Troy85

I got my place booked on San Miguel for Mid June. I'm a shallow water marsh guy, so I'm really looking forward to trying to fish offshore deeper stuff. I've always come to TB during the spawn, this will be the first summer trip. Guess I'm going to have to read thru this topic again as a refresher.

Thanks. I messaged a camp owner on AirBnb, they said rentals opened up on May 1.

I usually bring a sandwich and a bag of chips. I'll almost always forget about eating it till the drive home in my truck.

I may be going up to TB in a couple weeks. Someone was telling me that currently the public launches are closed, and only locals are allowed to fish in the lake. This doesn't sound accurate to me, but I wanted to double check before making my final plans. Troy

I have an Older Model Xpress H18. I love it, rides great, plenty of room. I agree with @nmatthes, the compartment layout on their older models is not the best, but they have greatly improved on that the past several years. The newer Xpress X18s and 19s look awesome.

Good point. I personally try to avoid the over confident approach in almost everything I do, especially in bass fishing(haha). I've only been bass fishing for about 3 years, so I still have a ton of stuff to learn. I'd say for me, the area where I have the most ignorance of a situation, is when I'm not getting bit in a new area. Is that the fish aren't there, or do they not want what I'm throwing. Even if I try several different presentations, I'm still never quite sure if its a location thing, or a presentation thing. I guess being more confident in that respect comes with experience.

I agree. You can't just bumble through without confidence in what you are saying and expect to make it as a content creator. What if different fish are there for different reasons, or biting a specific bait for different reasons? Just last week I was fishing a grass edge with my brother. We pulled up, he started a with spinner bait, and I started with a dropshot. He was burning his spinner bait along the grass edge, I was dead sticking my dropshot. After a couple casts we both started catching fish every couple casts. If I had been alone, I may have theorized that fish were sitting near the bottom, in a post frontal funk, looking for a subtle presentation. If my brother had been alone, he may have reached a completely different conclusion about the mood and positioning of the fish. Was he catching actively feeding fish or getting a reaction strike? Was I catching only the inactive fish that were sitting near the bottom? Were the fish positioned near the bottom and going up to grab his spinner bait, or were their bass throughout the water column? Would the fish that bit my dropshot, have been willing to up and grab his spinner bait and vice versa?

You could just get an aluminum prop as your spare. They are much cheaper than SS and if its just being used as a spare. My spare prop is SS, but only because I replaced with a new prop a couple years back and kept my old one as a spare. I think if your only using it as a spare, it doesn't have to be brand new. It only has to get you back to the launch.

So sorry for your loss Tom. Troy

11"!!!! I remember when I was really new to bass fishing, I'd go into the store and see those 11" bass worms or swim-baits and think, a bass isn't going to to be able to eat that! Then I caught a 9lb bass, and realized that a big bass could eat a tractor tire if they wanted to.

I'm not terribly far. I bass fish mostly out of Delacroix, occasionally I'll go around Des Allemands.

Now I have Marty Stones voice stuck in my head.....thanks J......

I like that,Limited number of score tracker updates would add a lot of strategy to a limited fish format. Either that, or the updates only give you limited information, such as anglers positions but not total weights, or maybe other anglers weight, but not number of fish caught. So many options.

I think it would be interesting to set a limit on the number of fish they could weigh, but not allow culling. When the fish is caught, they need to decide at that time if they want to weigh it or not. If the limit it set to 25 for a particular event, they choose the 25 they want to weigh, after that they are done for the day.

@Team9nine is Johnny Morris!!!!!!! ??

I don't mind the smaller fish. It gives me another perspective, I can watch BASS for 5 biggest, then watch BPT for numbers. One thing I do wish they would change, is the zeroing of the weights after elimination. There should be some bonus for the anglers in the top spots imo.

Rain jacket and rain pants.

I used straight braid until about 2 years ago, now I use leaders on everything except top water and punching rig. I think I noticed an increase in catch rate, but at the same time I can't say if its at all related to the use of a leader, or if its just me improving in general. My take on it is, I can see the braid in the water, so I know the bass can see the braid. Whether or not the braid bothers the bass is a different story,I decide to play it safe and just tie on a fluro leader. The leader knot thru the guides is probably the worst part of the leader, and I'm terrible with knots so I've always been using the double uni. I finally forced myself to learn the FG knot and the difference in night and day. If you are going to use a leader, make yourself learn the FG knot, its by far the smoothest thru the guides.

I'll almost never throw a top water bait for more than 5 casts before giving up on it, unless whoever I'm fishing with is actively catching them on top.

I looked for 8 months and could never find a used one within my price range. I finally gave up and replaced the 115 on the back of my Xpress H-18 with a used 150 sho. Most of the ones I did see were either on boat trader or or boats.com. I learned from using those sites to keep the search vague, Just set the filters to xpress boats and used. I have seen several boats that were not accurately listed that I would have missed if i had set my filter to look for a specific model Xpress.

I throw it usually in dog days of summer, or the colder day of winter depending on where I'm fishing. If I'm fishing the more shallow and weed filled marsh, I throw it more in the winter holes after the grass has mostly died off. If I'm fishing more of a man made lake that doesn't have as much grass or more of a hard bottom I throw it more in the heat of the summer around docks.

I wish they would. I wish they had cameras live cameras covering the BASS Team Championship that's going on right now at Hartwell.

I cut down on my color selection about 2 years ago. I used to have all these colors and I almost never threw them, and when I did I didn't get bit. Now I stick to a few basics, junebug, watermelon red, black/blue for worms/creatures. For swim baits I have junebug and Chartreuse. It is interesting what they say about white and Chartreuse looking the same was white. In my experience, I catch way more bass on Chartreuse swim baits than I do on white, I noticed such a difference that I don't even buy white swim baits anymore.

Late Summer on the tidal waters I fish. Water is 90ish degrees and there usually there isn't much wind to move the water on those slack tide days to position the fish.

I was very surprised when Jordan Lee Left BASS. He had won 2 of his 5 classics, I thought for sure he was gonna stick around and try to surpass KVD or Clunn for Classic wins.