Bluebasser86

205 here, down from 235, still got a ways to go but getting there. Other than that and fishing, I'm always trying to be the best husband and father I can be. I'm a work in progress there too, but I hope they know how hard I try for them.

My BIL is a plumber and HVAC guy and gets me all my lead from old lead pipes and lead sheeting when he's doing remodel work in older houses. Takes some work to clean up, but it's free.

Nice! I've got one and haven't had the right conditions to break it out yet but that has me excited to give it a try.

I fish a lot of small bodies of water, less than 200 acres. Some are no wake, some electric only, and some have no restrictions. I'm always shocked how many people feel the need to run WOT on a 100 acre lake, or how many will disregard speed limits and wake restrictions. The problem on smaller lakes, is there is less area to avoid those people and the lake gets to be like a washing machine, with waves going everywhere, which are much more difficult to ride out on a small boat or kayak. I'm pretty much the man powered/electric powered side of things everywhere I go anymore. I fish a lot of reservoirs much larger than my normal state lakes and get around just fine. It just takes some planning and forethought to try and prevent issues. It's much easier for me to avoid issues on big lakes typically than it is on small lakes with no restrictions.

I think it's because musky are so much of an apex predator that their curiosity gets the best of them sometimes. They see some gaudy, noisy thing in the water and the only way for them to determine if it's food or not is to bite it. Being that a lot of muskie baits are hand crafted one at a time also, it's extremely time consuming to make a bait that size with lots of details, and when you do, you end up with a very expensive lure (see large bass swimbaits). Musky have a tendency to trash baits, so having them be really expensive, and detailed works of art when it's not really necessary, is just not cost effective and likely wouldn't sell many. I've caught more muskie on bass lures than I have muskie baits, but none of them were particularly realistic baits. They've been on squarebills, T-rigged plastics, spinnerbaits, and frogs, none that looked a lot like anything real.

Since I started adding the silica gel packs to my boxes, rust hasn't been an issue. I use to fight with it every season it seemed like before I started using them in my boxes.

Hey but you get free shipping!

I have a Co-angler bag that holds up to 6 3700 boxes and then I have a couple gallon bags of plastics I carry. I keep the basics and then add some specific things I feel I might need. I use to carry too much stuff but it’s helped a lot to cut down a lot of gear and just carry the essentials.

I buy them all the time, but then hate fishing them, I don’t understand myself sometimes.

I’d go with the #1, the 2.8 is tiny. I have a pack and wish I hadn’t bought them, haven’t found any use for them.

I would look somewhere in the middle between KC and Springfield. The Ozark lakes are great, then there’s lots of smaller lakes in the SE Kansas area that are really good and nice to avoid the crowds. Those are mostly my stomping grounds.

One of my biggest spinnerbait bass was on an all red with tandem red willow leaf blades Strike King in March many years ago.

So sorry to hear about this. Thoughts and prayers for you and your family.

I guess it depends what your bare minimum requirements are. How big does the boat need to be? Do you need it to have a trolling motor or a gas motor? Do you need a trailer? I’ve bought a few John boats with nothing in them for less than $500. Last one was a 16’ boat that was 5’ wide with a trailer for $300. It needed work but I fixed it up and fished out of it for a few years before I sold it for $1000.

I bought a pack a few weeks ago but have yet to try them. Put them in my box and keep forgetting about them.