everythingthatswims

I am pretty sure this isn't a problem with a solution but I figured I would ask anyways. This is a gander mountain angler series 7'6" flipping stick, and it has two small fractures in the piece that screws down on the top side of the reel seat. This pretty much makes the piece act like a child proof medicine bottle cap. It will tighten to a certain point, then you feel a "pop" and it's loose again. It will not tighten enough to securely hold a reel in place, certainly not secure enough for what this rod is used for. Gander mountain, to my knowledge, is no longer doing any warranty exchanges which was the main reason I bought so many of these rods. Anybody know a fix for this? I honestly don't care if it involves glue and tape, cutting pieces off etc. I fish on a tight budget, half of my rods have tip and guide replacements that I do myself!

A barbel really doesn't look like a predatory fish but it's super cool that they will eat things other than chunks of lunch meat that the guys in the UK like to camp out with haha

I traded my 90 for a spool of fluorocarbon lol. The 130 on the other hand......

Hit one of my favorite stretches of river today and had a blast. These fish aren't quite my pets but they are pretty close to it. The last time I fished it was in November, but I have spent enough days fishing it in the summer to have an idea of what they would be doing and where they would be living! Clear low water and wolfpacks of fish. Though they are extremely skittish, if you time it right and stay hidden or far enough away, you can have a very fun flurry when you get one of the groups fired up. At one point I was fighting a 2lb fish with about 10 fish in the 2-4lb range chasing it, but once they saw my kayak I could pretty much kiss all those opportunities goodbye! Landed about 25 bass with all but maybe 4 of them being over 14".

They heard how much it costs and instantly both jumped on it

Honestly anything from Citrus Shad to ghost colors. The fish are just mean I don't think they care what color it is.

On my way back from Tennessee I stopped in southwest Virginia to stay the night with my grandparents who live close to South Holston Lake. My friend who lives here said he was catching some smallmouth on deep diving crankbaits so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try it. Only had about 3 hours of fishing time but it was a blast! Definitely will try to spend some more time on the lake in the future.

That is so darn cool. I love clear water, particularly when it throws other anglers off!

Stayed up the river the whole event!

Different species I have hooked several giants on my 6" bull shad but they always come off

Last week I finally landed a gar on an artificial. The fact that it got hooked on a DD22 still amazes me, but it happened. And the best part, it was when Ronnie Moore with Bassmaster was taking pictures, so the whole thing is documented!

The spotted bass on the coosa river were something else. You could shake the same fish off 6-8 times in one cast but they would keep eating it all the way to the boat! Many times they would start shaking their head and you thought you hooked them on accident then they would spit it out and eat it again.

I know what the problem is, just couldn't fix it on the water

Well we didn't get a big limit today but we managed to stick it out in some adverse conditions and bring in 10lbs 1oz which was good enough for 6th place! This makes our second National Championship qualification as freshmen, we will fishing in B.A.S.S.'s in August (Bemidgi Lake, MN) as well as FLW's (unannounced) next year. Not to mention that we have done it out of a 17' aluminum boat that tops out at 37mph. This week was an absolute blast! I was already a spotted bass nut, so the Coosa River was pretty much a dream location and I got to fish for a week on it! In three days of practice and three tournament days, I expect we landed between 150 and 200 spots, it was pretty insane! We caught nearly every one of them on a 1/2oz finesse jig with a zoom ultravibe speed craw as a trailer. We threw the jigs on 7' MH rods with 15lb fluorocarbon. Our pattern was to look for banks with current breaks on them, in 8-15FOW. We would drift with the current flipping the jigs to the current seams, and almost stroking them back to the boat, ripping them up about a foot or so off the bottom and letting them fall straight back down. Since the boat was also moving, you could cover a lot of water just drifting and working your jig in this manner. When we got a bite, it was almost always a school of them, and we would use the trolling motor to hold our position in the current and usually have a flurry of 3-10 bites in a few minutes before the group of fish would either disperse or shut down. Either way it was a very noticeable change from a bite on every drift through the spot to no bites at all once they were done. In practice, we would do this, but shake the fish off on our jigs and mark a waypoint on our gps. For the most part either the schools didn't move between practice and days 1 and 2, or the spots just held a lot of fish. Over the course of three days, the river dropped 5' and slowed way down, so we had to adjust to it. On day 1 we fished fairly close to the banks, the water had dropped about a foot and was still flowing hard. On day two it was down about 3' and moving slower, this eliminated about half of our spots because they either didn't have enough current on them or were too shallow. On the spots that did hold fish, we had to back off and fish deeper in the current. Any type of depth change on these spots that provided a current break on the bottom usually held fish, and just like the day before, you could have a fast and furious flurry on every group of them. We landed over 40 bass on each of the first two days, we would try to count but when you start catching them on every cast and having double hookups, things spin out of control! Today was considerably tougher, the river was now 5' lower, eliminating all of our areas, the fish simply weren't on them. We fished two deep areas that we had been finding nice schools of 17" plus spots on, but they yielded only a 13"er. We also had to start throwing a deep diving crankbait, the fish were able to roam in the slower current and were keying on shad, we saw sporadic fish on the surface chasing them. We saw one area with periodic breaking fish, and managed to fill our limit there by holding the boat in place with the trolling motor and throwing DD22's downstream and bringing them back towards the boat. After that, we headed to completely new water closer to the dam where we found stronger current and grinded it out with jigs managing to cull our way up to about 8lbs with one 13"er still in the well we needed to get rid of. This was interrupted by some drama, the boat wouldn't start when we were getting close to making the 40 minute run back to the ramp, but after some phone calls to the tournament director and then to dad, I managed to get it started. Left it idling as we fished one last stretch of bank, and I managed to cull out that little one with about a 2lb fish. If you made it this far, good job, here are some pics! If someone can figure out what is going on in this photo I would sure like to know

We had another great day on the water putting at least 40 spots in the boat once again. We didn't have as much weight today but our 11lb 15oz limit was enough for us to hold on to our 4th place position, keeping us well inside the top 21 cut for the final day! Hoping we can get a couple big bites tomorrow and make a run at this thing, we will see how it goes!

My partner and I had a great day today, we caught around 40 fish (maybe more!) and culled our way up to 13lbs, 13oz. Good enough for 4th place out of 130 boats. Hoping we can put together another solid bag tomorrow. We saved some areas and our spots should reload with fish anyways! I will do a full report after the event, we are on a VERY neat bite right now.

They bit again today, I think we're gonna stick to our game plan

Well today around 2pm I finally made the right moves and the right decisions on Lay Lake. I found a spotted bass bite that is pretty astonishing, my partner and I are really hoping it holds for the tournament that starts Thursday! We caught about 25 keepers, but this was with running new water duplicating the things we found the fish on, marking a waypoint after a fish or two, and shaking off LOTS of fish. We probably would have had close to 15lbs of fish today, the biggest was a hair under 20", we also had two 18", and several 15-17" fish. These fish might fight harder than smallmouth! I will fill in with many more details after we hopefully continue with this bite through the tournament. This guy was mean enough to eat a catfish at some point!

We definitely have our work cut out for us at Lay Lake. Fished from 6am to 2pm (storms pushed us off the lake early) and caught 6 bass, all between 11 and 11:30. Managed to catch every non-bass critter out there too. Changing it up tomorrow, we'll see how it goes. Have been hearing it is tough fishing right now.

This month I will be taking two junior anglers from my old high school team to their National Championship in Tennessee (sort of paying it forward I guess). I took one of them out on Friday for a little fishing because all experience is good practice! He skipped out on field day to go fish, kid has his priorities straight

Quick let's all drive to Kansas to bass fish! Oh wait...

Well I don't have any good fish pictures but my partner and I won again on the local reservoir this evening, had a 4lb margin of victory this time. Just the confidence boost I needed before I head to Lay Lake Alabama on Sunday for the B.A.S.S. College Wild Card! The linked picture will convey how fun this evening's tournament was for me. IMG_5307.jpg.kmxw013.partial

Guess what, they don't all go deep!

If only we could look at a lake like we look at a field. I'll figure out electronics one day.

Yes the reel foot broke on the hook set. I managed to keep my hands on the reel and didn't have an issue bringing the fish through the pads, my bear paw hands that make fish look small in pictures do allow me to hold a baitcaster pretty well.