OCdockskipper

At the Elite tournament on Lake Havasu back in 2015, Tim Horton found a bed fish that looked to be a large male. He spent about 45 minutes on it, finally got it to bite, and brought to the boat a 3.5 lb Redear sunfish. If a former AOY can make this mistake on a lake with crystal clear water like Havasu, I don't feel so bad when I make a half dozen pitches to the shadow of a rock...

For painful, I would have to say getting a treble hook stuck in my thumb between the skin & the nail while the fish was still attached to the other treble. The pain came from the fish flopping & jumping, I had to press him against the side of the boat to get him to stop moving in order to begin unhooking both of us. Once he was gone, the pain of the hook in the thumb wasn't much, so I clipped the hook down to a small section & continued fishing. It was 6:00 am and I wasn't going to waste the morning going to a doctor. Went later that afternoon to have it removed. Less painful but more exhausting was getting stuck knee high in some mud at the back of a small lake in Georgia this past March. I tried to take a short cut across a feeder creek, marshy area & found out why people don't take short cuts there. After struggling for 15 minutes trying to extricate myself, I ended up laying flat across some branches and pulling my legs out of my boots (& then pulling the empty boots out of the mud). The anxiety of being stuck was increased because I had seen a small gator about 15 minutes prior to that, not more than 50 yards from where I got stuck. Dumb Californian out in the Georgia backwoods...

80% casting, 20% spinning on my home lake. The lake is small, fairly clear without much in the way of cover that fish can bury into & break me off, so over the years I have progressed towards smaller baits & lighter lines. The numbers change drastically when I visit relatives in Texas & the South.

The Beatles - "It's the sausage pepperoni hot dog band"

If that is your average on every lake you fish, then just know you can learn how to catch more (& larger, most likely). If that is your average on a certain body of water, check with another angler that you trust what he averages there. If his is low too, then it may be a tough lake.

I tend to refer to Bluegill that large as being "as big as your face". It makes folks think how really big that is.

Elton John - "Hold me closer, Tony Danza" KISS - "I want to rock & roll all night, and part of every day" TOTO - "I guess it rains down in Africa"

It was a one word question - "Bacon?"

Then I stand corrected. Congrats on the new PB.

I am going to get yelled at for this post by many, so let me preface it by saying that is a great bass. Congratulations on catching a huge fish, one that any member of this forum would be proud of. My initial reaction when I saw the pictures was that that hawg was in the 7-9 lb class. When you mentioned the fish was over 27" long, it took me back a little because my impression from the photo's was that it was shorter than that. The first photo is a little tough to judge because of the way that it is being held out towards the camera. The second picture includes your hand and the reel, so that gives us some perspective. The fish appears to be about 6 1/2 times longer than your index finger and about 4 1/2 times longer than your spinning reel. Most adult men's index fingers are about 3.5" long and most spinning reels are about 5" long, both of which end up putting the fish in the 22"-23" range (which puts it in the 7-8 lb range). If I am wrong about this, I apologize up front. I'm not trying to embarrass you or call you out, rather just pointing out what (to me) jumped out as kind of obvious and what I believe many others may have thought when they read these posts. Once again, congratulations on catching that monster, very impressive.

Tom, unless you have been awarded a well deserved and long overdue doctorate in bass fishing and are addressing the rest of us as your convalescents, I believe the word you are looking for is patience... . In any case, your information is spot on.

Another example of the dangers of sunbathing. I bet not a single one of those dead bass was using sunscreen...

Any chance the bass was playing opossum?

A gun, to shoot myself for having to downsize to a single Plano 3700 tackle box.

Like many have already posted, for me it is a "depends on..." answer. The earlier post where a person asked "What are you doing out here?" is an example that I would take positively. That sounds like a person curious to learn, wanting to understand what is happening and not necessarily infringing on the person fishing. My response would have been the same, tell him what is underwater and invite him to fish it with me. It is the "entitlement" questions, the grilling for information, that rubs me the wrong way. Normally, I will give any & all information to youngsters who are fishing, but even some of them can be jerks. Just yesterday, I was 70 yards away from a designated shoreline fishing area when a young teen yelled as loud as he could "Are you catching anything?". Keep in mind this is a small lake surrounded by homes and it was still early morning, so I am assuming the nearby neighbors were still sleeping. I responded with a thumbs up, not wanting to encourage the kid to keep yelling. No such luck, he then yelled "What are you using?". There were other people fishing where he was and I didn't want to motor over there & disturb their spot to answer him & I sure as heck wasn't going to yell back, so I just held up the Ned rig. Kid must have eagle eyes, because he then yelled "What color?". That was enough for me, I just waved, turned my back and went the opposite direction.

Good luck. I hope you have a great time and I look forward to hearing about your experience.

The method for removing gut hooked bass per the diagram above works amazingly well. It doesn't take much time to flip the hook around and then pop it up out of their mouth, so they aren't out of the water that long. Once you do it, you get a feel for it real quick. I caught a bass this past weekend hooked in a way I had never seen before. He hit a Tiny Torpedo & when I got him to the boat, I found that the lure was outside his mouth under his jaw. The rear treble hook was completely in his mouth, all 3 hooks in the mouth near the tongue (pointed down). I have no idea how this fish hooked himself this way and even less guesses as to how I could have removed the hook intact, so I just snipped each hook loose (destroying the treble) and pulled it down through his jaw in order to release him.

It was a dog, a miniature Dachshaund (sp?). I think a cat would have freaked out being that close to the water.

A neighbors dog, with a face only a mother could love (cool dog nonetheless)...

Disrespectful people, specifically when they are doing something in public that effects others yet they are completely oblivious. Examples include driving slower than the rest of traffic while in the fast lane, standing in the middle of a walkway as people are trying to pass, being loud and obnoxious in a place where others can't escape your noise (plane, restaurant, etc).

I use HDX superglue, it is the in-house brand for Home Depot. I prefer liquid over gel because I also use it on leader knots. It performs really well and is cheap, 4 small tubes for $1.97. I prefer multiple small tubes because if you mess up & accidently glue the cap on, you aren't throwing away a big bottle of it. 4 tubes last me 6 to 8 months.

I recently changed from that to an app for my phone (Android) called "Thing Counter" because it lets me count catch per lure type. It also gives voice feedback, which I smile at every time I add a fish & hear that robotic voice say "5 Ned Rig" or "3 Shakey Craw".

Who needs to draw?

While I have never been there myself, maybe some of the members who make the trips down to the Mexican resort lakes can chime in. Their reports from those lakes seem to have both numbers (80 fish days) as well as size (plenty in the 6-12 lb range). I believe these are world class waters not because they have a low population density, but because they have low fishing pressure combined with the right environment to grow larger than average bass. Your comment regarding counting fish being lame is interesting when you later give the definition of a "red letter day" being a certain number of a certain sized fish. In that scenario, you too are counting fish, but only those within your parameters. To summarily dismiss what interests others as lame and try to classify your preference as worthwhile is wholly subjective. If someone felt spending 5 days on the water for 1 bite from a double digit bass was lame, they would be wrong. Not because that kind of trophy hunting is somehow more worthwhile, but because for most of us, bass fishing is recreation, something we do to relax & enjoy ourselves. Who am I or you to declare that an activity that accomplishes that for someone else is lame just because we don't like it? I count the number of keepers I catch because I enjoy recording such information and looking back at it over the years, both for recollection and for comparison purposes. I enjoy every fish I catch, no matter the size - each one is different and I never get tired of checking them out. I will use the techniques and methods designed specifically for larger fish, but I won't do it at the exclusion of catching as many keepers as I can figure out how to. I don't begrudge what interests you, I won't call it lame, it is your deal & I am glad you enjoy that. As an aside, my older brother is similar to you in regards to fishing. He has very little interest in fresh water fishing, he instead loves to go after Marlin, Sailfish & big tuna. He spends a lot of money to pursue this passion, but enjoys every bit of the process. Different strokes for different folks.

Kennedy sank me as well. Justin Lucas had made something like 26 cuts in 30 events prior to the start of this year. He has missed all 4 so far in 2017 & I had him in 2 of them.