Sphynx

This...a bass that hooks me and thrashes is going in a frying pan with some seasoning mix and a nice veggie, I prefer to release my bass, but I'm not risking serious medical harm over a fish that is in no way endangered...and muskie may not be the sort you can bonk, but I bet a knife tickling his thinker would probably be a workable substitute.

There's two boxes I never, ever leave home without, one is the terminal tackle box, the other is the jig box, the only situation I've encountered that a jig isn't a respectable option is when the fish are on a topwater bite, other than that, there's a jig made somewhere that will fit whatever conditions your fishing.

That's true, until you put in tons of effort to get to what you just KNOW will be a great spot and come up blank, worst feeling ever

Because I need to stay active, the Army obliterated my back, the VA refuses to acknowledge that it's connected, and it gives me a reason to get up and go, when I go fishing it's me vs. the fish, and there are no nonsense rules, and your results mostly mirror your efforts, can't get a more fair deal than that, they say that things that are in motion tend to stay in motion, those at rest stay at rest, the day I quit going will result in my no longer being able to go, which would be a fate worse than death to me.

I find a fluke works pretty well for this if they are on baitfish, if it's a crawfish bite it's either a jig, a T-Rig or a shakeyhead.

You talking legally or morally? Two very different answers, legally you were wrong as a three dollar bill, no court in the country would consider that you didn't instigate and escalate, that being said, morally? The guy was a ***** and probably deserved to get punched in the face a few times...as far as how I would handle it, can't really say, depends on how high my blood pressure got, whether or not I'd been drinking, and my overall mood, could be anything from completely ignoring him to ending up caring what's on the menu at the county lockup, and everything in between.

It depends on how often you lose lures, if you fish from the bank primarily, like I do, you are absolutely going to lose more lures than someone with a boat who can retrieve them, also don't forget to add in new hook/ring costs, I have a few cranks with dozens of fish on it, definitely economical, but I've also thrown $15-$25 jerkbaits and been broken off without ever having landed a single fish, which hurts my soul, I never get that feeling losing a soft plastic, they are intentionally disposable, even if it is fair to question the environmental impact of their large scale use on fish and fishery...I am not at all saying that one should never buy hard baits, just that unless you regularly catch bucketloads of fish on the same one, it's not very economical.

Average pack of Rage Bugs is ~7 baits in a package, $6-7/bag, at one fish per bait, your talking a whopping, bank breaking $1.00 per fish, by that same token, you'd need a crankbait, jerkbait etc to catch something like 10+ fish to equal that sort of economy, plastics are still the most economical way to fish far and away.

I'll give you that, I am not a huge fan of the Googan's, but you have to respect the hustle all the same, those kids are out there busting hump and creating jobs, making their dream of turning a hobby/passion into a paying career, which is a whole lot more than can be said of most folks their age.

That's a fact, and I can assure you that your smallmouth adventure began much more impressively than mine did, congratulations!

Unweighted fluke is about as good as it can get this time of year, hard jerkbaits if you have deep enough water or a watercraft of some variety for retrieval when you hang them up, can fish an unweighted fluke at any part of the water column, can go fast, slow, swim it, let it death spiral, easily one of my favorite soft plastic baits, if you want something even slower a jig would be the other bait I wouldn't even think about leaving home without, good luck and congratulations on the PB, hope you break it again soon!

Terrible news, treat each moment like the gift it is, because it really does happen just that quick, my condolences to you, and your friends family.

Looking to me like a weird jointed version of a skitterpop, I'll dig through my box of vintage lures and see if I've got anything resembling that sometime this week.

Yep, spring bite is always my favorite time of year for chasing the big girls, fall is for numbers, summer and winter are for seeing how much hair is on your chest, because your going to earn every fish with sweat or hypothermia.

I have T-Mobile, started with Virgin Mobile, they got bought by Sprint, who in turn got gobbled up by T-Mobile, as a driver for a living I get around a lot, and I don't care which service you choose sooner or later you'll find bad coverage if you travel widely enough, long as you end up with a price you can live with, and you get good service where you spend the vast majority of your time (home, work, common hobby locations) and you like the customer service, one is as good as the other in my book.

Just doing our part to help keep the lights on around the old place eh? Lol

Oh my isn't that just about enough to bring a tear to the eye! They are even color coordinated lol Far as the snaps...your tying a knot somewhere in all this, either to the bait/hook, or to the snap, and not regularly re-tying that knot is eventually going to get you broken off, I find that by tying directly to my baits I refresh my knots often enough it's not usually a problem.

You fellas reckon Mend-it will be mailing us a check for the free advertising, or do we have to go on the website to get a coupon or something? Lol

As much levity as this topic has brought, my brothers house burned down last month and this is a legitimate claim, fortunately he was paid what the insurance company considered a fair value (LOL) based on depreciation.

Joke will be on that amoeba, all that work and nothing in my head to eat.

I haven't tried it on ElazTec or anything, but for all your typical zoom, biospawn keitech etc it works fabulously, saved me a ton of money over the years by being able to re-use plastics. I keep some of those scent marker deals in my bag in a couple different colors, orange or methylate or whatever is one, chartreuse and I think either red or pink is the other

Done that for a whopper plopper, and a couple of S-Wavers, having the benefit of being a chameleon in the sense of not truly having any region in the country to call truly home I'd say that I will continue to swim for baits up north, and out west/southwest...but you get me from about Houston or so east until Florida and suddenly the money doesn't seem so valuable, had a big gator take a pass at me drunk and fishing for catfish as a young buck Sergeant in Louisiana one time, that thing was every bit of 8+ feet, and it changed the game with regards to how I fish in that region of the country let me tell you.

I like my Cabelas/BPS Advanced Angler bag, I brat the snot out of mine and it's still good to go

I think you'll find that might actually help a bit, one of the things I keep with my tackle bags is a bottle of mend-it, when the plastic starts getting chewed up swap them out, and mend the tore up one, it'll be good to go after 5-10 minutes tops

When you say lake, what size are we talking about? Most good sized lakes I have ever fished have crawfish in them, and even if I don't see them, the bass are usually pretty quick to hammer a jig. As a general rule, if a bass can reasonably attack/eat it, it will try, I've heard it said that if bass were the size of sharks, we wouldn't be safe to swim anywhere.