Neil McCauley

Think it depends on the body of water and its bass population. If it's a small lake with declining fish from pressure, invasive speceies, habitat loss, whatever, and then someone is fishing spawning beds, seems worth frowning on. IMO respect of people's right to behave badly doesn't also exempt them from criticism and being called out.

Wouldn't want to miss out on the sounds of being out on my lake even if it's just silence. Maybe especially if it's silence. I never really understood why people go out in the wilderness and then blast music when they're there.

Objects have to be mostly linear, horizontal, facing parallel to your direction, and stationary relative to you as you pass over for them to make classic looking arcs. So...not many things in the water do that, usually not even most of the fish themselves. Arcs are nice to see but fish sitting still aren't usually feeding. What I really want to see are multiple ribbons and streaks moving all around the water column. Keep the awful "fish ID" feature off! It does over-identify lots of stuff. You want to be looking at the actual sonar data yourself, because you actually know things about fish behavior and the computer don't, which is why you can interpret it better.

My goals seem to get less and less focused on the fish every year, but oh well here goes in no particular order: 1. Keep gear more organized, clean, dry, maintained, etc 2. Add Sacandaga, Champlain, Ontario, and Placid to my map decals of lakes fished 3. Catch a 26" Laker, and 18" SMB and LMB 4. Catch a Landlocked Salmon 5. Fill the freezer with perch 6. Stay safe 7. Pull an overnight/day trip in early July 8. Use fly rod more 9. Get wife to accompany at least one trip, and not be miserable 10. Camp/fishing trip with dad and brothers

I have gone through a bunch of deep cycle batteries now with my trolling motor + canoe and along the way gained a great respect for things like battery maintenance, storage, and overall info I didn't know before. When I first started I was kind of clueless- left batteries in hot cars or freezing garages, didn't re-charge promptly, etc. I've become much more informed and careful, but wondering what other general info and or advice people have about deep cycle batteries and how to get the most out of them? Great website to start off: http://marine-electronics.net/techarticle/battery_faq/b_faq.htm One interesting thing I learned from the above link is how important temperature is for every part of a battery life- discharging, charging, storage- particularly "thermal stratification." Yes, kind of like lakes themselves: I used to run my batteries just sitting openly in a canoe, with just a 1/2" thick polyethylene hull to sit on and no sun protection. In the spring when water is 40 degrees but the sunlight is beating down, the tops get warm and the bottom contacting the canoe is ice cold- that can't be good. I am not sure how much it matters but I'm going to be careful to insulate the bottoms and cover the tops of my batteries from now on. Likewise I won't be storing or recharging them sitting on cold concrete garage floors anymore either. Anyways, if you have any tips like this please share. Also curious what batteries people are running and for what and where do you buy them? I use 3 of the above 27DCs for a 55lb thrust TM, with 16' 8 ga jumper cables, and I get them at Walmart.

Highest mercury content of any freshwater species, thickest y-bones, very vulnerable to over-fishing...Not sure about the taste but I never ate one, prob never will.

AJ....based on apparent proportions.... and an assumption that you are an average size man... that smallmouth is easily 50-60 lbs!!! lmao

In terms of prevention...not sure hook barbs are even the issue with this. How'd the smallie partially swallow your hook/lure in the first place? Might be something you're doing.. Can't say I can remember the last time I ever had a SMB swallow a hook. It can happen with plastics or live bait, but neither of those hooks are worth messing with trying to cut. Only times I commonly see hardbaits and other lures (esp inline spinners) hooked deep it's with Perch or Pike.

What is worse than blasphemy? That'd probably apply for some of my methods. I used to have boxes full of all sorts of bass tackle and rod set-ups but became kind of a minimalist fishing the same types of lake. -Don't currently own a baitcasting setup, braid line, or any jigs or plastics meant for bass... -Use mostly crankbaits...and use the same 6'6" fast action med/light rod as for everything else except fly fishing. -also only use 8 lb fluoro, only take 1 tray of lures -Don't make bass a primary target of most trips now.

I doubt you'll find them commercially. I don't know of truly quality paper maps for any lakes, much less ones way up in Maine. If the lakes you want have good charting data on Navionics and you have the patience you could piece together screenshots of them zoomed in. A printing shop could print the map out for you. When I did this and the image was 10k x 5k pixels.

I felt overwhelmed at first too but it becomes intuitive pretty quick as you actually use it on the water. The main thing to get used to is how relative motion of the transducer and the dimensions of the sonar cone affect what is represented on your screen. The screen is misleadingly big compared to the info it actually gives. Need to see for yourself how you have to be at a certain constant speed, and at the right depth, just to pick up only stationary fish/objects in a single thin plane of the water mostly near bottom. It might also help to know some basic wave physics about frequency, wavelength, and energy. Then you'll see the issues with lower watt sonars, deeper water, and accuracy vs coverage area. Ironically the more you learn the limitations of sonar the more helpful/fun it is. These vids might help too

Tell me you don't deep fry rainbow trout! I found the TB spoons, what colors do you like?

Some more budget-sonar shots

On the right body of water, fly fishing for bass is not only the most enjoyable/exciting way to fish, it's just plain deadly, too. On the deep clear lake I usually fish it's not a go-to method. Bass are suspended or around structure 25-35 feet deep about 90% of the year. But on a few other lakes I fish, a fly rod and tackle is all I even take, if I know the weather is decent. Mostly they are lakes that are shallow (avg 10-20 fow) and have good shoreline cover like rocks and boulders. Small rivers and streams would probably be good also. If you are using topwater productively anywhere and not required to cast >50 yards then you could probably be using a fly rod setup. And there is nothing, other than maybe a muskie or big trout/salmon, in freshwater fishing like fighting a big bass on a fly rod. The give of the rod and the stretchable line take away a lot of the worry about line break-offs, and the tiny fly stuck in their jaw has very little chance of getting thrown. It is a challenge to control and reel them in, though.

Used one for a while but ended up not liking it. They're just not comfortable enough for 10+ hours of fishing. Too hot, hard to breathe, fogs up sunglasses. I actually bought N95 masks and hot glued one inside the front and cut holes in it so my breath had a place to go, prevents sunglass fogging really well, but overall it's still just more hassle than its worth. And if you wear one, you're kind of committed to it. Taking a break from it and putting on sunblock will get it all greasy and nasty when you wear it again. A compromise might be wear the buff for the first half the day and sunblock the other half. I'd do that if it was a late June super clear day and I was going to be on the water sun up til sun down for 16 hours. Otherwise, I'd rather deal with sunblock all day than the buff.

Is that water temp ...94.2 degrees F?? Wouldn't really even bother finding fish at those temps.

Last summer around this time actually, I was on the water in my canoe for a full day of fishing. It was an awesome summer day aside from the wake from all the boats. After having a couple ice cold beers from my cooler I was fishing later in the day and stood up to cast. Was parallel to shore about 50 yards out, in 20 fow. Lots of people out on docks and boats around. Big wave came along from behind and next thing I knew I was in the water, fell right backwards overboard. No life jacket, but no problem really- amazing how quick you pull yourself back in as if nothing happened. Except for being soaked and having 3 inches of water in the bottom of the canoe. The water was warm as bathwater and it was actually kind of refreshing. Luckily none of my tackle or my rods went into the water. Mainly I was embarrassed if anyone saw me, but I'm not even sure anyone did. It happened so fast.... my samsung S6 phone that was in my pocket actually still worked...partially. Somehow the SIM card that allows making calls and getting texts was fried, but the GPS and wifi, everything else still works fine. I got a replacement and now I use the old one as a dedicated Navionics chart. Also I am a lot more careful about standing in the canoe later in the day when waves are big and if I've had a few.

Yea, yea, I see this posted a lot in this thread. No one is criticizing poaching or anything illegal though. Obviously "they have the right" to keep their limit. What is up for debate is the unwritten ethic about keeping fish. I could catch and keep my limit every time out but I never do. I try to be strategic about keeping fish in a way that has as little impact as possible. I know a specific spot on Lake George with tons of huge pumpkinseed sunfish. I keep a few and move on, I don't want to over-fish it. There are probably hundreds down there but I try to only take 5-6 each trip because I value the spot so much. When I'm catching tons of rock bass in the spring, likewise I try only to take a few of the bigger ones. Any time I catch something rare- like, in my lake a Northern Pike or a Crappie- I am sure to return it carefully. There is an ethic about how you treat a fishery that goes beyond laws and regulations and everyone approaches it differently. That's what's interesting to hear people explain.

Big bass....YUCK. The meat is brown and soggy and has huge deep lateral line. It's a strange texture and flavor for sure. The Y bones are very heavy and you lose a lot of meat if you don't take the time to pull them out with pliers. I only keep bass 12-13" if possible, on the rare occasion that I acually keep bass. My "opinion" on people keeping bass in general depends on the body of water. On my current lake (LG) bass are teaming in the water and you practically can't get away from 12-15" bass of either species. No issue with keeping those. If anything some need to go. On smaller lakes and ponds though with a lesser quality ecosystem keeping lots of bass seriously endangers their population #s. Go to the inner city ponds where people sit all day on buckets of literally whatever they catch. These places are awful thanks to people keeping fish.

Wow! How about one of these tungsten jigging spoons? Right now in LG they seem to be around 110-160'ish in the southern basin.

I've never found yellow perch to be much of a fighter. They shake their heads a lot but never make runs, jump, or much. Pumpkinseed and bluegills or other sunfish are better fighters.

(January, 2016) Absolutely refuse to put it up at all!

Almost had a worst case scenario last week... When I have a well hooked fish in my canoe I sometimes hold them between my thighs (you might see where this is going...) while taking it out. Was doing this with a large crankbait from a bass last week and it somehow thrashed free and hooked a big treble into my inner thigh. Let me tell you there is no adrenaline rush in the outdoors quite like having a p$$ed off bass directly connected to a set of hooks perilously dangling around your nads. Thank God the fish fell off the hook. The hook in my thigh I had to just back out.

2-4 ft is good water clarity? Try 35. Both of the lakes I fish regularly are ultra clear and deep, I don't really even bother with top water except when flyfishing for panfish.

How deep are you fishing? And what kind of weight egg sinker? Thanks for the help! Curious to try this, I may try live minnows for the heck of it, wonder if they can survive that far down?