68camaro

At shooting range the saying is beware of the old timer with the worn out wheel gun and duffle bag

Yup, love fly for trout, smallies and soon to be trying Shoal bass on fly. LM I only use conventional tackle. Pretty soon biggest challenge will be what do I go after today.....Stripers in tidal river, brook or rainbows in streams, brown in rivers or LM in ponds/lakes.....:)

Here in central VA we are iced up, keep driving south. Add shallow water due to 3 month drought along with sub-freezing temps and its a mess.

I've only used DVT and they were great.

For Christmas we got the family the Ferrari steering wheel/pedals for the Forza game, its awesome, very addictive. son and daughter love call of duty

I just spent a couple hours redoing my jig tacklebox yesterday, I decided to put each one in seperate little baggy they come in and write type, weight on it: (I've saved these bag and have a bunch) I have 6 catagories: Finesse - 3g Arky/Round ball - 1/4 - 1/2 Swim Jigs - 1/4 - 1/2 Football - 1/4 - 1/2 Pitchin/flippin 1/4 - 3/4 Punch - 1 - 2oz I only have 3 - 7 of each so I keep them in slots grouped by catagory in 3700 Plano box, for colors I really only have Watermellon, black/blue type and firetiger. If I want an pitchin jig I simply pick up all baggies in slot and look thru to see which one I want. I have a Bass Mafia for terminal tackle and love it, but being on a kayak I didn't want weight of another one.

Hard to tell, my recent 20"'er was 5.45lbs but seemed fatter. Yours is quite a bit longer so I am guessing no less than 7.5 - 8lbs. Here's an on-line conversion that was very accurate on my 20" LM. 
The basic formula for calculating the weight of a largemouth bass or smallmouth bass is: length x length x length divided by 1600. Using this put you at 8.64lbs.

They are popular here in southeast but they do need to be sized correctly, they sit on head not by pressure around band. I've used one in hot humid south from golf, to fishing, to beaches, and 7 years in wilderness search and rescue as ground pounder. I wore one out and they replaced for free.....

I bought mine on Amazon for I think 150 or so, read it and sold it some some guy here for discount to what I paid since I got my monies worth and wanted to pass it along. Now two years later I wish I had it back.....LOL

Tilley....case closed!

I have one custom made rod over $400, I use it for blade baits. It's made by guy who does it part time and has big following with 4 plus month wait. With a custom you get exactly what you want - everything from size, handle type & length, to color to action and everything in-between. For example, mine was built on 7'6" Point Blank blank cut down to 7'3", it's made for exactly what I wanted it to do. I have mostly Dobyns, Megabass and another semi-custom rod but neither is in class like this. Its ability to throw bombs and insane sensitivity is unparalleled. Now with that said did it make me a better fisherman, don't know, but it really increased confidence and I now use and have much more success with bladed baits than before i had it. It's just so sweet and so much fun to fish, it kinda has feel like my Megabass Aaron Rogers spinning rod I use for finesse baits but has other design advantages and fishes up to 3/4oz. Now why did I buy it? I'll quote Darren's response...."because I can". I don't say this arrogantly but I know it sounds it. It's just that I am at the point in life when disposable income is more than when younger. I would never buy a rod this expensive when I was in 20's, 30's, or even 40's. But I am 54 almost 55, our financial house is in great order so I do have disposable income that allows me to enjoy some finer things without blinking. Do I need a $400 rod with reel to match? No, but I enjoy the search, interaction with builder and fishing with rod that I helped design. But really I could fish with sub-$100 rod and still catch fish so the argument can be made why buy a $300 or $200 or $150? Heck, I go to my little pond sometimes and struggle and down the bank are a group of 12 years olds having a time of there life using walmart bought setup and catching fish under bobber/worms.... I used to collect and target shoot 1911's several times a week. Fishing is cheap compared to some shooting sports, so I figure now that I don't shoot so much I am actually saving money:)

great to hear you and your buddy hit the water together.....

Sweet.....awesome fish

Welcome from transplanted Albany native.

Before I bought mine I went to my dealers on-the-water demo day to try out the few I had narrowed search down to. Mine is a very wide stable sit on top that you can stand on easily, its 36 inches wide and crazy stable. You'd be hard pressed to tip it, however it is very heavy. The trade-off with a stable yak is they are very heavy.

I am in central va and use Marmot Precip for jacket and lightweight rain pants from GoLite, both are breathable and don't hold heat so I am comfortable peddaling with them in yak. When cold I can layer underneathg them with flleece zipup and/or light, med or heavy longjohns. If super duper cold with rain I use a pair of insulated waterproof overpants, if super duper cold without rain I have a pair of very warm fleece overpants. Depending on conditions I just may wear my Simms waisthigh waders as rain pants. Also I keep spare clothes in waterproof sack in yaks storage compartment in case all elese fails.

I just started watching MLF reruns past few weeks from summer, they are on Lake Eufala in AL and I am hooked, I taped final and will watch today. I can't wait for January, I will tape and watch on playback so I can keep stopping and rewinding to wrestle every morsel and tidbit of info I can. Is there a good spot I can go to see schedule of when all fishing shows/tourney's on TV?

I hope you can get to Richmond soon.......

Can the Ned be used in stained or dirty water? If so do you use rattles or smelly attractant?

The lowland 1700 acre reservoir I mostly fish started noticing a hydrilla problem in 2009, by 2010 it affected 763 acres of the lake. Hydrilla will affect taste and oder of drinking water by messing with waters algae. Since then they created a "Hydrilla Management Team" tasked with managing this problem, their goal is to control hydrilla but maintain 15-20% of aquatic vegetation as a healthy amount for a a reservoir. It seems our county has done a lot of studies and does a monthly hydrilla growth survey so people can compare coverage month over month and year over year, its all pretty interesting. The hydrilla seems to be concentrated on one side and the thought is someone put first plants in there from an aquarium. When you look at the survey maps its amazing how fast the hydrilla grows and takes over a lake, but it's equally amazing how fast carp eradicate the hyrilla, with negative of everything else along with it. Our counties first carp stocking was 10,500, since then they have done smaller releases and plan is to do regular releases but on much smaller level. Carp cost $5 - $15 so it is very expensive and since they don't reproduce you need to restock. One interesting note is we had one cove that was cut off from rest of lake due to bridge repairs, this cutoff nearly all carp from cove except for a few but in two seasons the hydrilla completely covered the 43 acre cove.

Nate good luck and lets us know how you do.

Awesome man just great, Kietech my favorite swimbait also but I never caught one close to that size:")

Sweet........take it anyway you can!

I really like the ex6 for cranks but after mine settled at bottom of lake I upgraded to a Dobyns 764CB RM, but Megabass is awesome as well.

5-20, you bring up good counter points and clearly well versed on the lake and the subject matter. I guess at this point we can only hope the VDIF knows what they are doing and their plan works out. We'll have to see what happens now that grass carp are dying out and natural vegetation comes back naturally and through human reintroduction, but your overall concern seems correct as it seems the VDIF has accepted more 4-6lb fish at the expense of trophy size numbers.