OCdockskipper

That's the thing about a Bears/Rams matchup, it will be ugly one way or the other. If the Bears defense is able to control the game, they can ugly their way into a couple of scores and win the game like they did before. However, if the Rams offense can get up by 10 or 14 points, then the ugly goes the other way. The Rams offense won't press and they will be multi-dimensional (difficult for the Bears to control) while the Rams defense can then pin their ears back and force the Bears into playing a game they aren't good at. So you end up with a 15-6 Bears win like the Bears had earlier in the year or a 38-10 win by the Rams with the Bears offense committing 3 or 4 turnovers. Ugly either way. I am rooting for the Bears today because I want the Rams to prove themselves over teams that have beat them this year. I want McVay to show he has the ability to learn from losses and make the offensive adjustments to beat the Bears and the defensive adjustments to beat the Saints. I don't want the Rams backing into the Super Bowl, I want them to be the best team.

My S-10 was an early 2000 model, so the width between the wheel wells may have been less. 52" should be fine. As far as the 2 feet of boat hanging out, it helps to put anything heavy in the front of the boat (battery, etc) and absolutely nothing in the portion hanging over.

As long as it got there by the bass eating it and there aren't your fingerprints on the trout, then you are good. However, if they find that the trout has a bunch of lead weights stuffed in its belly, then there be trouble abrewin'... Sudden thought, what if a 12lb bass has delusions of grandeur and attempts to eat an 11lb trout...

I have a 10 ft. original Pond Prowler, as far as outer dimensions, it is nearly identical to the Pond Prowler 2. When I first got it, I had an S-10 truck and the bed was just a touch small to tow it in, even with the tailgate down. I now have a Colorado and a year ago, I pulled it out of the lake to take on vacation. It fit in the Colorado standard bed great (again with the tailgate down), no problem getting it between the wheel wells. I have a cover for the boat, which I strapped to the tiedowns and then used a half dozen bungy cords to keep the boat up tight against the cab and over the cover for additional security. It handled the 120 miles there and the 120 miles back with no problem.

I have a seat, but I am up & down depending on the technique. Dragging a jig or plastic, using a popper or any type of straight moving bait, I will sit. Skipping docks, using a jerkbait or walking a Spook, I prefer to stand. However, when standing, I find that as soon as I hook up, I sit down to fight the fish.

As good as the Bears defense can be, I find myself hoping the Rams get to play them in the second round. The only way for the Ram offense to improve against good defenses is to play against them and learn how to beat them. It won't be a surprise if a team with a good defense is in the NFC title game or Super Bowl, so the more the Rams can learn against the Bears, the better the Rams should fair down the road. This will be an acid test for McVay to see if he can make his offensive prowess work against a good defense that recently handled his team. If the Bears beat the Rams both home & away in the same season, then they indeed are the better team. Good news for you Chicago fans, the long range weather report has it raining on Saturday the 12th here in Southern California.

The interesting thing is there may be 1, just 1, queen of the pond roaming around your friends place. Someone is laying the eggs to hatch all those dinks and if you tend to only see big bluegills, that same someone is most likely keeping the bluegill population in check by eating the medium sized ones. I wouldn't be surprised if one day, after hooking up with a dink or bluegill, your line suddenly gets real heavy and your drag starts screaming as the she beast devours your catch and heads for the other side of the pond. Looking forward to the picture

That perspective changes based on where you are fishing. If you are on the Sabine or Delaware rivers, 1 to 2 lb fish are a positive. If you are fishing El Salto, 4 lb fish are a bother. Personally, I never consider any bass of any size a negative. If I have a choice between catching 25 bass in the 1 to 2 lb range or just one or two 3 lb fish, I'll take the former. I'm not in a tournament, so the weight means less than the action. Plus I find the 1 to 2 lb bass to be more acrobatic & creative in their attempts to escape. Fun fishing should be fun.

I actually use Keeper hooks for my thinner bodied plastics, but I have a mental hangup about using them for Flukes & Sluggos because there is alot more worm to go thru. You could give it a try, the worse thing that would happen is you would continue to miss fish on hooksets, the plastic would come back bunched around the hook. For colors, baby bass always works as well as colors that match the local forage.

I tend to favor small to medium sizes (4" - 5"), as long as they are heavy enough to cast the distance you need. Sluggos have more meat & are heavier than flukes, so they might be a better choice to start with. I like using a Gamakatsu skip gap hook with these because I am often skipping them under docks, but they will work well for coming through brush as well because the hooks stay in place better than many other T-rig hooks. They are a great bait to use from shore, because they have a lot of action without you having to move them far. The retrieve is similar to hard jerkbaits, except in your situation, the pauses are longer to let the bait sink (when twitched, the baits tend to rise in the water column). When they sink, they actually have a subtle swim action as opposed to diving to the bottom. You could make a pass or two over the tops of the brush pile to see if a fish comes out to get it and if no luck, make a couple of casts where you let it settle into the brush pile & twitch it out.

Tungsten is denser, so it is smaller in size compared to lead for the same weight. A smaller size of the same weight has a better chance of making it through the brush pile without hanging up.

Largest for 2018 was caught on a 5" Senko, color Amber Laminate (which sounds like the name of a dancer down at the local club). It was weightless & wacky rigged, skipped under a dock in about 4 feet of water. She was post spawn, weighing just 6 lb, 2 oz despite her 24" length & big fat head. BTW, I am not a big fan of quantum, I just got the shirt for free

I believe it will be the debut of Jordan Lee & Justin Lucas on MLF.

If I was in that situation, I'd rely heavily on a Texas rigged plastic with very few appendages (a personal favorite of mine are Roboworms). Use a really light tungsten weight, the lightest you can get away with even if you have to throw it with spinning gear to reach the cover. Work the outside edges first to cut down on hanging up and having to pull fish out of the cover. A second option would be weightless Senkos or soft plastic jerkbaits (flukes or sluggos), also T-rigged. These will take a little more time to sink, but will sit on top of the brush piles instead of going down in. Use the Senkos if the fish are eating, the soft plastic jerkbaits to get a reaction strike. The more I think about it, the second option might be better than the first.

That is interesting, I had the same exact experience with a JM baitcaster I bought a few years back, to the point i thought it was me. It seems like a well built reel, bu it just doesn't cast well, so I now use it for punching or throwing real heavy baits (big swimbaits or umbrella rigs). I have a couple of Pro Qualifiers that are better, but I found I prefer my old Curado and new Revo S substantially more. The same doesn't apply to the BPS rods, I have both spinning & casting rods of theirs that I like.

Yesterday was the last day of 2018 that I would go fishing. It had been productive for a cool winter day and as I was headed in, I stopped at one last isolated dock on a point that had often produced in the past. My first cast into the shade line produced a strike and I ended up with a nice bass that just topped the 4 lb mark. A fitting end to the day & year and I continued back to my dock to unload. One post-outing habit I have after cleaning the boat & stowing the gear is to make a couple of casts to test certain lures or to try something new that I didn't do out on the water. I had a new jerkbait tied on that I had only made a couple of casts with during the day, so I wanted to see its action and what depth it would run at. As I made a cast with it, my mind wandered back to the bass I caught coming it. I suddenly realized that bass was the largest "last bass of the year" I had ever caught. I don't keep records for such a thing, but the uniqueness of it stood out to me. Most of the time, the last fish you catch just melds in with the rest. As I was thinking about how cool that was, my rod loads up. A 12" bass who had done stretching exercises in the morning to make himself a keeper had grabbed my jerkbait. He was hooked well, he had all 3 hooks of the front treble in his mouth and the rear treble had swung around & stuck him as well. As I worked to unhook him, I suddenly realized that he was now my last bass of the year. Crud, so much for that record..

Tall with a young face, that combination will do you well over the rest of your life. Knowing you are even taller than I thought just makes the fish bigger, so it is a no doubt 5 lb in my opinion. Congratulations again.

I agree. Guessing that Aiden is near 13 years old & probably a little over 5 feet tall, his hands make that look like a solid 5 lb fish. The belly isn't huge (on the fish, not Aiden), but it isn't skinny either and the length pushes the weight well above the 3 lb range. I think he can call it a 5lber even and not be accused of telling a fish story.

From what I have read, that is obsolete and no longer supported by the manufacturer... ?

Not a fishing app per se, but I use the "thing counter" to keep track of how many I catch and on what. It is a simple counting app that has voice response when you add an item. It is fun to hear them mispronounced lure names...

I know it sounds odd, but the bass in my lake (& all So Cal I would guess) react to this event. Not specifically on the 21st, but typically 10 days to a week later their activity level picks up. It is more reliable than water temp to predict what they will be doing and where. Even though they won't be on beds for another 6 to 8 weeks, we will be entering prespawn over the next week or so. They will stay a little deeper for a week or two & then weather permitting, all heck breaks loose.

Back to the topic... I have a bass & bluegill that live in my koi pond. They started as a 12" bass and adult bluegill, the bass is now over 18" and the bluegill has kept pace in order to stay too big to eat. I believe the bass is a male so he most likely won't get any larger. Feeding & upkeep is not much more than if the koi lived alone. I feed the bass 10 large goldfish twice a week and the bluegill gets giant mealworms. The bluegill occasionally poaches a goldfish or two as well the koi pellets. The bass gets extra treats whenever my kids catch a grasshopper or other critter. The bass is definitely king of the pond, although at the peak of summer, he gets a little sluggish and the warm water koi invade his space. He likes to lounge under the lilly pads while the Bluegill is a bit more shy and will hide under rocks.

I don't believe So Cal is the capital of giant bass anymore since the DFG stopped stocking bite sized rainbow trout in lakes where they quickly became meals for DD Florida strain largemouth. We still have the climate to grow the largest bass (like Dottie) but the key forage is now gone. BTW, those trout plants used to occur mainly in public lakes. The lake I live on is small (85 acres) and has Northern largemouth, not Florida strain. I have caught three 8's & two 7's out of it, I don't know if there are bigger bass in it. The forage is bluegill & crawfish, no trout or shiners. You can catch good numbers on it if you understand the lake, but it is no means a bass factory. The private part is cool because it limits boat traffic in a county of 3 million people. There is a nearby private lake with Florida strain that popped out a 19lb a decade ago (Lake Mission Viejo). I only fished it twice, it wasn't much fun. It was more gridlocked than our freeways and there was zero etiquette by the other anglers. I prefer being the only boat fishing on the lake.

Wow, you just pegged my BS detector. I understand how some private lakes are avoided because the logistics are difficult, the other anglers are jerks or the cover is something you don't enjoy fishing. However, when the goal is to catch fish and you say you avoid a place because you catch too many fish, well "ding, ding, ding". If your goal is a challenge, why fish in Florida? It is easier to catch DD bass in Florida than most any other state other than maybe Texas. You want a challenge, go fish in Indiana.?

Sounds like someone is irritated that they dont have access to some private waters...