AlabamaSpothunter

Caught 3 and lost a toad on the Berkeley Slobberknocker. Tough fishing continues and looks to get a bit worse over the next few days with a few nights with freezing temps. Nice 4+ came off the Shimano swimbait, then jerked the other two with a 110jr +1. Met a new friend way offshore, so I scooped it up and put it in the middle of emerging weeds. They suck as adults, but as babies they are too cute.

Bob is indeed living the dream, but as you said it took a lot of hard work I'd imagine getting there and takes a lot of hard work to stay there. The Billie Goat pics crack me up every time he posts them, if those things don't make you smile, something is broken inside.

Somebody's on the board for 2023! Great job, and doing it on what you love best.

"Feeling kinda of cute, think I'm gonna rock this new SM look" That's the instagram caption for the last SM pic ?

You are right, my bad. I was just sent a pic of the ad in the text from my buddy, and looked at the bottom price.

Thanks for the help! With that 12" graph and the updated LVS34, it would be about $2700. Or he could go with the LVS32 on sale at bps for $999, and then grab a cheaper 9" chartplotter from Garmin, and maybe be into it for as cheap as 1500-1600. That's the route I'm hoping to take. Been reading over on Garmin Livescope FB group and it seems the LVS34 is a little clearer and has little further range than the LVS32

There's the proof of life centerbrick anchor I needed to believe this post ? Sounds like a blast outside of getting your ego's checked

I'll quit once I catch the next fish is like I'll quit once I win the next hand in poker/blackjack......it's literally impossible to do for myself. Catching a fish sends a new wave of energy and motivation through me, doesn't matter how small......"I'm like yeah this when it's all gonna turn around, finally I've nailed down the pattern" ?

So a friend on the lake I mainly fish is wanting to get FFS, and I'm trying to help answer some questions but as a non FFS owner, I thought better to come here first and get expert opinions on it. Is it as simple as buying Garmin's Livescope Plus transducer and blackbox, and then hooking it up with a compatible chartplotter? He's looking at the Echomap Ultra 126 that's on sale right now at BPS.....so if he bought this, would he just need the Livescope Plus + blackbox and then it would be plug and play? Thanks a bunch in advance!

Wow, that's a pretty epic story, and fish! Incredible testament to catch and release, three anglers got the fish of a lifetime from a single magnificent fish. That's just brilliant. Bob Lusk always says that big Bass don't get that way by not being standouts in terms of aggression, and propensity to eat.

Straight tail Roboworms 8" Magnum Zoom Lizards Live Magic Shad Damaki Armor Shad Scottsboro Tackle swimbaits

That's a beautiful toad, congrats!

Awesome stuff, I'm jelly ?

I saw it I can't have down time for the Zillion while it's OEM drag is shipped, I can't fish without it, it just sucks, you know this ? Building the arsenal back ain't cheap, I'm a few more rigs short of having a nice layout to start customizing handles, knobs, drag dials, etc.

Haha you were the first post and it's appropriate, took a popular youtuber clickbait title to get it noticed. It's fantastic info in so much in tells us we can stop trying to answer certain questions about Bass behavior like we can with individual personalities with humans. Now tell Todd to do the weather please ?

Beat me to it. I got the deep version

Truly a magnificent looking fish, and equal magnificent beard. That fish looked up and said, "this ain't no real Santa" ? Welcome, awesome group of guys and GAL in this thread.

Yeah, and the one where some youtuber took the concrete evidence of this thread and the study and put some clickbait title that made the viewer think some kind of concrete conclusions besides the ones already listed here in this thread could be gleaned.

Imagine the caloric output/intake it must take to make a 20-25m journey as a Bass. Bob Lusk is a wealth of info on Bass biology because of decades of shocking. He's shocked two 7lbers in a lake in the same location, put tags in them. Later on these fish were shocked again.......one was exactly where it was the first time, and the other one was at the extreme end of the 125acre lake. The fish at the other end of the lake was long and skinny, and he said he finds fish like this often. One thing I'm learning is that Bass will tolerate certain things we as Bass anglers don't think they would tolerate or endure as long as a certain other ingredient is present, might be the right D.O., the right temp., cover/structure with baitfish near by, etc. There is no such thing as "dead water" once you spend enough time on the same body of water. One advantage to fishing one body of water exclusively for a longer period of time. You will find a day, week, month where the fish are places you never thought they'd be.

Pretty wild, myself and another Crappie angler I was talking to on the lake today were talking about how frustrating it was to see so many fish on sonar without any of them biting. That 38d night last night put the lockjaw on them that's for sure, otherwise it's was a perfect day to Bass fish. Caught one small guy, and 3 Crappie. Only had three followers on the Shimano swimbait which I threw the vast majority of the time. Spring just sucks ?

As more knowledgeable folks said, every Bass is a law unto itself. Toledo Bend telemetry study showed some never left the general area they were found in, others moved miles. Watching a lot of livescope videos will also show you just how unique every single Bass is. I think watching FFS reactions really drove that point home to me.

Time to go chunk a big swimbait around ?

Yeah that's a big thing because just yesterday while chunking this thing I was thinking to myself that unless a giant Cat or Bass or breaks me off once hooked up, it'll be pretty darn hard to lose this bait. It's a lot more fun throwing a $40 bait around when you know it won't get snagged deeper than you can get to, or that ESOX fish won't bite me off.

Great job, and an obvious fish of a lifetime! Congrats!