ww2farmer

I have had many days where it's only one bait or technique getting bit, and my best tournaments are seemingly when I have it dialed in and throw one thing. But honestly, I am a junk fisherman at heart and the more rods on the deck and the more things that I can catch them on the happier I am.

On my finesse jigs I will usually use a small craw or creature bait, like the Havoc slop craw, or the small pit boss. On a "regular " sized jig the combinations I use are endless. I have used the smaller trailers that I just mentioned in some situations, but I usually use a "normal" sized trailer. The one I am currently favoring is the Havoc Pit chunk, and I have also used and had success lately with the rocket craw, craw fatty, the devil spear, and the twin tail grub.

My afterwork trips have all but stopped due to daylight shortage, so it's just weekends, and random weekdays that we don't work because of weather issues now. That being said I got out twice last week, once thursday night, and sunday morning. Both on Silver, Thursday was OK with four decent fish making it into the boat before I lost daylight, sunday was SLOW. Two bass, and one pike all morning. I have three days in a row off starting friday, and am fishing all three days, probably Firday at Conesus, and sat. on Silver, and I have my last tournament of the year, our "classic" on Conesus sunday.

Me too.

Clean it, just don't alter it. I have collected older us military guns for years, and a good cleaning never hurts a thing, providing that is all you do. Don't try to remove any patina, or refinish the wood/metal. Keep in mind that the original US military 30-40 krag rounds were corrosive black powder, as well as the primers they used. The bore, chamber, breech, and bolt face may never "clean up " if it was not taken care of in the past. As far as helping you with the history of the rifle, krags are not in my wheel house, I focused mainly on WWI and WW2 era US military long arms.

I'm with you. In fact almost every invasive around here has done exactly the opposite of what the "experts" claim. Milfoil, alewives, gobys, zebes, have all helped.

Wow, he's going out on a limb there saying winter will be cold and snowy.

"best " is subjective. I have had several cranking rods in that price range, and they are all good. The ones I have or have had, are the Veritas winch, the BPS cranking sticks, and the st croix mojo.

Well, seems like the general concensus is that Abu rods suck. Send them to me for proper disposal.

I have done it..... Picked up a bank fishermen I don't know, that is. I have nothing to worry about. If they are bass fishing, and I am bass fishing, we already have something in common. I have made a couple of friends this way too. What is the worst thing that could happen. So far no one has really tried messing with the 6'+, 325 lb guy who shaves his head, talks to himself and yells a lot.

This weekend was pretty dang good. I fished Silver sat. afternoon, and caught my biggest fish of the year, a 6lb 4oz largemouth, and then piggy backed that with a 2nd place finish in a tournament on Conesus lake. The first all day/five fish tournament I have ever fished there out of my own boat, and the first one I have fished since 2008. I am happier with that than I am with the tournament I won, or the........literally.....five consecutive 2nd place finishes I have on Silver this year.

Thats what I do.

Most of the lakes I fish have grass. I run the square bill into the grass. Some days they want it ripped out, some days I stop and let it float back up a little when it hits the grass, some times just a pause next to a grass clump triggers them, and some days just chucking and winding trough the grass works. It's cliche' but you have to play around till the "fish tell you" what they want.

I use the vmc drop dead hooks in 1/16th oz.

I feel sorry for people who think they need to use yamamotos. I'll put my results with knockoffs up against anyone's results with Gary's, but it would be embarrassing for the yamamoto fan boys.

I like the Strike King KVD frog, and the booyah pad crashers. Both offer great bang for the buck. Each one has a niche for me. I like the Strike King over mats and in thick weeds, it "pushes" down on the mat a little more, has thicker plastic, and has a rattle. And I like the booyah for more open water work, it is super easy to walk, and is softer. As for colors.... Give me something with a white belly, a black belly, a chartreuse belly, and a translucent color and I am all set.

I have had poison ivy rashes plenty of time, it sucks, but it's tolerable. Poison oak?? Just once, and I wanted to die. Head to toe............and the burning, itching, pain, swelling, and the fever that lasted for a week were just part of it. It never comes out of the clothes that it comes in contact with, I had to burn them. The steroids did help, as it turned probably a 3 week + ordeal into 10 days of misery. I doubt you have come into contact with poison oak, there is not much of it in our area, I got into it down near the PA border, but if you did..............it's going to get worse before it gets better, bite the bullet and get the steroids.

I have/had both of the original Veritas cranking rods. I found the 7'M to be too limber for my tastes, but I like the 7'6" MH. But I mostly fish grass and need a little faster rod to cleanly rip baits out of the grass, and even the 7'6" MH winch lacks the required stiffness for that IMHO. But it's great as a deep crank rod for banging the cranks on the bottom outside the grass. I use SK 5xd, and 6xds with it and it works great. When I had the 7'M I used it for walking squarebills through hard cover, and banging wiggle wart type cranks on rock early in the year before the grass got up, but thats such a limited niche for me, and once the grass got up, I found the rod to be almost worthless in it, so I got rid of it. But it was a nice. light, well balanced rod.

I drag them 100% of the time using three different methods: #1 drift and drag............cast it out behind the boat, and let the wind naturally drift you through the target area while maintaining bottom contact at all times. #2 cast and drag.......self expainlatory #3 long line drag.....just like long lining a crank, cast it out, let all you line out, and then begin a slow "crawling" retrieve with your reel maintaining bottom contact at all times. I use it as an alternative to the drift and drag when I have a vast area I want to probe, but no wind to drift me over it. Weight is your friend with a football jig. The lightest I use is 1/2 oz., and most of the time I am using 3/4 or 1 oz.

I peg about 99.9% of the time. But I am always fishing moderate to heavy cover.

I fished all day sunday, and monday on Silver. Sunday for smallies, and it was slow. One 4lb 14oz brown fish, and a brown 2lber and that was it for keeper smallmouth all day. A couple 12" largemouth, many dink smallies, and a few pike kept me from falling asleep but it was pretty lousy bite. So I did the logical thing on monday, after the air temp had dropped 20 degrees, and a nasty front had passed trough, and fished for largemouth lol. Despite the conditions, that was a better decision. I didn't load the boat with numbers, as I only caught 10 fish from 8am-5pm, but the best five, all largemouth, weighed 22lbs, with a 5lb 5oz fish for my biggest of the day.

Fall is about size for me, not numbers. As the days get shorter and colder, the number of fish I catch go down, but the average size goes up.

My various partners and I have won 7 tournaments since I started tournament fishing in 2008, and not a single one of them did I feel "was in the bag" until they handed us the money LOL. The last two we have one were tough, low weight grinds, that I actually felt coming in that we had no chance.

Pit boss

Wacky rigging on the deep weedline. 1/8th oz. wacky jig, and a green pumpkin trick worm. Once the sun got high on the water I went to flipping thick weeds and fishing under docks.