OCdockskipper

In Southern California, it is nearly ritualistic to drive to Vegas for a weekend of fun. However, what once was a nice 3.5 hr drive has now become a hair pulling nightmare. First, the sheer number of people on the roads (even with Covid lockdowns) dictates when you can & can't make the trip. Want to leave at 5:30 on Friday night? Expect to pull into Vegas near midnight. You have to drive at specific times or days to avoid miles long backups of cars. Second, if you do find a time that has traffic moving, there appears to be no rules of the road. People are driving 65 mph in the fast lane with a dozen cars lined up behind them. Others use the slower lane(s) including the truck lane to pass. Many who pass look like they are playing "Frogger", jumping in front of cars & trucks as they try to weave their way ahead of traffic. Trucks move into the fast lane to pass another truck, but take 2 miles to do it, causing a line of cars behind them. The worst example is in the areas where the road is 2 lanes, the fast lane has a car doing just about the same speed as the intermittent trucks/slower traffic in the slow line. You may have as many as 25 cars behind the inconsiderate fast lane driver and along comes Johnny Me First in the slow lane, passing 3 or 4 cars until he is slowed by a truck in that lane. He then wedges himself into the fast lane and a minute later as he has now passed the truck, repeats the process. Into the slow lane, speed up to pass people & wedges himself back into the fast lane. Imagine doing that when you were in a line for something, jumping in front of people just because someone is too nice to say anything. The rules of the road are so logical and make for such a more pleasant driving experience, it is a shame more people don't follow them. I am assuming driverless cars will, hence my interest in them being on the road as well. AJay, two things: 1) You are absolutely correct; 2) Being a scold is not a good look (which I guess I am being for writing this. Such the hypocrite I am) ?

I would suggest to anyone who hasn't skipped lures to not get hung up on having to use a baitcaster. Unless you are on a lake with extremely heavy cover, you can pull any bass out from docks with spinning gear. In fact, once you start them coming towards you, a good number of fish leave the dock voluntarily for deeper water (at least on my lake). I have 2 different skipping outfits, both spinning. The first has 17 lb test, the second has 8 lb test (both Nanofil with fluoro leader). I have to be cautious with the latter as far as dragging fish over things or rubbing the line against the bottom of Zebra mussel encrusted boats, but no more than normal when using that strength line. The latter lets me skip 1/16 oz Ned rigs or small weightless flukes/sluggos way back under the docks, which I find to be really effective on calm days because the entry is sneaky quiet. The best lure to learn to skip with is a 5" Senko, rigged wacky with an O ring, weightless. Don't use knockoffs, use a Senko, the O ring will give you more fish per worm than normal. Not only does that bait glide across the water when skipped, if you do miss a target, there is no damage to whatever you hit. Once you gain confidence with that, you can move on to baits that have lead in them.

As anecdotal confirmation of the above, I have caught bass that have spit up or were in the process of spitting up Senko's when landed. Some of the Senkos looked like they had been sitting in belly acid as opposed to just water, completely discolored and very rough. My hunch is they had them in their stomach for at least a few days. I've also caught bass who were in the process of pooping Roboworms, but that is a different bait for a different thread.

I still like their "keeper" hooks for fishing Texas rigs, especially with thinner plastics like Robo worms. It doesn't tear up the nose as fast, making the worm last longer and you really can't misalign it when rigging. My first bass was on a Mister Twister worm, a bright red original. My favorite Mister Twister worm is also discontinued, their Slither worm. The tail section continued up the back of the worm, almost like a dorsal fin, so the tail would have its action and the worm itself would have another, more subtle action. I'd buy them if they'd make them. An interesting current product they have is their Poc'it Fry stick worm. I don't fish it like a Senko, rather I tear them in half and use them on a Ned rig. They aren't as buoyant as ZMan products, but they have that similar bulk and the air pockets give a different look without changing the subtle presentation.

While I am frugal (cheap?), I look at the cost of Senko's vs knockoffs in a different light. If I am fishing a stick worm in a situation where the bite is a reaction bite or they are eating anything that moves, I may use a knockoff. Not because I am trying to save money, but because my stickbait bag is so full, I'm trying to create space. If I use up all of my Green Pumpkin/Amber laminate Senko's, I'll buy more. When I finally use the last of the Green Pumpkin Berkeley Generals, I'm not replacing them. If the bite is finesse based on the lure swimming slowly towards the bottom (like a small baitfish), I'll use a Sluggo or Fluke over a stickworm, they glide more than a weightless TRig stickbait does. If the bite is finesse based on the lure wiggling on its fall to the bottom (like a crayfish), then it is a Senko 100%. The other stickbaits don't produce that action that a Senko does & since I am trying to catch fish instead of save money, I'll use the best tool for the job.

In a tree?

So last year and up to last week, I would choose 2 rosters. My top picks would go to my entry and I would give my 2nd choice picks to my wife for her entry. This year, my 2nd choice picks have been brutally horrible. So I gave up. I went to my wife, had her pull up the website, told her that the lake they were fishing in was in Tennessee & nothing else. The results? She chooses Brandon Cobb, day 1 leader in bucket C, another top 10 in Lee Livesay in bucket E, has 2 more anglers in the cut and her 5th choice is Brandon Lester, a Chickamauga regular just 8 spots out of the cut. She is crushing me by about 200 points. In the future, I may have her pick my lineups as well...

When carp are grouped up shallow, I don't see bass around them. However, when a single carp is in a foot or two of water, mucking stuff up, I typically find a bass or two hanging out behind him. Close enough that they can see what the carp is dislodging and be able to swoop in & eat a fleeing crawdad or minnow, but not right in there with them.

The thing I find unusual is that male bass will spend days making a bed, attracting a female to spawn, guarding the eggs & then guarding the fry when suddenly, as if a switch has been thrown, they stop guarding the fry and will eat them instead. That is a lot of work for a meal.

Just so I'm clear, have you attended 14 Classics or fished in 14 Classics?

A bag of grapes. I kept the bag, released the grapes.

I never thought to ask, did you ever get to spend any time with Malcom Smith? Amazing man with an amazing life story, not unlike you.

I believe the answer is a combination of components, not just a single part. Yes, smallmouth fight harder, but largemouth do fight hard, just for a shorter period of time. Depending on the lake, they will also put on a acrobatic display, not to the extent of a smallmouth, but one nonetheless. So you aren't comparing a 10 to a 0, rather a 10 to a 7. As far as prettier fish, that is in the eye of the beholder. I find the lighter colored largemouth to be better looking than any smallmouth, but I also prefer brunettes over blondes. When they get larger, smallmouth lose their proportions, their head is too small for the rest of their body. The head on a largemouth grows with the rest of him, so one that reaches lunker size doesn't look like some weird Picasso type fish. Wild rivers are indeed beautiful, but on the west coast, they are rare and if they do exist, have trout instead of bass. So like the average looking girl who will go to the prom with you, just being available counts for something. That also plays into being catchable, smallmouth are notorious for being here today, gone tomorrow. You can't catch what isn't there. One of the reason why sunfish and catfish are popular than Musky is you can catch the former while the latter wears you out for just one bite. I agree that fighting ability is more important than size, that is one of the reasons I prefer catching a 1 lb bass over a 2 lb trout. However, when that size changes the fight, it needs to be accounted for as well. I inadvertently hook catfish over the 15 lbs every year and they fight like the dickens. However, after about 10 minutes of them pulling my boat around and taking drag, I just want to land them, check them out & move on. Catching a fish is a date, not a relationship. I'll end this with something I wrote to another poster who felt like you. A 5 lb smallmouth jumping 2 feet in the air will take your breath away. However, the first time you see an 8lb largemouth break the surface with his big ol' bucket-head and thrash about, mouth open, I guarantee a "Holy S***!!" will come out of your mouth, even if it is a Sunday and you just got back from church.

The story was that Kreit was staying at a friends house a couple of years prior to the tournament and fished some of that water (don't know if the friend recommended it). When Sabine got put on the schedule for 2013, Kreit noticed that those areas just outside of Houston he had fished were actually part of the Sabine River system, but the trick was you couldn't get to them by boat via the Sabine. You had to make the run into the Gulf & Galveston Bay to work your way back to it. So he used prior knowledge of the waters, knowledge of the fishing boundaries and a little creativity to have a high risk, high reward spot. Those who 2018 just drove to the spot didn't do any of the legwork normally required to find a long distance spot.

No, that wasn't their point. It was that other tournament anglers using TV as a resource to shortcut the process of finding fish. The other anglers had 2 tournaments to figure out where to fish and they only decided to go where Kreit and McClelland found fish based on TV coverage

This kind of reminds me of the situation that arose back when the Elite series began fishing the Sabine River. Weights were low the first year they fished it, 10lbs made the cut and 49-12 won it. There were only a few places were decent sized fish were found and anglers were fighting about those spots (Dean Rojas & Alton Jones had an issue). What most people didn't realize in that tournament was that Jeff Kreit & Mike McClelland had figured out how they could get to a better area, yet still stay in the tournament waters by making a run into the Gulf of Mexico, through Galveston Bay and into the waters just outside of Houston (a 240 mile round trip). In 2013, McClelland made the run, but finished out of the top 10 while Kreit stayed close to home. When the Elites returned to Sabine in 2015, they both decided to make the run. McClelland came in 2nd while Kreit had a top ten bag for day 3 when he broke down & came in late from the long run. They had found a location that no one else had and it was a way to compete & possibly win the event. It was covered in the TV show, in fact the producers even drew a map of exactly what it took to get to the small area they were fishing. So the 2018 event rolls around and a dozen anglers now make the same run. Kreit was furious, not so much about these other pros wanting to make the run, but that they only way they discovered the spot was by watching TV. He & McClelland did all the legwork and now others wanted to benefit from it without doing any real research. In this case, I understand the frustration. https://www.bassmaster.com/news/daily-limit-risk-run-sabine

I hadn't thought of that, so I just spent 15 minutes looking at events 2 thru 5 to see if there were any other oddities. Event #2 (The Classic) - Trista511 didn't play the 1st event, then tied for the most points in the 2nd. She lost the tiebreaker by 8 oz. She has played in events 3-6, but has never scored more than 1035 pts for any other event. Event #3 (Eufaula) - 15th place went to Scott4444, who hadn't participated in events 1 & 2 and didn't participate in events 4-6. I know he only won a hat, a shirt & some lures, but it was worth $50. Odd that he only played once. Also in event 3, the winner (Stratos1223) and 6th place (Troy15) stopped playing after getting those prizes. I would think winning would motivate one to continue. Also for Stratos 1223, for event 2, he only chose 2 anglers instead of the full lineup. Amazing going from not being able to fill out the lineup correctly to picking the winners the following event. Event #4 (St. Lawrence) - No anomalies, but this one would have been difficult to game because so many favorite anglers did well, meaning many legitimate players scored high. For example, in our group, we had 4 players score in the 1440's and another 2 top 1400, yet none won a prize because 20th place was a whopping 1464. To compare, in this past event, 1st place was 1342 and 20th prize was 1278. There wasn't much room to skirt the system because of how well so many people did. Event #5 (Champlain) - The 4th place finisher (fishfreak111) and the 19th place finisher (kiinyon) were both playing in their first event and won prizes. Both of these also played event six and finished with under 1100 points. I don't know, maybe I am seeing something that isn't there and some folks are having wonderful beginners luck. I just want to see as many Bassresource members as possible win prizes. BTW, they corrected the entry form, it is now for Guntersville.

Oh, I agree, and I wasn't talking about our group. I was talking about the contests website & software, the parts BASS & Rapala are responsible for. Every event, there are at least a couple of entries who have played zero events up until the current event and after the first day, they are in the top 20. Now they don't always stay there, by the time day 4 rolls around, they often can slide a little. It just seems odd how often people who have not played the entire year can be in the top 20 over the other 20,000 plus participants. My semi-educated hunch is that someone figured out a way that new entries, people playing for the first time, can submit their choices AFTER the event is underway. Maybe it gives new entries a way to submit their choices 6 or 7 hours into the event. What one could do then is create new entrants for each event, and as the first day is wrapping up, choose anglers based off of Basstrak or TV coverage. It wouldn't guarantee you a win, but could give a major edge by eliminating those anglers who are struggling and giving you a heads up that a low percentage angler, such as Weidler, is doing good. I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it reminds me of some of the hacks people found (or were given) in online poker when the first few sites were operating a decade plus ago.

Here is something else that will make your head hurt ? I went back and looked at the scoring for Fantasy Fishing for St Clair & who won. The person who came in 3rd (Buickparkave) had not played the entire year, this was his first entry. He went with favorites in the top buckets (Mueller, & both Johnstons) but then switched it up and went with the longest of long-shots by choosing Weidler in bucket E. I know this sounds like a conspiracy theorist, but how does a first time player who is choosing favorites decide to switch it up on a guy who has never cashed on the Great Lakes and was at the bottom of the AOY standings, only to have that dark horse win? I really wonder if there is a glitch in the Fantasy Fishing programming that allows late entries to slide in...

Bill Weidler seems like a great guy, I am happy he won the St. Clair event. He has never made a cut at the Great Lake events and last month came in 78th and 80th at the NY events. So who were the folks prescient enough to choose him in Bucket E? He had .3% of the vote, which out of the 35,000 some players comes out to 105 people choosing him. However, there is some percentage of players who are dead wood, they signed up, but are no longer playing. For example, there are 75 people in our group, but only 50 or so that are playing, so we have a 33% deadwood figure. Using that as the whole contest number would knock it down to 70 people who chose him. However, I think our group has higher participation than the contest as a whole. For example, I have sucked this year and am in 16th place in our group, which puts me at the 79th percentile if you count our dead wood. However, in the overall contest, they have me at the 90th percentile. So based on that, the overall contest probably has another 9% more dead wood than our group, or 42% deadwood. Applying that to the 35,000 number of official players means there are only 20,300 active players, of which 61 chose Weidler. Great longshot to hit, especially in the E bucket. Was anyone in our group part of the 61 players who chose him? Also, for the total weight (now a 40 point bonus), I chose 86-6. Missed it by one ounce. Crap.

I'd add that not only are all waters different, every year is different on the same body of water.

The universal covers are only good for keeping dust off while it is stored in a covered area. Water will penetrate it and wind will blow it down the street. I keep my Pond Prowler on the water year round, so I decided to get a really good cover to protect it. I had a guy who makes covers for saltwater dingys custom fabricate one for me. It cost me $500, but has served me for 6 years and keeps the interior of the boat immaculate no matter the weather. It will easily last me another 4 years, so I look at it as costing me $50/yr.

I believe the saying goes "Color doesn't matter until it does". That fits for me. Most days, there are numerous colors that work. Every now & then, there is one color that obnoxiously outfishes all of the others that you try.

My condolences Tom. If a time ever comes that you want to get back on the water, be it for an hour or a day, I'm just down the 5 freeway from you. Let me know & I'll make it happen.

I would say it weighs 8 lbs the way it is, but if you washed off the dirt & leaves stuck to him, he would be closer to 3 lbs.