Further North

I feel better now. Thought I was going nuts. I'd pull my graphs if I had to do that, too. ...and my trolling motor...and all my rods...and all my other gear...

I was thinking you had to park your boat away from your house. I've got you confused with someone else.

IIRC, you've got an off-site storage solution though, right? To answer the original question: The only time my graphs come off is when I'm towing for a long trip and I have to put the cover on, or if I'm not home overnight.

That's how I'd go as well. More value for $$$. If that Ranger is for real, and it checked out ( See @slonezp post, above), I'd stop looking and write the guy a check.

Thanks, makes sense.

Got it, thanks. Thanks - you're a class act!

Yep. We generally get treated as we treat others, one of many reasons I always start out polite. I have a question: why the deference to tournament fishermen? I generally avoid lakes with tournaments, because of pressure, but I don't understand why they would get preferential treatment.

Oh Jeez...yeah. Pet peeve there. I've got a big red and white Daredevle spoon (without hooks) on board for that. It's hit more than one boat... I am unfailingly polite and respectful...right up until someone starts pushing or bullying. Bingo. ...and no "right" to bump other fishermen off a spot, or somehow get right of way. That'd be fine...as long as you didn't expect another fisherman to move off a line they were fishing first...

Yep. I had a tournament fisherman give me static a while back because I was fishing a dock a couple ahead of him as we were moving towards each other...still 100 yards apart. "That should have been MY fish!" I "apologized" then sent the jerk on a snipe hunt for bunch of big bass I made up on the other side of the lake... **************************************************************** To answer the original question: 1) If I can't see the other boat when I start, and we both become visible to each other was we fish, I'll pul out when we get a couple cast lengths apart. They can have the last spot. 2) If another fisherman pulls in front of me while I am fishing a shoreline and fished towards me, less than a couple hundred yards, I will fish right through them. I've gone between them and the bank more than once. I have zero patience for this and zero patience for people who are so self involved that they think their fishing is more important than someone else's. 3) If I see another fisherman on a piece of shoreline I want to fish, regardless of which way they are going, I never, ever get in their way. I go go fish someplace else and expect the same from others. See #2 above.

I love doing this, every time the topic comes up: ...but for me, any popper, slider or diver I can toss with a 6, 7 or 8 wt. fly rod.

A-yup. I hate "it depends" as an answer", but it's a real thing, unless all the criteria are known...and you're familiar with the lake. Funny you should mention that... I spent the 4th of July week on Clearwater/Pipestone some years back...and conditions hit me hard. Temps were 80°+, I'm not sure I saw 10 clouds the whole week, little to no wind...and if all that wasn't enough...I wound up right in the middle of God's own mayfly hatch...to put it in perspective for folks who are not familiar with the phenomena, there are rafts of dead mayflies in the back of bays that are so thick they look like a layer of foam, or pale algae. Few people were catching much of anything, and when they did, they were bloated with mayflies and mayfly emergers. I saw a 30+ inch pike swimming along the surface with it's mouth open skimming mayflies off the surface, which was cool...but geez...the fishing just blew... I had fly rods with me, as I intended to chase smallies with them, but I'd intended to throw poppers, divers and streamers (leaches and crayfish are normally killer up there). About three days in...I'm rummaging through my fly gear looking for something (probably a bottle of Hemlock so I could end it all)...and I find one of my fly boxes that I use back home for trout. It's got 10 or 15 mayfy patterns in it... Oh, baby... I ran up-lake to a shallow bay I'd seen a buncha smallies in a couple days earlier...tied on the biggest mayfly I had on a 6 wt., flicked it out there... I don't think I went five casts all day without catching a smallie. It worked pretty much everywhere. I caught a half dozen walleyes...on the surface...too. I fished each fly until it was so bedraggled and beat that even extreme applications of flotant couldn't keep it up on top. People cruising by kept stopping to ask me what I was using, my standard reply was, "You don't have any." then I'd show them. The mayfly flies lasted about two days....then I said, "Screw it." and drove home. Still makes me smile...

Some of my best bites on topwater lures (not just poppers) have come over deep water... ...but yeah, fishing them shallow would help some.

Glad it worked out well!

Would I sound like a smart-ass if I said, "About 9" long."? ? ...it's and Orvis Mangum Dragon Tail. Yes, "Mangum" is spelled right. Other places have them in shorter lengths, but Orvis was the first place I found them in th 9" length.

That's where I was...I found that if I used a line that'd move that big, wind resistant profile with some authority, I hated throwing them a lot less. I'm with you on the profile - the foam heads I'm using now (Surface Seducer Double Barrel) have a pretty big profile. https://flymenfishingcompany.com/products/surface-seducer-double-barrel-popper-slider-body ...but I still like the way deer hair poppers look. I'm really blown away by the folks that manage to work a pattern into them. This one is a slider, but you'll get the idea.

Maybe this a regional thing? I catch hundreds of bass every year on soft plastic Texas rigged over a wire leader. I also catch bunches of river smallies in musky infested water with poppers and sliders rigged on wire leaders. I've never seen any objective evidence that the leader makes a significant difference, and I would have a very hard time buying it making any difference at all on something like a spinner bait, an inline spinner, etc. My PB smallie as been on leader rigged lures twice, both over 6 lbs. in a very clear lake. I've already caught three or four around 5 pounds this year on similar rigs. I see you fish western Ontario...so do I...leaders work fine there for smallies on the lakes I've fished.

Nice fish! I've been looking for something like this book for a while because as much as I admire spun deer hair poppers...I don't like fishing them. They get waterlogged and heavy, getting continuously harder to throw, and eventually sinking, or close to it. A foam/cork/whatever will last all day, and longer...unless something toothy tears it up. The book is broken up into pretty easily digestible "lessons" that you can really take out of order if you wish. First thing I did was skip to the part about weed guards, because I really sucked at them...problem solved...

I'm not sure...how many chords there? Hard to tell around the yelling...but what...maybe three?...I'm having a hard time even getting to the "provisional 1".

See...I re-read the whole thing, laughed all over again...

Ulterra...just sayin'

Me. I can't do it. ...but I love hearing about when you do it!

Yep, and you enjoy that kind of fishing. I've looked at fishing the great lakes for smallies...and it's generally a trolling/jigging game. That's cool...but not for me. I'd rather catch smaller fish...or even no fish...fishing the way I enjoy. It's why there's chocolate and vanilla...Cadilacs and Porsches...and Jeeps and trucks. Something for everyone.

No point. I was trying for humor. On a personal level...I'm not wired for trolling...or jigging like folks do for walleyes...As a life long hunter, I've never been able to have any fun with the forms of hunting that involve staying still. No ducks, geese, deer, turkey...any of that stuff. I envy the folks who can do it, but it's just not me. I need to be moving, doing something (even if that something is jst reading) It's a good technique, if you can do it. I tried to learn it and love it really, really hard when I thought I wanted to catch walleye...but I just can't. ...what I'd do, were I stuck "...searching an endless desert of lake to no avail." ...is go to another lake. But I can do that here, and some folks can't, in any practical way.

The thing about this is...when all is said and done...It's still...trolling. ?

Smokin' Rooster. T-Rigged with a weight. T-Rigged without a weight. Any depth, about any retrieve you want....