king fisher

I stand if I am anchored, or slowly drifting a large area, where constant boat control is not needed. Much of the time I am sitting down, because I am constantly using the pedals, and ruder to change position. Small fish I land standing, big fish I sit down. If I am fishing in trees, I am sitting. I want to be able to start backing up as soon as I hook a big fish in timber. Otherwise the bass will pull me in to the trees, and get wrapped on a limb. I lost a DD that way once, and am not going to let it happen again. I don't use a net, I prefer to play the fish until it is easy to land by hand.

Does any one use double blade buzz baits? Where, when, why instead of single blade? How well do they cast compared to single? What make, model ,and size? Thanks.

BG is bulletproof. If you plan on using the reel in saltwater get the BG. The BG is as good other saltwater spinning reels that cost twice as much. If you are looking for freshwater only, then there are lighter options in the price range.

hoard them.

Instead of trying to get chartreuse worms to work, I would suggest trying dark colored spinnerbaits. You may be surprised.

Any shade of purple.

Bass fishing south of the boarder is good all year. My favorite lake's surface temperature peaks around 80 degrees in late Sept. and gets down to 66 degrees in early Jan. Most of the time it is between 70 and 80. July is my favorite month because the water is low concentrating the fish. August thru October is the rainy season, and the bass are in flooded shallow cover. Buzz baits and frogs all day. Problem is the bass are spread out, only catch one here and there. No bad time to fish here.

Thanks, QED and Tom, your replies have given me hope. I have always been able to reel with either hand, but have never casted with my left. I do think I might be able to get the hang of casting spinning with my left hand. Baitcaster will be tough, fly casting is going to be a disaster, and I am sure I will have to become a spectator only when it comes to big game fishing. At least it will be a good excuse for me to keep from having help land big tuna.

Has any one ever had to learn to cast with their non dominate hand? If so, How long did it take to get comfortable and reasonably accurate? Any tricks or advice that helped speed the process?

If you are sure you did not change anything ,you may be in big trouble. You could have a boat gremlin on board. The only way to find out for sure is to pay a mechanic way to much money to come trouble shoot the trolling motor. If it doesn't run backward when the mechanic checks it out and you have to pay him for doing nothing more than tell you it is working fine, then you definitely have a boat gremlin issue. Not much you can do. Gremlins are scared of mechanics. They hide whenever one comes around. As soon as the mechanic leaves the gremlin comes back and the problem returns. The only thing you can do is park your boat next to a more expensive boat with newer complex systems and hope the gremlin jumps ship. If you get really desperate you can pass him on to a friend with a boat. While that solution is perfectly legal in all 50 states it is highly unethical and can end up costing you a friend for life. Hopefully you do not have a boat gremlin and someone on this forum can provide the solution to your problem.

Eastern WA is going through the worst drought in recorded history. Last winters snow pack in the mountains was above average, so if you are a fisherman fishing any of the Columbia river drainage system, the water levels are almost normal. Same with the farms in the Columbia River Basin, that irrigate their crops from the Columbia Reservoirs. No effect from the drought. If you fish further east on natural lakes and rivers not fed by the Cascade mountains you will see the effect of the drought. There are small lakes south of Spokane that have completely dried up for the first time any one can remember. Dry land crops were a complete failure, and no one can plant winter wheat until rain comes because their is zero moisture in the ground for the seed to sprout. One bad year does not make a dust bowl. Hopefully next spring everyone will be complaining about to much water. Here in Nayarit Mexico we had the worst drought in many years. The fishing at my favorite lake was unbelievably good because of the low water, but the local commercial fisherman and I were afraid of a big die off, and bad times to come, if the drought continued. Fortunately the rainy season came early and the region is having the most rain any one can remember. It all worked out well. Low water made the fishing great, and the rains came in time to save the fishery. Hopefully the Western US will have similar luck.

I don't know if you consider Academy sports H2O baits knock offs, but I believe their square bills catch fish as well or better than many high dollar square bills.

Diawa Ardito travel rods. I own three, one medium, and two medium heavy. I have landed two bass over 10 pounds cranking with the medium so far this year. I have caught many bass, and numerous other species both fresh and saltwater with all three. Highly recommend them. I use Diawa coastal, and Tatula CT reels on mine, but if you want to put a Shimano reel on, I'm sure it will work fine. Just don't stand near me during a lightning storm if you do.

If the crankbaits are working, but you aren't trolling can be very effective. I know many bass fisherman think trolling is a sin, but it does work great with crankbaits. Another advantage is you can get about 1/3 more depth out of a crankbait trolling it than you can on even the longest cast.

I didn't even know it happened. I was guiding a moose hunter on the Alaska Peninsula. We were camped up a valley on the boarder of Katmai Park. On the 12 the hunter shot his moose. I was able to pack the meat cape and antlers back to the camp that same day. The next day I flew the first load of meet back to main camp early in the morning. When I landed at the main camp, the outfitters wife came out of the cabin and told me what had happened and that there was a no fly restriction for the whole state. I didn't want the bears to get the meat, so I made two more flights, for meat, and the outfitter flew the hunter and his gear back to main camp. It was a few days before we could fly and pick up the other 3 camps that were out. By then we had heard stories of float plane pilots getting forced to land immediately by military aircraft, even in the middle of nowhere. I'm sure glad that didn't happen to me. I only had a hand held radio, and always flew with it off to save the batteries. Not hearing a response over the radio, I'm sure they would have flown very close to me to force me to respond. By the time I got the radio turned on I might have had to change my shorts. All the clients had to stay where they were until the no fly ban was lifted couple days later. They allowed the air taxis to pick up all the remote clients and fly them to King Salmon, but they still weren't allowing jets to fly, so everyone got stuck in the town for another couple days. The hotels were full, and the bar was almost out of beer by the time they were able to fly to Anchorage. I was glad to be still living in a tent away from it all. I didn't see the pictures until a couple months later, when I got out of the bush, and back to town. That is when reality really hit home to me, when I actually saw what happened, seeing the destruction was way different than hearing about it on the radio. Very sad day for all.

I give most of my fishing lures away to snags, I generally keep everything else.

I was born in 1963 and grew up in a small farming town of around 500 people. I took my girl friend now wife there a few years ago to visit. She couldn't believe it when I walked in to the bank, and took some money out of my savings account, and the teller didn't even ask for my ID, she asked my name and I told her, she replied I must be Camille's son that lives in Mexico now and how long was I going to be town for. My Mom didn't ever lock the house and I always left the car unlocked with the key in the ignition. My wife was in shock, she thought we had entered a time machine. It is always nice to go back there and see how little has changed. The star quarterback on the high school football team last name is Bluemenshien, everyone still has a shotgun, in the gunrack on their pick up( unless it is deer season, then it's a rifle.), I can go in to any store, buy something and say put it on my Moms bill, the best way to find some one isn't the internet, just ask some one at the store where so and so is, the key to the lock on the gate going down to my favorite fishing whole is still hid under the same rock, and the bass still hit a Hula Popper if cast properly to the rock pile on the opposite bank( much easier to do with gear I have now). It is still a small farming town of 500 people, only thing that has changed is peoples first names, and the walk to the river is a lot longer now. Some times I wonder why I ever left.

You are right. Unless your unit is hooked up to a separate compass the GPS boat icon will not show you which way the boat is pointed if you are not moving. The GPS will show you what compass heading the object is in relation to your boat, but the icon wont necessarily show the bow pointed in the direction it is actually pointed. Best way I have found with a Garmin unit is to scroll back and mark the structure as a waypoint on the fish finder screen. Then go to split navigation screen, and fish finder screen. Drive away from the waypoint. Turn around and drive directly over the way point. Throw out a marker the instant you see the structure you have marked appear on the fish finder screen. If you don't see it on the fish finder, do the same thing from a different direction. The GPS is very accurate and your waypoint is exactly where the map has it located. The problem is keeping the boats location in relation to the object without getting confused by looking at the little boat on the screen. I like to use markers because they are simple. Other anglers are proficient with other methods and there are many videos on U Tube that show those methods. The saltwater boat I work on has all the electronics connected to a compass. The boat icons are always pointing the exact magnetic heading regardless if moving or not.. It makes it way easier to stay on a a waypoint.

Forward scanning sonar would take all the fun out of finding rocks the old fashion way with your propeller.

Welcome. Any idea how your home town got it's name?

I respool often. I retie knots and change lures a lot, and when I do I always cut off a couple or more feet of line, plus what line is used up tying the knot. I don't like fishing with a reel half full, so some reels get new line after 3- 4 days of fishing. Mono gets changed even if I still have a full spool because it is cheap. Braid only gets changed when the spool runs low. Floro gets changed every time I switch back to mono and say never again. The Bait Monkey tried to convince me to buy more rods in order to save money on line. If I had more rods rigged with different lures, then I wouldn't have to change lures as often, therefore I wouldn't go through as much expensive line. I explained that investment theory to my wife. My wife told the Bait Monkey we could move to the lake and live in a tent with all the rods, reels, and line we wanted. I don't think she was trying to tell me she wanted to go camping.

Bob Toman is one of the most famous salmon steelhead guides in Oregon Washington, and Alaska. He started one of the first king camps on the Nushagak River in Bristol Bay in the early 80's. His son still runs the camp which is one of the best on the river. Down stream trolling inline spinners with blades called Magnum willow, or Oklahoma became popular in the late 90's. Bob decided to design his own mag willow spinners with a little different bend than other similar mag willow blades. His spinners have been the most popular spinner by far the past 10 years on many rivers in Alaska. Yakima Bait bought the rights to the spinners a few years later. They come in almost any color combination you can imagine. Half pink, half white on the outside, gold on the inside is probably the most popular blade. I haven't tried any for bass, but there is no reason why they wouldn't work as well as any other blade. King salmon sure prefer them over other blades.

I have a friend who I have fished with for 45 years. I can't remember a day either his older brother, or I have out fished him. He has always had lousy equipment, that he never maintains, never wants to get up early or stay late, doesn't even care if he catches more than he wants to clean, ( which is zero, unless I volunteer to clean the fish while he drinks beer), is basically lazy when it comes to fishing, has never read an article, about fishing, doesn't even know the basics like what water temperature, structure, type of cover any game fish prefer, but is the luckiest fisherman on the planet. I even saw him catch a brown trout out of a lake that never had brown trout, and to this day has never had another one. He wasn't catching fish on one of his only lures a Jitterbug, so he decided the bass were not on the top. I told him I would loan him one of my diving crankbaits. He refused my offer and instead put three rubber core sinkers on his line ahead of his Jitterbug to get it down. The lure had absolutely zero action. I'm not saying he slayed the bass, but he did catch a bigger one than me with that crazy idea. He is so lucky not only would he dominate as a tournament angler, they would have to ban him. The officials at BASS would rather bring the Alabama rig back, and allow explosives rather than let him enter a tournament.

I use all three types plus braid to leader, but if I could only use one it would be mono. I read an article by a pro who said he accidently hooked a big catfish while using floro. He applied maximum pressure on the fish to land it quickly so he wouldn't waste time. Because he stressed the line to it's limit he quit using that rod until he changed the line, because over stretching floro would weaken the line. That is when I realized why I have had great success with floro, and then have a line failure that I had no explanation for. I didn't know I couldn't stress the line. Isn't that what fishing is about? The most accurate rifle ever made isn't any good if every once in awhile it doesn't go bang for no apparent reason. I am back to using mono, for most of my bass fishing, straight braid, and braid to mono leader for some techniques. Only time I use floro, is for saltwater leaders. I'm sure I will be back to using floro again. It's not the first time I have been off the floro wagon, and probably wont be the last. After all the pros use it , and it's expensive, must be the best. I just need to learn another knot, and change the line every time I stress it too much. Berkley should just make a mono called Big Game Plus, priced just over the most expensive floro. They wouldn't have to actually change the line, just the name and price and I would be happy.

I have gone to hollow braid on all my salt water reels. There are three major advantages to hollow braid. 1-- Cost. Hollow is more expensive with original purchase, but you will never have to replace it. You can splice hollow to hollow so well, that you will never even notice the splice. The splice is actually the strongest part of the line, because the line is doubled at the splice. FG knots are great, but are still the weakest link. As you loose line, due to changing lures or leaders, instead of refiling the spool with new line, you simply splice in another section of new line. You can even splice in different pound tests, making the last few yards stronger, or weaker than the main line. 2-- No leader knot. FG knots are small and strong, but again, not as strong, or small as a leader inserted inside hollow braid. 3-- Hollow braid lays flat, making it far less likely to dig in to itself on a reel spool. It is also less likely to cut your hands if you accidently grab the line. I have over 30 big game rods rigged with hollow braid, and floro or mono leaders, with a crimp used to attach hook, or swivel, making the whole set up complete without a single knot. The disadvantage is it takes time, practice and different size needles to make the splices. If I am in a hurray, I will simply tie a new leader on the hollow core with an FG, or Alberto knot, and splice a leader in when I have more time. Hollow core line in pound tests under 100 have only been available for a few years. I am interested to see if the new 50 and 60 pound versions ever catch on with bass fishermen. Solid braid is almost extinct in the west coast salt water world. I haven't tried it because I rarely use braid, for bass, and when I do I usually don't use a leader. Most of the time I use either use all mono, or floro. Next time I fill one of my bass reels, with braid I will use hollow simply because I will be able to change lures, and cut off top sections without worrying about having to replace the line, or put on some kind of backing. Just fill the spool with the braid, and splice more on when needed. I doubt I would bother splicing a leader. An Alberto works with hollow as well as solid braid, and I don't think it would be worth the bother. If you absolutely want the strongest slimmest leader connection possible, than give it a try.