Cdn Angler

Normal. It only goes down to about 3-4 feet I'd say.

AJ interesting that the profile of most your baits is so similar. Makes sense if you are targeting mainly SMB. I'm going to buy your a-rig setup as I suck with my current one. My winners for this year, measured by numbers/big fish: - 6th Sense Speed Wake - I am sold on this bait. You can fish it effectively at any speed and it gets bit year round. I caught two 4 lb bass on this bait in late June. - On Point Lures 4x4 - Spinnerbait with 4 blades, almost like a mini a-rig. This works amazingly well on active fish at the top of the water column, but you can fish anywhere in the water column. Good for SMB, LMB, Pike. Seems to excel in the fall. Got my biggest pike of the year on it. - Hybrid Hunter Jr. It is rare that a shallow crankbait is the deal around here, but I had one day when I thought it made sense and I caught probably 20 fish on the HH, including one of my biggest LMB (5ish). - River2Sea Lane Changer - Topwater Prop Bait. This thing killed it in the summer for SMB in clearwater situations. I was pleasantly surprised. - 2.5 Yamatunuki - White. I fished this on a tiny ned head in deeper water (for me so like 10-15 feet) and it caught a ton of fish and big fish. It seemed to do better than a ned rig in terms of quality of fish. - Zoom speed worm and local Chatterbait/Mini Max. Losers - Whopper Plopper. Just doesn't work like it used to around here. - Big worms/bigger creature baits. Maybe the conditions weren't right, but I feel like I did far poorer this year.

1. Texas Rig Creature Bait - Versatile and I can use a different weight depending on where I want to fish in the water column. Likely 3.6 Keitech crazy flapper. 2. Senko 3. Bladed Jig 4. 4 inch swimbait 5. Topwater, probably a popper that can be walked (Popmax or Ima Finesse Popper) I'm fairly certain one of those will always catch a bass on any lake I fish.

The only thing I can think of that I do that I never hear about is when fishing rivers with heavy to medium current, usually bigger rivers in shallow areas. I'll fish a small shallow crankbait, cast it and let the current take it with my spool open, basically until it is close to unspooling a 4000 series spinning rod. It's probably a couple minutes watching my crank float away. Then flip the bale over and reel it in against the current extremely slowly. I can cover what feels like hundreds of meters. This is usually a wading or shore thing, but I've done it out of my kayak too when I don't want to go down a set of rapids. There's actually one other "pattern" that I haven't heard of, which has happened to me multiple times. I've encountered areas where the fish will literally follow my kayak around like it's a floating dock, usually LMB in summer in clear water. Toss a senko at them and boom, fish on. They then seem to learn their lesson and I don't target them as it isn't exactly sporting. But I can't think of anyone else saying they've caught fish like that on multiple occasions. Third one, kind of stupid. If I know I'm going to be stopping to use my phone or to go rifling through some tackle, and I'm fishing a topwater, I'll usually make a commotion and then kill it on the surface while I do whatever. I've had enough scenarios where a SMB will explode after 30s to 2 mins of a bait just sitting there to think it just might work. It rarely works, but I keep trying.

The white blades/skirt combo has been my go to. Can't catch a cold on the chartreuse/yellow!

I've used River2Sea Bling for probably 7 years now and they are great around cover (grass, wood) and d**n near indestructible. I've caught a lot of pike, bowfin, muskie, and they are still going strong. Never had any component break in any way.

I'd also say going the Facebook Marketplace/Craiglist route is a good one, but it really depends on where you live. There might be a lot of fishermen, there might not be. From what I've seen it is hard to get people to buy HUGE lots of lures unless they are underpriced by a lot as the market is basically a reseller looking to make their own profit. The best way to maximize price with minimal hassle is to group them into lots based on type of lure, assuming your collection isn't completely all over the plac.e

This site is my go to for trying to find any info on what line to use for what. I can figure out baits in the water (usually), but line is something I don't want to get wrong. The wrong line is a pain in the butt and waste of money. Can render an entire setup inoperable on the water and I don't need that.

The Shadow Rap Shad has always gotten bites for me. The Duo Realis Rozante is also a good small jerkbait, but I find it only dives like 2 feet, versus about 4 feet for the SRS, which also comes in a slow sink if you want to get it deeper. The Rapala bait doesn't look like anything special, but it gets bit. I think it must be the profile/size, which is bigger than a tiny minnow, but not as intimidating as a Vision 110. And very slender. It's also fairly cheap.

I've literally never talked to anyone about fishing in my neck of the woods. I have zero friends that fish and I don't often see people at the ramp either.

I always wonder about this with kayak fishing derbies where you take a photo and then release the fish. To get the bass lined up perfectly on the board, mouth shut, not moving, takes forever. And when you watch videos online they invariably jump ahead to the photo i.e. it took a long time. I don't really do derbies and try to take 1-2 photos ASAP, even if the photos are poor quality. Then get that sucker back in there. If you have to have a fish out longer because it takes a while I try to let it chill out in the net. With muskie / pike I try to never even take them out of the net, where possible.

For those who are good with technology I think the learning curve will be less to become good at fishing with FFS compared to learning fishing "old school." At some point a large number of fishermen will be at Josh Jones' level and many will be better than him. You'd think, given that everyone will be fishing the same way, that the results will eventually be extremely even in terms of tournament results too, with fewer guys repeatedly dominating. Catch rates and quality of fish should go up, but diminish over time due to increased pressure on fish IMO. If you are a kid that grows up 100% on FFS it'd be interesting to see how well you'd adapt to fishing without it. It'd be supremely annoying, at minimum, like us using a cane pole. I don't buy that FFS is only seeing fish targeted that never got caught before. It isn't like a suspended fish lives its entire life as a suspended fish. They move between suspended, bottom and shallow at different times of year, so might be caught at any time. It does mean there isn't anywhere a fish could temporarily be located without being at risk of getting caught. And that people will become more efficient at catching both big bass and more bass. The thing is with forecasting all of these changes, that it doesn't feel like anyone is actually systematically keeping track of anything. If things change gradually over the next 10 years I'm not sure there will be a lot of empirical data and we'll all be on here arguing back and forth.

Yep, and I've seen people have a lot more success through the ice. But I'd still say only maybe 10% of people ice fishing own one. As the prices comes down and people upgrade and sell used units eventually that number will get closer to 80%.

Eventually the price will come down, like everything else. And even then it's a pittance compared to an expensive boat. It 100% changes the nature of fishing when you can always tell if a fish is there or not. And can see what the fish is doing in real time. Personally I enjoy trying to figure out where the fish are and piecing that together. And I don't want to look at a screen all day. I go to great pains to escape my computer, which is why I'm fishing in the first place. I can appreciate that Livescope makes you waste less time and stop fishing dead water, so you can spend more time seeing what fish are doing. On the other hand, you don't need to spend half as much time thinking about seasonal patterns or bass behaviour. Jury is out on the impact it has on fish populations. I can't imagine the result will be anything positive, but the extent is hard to gauge. The one thing I'm certain of is that ice fishing will see fish getting hammered. So many people ice fish and it's freaking hard. If it becomes 20x more efficient (not an exaggeration) that's a lot more fish. And most of them end up in a freezer. As far as tournament fishing is concerned, there are limitations on tournaments already, same as in every sport, so I think removing it is fine on those grounds. But if pros don't use it and regular Joe Blow does, Joe Blow will potentially outfish a pro due to his tech advantage. And I don't think the pros like the "look" of that. But if catching fish via livescope is seen as its own category, similar to using live bait, that might not be a problem. Personally I don't enjoy watching people LiveScope, same as bed fishing. Tech won't stop. At some point if you know where every fish in the lake is at, the boat drives itself, maybe you have a self-casting rod/reel, AI picks your lure for you. You don't even need to leave the house anymore. Is that still fishing?

Even if you have a killswitch, lifejacket, aren't drunk etc. The number one thing you can do to stay safe is to pay attention and be conservative. Go slow, don't go out in crazy weather, pay attention at all times (don't be on your phone, eating etc.), and be mindful of hazards. Boring, but prevention is the best medicine. I think a lot of mishaps come from simple inattention, which is easy to do. Anyone can get distracted for 5 seconds, which is all it takes. The more you do something and nothing bad happens, the more you let your guard down.