Sphynx

Trick worm is a big one for me, I like plasma tails from BioSpawn a lot too, just recently I have started playing with some of the Airtail Wigglers from Grandebass and I am really liking the way they are looking, for colors I don't find anything special from any other worm presentation, use whatever you'd use if you were throwing a T-rig or C-rig in the same conditions, the only thing I will say is that a chartreuse tip on my plasma tails seems to get me more attention from smallies, but sometimes they just go after the tip instead of the whole bait,so it can get frustrating too.

I took up smoking when I joined the Army, after 2 bullets and 4 explosions I came to the conclusion that it wasn't very likely that I would live long enough for it to make any real difference whether I smoked or not and I smoked the entire time I was in, few years after I got out I just stopped smoking cigarettes cold turkey, I had taken up a pipe and the occasional cigar which I still enjoy to this day, there is no addiction any more, I can smoke 3 pipes a day for 2 or 3 weeks then not touch a pipe for a month and it doesn't bother me in the least, I am quite comfortable with my relationship with tobacco, I truly enjoy the taste of a quality cigar or nice bowl of pipe tobacco and as long as I can pick it up or put it down as I choose I can live with it, sure its a harmful substance, but so are many of the things we eat and drink so I figure that the burden falls on me alone to decide which risks I take as long as I am paying for my own Healthcare its between my insurance provider and me, I also do not delude myself into thinking that following all the doctors rules will allow me to live forever, but it will absolutely mean I will hate every minute of it,and I would rather live 60 or 70 years that I enjoyed every last minute of than 80 or 90 where I was hating all the rules I had to follow.

I fish them in rip rap and rocks all the time, and they produce for me very consistently too, as others have pointed out, in order to do it perfectly you need to be able to just tick the bill off the tops of the rocks, which means you need to know your depth, and you need to know how deep your squarebill dives on a given line type/diameter, if you use a braid to mono leader set up you'll lose some depth, the thicker the line, the shallower it will dive, your rod tip angle can massively influence the depth too, if I fish from shore I make sure that as I get closer to the bank I start raising up my rod tip to account for the shallower water. It can get a bit fiddly tinkering with them, but in my experience in the fall where I fish, there was no other lure that came even close to being as productive for both size and numbers for me, so it was worth the hassle to me to sort out the details of my favorite spots

I don't see any advantage to this system that the Plano EDGE system does not provide at least as well, I have fully converted over to EDGE boxes and I have no regrets about it.

Spinnerbaits, lipless, and the last one kind of depends, can't go wrong with a paddletail, popper can be deadly, walking bait, swim jig, under spin, squarebill, tons of options, but you for sure wouldn't catch me without a spinnerbait or a lipless during a shad massacre

It is just part of the process of fishing unfortunately, once I establish a pattern and get weather consistent for a week or so I can go out and smash them all day, but once something changes the old skunk comes back and hangs out until I figure out what the new pattern is, the best way to get through it I have found is use it as an excuse to try new baits that you have but don't usually throw, or if they simply aren't where you are or have a bad case of lock jaw use it as an excuse to work on flipping, pitching, skipping, off handed casting, all those other skills that can and will improve your ability to accurately and quietly present baits to targets, I grant you it's not as much fun as catching fish, but it is productive use of time on the water and will keep you occupied until you can establish the new pattern. Keep grinding!

Nobody is perfect, but I do put a lot of effort into avoiding those behaviors, I think the one that stands out most to me that I find irksome is the idea that there is a "wrong" way to fish, I can forgive the snooty comments about cheap waders, less expensive rods that cast like broom handles, the making fun of someone's ability (or lack thereof) to properly tie (insert pattern here) according to the current fashionable version, but if somebody is out catching fish and having the time of their life doing it, they might be a lot of things, but they certainly aren't wrong.

I'll second this, I enjoy fly fishing immensely, but I try to limit the time I spend with the hard-core purists in the sport, they can be ok in small doses and can be incredibly knowledgeable, but I think I'd be in jail or the looney bin after spending any significant amounts of time around them, because they can be some of the most judgemental, opinionated and snarky people you will ever meet too.

Out where I fish a squarebill fished on 30lb braid and 15lb mono leader rated for 2-5 feet won't go much over a couple casts without getting pulverized, burn it too, they don't mind, especially later in the month as the summer/fall transition gets going, after it's all the way fall it's still one of my top 3 lures, the Pop-R or other variant is an enormous producer, and the Spinnerbait is the other, but basically once we hit fall I don't touch another crawfish imitator until winter or spring.

Well...in case nobody has told you yet, BOAT is an acronym very cleverly changed by marketing departments to have lowercase letters and no punctuation, Break Out Another Thousand...sorry for the rough luck, hope you turn the corner soon

Just do yourself a favor and don't add up the receipts whatever you do, you'll probably stroke out on us.

We had a pretty stout wind kick up a couple days ago (hasn't really let up since) and I am rather annoyed at the fact that it has pushed all the surface vegetation onto the shore, and from the angles I have I can no longer tell where the stinking salad is, good part is buzzbait should be a better producer with less fouling, but anything subsurface I seem to run slap into trouble now since I can't tell where it's at anymore, definitely sympathize with the boat issues, gotta be a freaking nightmare cleaning off props etc of all that crap.

Between supply chain orders and truck load/hours of service capacity your a long way out from consistently being able to get stuff like it once was, lots of drivers have left the industry since covid started, and the driver shortage is worse than ever, add to that the fact that freight seems to come in waves this last year or so and you have more problems, if you have 100 trucks and freight for 500 trucks, somebody is just going to end up waiting, it sucks, out of the transportation industry control too, we'd love to burn up those miles, but it just can't be done like that.

I got a bunch, just haven't had any reason to put down the power fishing lures and go to one in several weeks

This time I caught them swinging too ?

Well, yesterday was nearly a stinker of a day, they've been destroying any and all baitfish imitations, and I definitely went to sleep on it, spent a couple hours down on the river and snagged a single pound and a bit fish off a handful of baits, was about to give up when it struck me that I had not tried anything to imitate a crawfish yet. Tied on a tube and it was on like donkey Kong from the first cast, probably landed 8 fish in 15 minutes, but I definitely wasn't listening to the fish yesterday, I should have been on that tube an hour before I was, next time you start getting frustrated at not getting bit, try listening to the fish, it sure saved my day.

You betcha, there are days I am too wore out to go, but every time I start getting stuff ready that tingling anticipation starts to build, will I avoid a skunk? Is this the day I break a state record/land a trophy? The not knowing how it will go reminds me of a very tame version of the same feelings I used to get in Afghanistan before a patrol, just this time I don't have to worry about getting killed quite so much.

I tend to find that the evening bite is pretty solid, and is usually at least as good as an early morning bite, I think the biggest reason that you still hear that fish bite best in the early morning are because people spend the most time out fishing at that time because In late spring through early autumn it's more comfortable than the evening bite, I'll bet a lot of folks who insist steadfastly that you catch fish most productively early in the day would have a tough time remembering very many trips that do not qualify as early morning trips, kind of like guys who tell me that "they only bite x lure" and then can't tell me the last time they tried anything else...those same folks usually tend to get irritated when you outfish them too, for those who enjoy that sort of thing ?

Guess it depends on whether you mean fishing at all, or Bass specifically, if you mean at all, I have pictures of me with my grandfather's catching trout on camping trips and stuff that pre-date my ability to have a memory, so I literally never knew what it was NOT to fish, as far as bass however, I was 19 years old at Ft. Hood Texas and had just gotten my EIB and was getting sent to Ft. Campbell for a couple of weeks for Air Assault school when we got a new guy from Alabama to our platoon, and he and I went camping and he was a semi-pro bass angler before the Army, and he gave me a crash course in bass fishing that would have been worth big bucks on the market, if we weren't in the field training for Afghanistan, we were in the field catching fish, shooting turkeys and pigs and every other outdoor activity you can imagine, it was probably the greatest time in my life, he and I still talk several times a week and try to meet up a couple times a year to go do bucket list fishing or hunting trips, it's getting more difficult to do a lot of the hunting these days, the price tag for multiple deployments tends to be paid in medical conditions and joint/tendon pain, but we are very active in checking off the fishing side of things, I think next year we are tackling Florida for a few prime bass spots and some saltwater adventures.

It is unlikely that I will forget it any time soon lol

I don't like an A-rig anywhere shallow in the summer simply because of the fact that it picks up vegetation worse than literally any other option in my box, as far as would it work if I could find a spot that was open enough? Probably, but I think I would be inclined to downsize the trailers a bit, and shoot for a young fish type imitation. If I feel like an A-rig would maybe work in an area this time of year, I usually will toss a spinnerbait and try my luck, it's basically a finesse A-rig with some skirts (which it just occurred to me there's no reason you couldn't add those to your A-Rig too if so inclined) and is probably a good option under similar conditions.

200 fish in a river is a drop in the bucket, in your small farm pond it's possibly your entire population, the St. Lawrence has thousands upon thousands of fish in it, if 200 died they won't see a difference, does that make what they did responsible or ethical? Not a chance, it's another perfect example why going to MLF style weigh in is a more responsible format, but the idea that harvesting/culling any fish is in and of itself a bad thing is a pretty bold statement that I'd love to see some sort of supporting documentation and anything approaching scientific theory on, I think a much more effective argument for this is convincing the sponsors and the tournament organizers that the brand association they will end up with if they keep insisting on these outdated weigh in practices is going to cost them a lot of money...they aren't going to want to be the bait/tackle company people remember as being associated with all the dead fish floating around after being the headline sponsor of a given tournament, a much better optic given the current prevailing thoughts and opinions is to be seen as the company who takes the obligation of responsible resource management seriously and is willing to adopt practices that ensure the future of the sport in an increasingly hostile public opinion...lots more money in that than the dead fish associated guys.

Loving these stories, it reminds me of why I keep fishing, it's the chasing and not knowing when you'll find "that" fish, awesome stuff

Ah yes, the good old bent rod pattern, a perennial favorite, doesn't bother me in the least, by the time that spot becomes available for the day I promise I will have had my fun with it, and best of luck to the next guy...it's also one of those deals where I have no issue with either going to a different spot (my usual waters are full of them) or if somehow that doesn't work out, I will go discover a new spot, that's probably how I found the other one anyway

Oh yeah, those dudes are probably about one more order away from handwritten Christmas cards and invitations to holiday parties ?