Troy85

They do for the Texas Fest event every year. I bet as time goes on they will move and more of their events to the catch weight release format.

Never caught a bass with a soft plastic, but I did catch one with a 1/4oz jighead in its stomach. Jighead appeared to have been in there quite some time, as it was rusted to the point where the eye of the jig was almost completely rusted away. Fish seemed perfectly healthy, had a stomach full of shad in addition to the jighead.

Probably from the severe increase of traffic as northern lakes start freezing over. This is the time of year where AJ's activity on the forums quadruples.

I think it all depends on the context of when you are fishing. If you are pre fishing a tournament, and there are other competitors boats around, the bass will usually never let go, you can sling it around the boat like a yo yo and its gonna just hold on tight. Come tournament day, they give you about 16ms to set the hook before spitting the bait. I don't intentionally let them swim out. I did hear Roland Martin once say that if the fish takes it and swims away with it, there is a good chance there are other bass around that he's trying to get away from, so be sure to cast back into that same area after the landing the fish.

Did you try throwing a small silver spoon? Buddy of mine will break out little silver spoons that you use for stream trout.

That sucks man. I remember once at a public launch, we came back from a day of fishing only to find that someone had to stolen the tires off our trailer. That complicated the rest of the day.

LOL! I am so tired of those commercials.

I don't know if bass know what day of the week it is , but I know cold fronts do. They always come thru Friday and bring those 20+ N winds all weekend.

According to LA sportsman, night fishing is hot right now. 7 fish over 10lb were caught last month.

Ott and Wheeler will both be up there near the top of the leader board.

I'd be willing to bet that KVD makes most of his yearly income on advertising deals. Tournament winnings are probably his extra fun money. haha. I did always find it funny, when a lot of the big names were switching to MLF they praising MLF for making it easier for anglers to make money, and saying how hard it was for guys to make it in Bass. The funny part was, all the guys saying this, were the ones who had already made it big in bass.

I grew up inshore salt water fishing. From the time I was about 3-4 my dad started taking me, we went just about every single Saturday, Sun up to sundown. My younger brother got wise as to where we were going every saturday, so he started going at about 2-3 years old. From the time I was 3 till my late 20's I had probably been bass fishing maybe 10 times. My younger cousin lives in SC, as he got older he got into bass fishing. So I would go with him when we visited SC. On one of our trips I caught a 9lb bass. I was hooked after that. I only go salt water fishing a few times a year now, mostly when my cousin from SC is town, all of the other trips are spent bass fishing. My dad and brother followed suit on the bass fishing not long after I did.

I'm sorry honey, its not you, its me...I just can't be with someone who believes they out fished me.

Tom, I know you fish the clear water lakes of Socal. You use straight fluro/mono or do you use straight braid a majority of the time?

I recently started using a leader. Although Saturday my uni knot failed on a hookset, so now I'm reconsidering if its really worth it.

I usually start with the frog. Its easy to cover a lot of water in just a few minutes and get a feel for what the fish are doing. While throwing it, I'll look for bait and other surface activity, If i don't see much happening on the surface, I usually won't stick with the frog for long. From my experience, if the fish want the frog, you usually know within the first few minutes. At least that's how it goes for me, I'm not a patient frog fishermen, if I throw the frog for 10-15 minutes and don't get bit, I'm putting it down for something else.

We always used beef melt, then find the nastiest looking brownest swamp water we could and put our nets there. I haven't done in probably 20 years. It was fun most of the time, unless you pull up your net and you got a big ole snake chomping on your melt(I'm not a big fan of snakes).

Best Advice: Don't leave fish to find fish. Worst Advice: There is this website called tackleresource.

I've never owned any of your boat options so I can't help you there. As far as trolling motor, I'd definitely go with the 24v, get a 3 bank charger so you can charge both trolling batteries and your cranking battery. I would also recommend maxing out engine HP.

The same cannot be said about a tournament fishermen's deck.....a buddy of mine has been known to show up at the dock for weigh-in with deep sea lures tied on some of his rods.

Booyah Pad Crasher.

You can give the fish a little line to swim without giving it completely slack line, just lower your rod tip slowly and see if the fish will swim down from the branch or log that its pinned up against.

Sam makes a good point. Many times I catch bass and inshore salt water fish at the same spot. There is so much marshland available that you couldn't fish it all in a lifetime, it also gives boats plenty of room to spread out. I launched on Saturday at a launch that must have 200 trailers in the parking lot, and I saw 1 other boat fishing all day.

I really think this plays a part. For the 19 schedule BPT waited till after BASS released their schedule, then scheduled their events to make it where pros could fish both. At least that is how it looked from an outside perspective. Only other logical explanation is @OCdockskipper Zona's theory. Probably dropped it when trying to take a picture of a "slaunch".

Pro: At that price, shipping will be free and you can get a sticker. I've never used that particular scale, but a buddy of mine has one and he likes it.