DanielG

Remember many years ago when all the rage with teen girls was the stirrup pants? They were tights with a stirrup on the bottom of the leg. Sometimes they'd wear them outside of their shoes. Anyway. They were tight little things on them. Those same teens grew up, spread out, and they're still wearing the same tights. You've seen them. You know what I mean. It's fine with me. Up to them, but at this time in my life I wouldn't be caught in public with anything like that on. ?

Well, sorta looks like bass will bite on a wide variety of things!

I hear ya, hard habit to break. Ever miss the release trigger timing and a lure smacks the water right in front of you and the reel keeps going because your thumb didn't expect that to happen and a nest forms? Happens to me on occasion. A DC reel actually, somehow, senses that and the reel comes to a quick enough stop so that the line fuzzes up but that's about it. Pretty cool how it does that I think. DC reels, autonomous self driving cars... what's next?

Red and white, red devil spoon. As far as I knew about 58 yrs ago the only lures that existed were the red devil, mooselook warbler and a black jitterbug. Oh, and worms. We had a big worm rich garden. You also had to use 6-8 lb mono or a nylon braided line because anything larger was the size of clothesline rope and stiff. So, playing the fish was always a given. No rapid reeling them in and hoisting them into the boat without a net.

Addendum: I'm the original poster of this topic on the Curado DC. I'm into my third season now. I have yet to have to untangle the line on my reel. And, for some reason, over time it seems to have become better at being forgiving of lure weight changes. Sometimes I forget to adjust the tension knob when going from a lighter to heavier lure. It still seems to work good either way. And I only use my thumb if I want to stop the lure short during a cast. I've finally trained it to stay off the spool. Wasn't easy to do.

I like to use a calculator to add things up. ?

I think that 'Smallie Chaser" was simply letting me know of a little bit of information that is really just an interesting factoid to most people. I've had people confront me in my back yard about spying on them when the drone was up around 15 ft and I was looking down at my roof to see if my gutters needed cleaning. And they weren't even neighbors! Just driving by. Almost like those krazy Karens you see on youtube that call the cops if someone casts too close to their dock. But you know, to be fair, for every one of them there's 10,000 who just want to watch and ask some questions because they want one. A guy came by the other day and had a 6 yr old. Wide eyes when he saw it go up. We were in a very open area so I let him have the joysticks. I think that made his day. Dad gave me his email address and I sent him the video of the flight. We turned the drone on the boy so he got to be in the video too.. proof.. he's a drone pilot now!

Yes, but I don't live anywhere near a national park. When you fire up the drone you see the flight through on your phone from a camera on the front of it. You also see a map that tells you if you are in a flyable area. If not, a notice will indicate "not ready to fly " on the screen. Most places you can fly though. Two places around where I am is a town airport about 10 miles away, and a small county prison about the same distance. The rest is pretty much wide open. The drone has a legal altitude limit of 400 ft. and mine will lose a signal after about a half mile away, so just a couple thousand ft.

Oh I did. Just didn't put that picture.. I went all over on that flight. Just north of the island there's a bunch of beds. Here's a pict. The buoy is visible and the island would be in above that out of frame.

Yes, we like it a lot... Maine's pretty nice. Been here all my life.

Kids gave me a mavic mini for Xmas. A really nice unit. Just need a cell phone to watch where you're going. Still, pricy for such a little thing. Fun to use. I've sent it up to look around the area, but will mostly use it in my travel camping to check out the area and add to the vids on my youtube channel. I live on the bank almost directly under the drone shot. Southern Maine.

I was out for a friendly flight with my drone this morning and noticed that along the edge I could see all of the spawning beds from about 120 ft up. Just a point of interest....

I had one guy at a camp say that I was to close to the shore and there was a 20 ft limit as I was sliding by. He had a beer can in his hand at 6 am and I could see that it was far from his first and could tell because the M.O. for to many beers is loud and obnoxious. I just said, "okay, and continued to slide by".

Retired but I taught Jr. High Science for 30+ yrs.

Whoa! miss informed doctor there. Vulcans do but not humans. That is simply not true. My dermatologist says cover up and use sunscreen, the days of sunbathing are over for humans on the planet as it is now. I'm having a stage 0 melanoma removed tomorrow... Got it very early so no issues. Thing is, cataracts can be caused by different things but if you've got cataracts, then you need to also watch your skin as you're probably getting too much sunlight. Cataracts are pretty fixable. Melanoma is a killer. My optometrist says to use sunglasses when I can, visor cap when applicable, and consider the sun gradient prescription glasses (and she doesn't sell glasses just does eye tests from her office). I've got the beginnings of cataracts in one eye, so a few years before they'll have to be dealt with. I live in Maine but for those of you who live in the sun belts areas, you're getting sunlight a lot more than as northerners. The map below shows the age people need cataract surgery. People mostly have it done a lot earlier in the southern states. Okay... I've gotten way to detailed with this... sorry.

Well according to 'marling baits'. a lure maker online, bass see a 4"x1"x1' brown block of wood with treble hooks on it as a delicious meal. So... go figure right? He actually made one and show him catching bass with it. It seems bass like light sabers too. Wow, It's true. If you put your face close and look at each ball individually the orange ones and the green ones are actually all brownish.

I'm sitting here at Mousam Lake in Maine where I live. A four and a half mile long lake, 60-90 feet deep, looking out of the picture window at the water thirty feet below me down a long flight of stone steps, in early morning. The water temperature is probably 45ish degrees. It's early May. I've not got my boat in yet and have just taken a few casts off the shore to this point. The air temperature is currently 50 degrees. As I look out of the large sliding door glass (picture on the right), coffee in hand from a glider chair, I see a kayak coming by on my left field of view. It's about 30 ft off the shore. It's one of those department store kayaks. The short ones, plastic, open, paddle layed across it. A guy is sitting in it with a life vest on and beneath it what looks like a hoodie and several layers of clothing. Sort of a hooded Michelin man. The breeze is blowing him at a fairly good clip sideways from left to right in front of me. He seems to have a wrap of line on the tip of his rod. The pole is whipping in the air with the bait flipping up and down to try to get it untangled. He gives up and tries to position the pole so that he can get access to the tip but doesn't seem to know how to get the reel end from sliding off the rounded kayak if he puts the pole on it. It drops in the water and he quickly lifts it out and gives up on that method. Next he tries to put the reel end of the pole in the kayak to get to the tip but it won't go in far at that angle and he gives up. So as he's bending the pole almost 180 degrees to get to the tip to try to unwrap the end, he's glided about one hundred feet from left to right and out of my field of view. I take another sip of coffee, shake my head, and think, "He came out here on purpose." Just a casual morning observation....

Cataract surgery is a quick outpatient thing. They do it so much it's become a very routine, foolproof fix. It should be done earlier than later as it's more difficult if you wait. It also produces better vision if done sooner. I know a lot of people who have had it done with great success. It only takes an hour or less. I'll need it in a few years. Doc is keeping an eye on mine.

Not graphite, but I've got a JC HIggins fiberglass rod (and reel) from the late 50's. I used it as a kid. I restored it awhile back but it's really not that much fun to fish with (at all). I've got a Dobyn's graphite that's pretty nice (not great) but my favorite is another glass rod. The Dobyn's Champion crankbait glass. Nice rod.

Probably an unpopular choice I do but, I've got a 2015 F150, naturally aspirated V8. I'm more worried about the underneath than the top. I had a Silverado Z71, nice vehicle. I'm a 'recreational driver' Groceries, camper, home depot for a sheet of plywood. The frame rusted out completly in 84,000 miles. Uninspectable and unrepairable. The body was like new. I drive in Maine and the salt is rough on vehicles but never like this one. Very disheartening experience. Turned a lifelong chevy guy to Ford. This time around I'm doing Krown undercoating. $149/yr oil based spray. It's a company that's widespread in Canada and moved into the US just a few years ago. So far I have zero (0) rust on the underside. Right now it's the same mileage as the chevy I had to trash. The body is the first year Ford did aluminum. I'm always watching that, sort of a verdict in progress, but so far so good. Nice that any deeper scratches I get I can touch them up at my whim as they never turn brown with rust. Anyway, on the washing side. I go through a touchless carwash with the undercarriage wash and order the wax and sealcoating. I have no idea if they are good or not but I do it once a month usually and figure if it doesn't last that long it will be recoated in about 30 days. Lazy maybe is the reason but it's hard to wash the car in the winter and that's when all the salt is on the roads. They have a special full year of washes gift envelope every year before Christmas. Works out to about $7/month. I think the most important thing is to keep the vehicle sheltered out of the weather and tree sap.

Hey, I taught Jr. High for 30 yrs... I know. Just kidding... no comments please! Nothing I like better than seeing a guy in uniform out with his wife and kid(s) in a restaurant and picking up the tab via a secret come hither look to the waitress. Interesting, the waitress won't look at you funny. I'm thinking it happens a lot.

I've lived on the lake since I was born. Good swimmer. I can tread water till the cows come home but I put on an auto-inflate vest just as much as I use my seatbelt. I'm 66 now and figure, somethings got to be different from when I was 17. I tell the wife I'm putting it on for her. Let's me off the hook that way. I also use those thingy's that hook onto the bows of my glasses. $500 in the water and they become invisible when they hit it. I've done it once and don't want to have it happen again!

That top one... I had a J.C. HIggins reel as a kid. Sold at Sears. Looks exactly like it. I can attest that that thing would rat nest like nothing they have today. You had to be really careful with it. I've still got the reel btw. ------------------- This is interesting. And it's a little off topic. I'll chime in because I noticed this just the other day as I went out on the dock to do my first casts of the season up here in Maine. I've had a Curado DC for my third season now. It always casted good without a thumb and never tangled. If you let the tension up a lot or cast into a wall, it would fuzz up a bit but always controlled itself and settled down. I trained myself to keep my thumb off and let the reel take over. Oh, sometimes I'd thumb if I wanted to short cast maybe under something and stop it, but otherwise no thumb. For some reason just the other day I noticed that it no longer fuzzes up. I first noticed it when I hit the trigger at the wrong time and it smacked the water in front of me. It should have fuzzed. I loosened the tension a lot and nothing. I used to see it. The casts had the same distance because from my dock I know where they usually land as I cast along the shore. I have more been intrigued by the technology more than the lack of thumbing the reel. I haven't really used my thumb in three years as I always grab this reel when I can. I'm wondering if these things have a break in period as it seems better this year than the last two....

They are nasty, but nasty fish can be fun. If you throw a 6" bait you might get a 3" pike try to eat it. I think of them as fresh water barracuda.

I have a couple of trailer/campers. All I know is that even though people think that the tire pressure on the side of the tire is way too high. Mine are 50psi. It's what you should do. The rolling, at high speed, will cause a lot of heat. I'd imagine less weight it wouldn't be as bad. I keep mine at recommended pressure. And yes my camper has to have everything battened down or it looks like someone turned it upside down after a long ride. The nature of the beast I think if you don't have a lot of weight in it to dampen the bouncing.