Wayne P.

From what I could find on boating regulations, the Coast Guard does not have a paddle or oar requirement. In Virginia, it is not listed in the equipment requirement section. It is listed in the recommended safety devices.

Well after checking what I have tied on now and have been using this year so far: Chatterbait-1/4 and 3/8 oz, Rat-L-Trap- 1/4 and 1/2 oz, Silver Buddy- 1/4 oz., Plastic Craw-Tx rigged, wacky rigged Trick worm and finesse worm, and a spinnerbait- 1/4 oz. edited: I forgot to mention another one I have tied on- a suspending jerkbait.

Good job on the "complicated" construction project. It looks familiar, LOL If at some point you want to upgrade, use some larger diameter wheels. They will roll with even less resistance.

The electric steer trolling motors are best suited for those that troll like when fishing for walleyes and crappie where precise maneuvering is not necessary. For bass fishing, a foot control cable steer or manual hand control is much preferred. Some models of those are available with a built-in transducer.

cwb60, the hook in the picture is a Circle Hook and it has the worst hook up ratio of any hook you can use. It is a non-hookset type of hook. The regular Octopus hook is many times better than the Octopus Circle Hook.

I have 8 spinning rigs spooled with braid. Yesterday I tried the new Fireline Tracer Braid with a wacky rigged Trick worm. I first tied the hook to the dark part of the line and caught a bass, then I cut off the section of dark line and tied to the bright yellow part and caught a couple more bass. The water was slightly stained with about 3' visibility. Most of my other rigs have the Stren Super Braid gold color that I sometimes use with a fluorocarbon leader to make the braid sink for weighless presentations.

IF the light is a lazer and it projects a beam like a lazer, then the light it emits will be reflected off whatever surface it is aimed. So if the lazer attracts bass, it will attract the bass to the projected beam and not the lure. IF the light is a lazer and the beam is prevented from being projected and just shines on the inside of the lure, then it may as well be a LED and is no different than the other red LED lures. The statement about pets chasing the red lazer light is correct, they chase the reflected beam, not the light source. That pretty much shoots a hole in the marketing statements.

I have owned 5 square bow boats and each has had the trolling motor mounted on the port or starboard side. The mount was parallel with the gunnel and the motor deployed on the corner of the bow. Each would track a little off center without a rudder of some sort. I used a transom mount trolling motor for the rudder on the boats without an outboard. This is my former 12' jon boat:

Are you running two motors on the same battery?

Aluma-Bass, that one and most of the others I caught were within the top two-three feet of water above the submerged vegetation.

fishfordollars, maybe the phrase "fishing weightless worms" has some of the kids confused.

I weighed both on my bullet reloading scale. The Zoom finesse worm (watermelon/red) is 67.8 grains and a Zoom Trick worm (mocassin blue) is 98 grains.

drmnbig, I use a Canon mini-DV video camera. It takes videos on small tapes and also does stills on an SD card. It can take a still picture of a frame of the video tape too. I just turn the view screen around so I can compose the picture and hit the remote to do a still or a video. I made a camera mount that inserts into the rear deck seat pedistal socket of the boat I have now. On my previous 12' jon boat I had the same mount attached to the transom. When I had a fiberglass bass boat, I just used a standard camera tripod held down by bungee cords to the rear deck.

Aluma-Bass, I don't everytime I go but at Briery it's a common occurance. Even those with minimal fishing skills don't find it remarkable when fishing there. When they are schooling in late summer, you can catch them that size two at a time on multi-hook lures. This is the 5-5:

I fished Briery today and it sure was WINDY. Warmest water I found was 55 degrees. The air temp got up to 79 this afternoon. Largest bass caught was 5 pounds, 5 ounces with a 1/4 oz Trap. Two of my Traps got one of the hooks of a treble broken off by large bass, one of the hooks was the cheap factory chrome and the other was a Owner.

I fish both of them wacky and weedless wacky style as my primary presentation. Occasionally I'll use them on a shakey head.

You need to learn how to adjust the spool tension knob on the reel side plate.

NO

If you are interested in the Humminbird SIDE IMAGING units and want expert knowlege of that technology, go the Yahoo and sign up with the Side Imaging Group. HB reps and users discuss everything about it. Bottom Line had a unit that was called sidefinder and Lowrance will be introducing a Side Scan add-on for the HDS units this summer.

I remember him as well as Gadabout Gaddis before him

That temp senario happened in Va. three weeks ago. The 70 degree air temp warmed the morning 43 degree surface water up 9 degrees during the day. I was catching them just under the surface with Traps, and Chatterbaits above vegetation. I don't fish the bottom of the water column when the water is warming up this time of year.

I have a Gateway desktop, a Tiger Direct desktop, a HP desktop, and a Toshiba laptop. Before I retired, I had a company provided IBM laptop. No problems with any of them.

IMPY03, Sat. I am helping someone practice for a upcoming Buggs Island tournament. Sunday I'll be at the Orange County Sports Show. I'll probably hit Briery on Monday and Hunting Run on Thursday or Friday. Hunting Run opens this Sat and will only be open Thursday thru Sunday for a while. The schedule is posted on the Spotsylvania County web site.

NYfishwow, Roland Martin spent his whole life fishing too, but he did the Helicopter Lure infomercial. It's called MARKETING.

I've posted this before on other threads, here it is again. Use braids based on the DIAMETER not the pound test and you won't have any problems. If you would not use 4# test mono, then don't use a braid that has a mono equivilent diameter of 4# .