Bankc

My only problem with inline spinners and bass is inline spinners love to get hung up on anything and everything. And since we don't really have much of a smallmouth population here, they're often not the best choice, since fishing open water is generally unproductive. But under the right conditions, they be a great lure. I always keep a few with me, even if I rarely get around to using them.

Lead can be painted. So I wouldn't go by paint. But lead is pretty soft whereas tungsten is really, really hard, and almost twice as heavy, so you should be able to tell the difference fairly easily if you have one of each size or weight. Some could also be steel, which looks and feels a bit like tungsten, but is lighter than lead.

I got married specifically to avoid having to use my brain. Thinking is her job now. My job is opening jars, reaching the top shelf, and mowing the lawn.

I leave mine alone. I don't even clean them that often. It's fishing stuff. So long as it works, that's all I really care about. Besides, if my rods are too pretty, people might notice how ugly I am. This way everything in my kayak matches.

I usually pitch left handed because I use right handed bait casting reels. But I usually cast with my right hand or both hands. However, since I fish from a kayak, I'll often find myself in situations where casting with my right hand just doesn't present a good angle or there's some obstacle in the way. So it's not too rare to see me casting with my left hand. I'm not as good with it, but there are definitely times where I'll get a more accurate cast using my left hand than trying to do something awkward with my right hand. I wouldn't call myself ambidextrous by any stretch of the word. It's just that sometimes a terribly awkward way to do something is still less awkward than the alternative.

Yeah, at $10k, I'd rather have a boat. Everything has its place, and part of the reason I own a kayak, is because it's a lot cheaper than a boat. Another reason is I have nowhere to store a boat. So a boat payment, plus insurance, plus gas, plus maintenance, plus taxes, plus storage fees is just too much for me. Even a small boat is hard to justify. And since I can't really get any of my friends or family to want to go fishing with me, the kayak works just fine. It's easy to get carried away with a hobby if you're not careful. Like most things in life, it's helpful to sit down and establish some goals and budgets to lay out both a short term, and long term plan. That way you don't waste time and money, wandering around aimlessly, not sure where you plane to end up.

It could be an oxygen thing. Kind of like a thermocline, but being caused by some other factor, like maybe pollution, bacteria, or just a lack of wind to churn up the water. I would think that if it were just a plankton issue, where the plankton is blown to one side and the baitfish and then bigger fish follow, you'd still have some stragglers left behind. But if all of the fish are gone, that leads me to believe there's a reason why fish don't want to be there, versus just why fish would just want to be somewhere else. Turtles, breathing air, wouldn't be affected by such things. Or it could just be a situation where there's no reason for fish to go there. On my local lake, you never find fish in the deep part (about a 100 FOW). There's no structure or cover or anything to relate or navigate to. It's just open water. When fish travel across it, they travel along the edges in the shallower water. Once the water in that lake gets deeper than about 60 feet, all life pretty much avoids it, no matter where in the water column you look.

I don't know that there's an easy way to make plugs more buoyant. You just kind of need to do that when you make the thing. Like if you were to drill out some holes in it, you'd have to plug up the holes to keep the water out. And usually whatever you plug it with (epoxy, glue, whatever) will be denser than what it was originally made of. So it's easy to make a plug heavier, but not easy to make it lighter, once it's already been made. I mean, I guess you could cut it down the middle and drill out a bunch of relief holes and the glue it back up, but that's about as much work as making it from scratch. And while you could use lighter hooks, I don't think that would do much if it's already floating. That type of stuff is more for striking a fine balance in the middle rather than pushing the boundaries out further. To change the action of a crankbait, you could try modifying the lip. You could try bending the lip down (usually with heat) or shaping the profile of it. But again, this becomes problematic, because if you don't get it right, you can wind up with a plug that doesn't run straight. Then it wants to roll over pop out of the water or just run cooked and tip the fish off to the fact that it's not a real baitfish. If you attempt this yourself, you'll want to make small changes at a time and test it out in a pool or something so you can see how your changes are affecting the lure. Honestly, I've only messed with this on crankbaits where they didn't run straight when I first got them, and tried to fix them rather than throw them away. And even then, I'm probably only running about a 50/50 success rate. Your best bet is to just buy the plug you want rather than try to turn a plug you don't want into one you do.

The most successful people in life don't do what they love best. They love what they do best.

I'd say I use a 1/4 oz. weight about 50% of the time. It's my default weight that I go to unless I have a reason to use something else.

My local lakes are all muddy bottom with no gravel, rocks, or whatever. And they're man-made lakes with no streams feeding them, just pipelines. So I have no idea where the bass spawn. It's rare to have more than a foot of visibility, so even if I knew where the beds were, I probably couldn't sight fish them. If I could, I would. But if I'm bed fishing now, it's not on purpose.

A couple of years back I tried resurrecting an old Abu 5000D. The old green round reel where when you cast, the line guide rolls back and forth. I had just spooled up a bunch of fresh mono and decided to give it a try in front yard with a 1 oz. weight. Being the idiot that I am, I decided to bomb it to see what the freshly oiled and cleaned reel could do. But the worm gear was worn out, and after about a half second of clean cast, the pawl jammed just enough to create the biggest backlash of my life. I spent an hour trying to clear it out and had line strewn all over the yard before I gave up and decided to cut it out. And I had to cut out almost the entire spool. I tried to save as much as I could, thinking it's an old reel that I wouldn't use often, so I wouldn't need much. But there wasn't hardly any to save. I later replaced the worm gear and it works now. But it's still the most backlash prone reel I've ever used. The centrifugal brakes are pretty much useless, so it's all thumb. A real challenge. But one that'll teach you how to use a baitcaster quickly, as it'll punish the tiniest mistake pretty harshly.

That's a good point. It doesn't matter who's right or who's wrong if it's his boat.

It all depends on the type of weeds and how thick they are and whatnot. But I often opt for hardbaits that can go over them, or soft plastic baits where you can hide the hook into the plastic. So maybe topwaters or wakebaits, depending on how high up the weeds reach. And sometimes you can get a jig through the weeds. Sometimes a chatterbait will work as well. Especially the ones with a weed guard. But sometimes you need something even more weedless, like a Texas Rigged worm or craw. You can also try a swimbait or fluke with the hook tip buried in the body. I'll often also throw a shaky head. And I've got these ned rig heads with weed guards that work alright in some situations. Often times, if the weeds are really thick, I'll use an EWG hook to texas rig my worms and stuff. I'll pick one where the point of the hook is in line with the eye. You're hook up ratio will drop, but your chances of getting through cleanly increase. A lot of it is just trial and error. Throw something you think might work and see if you can get it back cleanly. Sometimes the weeds are so thick and soft, it's not the hook that catches them, but the nose of the bait. In those cases, there's usually not much you can do besides go over or around the weeds.

Not yet. I've had a few brands that have turned me off, mostly from putting forth inferior products, but sometimes from business practices that I can't get behind. But with fishing lures and stuff, I haven't really had an issue with poor quality (unless it was super cheap and I knew going into it, it would be poor quality). And I don't really follow the industry side of things enough to know about any particularly bad business practices. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.

It's not for everyone. Personally, after the first couple of reels, I really don't like messing with them anymore. I can do it fine, but it's slow and tedious work. I've gotten to the point where I no longer do regular maintenance, and instead wait for signs of maintenance needed. My justification is that as technology improves, I'm going to want to upgrade these reels anyway. So, they don't have to last me a lifetime. Ten to twenty years or so is all I really need out of a reel. Beyond that, they're going to get upgraded even if they still work like new.

It depends on the engine for me. If the engine was designed for it, it should have no problem using it. You might lose some MPG, but you usually more than make up for it with the price difference. Since his engine says e-10 is okay, e-10 will be okay. If it wasn't there's no way a manufacturer would say it was. You'd have warranty issues and eventually a class action lawsuit on your hands, that could both easily be avoided by just printing the words "no e-10". I mean, what company wouldn't spend a penny to save hundreds of millions of dollars? And it's not like you'll sell more engines because yours says it can take e-10 if it can't. That's not something anyone really looks at when buying a new boat motor. So it's just common sense that if it says it can take e-10, it can, and all of the lawyers and engineers are fully confident in that. I probably wouldn't want to store the motor, long term, with e-10 fuel in it, even if it was designed for it. But a few weeks wouldn't matter. So long as the tank is sealed, so air and thus water vapor couldn't get in, you should be fine. But over winter, I'd be a little more worried about that. I'd probably still do it if I had to. But if given the choice, I'd choose not to, just to be safe. But mostly these e-10 worries come from horror stories of people putting it into engines that weren't designed for them. In those cases, they can do serious damage over the long term. It's basically like the old leaded fuel thing. When they first switched to unleaded, there was a similar backlash for similar reasons. But now, no one cares.

I'm confused. You called him your "friend", but you also said he didn't have FFS. How is that even possible?🤪

Cedar Lake is pretty nice. I believe the state record was caught there. And maybe another on the top 10, if I recall. But, like any small, big-bass lake, once word gets out, they get overfished pretty quickly. But people do forget, and I don't think it's a crowded as it once was. I think the record was caught around 2013. Either way, I don't think it's producing record bass anymore. Besides, I think those record largemouth from that lake came about because the lake got accidentally drained, and then when it refilled, it kind of reset the ecosystem for a while in favor of large bass. Now that it's been steady for a few decades, I don't think it's as favorable for bass that size. But there are probably still some double-digit bass in there. For its size and how remote it is, it still sees a lot of anglers. But the few times I've been there, it hasn't been too crowded. It is a real pretty lake. Though every time I've been, I was in the area for some other reason, so fishing wasn't a priority. So I've only fished from the bank there, and to be honest, bank fishing is not fun on that lake. But a Pond Prowler, kayak, or jon boat would be great!

Well, if they both went out at the same time, then the most likely cause is anything they share. So I'd start by checking the fuse and the wiring. Honestly, this type of thing wouldn't bother me. Even if both pumps failed, it wouldn't be too expensive of a fix.

My advice is to get a plastic welding rig and get some practice with plastic welding. Over the years, I've had countless setups on my kayak. Things are constantly changing as I get new gear, new ideas, work out old problems, etc. If you're like me, you'll never settle into a permanent solution for anything. Everything's in flux. So rather than worry about making "permanent" holes, learn how to patch the holes, so everything you do can be undone. It might not look as pretty, but it'll be structurally sound as new. Keep the mindset of a minimal setup. With more space, you'll carry more gear, obviously. But try to keep it as minimal as you can stand. The more complex you make it, the more room for frustration. There's a balance you want to strike, but our natural tendencies are to overcomplicate things, so our minds should be focused on doing the opposite. And taking the kayak out a few times before making any semi-permanent installs is good advise. What works for one person with a YouTube channel might not work for you. It doesn't hurt to get some inspiration and be introduced to new ideas, but ultimately, you want to be making these decisions based on personal experience, not advice.

Easy to get into. Hard to get good at.

Jitterbugs, toads, and frogs. I have nothing against them. It's just rare to find an opportunity to use them, and when I do, I usually forget about them. It's just too windy here most of the time.

The only real advantage to a mirrored sunglass is that they help reduce glare within the glass itself. But regular sunglasses can do the same thing with AR (anti reflective) coatings. Mirrored sunglasses also tend to be darker, because the mirror coating blocks out about half the light by design. If you've ever looked through the back of a two-way mirror, you'll notice it darkens what you see, even though the glass itself is transparent. Mirrored sunglasses biggest benefit is privacy. They don't let others see your eyes. Outside of that, and style, of course, there's nothing a mirrored sunglass does that nonmirrored sunglasses can't do just as well. Now whether or not a particular set of mirrored sunglasses are better for you depends on the actual sunglasses in question and what you prefer. And they may or may not reduce glare better than nonmirrored sunglasses, depending on the quality or lack of AR coating on the nonmirrored sunglasses. And they also may or may not be darker, because the company may decide to use a lighter lens color for their mirrored sunglasses to counteract the darkening from the mirrored coating and make the two varieties roughly the same darkness. My point being, if you're worried about only the performance aspects, and not style or privacy, it's best to try both and see what you think. The mirror coating itself doesn't guarantee anything, performance wise. So depending on which two sunglasses in particular we're talking about, the differences can be apparent, non-existent, or even the opposite of what you'd expect.

FFS has taught me that I need a better paying job. Preferably one that I don't have to show up to so I can fish more. Maybe I should get one of those honorary positions where the qualification is having lots of dirt on someone with lots of money and power. Oh! If only I had a photo of Elon Musk peeing his pants in the third grade! That would have been the life!