Sphynx

Oh man, in that case I have all kinds of trips on that list, Smallies and salmon/steelhead on the great lakes, any one of a number of legendary trophy bucketmouth factories, an Alaskan trip, Canada for smallies, Midwest Pike and Musky, Bend OR for one of the three trophy trout and salmon rivers that pass through/near it, gulf/Caribbean fly fishing trips for Redfish/Bonefish and I'm sure others I don't even know, a fly trip to the Catskills in upstate New York using only traditionally developed flies (dry preferred) Atlantic salmon, plenty of rivers in the UK for trout, the Scandinavian countries have some legendary pike opportunities, I mean, I guess my view is everywhere basically has an exceptional angling opportunity, give me more than 30 seconds I will probably Google it and be perfectly happy to avail myself of it, and I think about, plan, think/dream about, and research these things all the time.

In relation to bass fishing specifically or fishing in general?

By environmental variables I am mostly talking about weather, is it sunny or cloudy? Windy or calm? Clear water or dirty? Lots of open water or lots of grass? Rocky/hard bottom or muddy/soft one? Water temperature? Current? Options for cover like docks or grass mats or Lilly pads? All of this and the presence of food should give you a reasonable chance of locating feeding fish, that's the hard part, once you find them, it has been my experience that there are usually lots of "right" lures, for kids, I'd say about a 1/4 or 5/16 weighted Texas rigged senko/stick bait of your choice will probably be a fantastic choice, not really a wrong way to fish it, if you want to be safe, bring a couple bags in a green pumpkin based color, and a couple bags in a black and (insert color here) flake, there should be hundreds, maybe thousands of posts here about locating bass in various times of the year in various conditions, probably more than a few articles too. If none of that helps you feel confident in being able to put the kids on fish, find a local sporting goods store or bait shop and ask some folks there, if they comment that xyz product can't sit for long, there's a good chance it's because it's working and guys are stocking up, many of them also have a board showing fishing reports on local bodies of water, they can be plenty specific "Shad colored squarebill fished quickly in rip rap is catching numbers and size this week on Lake A." In the end, my best advice is to try to make the entire experience a positive one for the kids, getting skunked is always a possibility, even the pro's turn in 0 fish days, but if you make the entire trip fun with or without fish, it will probably inspire them to want to go again.

FC is a bit of a pain, but I have found the Palomar to be the best single hook knot for use with it in my fishing, as mentioned above make sure it is tied correctly, and then be sure that you keep the knot wet to help reduce friction/burning the line, happens a lot easier than folks think and it will definitely weaken your knot.

I think the best part in my mind about artificial vs. live is that you have much fewer logistical challenges, no need to find a local bait shop to buy minnows or whatever from, no need to worry about water temperature shocking your bait to death, pack a tackle box and leave in under the seat of your truck to go fishing after work, no problem because crankbaits don't overheat and die, it's just a lot less complicated that way, of course the other side of the coin is having to learn to do a lot of what live bait does for you, imparting the sort of action (or not) that will entice a fish to bite, and the cost of enjoying this hobby over a lifetime can grow to be astonishing, but in the end it's still just tackle, unless your tucking your deep divers in your children's bed at night and making them sleep outside it's not like your hurting anybody, and there are far worse uses of money.

Sometimes I wonder if the number of possible color options means the fish key primarily on the profile, rather than the color, "I eat these things often, and they are never the same color, but mostly the same shape, this shape means food" sort of deal.

Well, given your location I am guessing that your after smallmouth? Important to know which your chasing, we would also need more information about the environmental variables to be able to give you a hard solution, bass behavior is heavily influenced by a number of them, oxygen content in the water, water temps heavily affect activity levels, and also affect the bait, which is very important to finding smallmouth in particular, best I can suggest with any confidence right now is look for the bait, you'll probably have found the fish, if you see a bass munch a crawfish off a rock, your wanting to imitate craws in the rocks, if you see them chasing shad, imitate that, but no bait? No bass.

I use Owner hooks whenever possible, but that's not to say that Gamakatsu or Mustad or VMC or whoever does not make a good hook, I just am familiar and confident in the Owner lineup and don't see any reason generally to go to the trouble of finding out which other hooks will do what the ones I already use do just fine.

This is me too, unless it's a tournament and I think losing that many heads is going to cut a check big enough to cover the expense and still make me feel like it was worry my time, if I'm just out fishing for fun? Nope, not interested at all in it.

My stomping grounds right now are just about an even split between textbook buzzbait and frog spots, I can think of a couple places that you could maybe get a treble hook baits down the weedline edge, but mostly it's grass either an inch or so under the surface, or just at the surface poking out, so for right now, frogs and buzzbaits are the option for most of my spots

Guys like you are exactly where I learned about that little trick, and I have been known to make use of it myself over the years, but I also have to admit that I thought y'all were cuckoo for cocoa puffs the first few times I saw it until a guy I was fishing with fairly regularly broke down why it worked and showed me just how many more fish a worked in one caught that a new out of the package one.

I do believe @WRB is on it, couldn't tell you much specifically because there's a million different factors not avaliable, but generally speaking you'll find more success throwing the wrong lures in the right places than the right lures in the wrong places, summer can be either the most productive or most infuriating patterns for me, if it's hot as blazes out, and sunny? Shade is your answer, and cooler, more heavily oxygenated water. they get super predictable for location then, occasionally it's a pain because they won't bite anything you don't drop right on their heads, but you can catch some nice fish shallow, or deep, you will just have to figure out which cover they are relating to and what it is they are hunting for.

I dunno, I still think there is wiggle room, if they are pushing baitfish in a pocket, they don't go after it like a whale straining plankton out of the arctic, they pick a given baitfish, then another etc, which one do they choose first? That's where a small difference comes in to my way of thinking, maybe they think it's wounded, or helpless, or just plain different and worth the attention, no clue, but I've had enough experiences with it to know that for some reason, it seems to matter at times

Sounds like a fantastic place to throw a whopper plopper or a buzzbait, or if they want something a bit more subtle a popper or walking bait.

The fact of the matter is they already have an official either on the boat or nearby monitoring anglers for infractions as it is, there really is no reason they can't have them weigh and release the fish on the spot with minimal cost of time to the angler, plus you have an advantage of getting to weigh them before any possible purging or dead fish penalties, so it really doesn't hurt the anglers as far as I can see

I don't really think it's a matter of preference as much as a matter of noticing, if I swim an easy shiner on a plain metal or white head through a school of similarly sized shad, it is much more likely that my bait will be just another part of the school to a bass, put a red or chartreuse or whatever colored head on it and you single your bait out, I would freely admit that could end up being a two edged thing, but there are definitely times where I feel it increases my chances of getting noticed out of the thousands of other options the bass has available to it.

There are lots of folks who follow lots of practices, some legal, some not, some a given person might agree with, others that are more objectionable, I have no interest in judging others for what they do, simply stating what I personally practice, if I have a problem with eating it, I won't personally hunt it, same for fish, if I wouldn't be willing to eat one that I caused a clearly fatal situation for, I wouldn't fish for it, not at all suggesting that anyone else be held to these rules, they are just the ones I follow and have found to work well for me.

The other night I mashed the smallies on a 4in paddletail with a red head, switched to a white one after I broke off and got one fish, I happen to believe that was at least part of the reason why.

Out in the states I fish bass are not native, in fact they are a rather invasive species (how much they affect native species is still very open and hotly debated) so I don't think too hard about it, I just try to follow the same rules I have followed for all my life while hunting, if I intend to kill it, I had better be prepared to eat it, I do everything I can to ensure a safe and responsible release according to my understanding of how that works, if one floats up, it's unfortunate, but I certainly didn't do it on purpose, if I have reason to believe a given fish isn't going to make it? I am eating well that night.

As much as I appreciate the efforts, this is kind of what I am not looking to make decisions based on, there is no objectively quantifiable data to go on, no control, no individual metric of measurement, as far as putting hooks in your hand and the dangers associated with it? No disagreement at all, treble hook baits are far more intimidating thatn single hook presentations, but mention was made of fish having a lower survivability rate when caught by barbed hooks as opposed to debarbed ones, is there any quantifiable, repeatable experiment that has been submitted to a peer reviewed source on this? Any raw data from which to draw my own conclusions to compare with your statement? If it is available, I would love to see it to get more information.

Well, that sounds like a very different scenario than the prototypical "pond" I have in my mind, which more or less mimics Darwin's theory of the beginning of life on Earth, "A hot, soupy little pool" or thereabouts. In this case you might just be in the same boat as the rest of us that get absolutely infuriated by these fish, like our own @A-Jay has pointed out recently, unless they are spawning, they seem to be motivated by nothing but food, find the food, find the fish. I couldn't even begin to tell you whether there are any real predictable signs as to why they will choose to obliterate craws on rock piles one day, then become the stuff of nightmare for shad or bluegill the next along weed edges and in current Eddie's, but that seems to be the way it has worked for me, you get into a couple few bites don't change the channel because your into a school and you've found what they want, if it's any other way they either aren't being picky, or aren't going to eat, or your fishing in an area/food source they have decided is not preferred that time. As far as whether barbs cause any more harm than barbless hooks, I can't say I've ever heard of or seen any evidence to support it, but in the interests of not being a closed minded ***** I would love it if a link to any peer reviewed scientific studies could be provided, might be time to flatten my barbs if there is anything to that.

Given the SM preference for current and cooler water by comparison to LM, it would seem to me that ponds are disadvantaged to start with, and even if you wanted to set one up for smallies you'd have quite a fight on your hands to keep it going in a cost efficient manner...most ponds I have ever fished don't have enough depth to meet the cooler water requirements in the dead heat of summer, so I would guess that a roughly 25-40% (based on location/length of summer) of the year being very hard on the fish doesn't bode well for the long term prospects.

Lots of water brings rising levels, those fish will be pushed as far up the bank as they can hunting the new ground, as far as the grass dying off, the fish are still going to look for some form of cover or structure to relate to, if they don't have grass they will find other structure, rock piles, wood, grass mats you can either punch through or else fish the tops/edges of, since you have nice temperatures your fish should be relatively active so you can probably find some success in the mats with a frog, or by banging either a squarebill or spinnerbait through whatever hard cover is available, lots of options, just keep trying stuff until you see a pattern.

It's an anomalous event thusfar, but I tore through an entire pack in an hour and a half on the Columbia, managed to restore 4 out of that package with Mend-It this weekend to one degree or another, but I ordered a whole bunch more just to see if I can replicate it with any predictability.

A good chunk of it yes, but the summer months and into fall I get an unbelievable opportunity to test gear down on the river 6 or 7 days a week, so I really try to make the absolute most of that opportunity, I really haven't got much need to buy new stuff, but it is fun for me, most of the paddletails are going to be a little experiment on action after smashing almost 20 fish in an hour and a half with a BioSpawn one last week, there is a good chance that I will burn through the majority of the non-BioSpawn ones by the end of the contract, the other stuff is either just extra heads that I know are going to get used up in the course of the summer, or some hard body swimbaits that I have decided to finally quit being as old fashioned about and start incorporating into my arsenal when the opportunity for giant fish presents itself.