RPreeb

Spent a day at Arches NP and the Moab, UT area last week:

I've known guys who pour their own bullets for muzzle loaders too. Should be plenty of uses for old lead that are better than just dumping it in a landfill to leach into the groundwater.

At the risk of personal embarrassment, I have to confess that any experienced fisherman would probably fallout his boat laughing at most everything I do. What little experience I have was self taught 55-60 years ago, plus what little I've learned here over the last couple of years. As a result my technique with just about any bait is lacking in just about every aspect. I have nobody else with whom to fish along side to learn anything more than just by doing. I don't have a boat (a small canoe is my ride), I don't have electronics, I have 2 baitcasters and one spinning rig, and don't always take all 3 with me so as to cut down on my own confusion. The last time I went fishing for bass, I caught 2 walleyes and a crappie. That should tell a lot. ?

Well, looks like I'm in the right ball park with the setup I bought yesterday. I've been using the only spinning rig I owned, and was not that thrilled with it, as it was bought for inshore saltwater and was just too heavy for most of what I wanted here. I went with a BPS/Cabelas Fish Eagle 6'6" ML F and a Pflueger President 30 spooled with 8# Stealth Braid. I seem to be at least in the general range of what I see most in this thread. Feels good in my hands, and I hope to at least get out to the town pond in the next week to have a go with it and see if I can hook a couple of the dinks that live there.

Right handed Baitcaster - Cast right, crank right. Spinning - cast right, crank left.

When my brother and I were kids growing up in Wisconsin and Minnesota in the late '50s, finding a lure that someone lost was real excitement. We didn't have "disposable income". What money we came by was usually from finding returnable bottles and getting the $.03 each for taking them to the corner store. Lures were valuable to us and finding a usable one hanging in a tree was always a significant event. I don't think I ever had more than 3 or 4 lures at any one time back then. We never had the sort of good fortune when lure hunting that several posting here did, but we always had our eyes open, and we would go to great lengths to retrieve one when we spotted it. We were even known to quit fishing and go home, park my friend's boat (aluminum rowboat with 5 hp Johnson) and take our 50 year old Old Town canoe back in to where the lure we spotted was hung up. Losing a lure was almost unconscionable. It could ruin an entire week, or longer, if I lost a precious Hula Popper. We were even known to go over the side of the boat to make an underwater recovery when a favorite bait got hung up and there was no other way to unsnag it.

Saw this a couple of years ago when I was back in the north country for my 50th HS reunion. It was next to the public boat ramp in Balsam Lake, WI. Seemed like a cool idea. Hope that most use it as it is intended.

My closest BPS is in Denver, more than 2 hours away, and they stuck it in an area where it is very difficult to get to if you don't know the neighborhood. I stopped in there once just to see what it was like and had to use the GPS in my F-150 both to get in to the store, and then to get out of that maze and back to where I was going. I have a Cabela's about 30 miles north of me right off I-80 in Sidney, NE. No traffic, 2 lane highway most of the way, easy to find. There is even another Cabela's on the north side of the Denver area that's easier to get to than the BPS. I'll probably never go back to that Denver BPS store.

I just try to think about how it was when I fished with a worm and bobber as a kid. Watching the bobber twitch and jerk, but never taking any action until it was pulled under, or started to move away. That's how I sort of expect it to feel when a perch or panfish is tasting my T-rigged worm. Sometimes a sunfish or perch would nibble for quite some time before actually taking the hook.

Although "catch and release" may not have been an officially recognized policy back then, even as kids we knew what was a "keeper" and what needed to be tossed back to grow some more. That was true of anything we caught, not just bass. I started in the late 50's, and for bass, if it wasn't worth filleting, then it wasn't a keeper. We only kept sunfish and crappies that were too small to easily fillet, and even then we had a self imposed minimum size. The real difference was that when we caught one that was destined to die because it had swallowed the hook, we could legally keep it, no matter how small it was.

Because they are there........................... ..............or at least because I hope they are there.

Playing golf with my brother this week... Colorado mountain golf:

71 here.... I don't do marathon fishing. If I had to stand when fishing, I'd do it even less, but in my Old Town canoe, that's not really an option. I fish only as long as I feel like it. Sometimes I take a break - just sit and drift, doing nothing but enjoying being there. Just as I don't play 100 rounds of golf a year now either (more like 30 now). Changing weather makes a lot of body parts hurt (or at least hurt more than they do every other day). Peeing has become a stage race rather than a pit stop. Hearing aids are expensive. You young bucks take heed and protect yourselves. All that said, if I lived on or near a good fishing lake, I'd be out there many times more often than I am now. I'm darn sure not too old to fish a lot more than I do.

The only poppers I have with no rattles are my 2 little Hula Poppers.

With only 2 boats even on a small 100 acre lake, there is no reason to be within 30 yards of each other. The OP was there first, and when they kept jumping in front of him he tried to get more separation several times, to the point of motoring to the far end of the lake from them. His antagonists still kept making moves to get right in front of him, moves that seemed to be aimed at an almost calculated rudeness. I fish a 100 acre lake that doesn't even have the multitude of coves, and it would still be easy for 2 small boats to avoid close contact without either one being shut off from decent water. These guys deliberately moved several times to get right in front of the OP. I agree with Dockskipper that these other guys were rude - not just clueless, but rude.

I have 2 Tatula CT 100's, one 8.1:1 and one 6.3:1. The first is on a 6' Ugly Stik and has 12# Suffix mono. The second is on a 7' St. Croix Premier, and has 12# Yo-Zuri hybrid. I love the reel. I have no opinion about the benefits of the t-wing, or lack thereof, since I have nothing for comparison. All I know is that the first reel i bought worked well for me, so it was easy to decide to just get the same thing in a lower ratio when I got the new one this spring. I freely admit that my experience is quite limited, and most of what I know I've learned right here at Bass Resource.

These that I bought from BPS 7 years ago have caught a lot of fish, both bass in fresh water and snapper, jacks and barracuda in salt. They can be fished several ways, and they chug and spit fairly well with the slot right behind the lip. The exact type is no longer on the BPS website (brand was Bass Pro's XPS) so I don't know if anything exactly like them is still around anywhere. The one on the top right is the pattern which has been most successful.

This is how I look at it. When I've been fishing with a friend, I'm usually the one who is fumbling around blind, but I don't ask for help except in a very general sense. I'll ask him what he thinks I might need to have along for the trip, I'll buy it if necessary, but after that it's just friends being together. If he suggests something, I'll try it, but if he doesn't, no big deal. Really not much different from when we are playing golf. Whatever activity is involved, just friends enjoying each other's company was more important than how many fish were caught or how many strokes one had on the last hole.

Yep. Not a lot of grouper here in Colorado waters. While I agree that grouper, snapper, hogfish and others are truly fine dining, if I want fresh caught fish, it's going to be from fresh water. There is a real issue with that here in that Colorado is still on the kick of protecting little fish (most areas walleye, LMB and SMB are protected below 15"), and only allow harvest from 15" to 21", then it's shut off again above 21" with the exception of allowing a single large fish 21+ to be kept. Like many of you have stated, this seems to promote ponds full of dinks while it's nearly impossible to find anything that's legal to keep. I had the same issue years ago fishing for brown trout, with a 15" limit. I could catch 14" fish all day and never sniff a keeper. It tells me that there is something a bit off in their management plan. I do understand some of the problem, with a lot of fishermen and not a lot of water to fish (Colorado's climate is semi-arid), but seems like a guy ought to be able to catch an occasional legal keeper. Then there is the issue of returning a badly damaged fish to the water. Keep it and you are breaking the law, return it and it just dies to be food for the bugs. I'd rather be able to keep it for myself in that case, but it's not an option.

For shorter trips around home I just strap in into the back of my F-150 with the tailgate down and a red flag tied on because it overhangs by about 5 feet. Longer trips when towing the camper, it goes on top using my Thule roof racks. It's a bit of a hassle to get it up there by myself (and I'm 71 years old), but I can do it. I just ordered this Thule 854 Water Slide Kayak Carrier Accessory Mat to make it easier to just slide it up on the racks from the back. In any event, no trailer. I've been loading a canoe since the late 70's, and for several years back in the 80's carrying from one to six whitewater kayaks on top of various vehicles that I owned. I've always found a way to get them to the water, and never yet used a trailer.

How so? I don't think that I've ever heard anyone make that statement before. I have two CT 100's (6.3:1 and 8.1:1), and both are great reels. The Fuego is rated lower in just about every review I've ever read.

My "good" rod is a St. Croix Premier, medium weight, fast tip, and it's rated 10#-17#. I use either 12# or 15# on it. Using the same line on a heavy weight rod seems like it would set the scene for possible problems, especially with a heavy hookset. I'm new enough and ignorant enough that I try to stick with manufacturer's line weight recommendations for both rods and reels. I'm fairly certain that my knot tying skills could be better, but I'm living so far on mostly mono lines, and haven't had any breakage issues. I got hung up 3 weeks ago (Spiderwire 12# ultimate mono, line was spooled a year ago, still healthy), and was able to drag myself and the canoe to the spot, then stop the drift with the rod, and pull hard enough that it ripped the snag loose. It was some sort of net-like material (Maybe some old fabric fencing? Couldn't be fishing net in a 100 acre agricultural impoundment in Colorado) that was just rotten enough to tear a piece loose and bring a 5 pound chunk of it to the surface so I could unhook it. Glad to save the crankbait, as it's a discontinued Rapala DT-Flat that I didn't want to loose this early in the year, especially as it was catching fish. I retied the bait and caught a couple more fish on it.

Thinking about giving it a try. I was reading customer reviews on Amazon and got some chuckles: "Helps keep line soft and casts lures better due to enhanced line viscosity." (viscosity is a property of liquids, and I've never seen "liquid line") "Makes for easier casting & the line doesn't break." (Really... it makes the line "break resistant"?) Most of the reviews make more sense than these, and are firmly positive. Guess I'll have to try some.

I have good memories of going to the barber in White Bear Lake, MN when I was young, before my mother remarried. From about age 10-14, after school on haircut day I would walk from school to the barber shop, get my hair cut, then I'd get to sit and read comic books until Mom picked me up on her way home from work in St. Paul. The barber always had all of the latest Superman, Batman, Flash, etc., as well as Archie, Richie Rich, and the rest. It was a treasure trove for a kid who could never afford to buy them at a dime each. Sitting and reading about my superhero's latest adventures, and listening to "man talk" in the shop was an enriching experience for a kid in the late 50's.

My wife gives me a buzz cut about once a month. I started doing this when we lived in the Bahamas. Lots cheaper to buy good clippers (I bought a $60 Wahl clipper) than it is to pay someone $15 or more for no better cut. Cut short there is little maintenance, no worry about styling, just dry with a towel, not much issue with "hat hair", and it's cool in the summer. I've never been all that worried about my hair. It has a mind of its own - I've never been able to keep it looking good when it was longer anyway, so I'm better off going with minimal upkeep.