ww2farmer

So far I have had one SK KVD jerkbait and one SK Red Eye Shad bit off by pike, and have lost one jig to a laydown.

Here is what I would do if I was on either end of this: If I was the guy who found it...........I would return it as is, and expect nothing but a thank you. If they offered something, I would decline, unless it was a small gesture.............no harm, no foul in accepting a token of someones gratitude. If I was the guy who lost something and had it found and returned............I would offer a fishing trip, or a gift certificate for a family dinner/etc.

I pull my Tracker PT170 with a Jeep Cherokee.........it handles it fine. But that's as big a boat as I would feel comfortable towing behind it.

More expensive rods have come and gone from my boat, but my bar none most favorite frog rod of all time...........is cheap. The Berkley Lightning Rod Shock in 7' MH..........it's one rod that has survived my constant purges of St Croix's, Kistlers, Fenwicks, and the list goes on.

Trip #6 of 2016 Went out for a few hours this evening.........poking around in back water area's looking for largemouth.........never went out on the lake and looked for smallies. Caught two 2.5lbers, and a handfull of pike......not much activity in the shallows yet. Water temps there are still in the low to mid 40's, and the hoards of panfish that the bass usually follow have yet to seem to show up either. Pike are still spawning in there..........at least some late stragglers............past history tells me that the bass and panfish mostly stay away until the things with teeth that eat them leave LOL.

They way I look at it is..................if your a guest on my boat, anything I have is available to use. I want my guests to have a good time too. If they break it, lose it, etc...................so what. Fishing stuff can be replaced, getting a friend mad at you, or them not having a good time because your being a selfish jerk about fishing tackle is stupid. I do appreciate people who ask first before helping themselves, as I would always ask first myself if the roles were reversed, it's just the way I was raised............but I usually make it quite clear that they can feel free to help themselves to what ever they want to use.

2016 is the year of the old farts: Peyton Manning Dee Thomas Rick Clunn My guess is that Richard Petty will un-retire and win a cup race, and George H.W. Bush will get the surprise republican presidential nominee in Cleveland at the convention.

10lb plain old Power Pro braid on my drop shot rod, and 15lb Power Pro on my shaky head/wacky jig rod. Both get used with various sized fluorocarbon leaders ranging from 6 to 12lb test.

I used to have one...............other than being on the large side, good solid reel...........

Pretty much the same here.........substitute chatterbaits and/or swim jigs for the spinnerbait, and frogs for the topwater for me, and add that to your squarebills and senkos and that's my "list"...............If I am looking at them on beds, 99% of the time anymore it's with a dropshot rod in my hand, at least for brown ones.

Basically what I do. Have my "favorites" in boxes on the boat, with enough in each box for an outing or two. Extras and spares are at home sill in their original bags until the boxes on the boat need to be restocked.

I was a big fan of both generations of Vendetta's...............performance wise. BUT...........I couldn't stand the real seats on the 1st gen, or the huge metal real seat nut that gave me blisters on the current generation........so I sold them. As for the Vengeance, never had the 1st series with the full grip, had a couple of the 2nd gen with the goofy trigger's and liked them ...........again performance wise, but I didn't like the real seats much on those either. Just the other day when I was at Field and Stream, I saw they had the new silverish white Vengeance rods, and I actually liked them a lot. I might pick up a few to toss in the rotation where I usually use my favorite "cheap" rods...........the Berkley Lightning Rod Shock............and see how I like them. I use custom made rods now for my favorite/most used "feel" techniques, but I have always been a sucker for nice looking, decent performing "bargain" rods.

well...................lipless cranks are "flat sided" and that's about the only thing I use with a "flat side"...........so my vote goes for the SK Red Eye Shad ..............lol.

I have a jig and a t-rig tied on from the moment my boat hits the water in the spring, till I put it away for the winter. Here is how I decide the when and where...........keep in mind, these are only "loose" suggestions........sometimes the complete opposite of what I "think" should be happening happens...........that's why I keep both rigged up at all times. #1...........if they are really biting well that day..........a jig will get me bigger bites #2..............if they are NOT biting well on a given day.............a piece of plastic will get me more bites #3...........plastics work better for me in very clear water #4.............jigs work better for me in stained to dirty water #5............plastics, with a bullet sinker pegged to the nose............either with or without a skirted "punch rig"......... go into and come out of heavy matted grass better for me #6.........cold water, and slow presntations, a jig gets more bites.

I use 4 colors of Booyah Pad Crasher frogs in these situations: Cricket Frog (white belly, brown back, splash of yellow on the throat, brown and black leg strands): Clear shallow water, light grass, early spring-mid summer. This will be the first frog I have tied on in the spring, usually once the water gets into the mid 50's, and unless the water gets real murky from rain, I don't take this one off for a few weeks. Shad Frog (white belly, aqua green/black back, splash of orange on the throat, green, white and purple leg strands): When bluegills are spawning and the bass are , for the most part, done spawning...... and this is my usual "open water" frog color through the summer months. Bullfrog ( yellow belly, green back, green, brown, and black leg strands): Dirty water on sunny days spring summer or fall, and my go to color from late summer till the frog bite dies in the late fall. Dart Frog (black belly, black back with yellow spots, black and yellow leg strands) Dirty water on cloudy days spring summer or fall, and fishing over heavy mats no matter what the water/sky clarity/season is...........I will also add a rattle and a small chunk off a used up yum dinger stick bait to help the frog "sit" lower and move more water over top a heavy mat.

I so the same thing and I break it down lake to lake as well......... LMB: Silver: 6-12.........twice Conesus: 7-1 Florida: 8-3 SMB: Silver: 6-0 Conesus: 4-13 Erie: 5-9 I don't think as highly of the 5-9 smallie from Erie, or the 8-3 LMB from Lake Toho in Fla. as I do the biggest fish I have caught in my home waters........maybe because they are nothing more than "nice fish" on those bodies of water. I am awful proud of one of my 6-12 fish from Silver, it was caught during a tournament, took lunker for the night, and helped WNYbassman and I to win. Plus............I have fished and ran a lot of tournaments on that lake the last 10 years or so, and no one before or since has brought one to the scales that big........I'll cry the day it eventually happens.........unless it's me. LOL

What he said, except I roll with 4 colors..........chart./black back, orange belly craw, chart.sexy shad, and bluegill.

I have not seen anything on the main lake much more than 40-41........and 42-45 in dark bottom, back water areas. But that beats what the water temp usually is this time of year which is................frozen.

Trip #5...........between AM and PM family Easter festivities I was able to hit the water for about 3.5 hours today. Fished from about 10 am till 1:30 pm........................Stunk with a capital S. A couple pike while looking for largemouth, and a bunch of perch while looking for smallmouth and that was it..............first time I have not put multiple or at least one bass in the boat in a long long.............long time.

Just "go fishing"...............I am not the most exp. tournament angler on here, but I have fished them regularly for about 10 years now. I always struggled to just cash or finish in the middle of the pack my first few years...........then about 5 years ago I pretty much said "screw it" and treated every tournament day like any other normal day of fishing, except we have a time limit. The results have been much much better. We cash more times than not now, and win our fair share. It also helps that about 95% of the tournaments I fish in are on a body of water that I fish almost everyday, so I just "do my thing" and more times than not it works out. In the early days, I would always chase my tail on tournament days trying to do things that didn't suit me, thinking I "had" to fish like that to be competitive.

A pair of underwear..............I am pretty sure they were not mine, I have always come home from the lake with the same underwear on that I had on when I got there. Other memorable non-fish catches were a flip-flop that I swore was a fish, it put up a hell of a fight, and a rain coat...........a rain coat I lost a week earlier when I took it off after the rain stopped, but a gust of wind blew it off the back deck of the boat, and I never noticed it was gone. I caught it about 2 miles up the lake from where I noticed it was missing, if it could only talk. I took it home, cleaned it up, and still use it to this day.

Then you're doing it wrong................ I have had zero issues with the braid to leader knot hauling big ..........for WNY 5-6lb+ bass........and many many 6-10+ lb pike, which make largemouth seem like a lifeless slab of old carpet........out of the thickest junk and cover. OP...............google the "alberto knot"............it's the only leader knot I use, and it comes through all but the smallest micro guides very well.

I can make it through this entire upcoming season with several of my staples, and probably well into next year as well. I am talking about things like 4" + 5" green pumpkin yum dingers, 3" + 4" green pumpkin pit boss's. I'll go through a ton of them this year, but I have a ton of them to go though.

I'm a fan of Zona.................my all time LOL moment ever of watching a fishing show was the episode he filmed on Falcon Lake with Chris Zaldain and the camera guy in the boat following them fell in the water. I have a disturbing fetish of finding extreme humor when people fall off of boats, I have fallen out of mine before, and hilarity has ensued.

Let me know when you start this...........I'll forward the phone # to some lawyers that I have heard are very good with divorce.