ww2farmer

Yum Sharpshooter and Havoc Bottom hopper I can't really tell you why I choose one over the other........because there really is no reason. I keep both worms around for totally different reasons...........the Sharpshooter is my go to nose hooked drop shot worm, and the Bottom Hopper is my go to wacky jig worm (when I am not wacky rigging a yum dinger) and my go to finesse texas and carolina rig worm. But both are fantastic shaky head worms as well. I probably use the bottom hopper more for shaky heads than the sharpshooter.

Done..............where's my prize?

For all I know, it imitates.............to a bass................a water logged, sunken cigarette butt...........maybe bass love cigarette butts.

St Croix will take care of you. I have broken rods from them that were 100% my fault, and was 100% honest in telling them so, and they always went the extra mile to make sure my own stupidity was not to hard on my wallet. St Croix, and Pure Fishing (Berkley, Abu, Fenwick rods, etc...) are the best when it comes to customer service for rods. Don't ask me about Shimano and/or Kistler, I have nothing good to say,so I won't say anything LOL.

October 2014, 7lbs 1 oz. Conesus Lake. Caught on a homemade 1 oz flipping jig w/Havoc pit boss trailer, pitched into a small isolated deep grass bed in 18' FOW that I could only see on my graph. August 2013, 6lbs 12oz. Silver Lake (one of two fish that I have caught that same exact weight on Silver). This one was caught during one of my 3 hour, 3 fish Thursday evening tournaments. Took lunker, and helped wnybassman and I win the tournament with 13.69 lb for our 3 fish limit. Caught in about 10 FOW on a 5" green pumpkin wacky rigged yum dinger on a 1/16th oz. wacky jig head................I am more "proud" of this one than the 7lber. 7lber's are not all that rare, but also not common on Conesus, every year at least one or two get weighed in in tournaments. I have fished tournaments for over 10 years now on Silver, and not once in those 10 years..............either before, or after I caught that 6-12, has one bigger came across my scales, or any other tournaments that I don't run the scales...............I keep tabs LOL. Some day one will...............I just hope it's me that does it again.

I am an aluminum owner..........here is how I see it: Glass wins in big water, or the wind for the stability Tin wins if you are "rough" on things (holes in aluminum are easier to fix than holes in fiber glass) Glass wins for speed............but that speed comes with a price $$$ Tin wins for economy.............but that economy comes with drawbacks Glass looks nicer to people..............fish don't care Tin tows easier...........with a glass rig, IMHO a 1/2 ton truck is almost mandatory unless you want premature problems with the tow rig. You can tow small tin boats safely with a car Maintenance is far simpler with tin..........no wax, no gel coat to worry about............if it gets ugly..........paint it. I am not anti glass boat. I just don' t think I need one.

Boring old black/blue, white, and a bluegill color. I fish the bluegill color 90% of the time. I assemble my own. I use LPO heads/blades/hardware, and the Z-man "ez-skirts" I K.I.S.S........................3/8's oz head.........always black, and the nickle blade w/o bubble holes for all three. I did buy a pack of green pumpkin heads for the bluegill colored ones last fall, but didn't catch anymore with them than I did with a black head, so once they are gone, I'll just stick to black for the sake of simplicity. I have been meaning to try other blade colors, but they bite the nickle one so well, I don't really think change for the sake of change is needed. I keep my trailers simple..........the bluegill one usually gets a 4" green pumpkin curly tail grub, the black/blue one gets a black/blue chigger craw, and the white one gets a white 4" grub with the tail dipped in chart. dye.

British troops in WW2 got a daily "rum ration"..........I guess it was to make up for the piece of shoe leather they were expected to chew on for food.

Are they really any good? The only "army type" field rations I ever had were WW2 K-rations. Back in my WW2 reenacting days (late 90's - mid 2000's) we would make (or buy) period correct ones right down to the OD green tuna can of "mystery meat" , 4 pack of non-filtered ciggerettes, and postage stamp sized sheet of toilet paper. I usually smoked all the ciggs, spread the meat on the dog biscut crackers and ate it while holding my breath, traded the gum, powder drink mix (coffee, milk, or fruit punch depending on if it was the Breakfast, Supper, or Dinner box) for more ciggerettes, and farbed out and brought my own toilet paper hidden in my pack..........because lord knows what it came with was surely not enough to clean up the mess that was caused after eating these things day and night for a week. If we were lucky, some one in the unit made period correct D-bars................ a block of baking chocolate that was hard as brick. Once a wise guy made the D-Bars with a hint of exlax...................hilarity ensued................many a pair of vintage WW2 issue field trousers were ruined that weekend. I have seen real combat vets who were not man enough to eat this smorgasbord for days on end LOL.

The couch. If I gotta throw that thing.............in any fashion or size to catch fish, I am going home to take a nap.

FWIW............I have a cheap Berkley scale in my boat that is available at Walmart in your price range. I run tournaments, the Berkley scale weighs fish the exact same weight as the much more expensive table top tournament weigh in scale I have.

This............plus the Flambeau boxes come with the "Z-rust" dividers. I switched to these boxes for anything with hooks a few years ago from Plano, and rusty hook issues were a thing of the past. I still use Plano boxes, but only for soft plastics, and only because Plano makes a couple 3700 sized boxes where the compartments/dividers line up perfectly with what I am trying to store in them.

I tie direct to the split ring.

Last few years I have been using either 3 in 1 oil or Rem-oil on my reels. Both products work great, available at walmart and are cheap. What I do..........might not be "expert" approved but has worked and worked well. After I am done fishing for the season, everything gets brought in the house, I spray me reels down with CLP...........lord knows I have enough of it on hand for firearms stuff. Wipe them down, hit everything with quick dissolving electronic parts cleaner to "flush" the grime and CLP out, as well as de-grease. A light amount of regular old automotive type wheel bearing grease on the gears, and a drop of rem-oil or 3-1 oil in the bearings/worm gear. Put them away.............get them out in the spring and fish. Sometime mid way through the season all the bearings and worm gears get another drop of oil.

Nothing to worry about................it's not going to be cold enough for long enough to be an issue. And if you changed your lower unit oil in the fall and only put the boat in the water a couple times before this cold snap, It's highly doubtful enough water water would have gotten into the lower unit to make the oil so watery that a couple cold days/nights would effect it................if enough water did get in there in such a short time...............you got bigger problems than a few cold nights. All I do to prepare for these early season cold spells is keep my motor trimmed DOWN. I get more worried about it the fall with a seasons worth of use and possibly a little water in the lower unit.

Chatterbait or swim jig............LOL. I retired the spinnerbaits a few years ago, and don't even own any as of right now.

I like braid with a leader. I will NOT drop shot with straight braid. It's too limp. I also will NOT put fluoro on a spinning reel (or any reel for that matter) as a main line. The line management issues drive me nuts, and I have 100% confidence in my braid to fluoro. leader knot (alberto)

On my last trip to Toho in 2008, I hired a guide..........without him I would have gotten lost out there. I hired him for a full 8 hours, and we spent the morning fishing shiners. I didn't catch a super sized hog by Florida standards, I caught one over 8lbs, and a bunch more 3-5lb fish. It WAS NOT fast and furious fishing, probably just average. About half way through the day I said "dude............I can't take it anymore, sitting here watching a bobber. Give me a flipping stick and lets get to work." He complied with my wish's , and we went to flipping worms and creature baits. Caught a bunch, and another one over 6lbs. All in all it was a good day, and positive exp. I'd do it again. The guide was a super nice guy. Picked me up at the resort, and dropped me back off. He had a "no fish, no pay" policy, and like I said, he let me do "my thing". The first hour on the lake or so with him was a little dicey.................#1 I am NOT used to running 70MPH in a boat through dirt shallow water with cattails whipping by my head like and angry swarm of bee's LOL, #2 It had been 15 years since I used shiners for bass (actually never for bass only pike) so there was a slight learning curve, and #3..........I imagine he gets a ton of clients who are 100% not fisherman, it took him a little while to realize he didn't have to "dumb down" things (other than the shiner fishing 101) for me. By the end of the day we were both on the front deck flipping and punching, talking trash to each other, and joking around like long time tournament buddies. His name is Steve Boyd, I just did a quick google search, and he popped right up and is still guiding. HTH.

It's a flat out broom stick. I used to fish a lot of St Croix rods..........this was one of them. I HATED every single H powered rod I ever bought of their's................you'd think I would have learned after one, but no, I had to buy several.

I have a buddy named George that...............I better stop right now............LOL. Actually I can't complain. I have a pretty good bunch of friends that I have all met through bass fishing. I at one time (maybe still am at times) was "that guy" when it came to sharing things.............I have no problem sharing stuff with my close friends...........I just gotta learn not to get bent outta shape about it when they do well with some of the knowledge that I have shared.

It's not the wind that's driving me nuts.............it's the return to winter for the next week to ten days.

Why don't you just keep and eat them yourselves? If the pond has good water quality those bass will be tasty.

I have many shallow "power fishing" techniques and baits that I love to fish and have a high degree of confidence in. Most of the time it's simply a matter of matching a bait to the conditions your handed for the day. There are umpteen variables and subtle things that only time on the water and exp. has taught me, too many to "make a list".............to give you an example: One day early last spring, I was fishing a shallow backwater area and it was very overcast and windy, on days like this the bass that are in this area tend to pull off of cover and roam around on top of a little lip that runs the length of this area. The best way to catch them in this situation is to cover water, and given the sky/ligh conditions coupled with some murk in the water from the wind churning up the soft bottom, I chose a chatterbait............because it could be fished slowly in the cold dirty water I was in, and the bass could "find it" in that color water. I wore them out pass after pass for quite a while...............then the clouds blew out, and the sun shined. It was over. I am not so foolish to think that I caught every bass in the area..............I just adjusted to the change. Once that sun popped out, they headed for cover.........and so did I. I cut the chatterbait off, and tied on a square bill, and continued catching fish. Then the wind laid down......................out came the flipping stick and a jig..............and I continued to catch fish. Now, had that water been clear, but I was still faced with the overcast and windy conditions...........I would have used a swim jig, and I would have caught them..........because I have before. And faced with the same situation, where the sun comes out and they moved back to cover, but in clear water, I'd still stick with the swim jig and bang that around in whatever junk they pulled up in,then when the wind died ..........I would have gone in after them with t-rigged plastic...........and caught them.

Hold on while I see if I can get my 6 and 11 year old daughters to explain it............it took them a whole 10 mins. to learn how to do it, I'm sure they will have words of wisdom for you....................kidding aside............what exactly seems to be giving you fits? It really is a very simple and effective way to fish.

I do the opposite.............when they are really biting, they will bite anything............I try new stuff when it's a tough bite, because if I am hauling water with my usual routine, I want to see if showing them something new and exciting is going to generate a few bites............if it does, it goes in the "experiment with later" pile.