Swamp Girl

Awesome. It sure puts the thunder in your quote: "All of the 'hot new' baits and colors are just playing on the gullibility of anglers that think there is some magic lure that will overcome their lack of fishing ability." -Wayne P

What Eric said x3. Is it an in-line spinner with a mirror blade?

When I teach writing, I tell my students to not insert themselves into the story, but to simply be the wire that carries the story. Glenn just described the video version of this advice.

I wish the YouTube creators would read this thread. Again and again, we fishers want to see the how-to and hear the why-to. Not footage about stopping for gas. Not chatter about them being sleepy in the morning. Not exaggeration about the size of the fish they just lost. And certainly not chucking bass into the water. I want to get inside a fellow fisher's head and I want closeups of their hands to see how they're working the lures. Y'all might have noticed how I use "fisher." I wish everyone would. A man isn't a hunterman. He's a hunter. A guy behind the wheel isn't a driverman. He's a driver. So, we all should be fishers instead of fishermen and fisherwomen. Why slap on an extra syllable or two? Yeah, those are goofy. . I like everything BlueBasser86 wrote, but I'm glad he raised ^this^ because I've watched a few of those videos and they're clickbait.

@Blue Raider Bob I respect people for many things, such as kindness and living a grateful life, but of all the traits I admire, I think I admire hard work the most. I'm a gardener and amateur forester who lives in New England, the Land of Rocks. I've planted hundreds of trees, so I know it takes dogged grit to dig "in soil full of rocks, roots, and old fence wire." But you're more than muscle and tenacity, Bob. You're got an artist's eye. It's not easy to make a fence good looking, but you did it, Bob.

@T-Billy Thank you, Voice of Reason. I need that reminder now and again.

WRB has caught ENORMOUS bass!

I second every syllable Aaron_H wrote and I'm about to subscribe, er, follow him.

@Blue Raider Bob I do want to see those pics! Sausage and taters are you due. @Bluebasser86 What a day! I think I'm going to change my name to Blue Crickety. Given what the two Blues produce, I want in on the blue action!

Some of my favorite videos are the swimming pool videos where you see the action of the lure. They go a long ways to helping me understand what I need to make a lure do. I also like the videos that don't skip steps, that assume I know how to Texas rig a worm. Everyone has their little rigging tricks. Show me yours.

^This^ is what I want from a video, i.e. I want to learn. So, I want the video's maker to get to the point and, when possible, to illustrate the point. This is where cinematography matters. For example, if you're teaching me how to tie a knot, I need to clearly see every single step. If you're teaching me how to fish a Ned bait, I need to see you working that bait as much as hearing why you work the bait that way. Ha! One of my editors said that she didn't like me reading other writers because "you end up mimicking them for a bit and I like your own voice."

I wonder what that is...hmmm. Oh, yeah, it's the ^Giants!^ You're describing Alex(AlabamaSpotHunter) here. This is off-topic, but I stumbled on it this morning at ladybassnanglers and I love it: "Fish don’t care if they are caught by a guy or a girl, young or old. Fish have no idea whom is behind the reel. Fish don’t care if you are a legendary angler or a first time tournament angler. Don’t let anyone, even yourself, under estimate your ability to catch fish. Fish don’t care what year, make, or model your boat is. I have been in all types of boats and have been able to catch fish in new boats and very used boats. My boat is new to me, it may have a scratch or two and it may not have the biggest screens of electronics and the seat most likely will have a nice piece of duct tape on it this year, but none of that has kept me off the water or kept the fish from biting ."

I greatly appreciate all the guys on Bass Resource and YouTube who film their own fishing videos. I even like the low production value videos where it's just a guy chucking a lure and rambling while he does. I also enjoy the high production value shows with drones, tripods, music, cutaways, and splicing. When I watch the high production values videos, where there are shots of the angler pulling away from shore, I think about how he had to frame that shot, set up the tripod, proceed from the shore, return to the shore, check the footage, and perhaps reshoot. That would make me bonkers! I would just want to fish! How about you? Do you produce videos? Wanna? Or are you grateful you don't? What kinds of videos do you like best? What don't you like in fishing videos? I'll answer my last question. I don't like long lead-ins. Treat the viewer with respect and start sharing what you know ASAP. I also hate when they lose a fish and say, "That was a monster!" Little fish come unbuttoned too.

@AlabamaSpothunter I bought half a dozen 6th Sense Crushes because of you, but you'll get no bill. I expect them to hook lots of bass in the prespawn. They're gorgeous lures. I expect the lure to be a: This past year, I missed the prespawn and spawn. I missed June and most of July. So, I am super exited about 2023 because I'll get to fish all these periods. I'm up to 21 new bodies of water to fish. The planning is almost as much fun as the fishing.

Finesse family, that is.

@AlabamaSpothunter We're in the same shoes, Alex. As a kid, I fished largemouth. As an adult, for a couple years, I was musky obsessed, but other than that, I was fishing for smallmouth in Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, the Wisconsin River, the Mississippi River, and a dozen or so lakes in northwestern Ontario. Total finesse fishing. Then, this past summer, for the first time in 50 years and after five years of caregiving without fishing, I started fishing for largemouth again. It was like running into a high school sweetheart at your high school class's 50-year reunion and being smitten again IF my high school sweetheart had become an enormously complex person in that half century. Bass fishing has become enormously complex, as you know. There isn't a day at Bass Resource where I don't google a lure or technique that someone mentions. I'm slowly adapting to catching largemouth with modern techniques, but I've got my decades of finesse fishing for smallmouth always nudging me. I'm an old dog, but I'm slowly learning some new tricks.

Alex, you use soooo many different lures to catch your fish. I admire that. I also admire your caring for a bleeder. I'm the same way. I don't hurt many fish, but when I do, it eats at me.

Heck, yeah. Look at the muscle between the tail and the body. I always look there first. The tail tells the tale.

That's a VERY nice one!

@gimruis I'm assuming you're thinking about gear ratios when you state that a spinning reel lets you "reel it in faster." There might be more in play than gear ratio, such as the distance from the hub of the spool to the outermost line. When it comes to radius, a little more makes a big difference, as in a 12" pizza being 113 square inches, whereas a 14" pizza is 153 square inches. That's about a 35% difference in total pizza for a mere 14% increase in diameter. I'm wondering if a crank of a spinning reel with a 5:1 ratio and a deep spool might be closer than you think to a baitcasting reel with a 8:1 ratio and a shallow spool. I'm just guessing, of course. Are there any engineers or mathematicians in the house?

My primary spinning rod is 7' 6". I'll try the braid, but unless I can one day cast as long with a baitcasting reel as I can with a spinning reel, I'll stick with the spinning reel. I have used braid with muskies and on my froggin' outfit. It's my thinking that hook-setting power comes from the rod, not the reel. My surface lure rod isn't as stout as my froggin' broomsticky rod, but it's no pushover. I caught about 20 bass in the 19-21 inch range with it this past year, mostly in slop. Those are four-to-five-and-a-half-pound fish according to the length to weight chart I consult. And they were caught from a lightweight canoe that gets pulled around in the fight, so I can't hold my ground, but that rod still worked most of the time. I lost some big fish, of course. One ran into wild rice reeds and I just couldn't turn it, not even with my drag cranked way up. You're a northerner. You know that they're like bamboo. Another time I was blown into thick weeds, inches below the surface, and the bass burrowed into that. Anyway, I'll switch to braid and we'll see how that goes and if I ever increase my casting distance with a baitcaster, I'll be open to switching to that!

Humble, too. BTW, I smile whenever I see Kramer by your name.