolling motor doesn't have a platform for one and he's not inclined to have one installed. His idea is to install the motor at the back of the boat. There he has one of those water-level decks that people use to climb into or jump off the boat. He wants to install the motor there. Now I've never seen it done like that but it's not to say it isn't feasible. Has anyone here ever done or seen a trolling motor installed in this way and location?

Yeah, I could see that for dog walking...there would be some flex at the part where they joined. I retract my mild skepticism! And that would suck for a kid to have happen. At any rate, that's how I go as well: split for shore fishing, one piece for the boat.

I fished two piece rods for decades and never had this happen to me or even seen it happen to someone else :-)

I'm glad most of you don't work for me :-) I have never called in sick to go fishing. I'm flexible enough at work that I can ask for short notice vacation time to take a day if I really wanted to fishing during the week.

I had a list of goals -- new techniques, PBs, and the like -- now it's simple: Fish more. Take advantage of every weekend. Brother-in-law doesn't want to take the boat out? Shore fish. Brother-in-law wants to go out? Boat fishing.

Be it resolved, that joining the banned thread topics list which includes the North American Fishing Club and the Banjo Minnow shall be threads on Mike Iaconneli's exuberance. Still permitted, for now, shall be the Mighty Bite Five Sense Lure, the Bionic Minnow and the Skippy Fish. Do I have a seconder?

Not technically tackle or gear but after watching Force on Force on WFN I bought a neck gator/buff from Army Bass Anglers. Money goes to a good cause so what the heck. That said, called in sick today and a BPS catalogue came in the mail. Sick enough that even $5 shipping to Canada with no minimum order couldn't entice me...

Conditioned? I don't know. There is a video on this web site from a biologist where he mentioned that after about 15 minutes a fish has essentially forgotten it was caught and you can catch it again. If a bass forgets its unpleasant encounter after 15 minutes I would think it would also forget the particulars of why it was caught. Then again, conditioning isn't purely a function of memory, or rather it's a more complex process than simple memory. If I remember all that fancy book learning in university correctly, the conditioning that we're most familiar with is called classical conditioning -- that two stimuli are responsible for a response. That was what Pavlov did with his famous dog experiments -- he rang a bell (first stimulus) then gave the dog food (second stimulus) and the conditioned response was salivation. He then removed the second stimulus so that only the bell would cause the response. Operant conditioning relies on behavior modification because of something happening and it seems to me that's a more likely conditioning (though OC would seem to rely on a mental process I don't know that bass are capable of) going on with bass if it is happening. The fish remembers the experience of being caught came as a result of whatever factors are present (seeing hooks, lures, line, etc.) and learns to avoid it. There are many other types of conditioning but it's been about two decades and I can't remember all of them. Personally, given the mental capacity of a bass, I'm dubious that any real conditioning is going on but I don't claim to be an expert.

Not a damned thing. I was sitting this afternoon in an airport waiting for my flight, bored and armed with a tablet. Went on the BPS web site to check out their online Classic sale...and bought not a thing! I think I finally sated the bait monkey.

Since November I've laid in a huge stock of new tackle, three reels and two rods. We still have snow out the yazoo up here in northern Canada and bass doesn't open until June. The end of June. By the time bass opens I'll be like a recently released convict with his first woman. So I'm just looking forward to it being close to bass season.

My niece, five or six at the time, saw a old picture of me in BDU on some God forsaken base and asked me if I had ever fought in a war. My only response was, "Thank God, no." After what my grandfather told me of his WWII experiences fighting the Germans in the Balkans and being a "guest" of the Fuhrer in a brutal POW camp in Greece that was the most honest thing I've ever said in my life. Thank you for your service.

Outside of Braveheart and Heartbreak Ridge a fine list. I could add a hundred but ones I like on top of the above list would be: Bridge on the River Kwai A Bridge Too Far (though too damned long as well) Das Boot Paths of Glory The Hurt Locker Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence Full Metal Jacket Sargeant York

Yeah, not every day you can say you met a world leader. I didn't agree with his politics but I admired the fact that he's the only major western politician who tried to choke out a protester who got in his way (pic here). You have to like that.