the reel ess

The wife bought me an action camera for V Day and I'm interested in making fishing videos, mostly on the kayak, and possibly posting to YouTube. Do any of you do that and do you have any beginner tips for me?

I fell out once in 60 degree water, but the kayak didn't flip. I set the hook on a fish that wasn't there and couldn't regain my balance. I guess I went with the flow and bailed out. But when I did, I got braid around my ankle about 7 times. I also had to hold the yak and side stroke it to shore. I was in a pond with a very semisolid bottom composition. My daughter thought it was very scary at first then very funny. This is the only time it's ever happened.

Their plastics and spinnerbaits have been fine for me. But I usually don't bother with them. I go to Academy and get the name brands or their store brand. I do own a Glide in bass pattern and haven't caught a thing on it. I'll bet the BPS brand can at least match that production.

Rat L Trap fished as slowly as possible.

Rat L Trap in gold/black. I bought an Academy H2O Xpress Rattlin' T. It worked well at my buddy's pond. But the next time out with a different fellow, he flat smoked me with a CC Super Spot in gold. I caught two dinks and he caught 6, two over 3 lbs and lost the best one of the day at the boat.

It's prespawn all the time right now where I usually fish. Fish are on the first points and dropoff edges and some are even in shallower water. Trap, Spinnerbait, T rigs, etc. But I fish mostly smaller waters. I imagine on larger lakes they're between deep winter haunts and first points to coves. While they know it's warm and will feed, they also instinctively know the amount of daylight per day and there are almost certainly cold days ahead.

Mad skills That song's named Yackety Sax.

I just packaged up some tackle that I won't use and dobated it to a local charity thrift shop, among other things. Among the lures were a few Traps that I've never gotten a bite on. They only want gold metallic/black or silver metallic around here. I had so many I couldn't fit any more cranks in that box.

Funny. My kayaking buddy, who only fishes when he's with me and only has one combo because i gave it to him uses the trick Worm on bubble gum exclusively-and catches fish. Bama rig, big swimbaits, huge crankbaits, monster worms. I'm sure these all work and have their place, but you can go days without a bite when you oversize. I fish where there are big bass and I find that they'll bite normal size baits. But I'm a sucker for the expensive topwaters like rats.

When I was a kid my dad really wanted a pontoon so he got one. I really wanted a fishing boat so I fished from the pontoon. We used a cinder block for an anchor exclusively because the pontoon was like a sail when the breeze picked up. We would use two blocks if it was "whitecapping in the commode." I still have two of these that I bought for striper fishing. I even had a sideplate with clicker put on them. They're like new because I never use them anymore.

http://www.bassresource.com/beginner/bass_basics.html T rigged Trick Worm in about any color would be my first bait if I had to start over from scratch. Rat L Trap, spinnerbait, weightless trick Worm, T rigged craw are all on my rods right now. In the spring-summer-fall, I swap some out with topwaters. Summer is a long season here. http://www.bassresource.com/fishing-techniques/

It's considered really bad form to outfish the boater Honestly, once he has gone past a spot, it's yours, no? Put enough good bass in the boat and I bet he'll break one out.

I'd rather catch one bass on a topwater than two on a subsurface lure. Maybe three. I love thiose YouTube videos of dramatic topwater explosions.

The whole leader vs no leader debate never ends and there are pro anglers on both sides of the argument. Lately, it seems more are in the leader camp. I'm with you. I don't fish gin clear lakes anyway, but fish will bite an umbrella rig. If we can see 5 wires on this contraption they surely can. They can certainly see that a crankbait has no tail and that a spinnerbait really doesn't look like fish. But they still react to them when they're hungry or active.

If you held it upside down, you win the entire message board. Rat L Trap and lately the H2O Xpress knockoff from Academy. It actually looks more like a Redeye shad. My buddy uses CC Super Spots. When you do you'll be "hooked" on them.

I don't own but a few jigs and rarely, if ever, use them. I use straight braid on three combos with no leaders and cheap Big Game mono on the others. I use old BPS spinnerbaits with cheap swivels. I caught my PB on one.

I have a friend who has as squirrel dog and he says she trees maybe one a trip. I told him he'd see a lot more of them if he just sat still on a log.

Yeah, that ought to make them obvious.

If there are pickerel and at least one time there were bass, there are probably still bass there. If I hadn't caught one in three hard tries, I'd probably hang it up. At this point, I don't even want to go back to places where I fished hard and only caught one dink. Life is short.

OP should also consider whether he'll ever use or sell the boat in other states.

There are many, many variables that come into play. Barometric pressure might suck, but there might be bait in an area that causes fish to turn on no matter what their mood might be. As Bill Dance says, the best time to go fishing is when you can. You learn more when you have to figure something out than you do when they're just jumping into the boat.

At this age, I only have so many revolutions of the handle left in my wrist and shoulder. I'm slowly replacing all my reels with 7:1 or better. I don't use many deep divers as much as lipless cranks. But if I did, I'd probably just replace the handle with a larger diameter (longer lever). I can always slow the reel down, but you can only get so fast with a slow reel. I'm on the Lew's bandwagon and they make several reels with longer handles or I suppose you could just put a longer hadnle on.

I have absolutely nothing against keeping bass and eating them. There's a reason there's a limit and not a ban on keeping them most places. My fishing buddy does it all the time and I usually give him all mine, except we throw back everything over 3 lbs and the tiny dinks too small to fillet. That said, you'd be surprised what injuries bass can survive in cooler, good quality water with good dissolved oxygen content. And even if you threw it back and it died, something in the food chain will put it to good use. I find the bass from the local drinking water reservoir better tasting than the crappie from the local hydro lake. It's just dirty and it downstream from 2 cities.

Awesome! We don't have drum around here, so I'm no expert, but I believe so.

I keep a fishing journal. If nothing else, it's good to look back at the season and see what worked and what didn't.