Scott F

The book has been sold.

Are you sure about that? Minnesota has closed seasons, catch and release seasons, bag limits and special regs for the Northeast zone and a southern zone for both large and smallmouth bass. That sounds like a management plan to me. Bass populations in northern states are pretty healthy, there isn't a lot of fishing pressure on them and most bass fishermen release most of their catch. It's pretty difficult to enforce a regulation that requires the harvest of bass so except for rare locations it isn't done very often. Walleyes on the other hand, are seldom released, get a lot of pressure and require stocking so management of them gets considerably more attention

On a river, when the water levels go up, so does the current. The bass will find slack water areas to escape that fast water. If the water is over the banks, they’ll go right up into the trees. Ive seen guys fish picnic tables and garbage cans in flooded parks. If the water is just high and fast, they’ll often hug the shoreline. It’s a good time to walk the banks with a small jig and dunk the bait right at your feet in little eddies. Stealthy approach is critical. Plodding around will alert those fish hugging the shoreline. If the water is normally clear, during high water it’s probably muddy. Fish that are used to sight feeding will often shut down until things clear up. So many guys have trouble catching bass during high water on rivers. The good news is that they are in very predictable locations. If you can get to those slack water areas, from shore, you can get some bites. One more thing. Low head dams are killing machines. Use EXTREME caution when fishing near them, especially during high water situations.

Our 100% solution to getting rid of ants in our Illinois home was to use a solution of 1.5 tablespoons of borax, .5 cup of sugar and 1.5 cups of warm water. We soak some cotton balls in the mixture, put the cotton balls in some bottle caps, and place the caps near where the ants get in. The ants pickup the solution and take it back to the nest and within a day or so, all the ants are gone. I have no idea what variety of ants we had, or whether the borax works on every type, but its a cheap and effective method that has always worked for us. Terro, by the way, uses borax. Mixing it yourself is significantly cheaper

To use your example, on a small river, 18” smallmouth are old bass. They are near the end of their life cycle and often don’t even spawn. That’s why very large bass over 18” are so rare in smaller rivers, assuming they aren’t harvested, they don’t live long enough to get much bigger. At a fish hatchery near where I used to live, they removed the largest smallmouth (18-21 inch fish) and released them in a local small river because they no longer were reproducing. Instead of allowing them to die of old age in a tank, they gave anglers a chance to catch and harvest them if they wanted. If someone only kept the biggest fish out of your river, there would still be the smaller fish that would continue to spawn and the population would not negatively affect the population. True, there wouldn’t be as many large bass for you to enjoy, but those fish weren’t going to survive for a long time anyway. There is no simple answer to cover every body of water. There are many things to consider. Science aside, the DNR has to keep the people who buy licenses happy. If regulations are too strict, and don’t allow harvest, many won’t buy a license. With no restrictions on harvest, the fisheries can get destroyed.

My nephew took his 4 month old son Andrew, to his first Cubs game on opening day and got this amazing souvenir!

Where did you find information on the full moon effects on spawning? Aside from anecdotal, I haven’t found any studies that confirm any connection.

Modern depth finders are very sensitive to voltage. Could be your battery is going bad or it wasn’t charged up enough. Or you’ve got a less than ideal connection in your wiring. Sometimes it’s just that the power connector on the back of the unit isn’t plugged all the way in. A weak battery can start a motor just fine but not run the depth finders. When my battery was going bad, my depth finder would shut off any time I tried to start the motor. Once the motor was running, and charging the battery, the unit would work fine. DO NOT run the unit without a fuse! If there is an issue with wiring, you could permanently damage your depth finders.

Most of my trips with my boat I stay in cabins that are lakeside and have a dock that I tie up to each day. I prefer this style as I find them easy to use and stay in place. Even if the water gets choppy, those fenders protect the top rail from getting scratched if the boat goes under the dock. I’ve used the longer style with a hole in each end. For me and my boat, those work better tied to a post on the dock. Not every dock is the same and I know that those freeboard bumpers will work on every dock.

I noticed the address, Theresa, NY. My father was born in Theresa, NY 100 years ago! Those lures were probably made for catching fish on the St. Lawrence River which is close by. Just because someone is asking $500 on eBay, doesn’t mean it’s worth that amount. Finding out what someone actually paid for the lure will give you a better appraisal.

I use that same type of fender. I mounted additional cleats inside the gunnels just below the top line shown in the circle in your photo. You can use folding cleats so they don’t catch on stuff when not in use.

The OP isn’t interested in my copy, if anyone else would like it, let me know. $25 or best offer.

If you spent $5 for a coffee every day, that’s $1,825 in a year. I haven’t ever bought coffee from a coffee shop. I won’t even use Keurig pods because of how much they cost. It’s so cheap to make it at home. My flavored creamer is the most expensive part of my daily coffee habit.

For most of the fly fishermen I know, I used to be one, it’s more about the presentation and the art of it than about catching fish. There is a real challenge to learning to cast. To get the line to lay out properly without getting tangled. Making your own flies and catching something with them can be rewarding. Two of the best fishermen I know only use a fly rod. I picked it up as a kid because my father showed me how. I was never into the art of it but I found it effective on heavily pressured waters because the fish hadn’t seen those baits. I gave it up because it required too much of my time to do both, fly fishing and using gear. There are too many times when conditions make fly fishing difficult at best. Days when it’s windy or you don’t have the needed room for the line to stretch out behind you to cast. It’s possible to overcome those challenges but that’s when I don’t want to spend all the extra time to learn those techniques. If the fish are more than a few feet deep, you need specialized line to get baits deeper and learn how to handle the line. There aren’t a lot of guys who fly fish for warm water species like bass. When you are good at it, you can do well, but it’s rare for someone to outfish a good bass fisherman using fly gear.

I’ve got that book. I don’t know if there was more than one edition. Published on 1976, mine is the paperback version numbered 99/5000. Billy Westmorland and his family were hunters and fishermen who lived in the area that was flooded and became Dale Hollow Lake. The book is mostly stories of him growing up fishing Dale Hollow and what he learned, by spending thousands upon thousands of hours fishing that lake. Modern fishermen may not agree with everything he writes, but it worked for him. I’d be willing to part with my copy that’s in near perfect condition for less than what you saw it for, if you message me we can work something out.