Jar11591

Awesome report, beautiful fish, and what a trip! A trip just like this is on my bucket list. Congrats on the nice pike and successful adventure. Glad the wildfire didn’t screw with it much!

I’m usually bringing 5-8 rods with me while bass fishing. Sometimes up to 10. If I have 8 with me, they are probably: 7’ MF spinning with a wacky senko 6’10” MLXF spinning with a Ned or drop shot 6’6” MF baitcasting with a popper 7’ MHF baitcasting with a spinnerbait 7’3” XHXF baitcasting with a weedless frog 7’ MHF baitcasting with a jig and craw 6’8” MXF baitcasting with a jerkbait 7’ MHF with a lipless crankbait

I use these from Harbor Freight. The 45° make it so much easier to get a hook out. I modify them by super-gluing a little spring to each side of the handle right where rubber meets the metal.

Yes. In the summer I’m targeting 8-15’ of water, and looking for milfoil or hydrilla. Then I try to locate the outer edge of that hydrilla or milfoil. I throw a 3/4oz all summer to make sure I’m fishing it deep enough.

Always great when your parent company has “equity” and “capital” in its name. Shows a dedication to the outdoors.

From the last 2 days of harvesting. We’re completely inundated with cucumbers, can’t give enough away.

Rage Swimmer!

I never feel more confident then when I’m throwing a 3/4oz spinnerbait in 12-15’ of water on the outside edge of a milfoil forest.

If money isn’t a factor, why would price be a factor?

If you’re gut hooking fish consistently, the only logical conclusion is you’re waiting too long to set the hook. If you set it as soon as you feel the strike, then that means you’re bite detection is late. With bass you need to be quick on the draw. Bass not only can swallow baits fast, but can also reject a bait instantaneously. Gotta feel the strike and set the hook as fast as you can, no hesitation ever. And yes that means frogs too. Bass don’t mouth their baits. Feel the strike, drop the rod, reel the slack, and lean back on em as fast as you can. Waiting on a strike in bass fishing as a technique is counter productive, and just leads to missed fish or gut hooks.

@gimruis it likes to play it self off as a bass, but it’s no micropterus. Rock bass are Ambloplites, and they share that genus with a couple of somewhat rare centrarchids. They all compete to be the weakest fighting fish, a title known as the rock bass cup.

Wow! And my girlfriend laughed at me when I brought up the possibility of this exact scenario before our whale watching tour in Iceland…

@king fisher you may be mistaking species with genus. Wolves and dogs are not the same species, but they share the canis genus. Just like all black bass share the micropterus genus. Largemouth, smallmouth, spotted, shoal, redeye, and now the Florida bass which was previously listed as a subspecies of largemouth are all seperate species under the same genus. Some if not all can produce non-sterile hybrid offspring, ie. the meanmouth.

@Woody B what this is establishing is that Florida strain and northern strain are no longer a thing, because the Florida strain is now recognized as a separate species and not a largemouth at all. Meaning taxonomically, the Florida bass is as different from a northern strain as it is a smallmouth bass. btw, some consider the Denisovans to be a (obviously extinct) subspecies of H. sapiens.

Saw this! So the Florida bass is no longer associated with largemouth except for sharing the micropterus genus. That should also mean a new record for largemouth bass should be established. And correct me if I’m wrong, but that should also mean there is now no recognized subspecies of largemouth. What previously was the northern strain is now simply the largemouth.

My favorite part is that anticipation at the boat launch at sunrise. Calm, foggy lake with so many possibilities. Then that first blowup on the popper.

Thanks for all the advice. My gardening space is a couple hundred square feet. Even if rainwater collection want enough to irrigate the hole garden, being able to capture some of it to use and not let it just go to waste is appealing. For those that use the collection barrels, any problems with the stagnant water breeding mosquitos or water-borne pathogens? Guess it wouldn’t be too hard to give it some aeration to prevent stagnation.

As our garden gets bigger and bigger each year, my girlfriend and I are striving to get more efficient and sustainable as it grows. We’ve reached the point where watering is becoming very time consuming. Our rain the last few years has been coming all at once, followed by a 2 week drought. So the logical conclusion we’ve reached is to start collecting the rain water to use during the droughts, and provide drip irrigation to the garden. Does anyone collect rainwater to use in their garden? If so, please share your set up!

Pet peeve of mine with tv or YouTube chefs is some will be making recipes that require mixing something by hands, meanwhile they have a $3,000 watch on their wrist as they’re doing it. Nothing like some raw ground beef in the nooks and crannies of your expensive watch. It’s insane to me. And I see it frequently.

Blistered some shishito peppers fresh from the garden. Delicious.

According to that link the record has been confirmed? Oh my gosh. Can’t even wrap my head around that. A 12 pound largemouth caught just an hour and a half west of me. The NYS LM record is something I thought would never fall.

@gimruis yeah, we’re currently at the “giving them away“ stage. We’ve pickled them, made cucumber salads, cucumber water, and just snack on them. Now our friends and family are getting the surplus. Tomorrow another 2-3 will be ready that yesterday we’re just flowers. The growth rate is just insane. These guys are growing really fast too. And they are delicious. This particular garden bed which is the same as the cucumber, we covered in plastic over the winter. It seems to have supercharged the soil. Whole garden is thriving, but this particular bed seems like it’s on steroids.

Turn The Page by Bob Seger/Metallica. Metallica’s version made Seger’s version unlistenable.

@ol'crickety don’t want to speak for @gimruis but I’m assuming it’s a remote control for an electric motor.

Every few days we get this: Hundreds of tomatoes almost ready to start ripening. I’m salivating.