Sphynx

The PNW is great for this, open water all year long, but a fair number of high mountain lakes that freeze solid just in case you have to scratch that itch and remember that your not a young man anymore...

I absolutely love that everyone is getting away from throwing a spinnerbait, I have one of those new Plano EDGE boxes stuffed full of them, and two more 12 quart Sterilite boxes of them, and they are one of my top 3 all time favorite confidence baits, the less the fish see everyone else using them, the better they will bite mine, these things are as weedless as anything out there, you can fish the entire water column with them, and you have a ton of different options for how fast you move one, about the only thing it can't do is suspend, true 4x4 workhorse lure in my tackle box.

I think that spinnerbaits are like anything else in fishing, you'll convince yourself that you don't need every size and configuration of them available until you start to catch fish on one when another doesn't work and suddenly the bait monkey has run off with a few thousand dollars so you can sleep at night knowing no matter which spinnerbait they will bite on your next outing, you have it in a box somewhere, even if you can't remember which one of your shiny new spinnerbait boxes it's in...no...I do not have any personal experience with this...nothing to see here.

I have to say that the inclination about Indiana blades is correct at least from my personal experience, finding double willows is the standard anymore, and finding big willow small Colorado is not that tough, it's possible to find either style in a single blade if you are willing to put some effort into it, but Indiana blades you really have to dig for, or be prepared to put on yourself, I almost always use a double willow or a wil/col combination, I have one old faithful strike king (don't ask which model, don't recall) that is a single Colorado blade in blackish purple, and at night time it puts the beat down on them when they are looking for something moving, but I don't own a single Indiana blade spinnerbait, and I think I am going to have to order some to experiment, worst case scenario they turn into a niche thing and no harm done.

Lol, that's pretty entertaining, I was just going off of my own observations having traveled both states extensively, had no idea that figures like this were available

I have spent probably close to 24 months of my life in Minnesota and would feel confident in comparing it to Florida in the regard that most people who live there will own one at one time or another, lots and lots of boaters in Minnesota

Have to say, bravo to Minnesota on making boater insurance optional, I agree it's a bad idea to go without it, but giving boaters the option to do without is a big part of why it is so affordable up there, it has to play by the market rules and does not get any value added courtesy of legality.

Depends on the lure for me, I am usually cognizant of my retrieve and will alter it if the old chuck and wind isn't doing it for me, I do struggle with this on bladed jigs though, probably because I don't buy jackhammers and thunder crickets and don't like having to restart the blade on my account, squarebills I do this with a lot out of habit, because I almost never get bit on one with a monotonous retrieve.

Brush hogs give me no end of trouble, I don't know if it counts, but I get bit on them, fairly regularly, but d**n if I have ever managed to hook up on one, no idea why I have so much trouble with them, but I invariably end up late, or yanking the thing out of a fishes mouth, or mistaking a snag for a bite and breaking off, I spent probably 15+ hours of on water time last year trying to break the curse, but the curse is still winning.

I have caught some shockingly little smallmouth on the 190 size (I think it's the 190, the gigantic one anyway) Whopper Plopper and while I haven't checked the hook size on them, they are enormous hooks, you'd have to try very hard to find a hook marketed for freshwater fishing that even average size fish couldn't easily fit in their mouths I bet...probably a fair percentage of the saltwater offerings too...I have had much better success with most presentations when I stopped trying to match hooks to fish, and started focusing more on the relationship between hook/bait, line, and rod/reel instead.

I don't use trailers on my hair jigs, I fish a zig jig 99% of the time if it's a hair jig, and I probably am targeting trout or panfish 75%+ of the time I have one tied on at all, but really, if a trout or a crappie will eat it, a bass most certainly will too.

I own I think 3 Daiwa reels, 2 Regal LT spinning reels for trout and panfish, and a Tatula Elite Long Cast, I have to agree with folks here saying that the brakes on the Tatula are far more customizable than the system Shimano uses, but I find the handle and grips to be less comfortable in my hands than the Shimano offerings. Since we have gotten to Shimano, I own 1 Curado DC, 1 Tranx 200A, 1 Curado MGL, a Stradic FL in the 2500 size, and 4 Curado K's, so it's safe to say I like these platforms, I find they are ergonomically more suited to my mitts, and I do value the extra distance from them as a guy who mostly fishes from the bank, the brakes do give a bit more fuss than the Daiwa's, but I am not going to tell you it's night and day, maybe 3 or 4 more backlash casts in a hundred than the Daiwa, always because of user error too, but it can be annoying if you blow one up in a feeding window. All in all, pick up one of each company and see if one is noticeably better in your hands than the other, if not, buy whichever one is on sale, I would overall not mind a bit if I woke up tomorrow and found out my reels all changed names, both lines are excellent.

I think the reason you are having such a hard time finding a large hook on a jig head for this technique is because the influential folks involved in developing it designed it as a finesse technique, honestly your best bet is probably to pour your own, because not too many folks are going to be buying 4/0 finesse presentations...not saying it won't work, just that the market is demanding smaller hooks. As to not wanting to fish the Ned around vegetation, I used to abandon this technique after the salad got prolific in the year, but the new EWG heads have made it bearable again.

Honestly insurance and the specifics and details involved with a given policy are very difficult to understand, these things are usually many pages long detailing exactly what is covered, what is not covered, and so on, many policies even have exceptions to coverage based on a situation, i.e. if you park in a place they declare too high a risk, your policy is not going to cover it, if I had any hair left before I got my truck and had to navigate the numerous policies required to transport freight it would have fallen out for sure, read everything very, very carefully, anything that is even possibly open to interpretation should be clarified, and then make sure your legal representation agrees with the interpretation, and is willing to back that interpretation up where it matters, because trust me when I tell you these companies will make every possible effort to get out of paying, only you can determine if the insurance bet is valuable enough to justify the cost, but please in the name of God almighty understand exactly what you are buying, and which loopholes exist for them to get out of it, it breaks my heart whenever I read about a person being taken advantage of because they didn't understand how these games are played.

I catch a fair number of them on soft plastic swimbaits, the fluke is a fantastic little bait, stick baits, straight tail worms, curly tail worms, craws, creatures, tubes...no way you can not get it done with a soft plastics only type of mindset, you just might have to get creative on occasion.

As a guy who knows a thing or two about the transportation industry, anything that is shipped without packaging/wrapping/etc is asking for trouble, drivers don't often go out of their way to destroy freight, but when you have companies like the major parcel companies packing trailers with God knows what, primarily based on destination you are going to get things bumping, tipping, sliding, etc. In transit, the metal flooring in a lot of trailers is going to make these shifts especially uncomfortable for plastic boxes that shift to the bottom and get banged around against it, if they refuse to package items, I'd have to say your best bet is to find a company who's shipping department accepts the reality of the transportation industry and packs these things properly.

The deeper diving Vision 110+1 and Vision 110+2 are ones to look into, I also have some of the Staysee 90's,

@WRB nailed it, of course if you are like some of us who don't have electronics, your going to have to make some educated guesses about where baitfish should be holding, the fish aren't especially active, and just like the rest of us they prefer a certain comfort range in temperature, sun warmed rocks are a perennial favorite, T rig and finesse jigs, shakey heads, ned rigs and other finesse techniques are favorites here, jerkbaits and cranks can be effective too, but if your on the bank they usually give you more trouble than they are worth. Winter is some tough sledding for bank anglers and there isn't any getting around it, I generally have found the evening bite better than the morning one this time of year looking for active fish, but there are entirely too many variables left out for anyone to be able to give you a play by play instruction on what will work on your fishery

I'd expect no less from the Army, I know I would have moved heaven and hell to make the most of my time when I first got back, and tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis and any other natural disasters be damned, LOL Got to thinking about the OP's comment about shorter, thicker craws, and the longer, skinnier ones, and the comments made about being designed for flipping etc, they really are designed in such a way as to permit the use of different hooks, the meatier ones want some kind of an EWG, whereby the thinner of the designs you can get away with straight shank or offset round bend to improve your hookup ratio.

Gotta love it when the crappie want to play, I catch bass for fun, but crappie and catfish I play with for keeps, deeeeelicious

Flattered, no two ways about it, despite your claim to the contrary they are not "your fish" or "your pattern" as it is a public body of water, and you can't control other people's behavior, besides, if the only way they are getting on fish is to copy your lead, it's unlikely they are able to hunt up other places that hold fish unless you show them where to go, these type of people are either too new, or not obsessed with bass like bc we are, so I would personally consider it a sign that I am on the right track with my pursuit of knowledge and skill with fishing Flattered, no two ways about it, despite your claim to the contrary they are not "your fish" or "your pattern" as it is a public body of water, and you can't control other people's behavior, besides, if the only way they are getting on fish is to copy your lead, it's unlikely they are able to hunt up other places that hold fish unless you show them where to go, these type of people are either too new, or not obsessed with bass like bc we are, so I would personally consider it a sign that I am on the right track with my pursuit of knowledge and skill with fishing

Spot I fished a couple years ago in Clearwater Minnesota where the Clearwater river dam spilled into the Mississippi river was similar to that, and the pool below the dam was frequently a sight not dissimilar to a trout or catfish farm lake, folks nabbing smallmouth and largemouth on everything from minnows, leeches, crawfish, and all manner of artificial lures, also had some of the biggest red ear sunfish I've ever seen in the wild, and great populations of bluegill and green sunfish...loved hanging out there listening to a baseball game and chasing fish all Saturday and then hitting that same spot with a fly rod on Sunday going after panfish, great times that place was

A twist on one of my favorite mythological creatures, pretty simple

You can make a fist and identify all major terrain features on it, in this instance, your knuckles from first finger, driving finger, ring finger and pinky finger make up your ridge, on a map, like the one above, will be a series of peaks, connected at some elevation, the features labeled with a one, are a typical example of a ridge.

Mighty fine fish Catt, that overrun looks mightily forgiving compared to some I might have seen...not on MY reels of course, but I heard about them...lol