Scott F

Not that this will help your frustration, but if you get stopped for a safety inspection, the officer will want you to have a non electric horn or whistle. If you have a power failure, your electric horn will be useless. A friend of mine just bought a new Lund and ordered a color that was shown on the boat on the cover of the brochure. Weeks later, he found out that that color was not available on his boat. It looks like Lund's marketing department needs to get together with sales and get on the same page. Is a spare tire for the trailer a standard feature or is it an option? Be sure to get everything you want on your boat in writing so there is no question when the boat arrives. When my friend's wish list and his budget did not agree, the dealer removed options to get the price to where it needed to be but did not inform my friend of the deletions. He was surprised and disappointed when he did not get what he was expecting. His fault entirely, but he could have avoided problems by being careful while ordering.

Explain why your height would effect your choice of rod length. I can see no reason why you shouldn't use a rod as long as you like. Fly rodders commonly use 9ft fly rods. Steelhead and musky fishermen use 8-9ft rods all the time.

The Zinker Z's don't even float out of the package like a TRD does. I know.... soak it, stretch it, use it, eventually it becomes more buoyant. I just prefer them to float all the time.

I don't know about a "unique quiver", but I think the big advantage to the Elaztech baits is that they float and attached to a mushroom jig head, the bait stands straight up off the bottom instead of lying down which would happen with nearly every other plastic you might choose.

I'm using Z-Man, TRDs

In some rivers, smallmouth migrate out of their summer river tributaries into larger rivers and toward their wintering areas as summer ends and fall begins. Rivers that are dammed prohibit these migrations.

In the evenings, I dress up like a spider and fight crime.......

River fishing usually picks up as the water cools in late summer. Feeding river smallies can always be found shallow.

I had it happen to me last fall. I set the hook on a fish and the line parted so easily and quickly that I assumed I had been bitten off by a pike. I retied another senko type bait, this time with a steel leader. I cast back to the same general area and hooked up again with an average sized largemouth. When I landed him, my "bitten off" plastic and hook were still in his mouth.

First thing, define when exactly fall begins. 60 degrees is not for me or my fellow river smallie chasers the end of the topwater bite, nor is it the beginning of fall. For me, fall begins when the river smallmouth move to their wintering areas which seems to be when the water drops closer to 50 degrees or below. Until then, everything that's been working all summer still works for me except the size of the fish starts to get bigger.

I think you'd get a more accurate estimate if you called your local shop and got the estimate from them.

I have been doing very well with Whopper Ploppers for smallmouth. The river smallies I've been catching were pros at throwing my swim baits and inline spinners back at me every time they jumped. The only bait that seemed to keep them hooked up was the Whopper Plopper with the original hooks. I can't see any benefit to switching the factory hooks out.

The guy in the article above uses a 5/6wt to throw huge streamers. I was using an 11wt for the big flies I was throwing for big pike in Northern Canada. I was a self taught fly tier and fly fisherman and my skills, while adequate for throwing poppers and rubber spiders, was not up to snuff to handle the big stuff. I fish for fun, recreation and relaxation. I know guys who can fly fish out of a phone booth during a hurricane. That kind of fishing is just too much work and I didn't enjoy it so I put down the fly rod and these days just stick to hardware.

As a former fly fisherman, I have a lot of respect for anyone who has the skill to throw big flies especially on light rods. Those big flies can be like trying to throw a kite. Plus they can hold a lot of water which makes them even harder to throw. I believe one of the biggest mistakes most fly fishermen make is using flies that are too small for bass. I quit fly fishing mainly because of how hard I found it to cast big baits with a fly rod.

It does to me. But I would call Minn Kota.

To me, it sounds more like a limit switch problem. When you stow the unit, it is supposed to hit a switch to shut the power off. If the switch or actuator is bad, it looks like it shuts itself off even when it is off the cradle. Call Minn Kota.

Don't ignore the rivers in Northern Illinois. You've got the Des Plaines, Kankakee, Fox and DuPage rivers all within an hour of you. And all of them have good populations of smallmouth.

Aside from changing the frequency from 83 kHz to 200 kHz (or the opposite) on the settings of your depthfinder, I don't know of anything else to try. Except to contact Motor Guide. It is possible that the armature or the brushes in the motor are going bad which could generate excessive sparking inside the motor which is generating the interference.

Low voltage on my batteries causes my depthfinders to shut off. When I was having interference problems between my trolling motor and my depthfinder I changed the frequency from 83 to 200 on the depthfinder and the interference stopped. Have you contacted Motor Guide to see if they could help?

I would check for tight connections between the trolling motor and your batteries. Especially, check both the trolling motor plug and the receptacle.

Me and my other river bass fishing buddies take exception to your generalization. None of us fish for trout and we all know how to wade. We've been doing it for decades. If you take lessons on fishing from trout fishermen, you'll have to re-learn a lot when you finally figure out that smallmouth bass don't behave like trout.

For burning a shallow running bait, I use an inline spinner like a #4 or 5 Mepps. Many crankbaits will turn on their side when burned.

If the river is too murky and you can't see your feet, get a wading staff. Longer strides are the best way to insure that you will be taking a dunking. Don't wet wade. Get stocking foot waders and good wading boots. Cheap wading boots will fall apart pretty quickly. Wet wading is taking the risk of infections, ticks and poison ivy.

Quite an assortment there. If I had those, I'd make a decorative shadow box display with the oldest wooden lures. I don't know much about old lures, but they are part of the history of fishing and I wouldn't fish them, I'd be too afraid of losing them. In the second picture from the bottom, you have some inline spinners, Abu Reflex, the first lures I ever owned. I learned how to fish using those over 50 years ago.

Quantum reels don't get much love around here but I've used nothing but Quantum spinning reels for years and have been very happy with them. The Smoke and the Energy series are the two lines I've been using lately.