the reel ess

I always use braid. If you feel you need fluoro every now and then due to visibility in clear water, you can just use a leader of fluoro on a main line of braid.

Not better, just different. There are techniques that the 6.4:1 will work well with. I like the 7+ reels for most techniques though. If you intend to use it for frogs and heavy cover, the added speed helps you take up line quickly to yank the fish out. It's also good to have speed for search baits. If you crank all day, you would turn the handle 1/6 fewer times.

Given how often fish shake my treble lures before I bring them to hand, I's say very good. have you ever noticed how often, when you land a fish on trebles, the hooks move in and around the fish's mouth?

Lipless crank Jig/craw Spinnerbait Trick Worm or Fluke Pop R/Chug Bug Frog (Not in that order)

We have one local state managed lake that the water level appears to have been intentionally lowered to keep trailered boats out. That's the only one. I really have no idea why. The gate isn't locked and I was told by my buddy there were kayaks on it. It may be that DNR officers are expecting to be used as auxiliary regular LEO.

Tie a Trick Worm, weightless on your spinning rod and don't take it off. They like the bubble gum color a lot. Aside from that I use mostly the same baits everywhere. I also fish a lot of topwaters in ponds. Since they're usually shallow, bass will be in that zone where they're more likely to hit a surface bait. Most ponds have some weedy cover so the frog is a real killer. Add to that a spinnerbait and you have the basics.

They must be witches, Practitioners of the Left Hand Path. Be very wary of them. ? It actually looks to me like the dad has his glove on the left hand, which would make him right handed. Maybe they were trying to level the playing field by imposing that rule for batters or making it more fun.

We got a Keurig and never looked back. I alternate between 8 O'Clock, McCafe (I detest McD's food, but their coffee is good) and Starbucks Pike Place. I forced myself to get used to it black to cut some calories so it needs to taste pretty good by itself. . If I'm going fishing I usually won't have any because I'm on the kayak and it's not convenient to have to go. I keep some 5 Hour Energy and I'll take a sip before I leave home or maybe while I'm fishing. Not too much though because it will screw with your heart. If I'm fishing later in the day, no coffee necessary. Just a water bottle or two if it's really warm.

You can get all of that cheaper. I probably will go kayak fishing some time in the next week. But I'll do it a lot cheaper. Heck, I'd buy a pretty nice used jon boat, trolling motor and trailer for that dough. Since I already have two kayaks.

Monster worms, dropshot, Senko, jointed swimbaits. I will occasionally wacky rig a stick worm to sight fish or toss them at bedding bass. But just as a lure on its own merit, it doesn't do as well for me as it seems to for the rest of the planet.

Gotcha. But he did say something along the lines of "A bass don't care about the of main line" didn't he? Notice I was trying to type with his accent. LOL

My dad took me when i was a wee little lad. My mom used to make him because, like me, he liked to fish more than bait others' hooks. But I caught on fast. We mostly used live bait for crappie on cane poles and had good success. All of my dad's friends used to comment on how serious I was about fishing, even as a little kid. So, while I was still a young'un, I went with crappie fishing my dad and his buddy in his buddy's boat. To keep me occupied, they gave me a white curly tail grub on an 1/8 oz. jighead to throw on my Zebco 33. I wore them out and they didn't have another jig in the boat, or even another rod and reel. They stopped off at a store on the way home and bought them out of curly tail grubs and it was on. I saw my dad's buddy a couple years ago and he asked me if I still like to fish that much and I said "yessir, maybe more". Thus began my love for chunking and winding. I guess it's what eventually led me to want to fish for bass.

Get yourself an assortment of 3/8-1/2 oz spinnerbaits in combos of willow and Colorado blades and white, white/chartreuse and solid chartreuse colors. Then go get yourself a gold double willow blade War Eagle in gold shiner color as the wild card. On second thought, get the War Eagle first because I keep it tied on and haven't found the place it won't work. I don't use any trailer, but do use a trailer hook unless I'm in heavy wood cover. I've landed many that just got the trailer hook by the time they made it to the boat. You should be fishing this bait near cover and bumping every snag along the way. It triggers strikes. I even catch crappie and bream on it. They ain't cheap and big fish will damage them. Buy 2. A couple PB's ago was the fish in my pic that I caught on this bait and it wrecked the bait. Dig the gut on that fish. I'm pretty sure I've caught it twice. https://www.academy.com/shop/pdp/war-eagle-custom-3-8-oz-spinnerbait?campid=71700000050238199&adgroupid=58700004916746674&device=c&keyword=92700042923896399&Channel=pla&gclid=CjwKCAiA44LzBRB-EiwA-jJipEoNJqKUT7LSqx9XwGXsYYgu1kVPne77qDFomCNsqr2mKzL4SqTxhRoC5poQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds#repChildCatid=21597

Plan a trip to Okeechobee with a guide who uses live shiners. Fish the spawn and don't have a conscience about sticking a big bass off the bed. That's the best time of year for most big bass make their presence known. Be fishing NOW. Big gals are feeding up for spawn unless your water is hard. This is a case of fishing for maybe 1 or 2 good bites all day. Maybe no bites, but it's better than sitting in the house or going shopping with the wife. Amirite? Most of us don't really fish for PB's. We fish for a combination of numbers and the occasional larger fish. We fish the techniques we enjoy rather than the ones that actually produce more large fish. Playing the odds is fishing for numbers because we don't like getting skunked. Really fishing for only large bass means there will be days, even at a stretch, where you don't catch fish. Watch everything on YouTube and read as much as you can related to the subject.

In my first marriage, my fishing time was an issue. She didn't like me leaving her to spend that time with my dad or even by myself. In my free time, she wanted me to do whatever she wanted to do. That's not a good sign for the long haul. I came to understand she had trust issues, which were really her deep-seated feelings of being abandoned that I could not fix-she didn't have an ideal childhood. It was pretty complicated and needless to say it didn't last. Fast forward. My current bride of 16 years went fishing with me a grand total of once when we were dating. She caught all the crappie while I baited her hook with minnows and then I only caught catfish after the action slowed. She has no problem with me going fishing and genuinely wants happiness for me. She can see beyond her own wants. That's important in a relationship. If you don't have it, one of you will always be giving while the other takes. That's a recipe for lifelong unhappiness and you really cannot expect people to change completely.

I use a 10 year old regular Lightning Rod for those. I have another medium I use for cranks. I'd replace them, but they won't break. And if it ain't broke... These are techniques that don't require great sensitivity.

I fished a place like that in FL with a guide. It was full of big'uns. We caught bass and peacocks all day, including a 7 pounder. There's even a video on YouTube of Bill fishing it with another guide.

I watched a video of Gerald Swindle where he was typing a jig on and said "Why would a bass care about your line's tag end when they don't care about the other 100 yards tied onto it". Then he cut the tag end off his fluorocarbon line and cast it out. LOL. But I'm in agreement. I was fishing with a guide and we were working down the bank flipping to sparse patches of pepper grass. I said "We're mighty close. Aren't they aware of our presence?" He said "Yeah, don't worry about that. When you drop that jig in their face in that small space they can't ignore it. Instincts won't allow it." and gators and pythons

Another vote for the Glide. In fact, any hard swimbait. I know I just haven't used it at the right time/place. The action just doesn't look very natural to me. Big creature baits like the Brush Hog. To the guys with no luck on the Whopper Plopper, use the 110 in late prespawn/early spawn when there are big bass shallow. They won't tolerate it. I got my PB on it and I can say my average is better than 3 lbs. on this bait. You will have to make many casts without a bite, but the bite will likely be good. I've only caught a flounder on it. I was in a bait shop at the beach and the owner walked over and asked me what I was fishing for. I said reds-trout-flounder. He handed me a gold Johnson Minnow, some jigheads and Gulp mullets. He said you can spend as much as you want, but this will get it done. I have several, but the only jerkbaits that I have confidence in are Rapalas.

In my experience, if someone else has it, it's really good as new with a little age on it. If I have it, it's worthless, but someone will take it off my hands for $1000.

I'm so old, there wasn't even a Fox network until I was in my late teens. Bill Dance and Virgil Ward were the only ones I got and they were only on after noon Sundays after NFL season was over. I'm from the south, so naturally, Dance was my favorite. I thought he spoke the Gospel and walked on water. It didn't occur to me until years later the reason all his fish were bigger than mine is that he either owned the lake or it was a private managed fishery. I still love him.

Walmart forces some mfg's to make their products at a certain price point or they can't sell there. Quality has to suffer.

I agree with both of these. To get better at the jig I decided to put one on a dedicated rod and use it every time out. If you're thinking it will be like a T rigged worm with an offset shank worm hook, you're wrong. That's a thick gauge hook with a fiber weedguard in front that you really have to drive home hard as well as a soft plastic that can foul the hook points. Many times I've tried to set the hook on a smaller fish only to have it spit the bait. Thankfully, bigger bass are easier to set it on because they offer good resistance. Basically, it's the same with the chatterbait. I even sharpened my point and still missed a bunch. The frog is one that has a low hookup rate. But that's because the fish don't get the hooks in the mouth as often and you have to compress the bait to expose them. You need to feel that fish's weight before you set. When they do get the hooks, if you don't turn them towards you they have a tendency to leverage the frog out in the weeds. If you'll take some pliers and bend the hook poits out just a tad, so that they're not touching the plastic body, you'll hook more bass. A HVY-F or MF longer rod will help out a lot with any of these.

I've relayed this one before, but it applies. It still makes me feel quite stupid. Boat would not start when my dad and I got ready to leave a spot. We looked the usual connections over and couldn't find anything. We got a tow back to the ramp and I took it home where I looked it over many times and was just about to take it to a mechanic. My dad called me out of the blue and told me to go check the kill switch. That was it. I didn't use the boat for 6 months or more. I wasn't wearing the kill switch so I don't know how it happened and that's why it didn't occur to me. It's the old mechanic's adage "Start with the simplest, cheapest fix, not the most expensive". My dad thought something was wrong with the outboard on his pontoon once. It wouldn't get up on plane all day. Finally figured out he was dragging a 20 lb. anchor.

I'll keep fishing that log till that ol' bass bites. ? This reminds me of a story. I used to go to the reservoir every Saturday morning. There was always an old man fishing from a dock there or putting in his jonboat to troll for crappie. He would always tell me to fish a log that was under water nearby and that he caught a 10 lb bass off it once. I always fish that log and have caught quite a few off it-nothing approaching his 10 lb. claim. That old man died of a heart attack while fishing in that boat. My buddy found his minnow buck floating 2 days later and it still had a crappie in it. He still has that bucket and uses it. If I could choose how to leave this world, that would be it. BTW, I did keep a log a couple of years until I started to recognize the patterns. I still have it and will consult it from time to time.