fin

Sounds like you’re lucky you made it out of there without anything worse happening. In my experience, when things start going downhill like that, it’s best to just go ahead and get out of there. I find I make some of my stupidest mistakes after I underestimate how cold and windy it is.

I didn't realize you could mark your own comment as the solution

40 cents per fish is not terrible. I've done a lot worse. I've only had one break on me, and it was a Strike King too, but it was also my most successful spinnerbait. They could probably use a more durable wire for pennies per spinnerbait, but then you wouldn't be buying another one.

I’m no physics wiz, but I don’t think it’s possible to add any substance to make something more buoyant unless you can add mass. Nothing is lighter than the air that is already inside the lure. I have removed rattles in some cranks and removed ball bearings in some jerk baits. I’ve used old found baits, so there was no investment other than my time. I don’t have any regrets. It always helps a little, just like using lighter/smaller split rings and/or hooks. I have one jerk bait model that I have removed one of the ball bearings to great success on several of them. I wouldn’t do it on any “high dollar baits” unless I had a damaged one to experiment on. I’ve never experimented with modifying lips/bills. Gluing the ball bearing would ruin a jerk bait. In other baits, I can’t imagine how it would be beneficial, unless you were just trying to silence it, and still, you’re taking a big risk that it will never swim right again. I’ve learned to respect designers. They do things the way they do for a good reason, in most cases. In some cases, there is only one way to do things.

Interesting article. The last three paragraphs are duplicated, @Glenn It's surprising to me that the eggs are larger. I'm also surprised that they've had success getting those fish there alive after they're caught. They say the survival rate is 95%, but I wonder if that includes the fish from the time they are caught?

Now you've got me trying to remember where my old chalk line is. I may have to rig one of these up. One thing though, looking at your picture, I wonder if a round sinker might be better, and something smaller than those large snaps, because if the weight hangs too low from the line, it's going to miss your lure and hit what you're snagged on instead. It might not matter as much for you in your kayak, but I imagine for me from the bank, that would make a difference.

A couple weeks ago I kept feeling fish bump my jerkbaits. I took an old beetle spin with me one day to see if those fish were crappie or shad. I pulled out a LM over four pounds out of there, so I guess they were shad. lol I had the same idea as @Team9nine about using the small wire frame of the beetle spin, but putting slightly larger and better components on it. I haven’t gotten around to it yet, but I think it’s got to be a winner.

The way I remember it, around the time Googan appeared on the shelves of my local Academy with higher priced items, then prices seem to rise across the board for almost all manufacturers. That was before the pandemic, so I don’t buy supply chain problems as the reason behind all price increases. I suppose in the end, the reason for the increases doesn’t matter, but I think manufacturers saw how willing fishermen are to pay higher prices, so they simply raised prices. I’m fortunate that I’ve got plenty of stuff and I don’t HAVE to have anything new. I can afford to not buy some things out of protest. Lots of people don’t have that choice. When you buy something overpriced, it’s like voting to raise prices. I’ve got to draw a line somewhere. I don’t know exactly where it is, but I know it when I see it.

Start high, then low. Start quiet, then loud. Start fast, then slow. Start big, then small. They won’t bite if they ain’t there.

I imagine lots of younger people can say that, like people who have started fishing in the last 5 years or so. Maybe 10 years? It wasn't that long ago they were still popular.

Here's an article about a woman who had a minor fender bender that set off her airbag. The airbag broke her sunglasses and she lost one of her eyes. The article doesn't say specifically, but I think hers were plastic, not glass. It's hard to really know what you're buying a lot of times when it comes to sunglasses. https://www.11alive.com/article/money/consumer/sunglasses-safety-in-crash/85-7a8eebdc-3478-42e5-a9e5-465dac28425b

This drives me crazy. Why, why, why do you do this, Academy?

I noticed Academy quit carrying them in the store years ago, same with Walmart. I visited a local mom & pop store and they had some Zoom tubes on clearance for a fraction of the original price. The bags were so old they were crinkly and the labels were peeling off. I bought way more than I should have. lol Retailers focus on what's hot, not what's good.

Yep. Some fish live in water that is muddy most of the time. As a bank fisherman, maybe this is why I love muddy water more than most people in this thread. "The lateral line system allows the detection of movement, vibration, and pressure gradients in the water surrounding an animal. It plays an essential role in orientation, predation, and fish schooling by providing spatial awareness and the ability to navigate in the environment. Analysis has shown that the lateral line system should be an effective passive sensing system able to discriminate between submerged obstacles by their shape. The lateral line allows fish to navigate and hunt in water with poor visibility." "Blinded predatory fishes remain able to hunt..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_line

5-6lb. All that gear and you don't have $20 scales? Fish have a protective layer of slime. It's not good to lay them across absorbent materials like your shorts.

Seriously though, if you build a rack to hold 100 lures, you will end up with 200 lures. And if you then build a rack to hold 200, you will end up with 400. At least that's my experience, and apparently it's not uncommon. So whatever you build, make it expandable, or go ahead and plan on making more in the future. Or if you're buying storage containers, buy way more than you need, because you will eventually need them, they'll cost more in the future, and you might not be able to find the same ones then.

If you build it, they will come. lol

And get hung up less. Where I fish, I'd lose one of these in minutes. That video looks like they're fishing on the beach lol. I guess that depends on how you rig your tube, because this looks like the same action mine has. Don't get me wrong, it looks pretty, and I don't think this is a really bad idea or that it won't catch fish. I just don't think it's much of an improvement. Berkley claims they did extensive studies on tubes vs. craws and found that the claws didn't bring more bites. For me personally, I've already got tons of craw trailers in addition to tubes. It would take something more revolutionary than this to get me to buy more.

Yeah, I've seen that a lot. My guess is it's because they are sitting ducks. I see the shells mostly along rip-rap. Some birds love them too. Last year I saw a bird called a Limpkin eating mollusks out of a small pond and leaving the shells in neat little piles along the bank. They're from Florida and aren't even supposed to be in Georgia.

I've never seen blue bleed like on that Pit Boss. I don't use much blue though, so maybe that's the reason, but I thought blue didn't bleed that much.

Yeah, I think only the otter will eat the larger fish. I don't think there's a limit to the size of fish they eat, but the others you mentioned are all limited.

Lately in Georgia we keep getting large rains, like two inches in one day, and then a week later just as the water starts to clear, we get another two inches, so that we haven’t seen really clear water in a long time now. Stained is about as clear as it gets. We haven’t gotten more than normal rain amounts for the month, but when there’s large amounts of rain in a short period, that’s when you get the muddy water. Well that and high winds, which has been an issue here too, so that also helps keep it stirred up. I’ve been catching some big fat girls on the west side of the state, and with good color lately. I was catching pale ones last month, but their color has been normal lately. Hang in there. Yep, there's a lot of benefits to fishing muddy water, but there's a limit. There's a sweet spot where they can't see well (and make mistakes) but they stay active. If the water gets too muddy, they can shut down altogether. If I have to choose between clear and muddy, I'll take muddy every time.

There's a cool series of photographs out there of fishing with cormorants by a photographer named Dave Long. https://davelongphoto.com/#/southeast-china/ This is what I tell myself. Cormorants used to really irritate me, then it occurred to me they help control the shad population, which is good for me. I still hate them though. I love most birds, but cormorants are just nasty and obnoxious.

And does it clear from the top down or the bottom up? Or maybe none of the above? (It’s the same density, top to bottom.)

I see that at grocery stores all the time. It's like standard operating procedure for raising prices with them and it has been going on forever.