GobbleDog

During sun-up every bait works. The Great Fish in the Sky rewards fishermen who get up early! 8)

I like Roland Martin's show the best because he fishes the same Florida lakes I do. However, the last night I watched him do a saltwater show. He was Tarpon fishing off the Keys. They caught a few Tarpon, but they caught a lot more Nurse Sharks. Roland kept referring to them as just "sharks" and he was getting all excited about them. Take it from me, I've caught Nurse Sharks and there's nothing exciting about them. It's like reeling in 75 lbs of dead weight off the bottom. But I still like his show.

I think it's from the transducer, unless you programmed the unit to adjust.

We do have quite a few in Florida. Down here they're known as "Mudfish". I haven't caught one in a about a year or so. They'll hit a plastic worm every once in a while, but you don't accidently catch them as much as you do gar and pickeral. Mudfish (aka bowfin) are a decent fight, but it's always bittersweat because: "HOLY CRAP! IT'S A 10 lb BASS!!!! I AM THE MAN!" "what the heck?"... :-/ "Oh, it's a Mudfish. Great." :

Hey Rattlinrogue, that picture under your name looks like most of the bass pictures I end up with. A small bass which looks even smaller because you're holding it away from the camera and the lighting is perfect. ;D I like it!

Some folks set the hook immediately after getting a bump and other folks like to reel down first. I reel down and get out the slack first. Feel the fish on the line and then set it.

Yep. In Florida, I think it started after the first cold spell back in December or January and ended about a month ago. You can still see the beds along the banks, but the fish are long gone.

My Uncle is a veterinarian and an outdoor nut and I've heard him make that statement about redfish. Apparnetly the older one's are infested with stuff. It's probably true with bass too.

Given the amount of serious bass fisherman who use this site, there's a thousand years worth of bass experience on this site. From Yankee town to Florida. I'm too old to give up my finess fishing ways, especially given the decent success I've had at it. But I still like reading all the info.

It would be pretty tough to actually get caught transporting bass, since it's legal to keep bass if they meet the size requirements. The only time you'd be at risk is at that very moment you let go of the fish in different water. And even then, how in the world would anyone know you didn't catch the fish in that lake? They probably issue about 0 to 1 fish transporting permits per year.

:-X I ate one once. Granted I can't cook to save my life, but it tasted like garbage. I'll never eat another one. Everything drains into lakes. Road run-off, fertalizer, you name it... Plus, ever looked at the roof of a bass's mouth? A lot of them have little leaches crawling around. You can actually see them squirm. And that's just the stuff you can see, I don't even want to know what else is infesting inside that fish.

I always throw em back. Not because I'm a tree-hugger or some great conservationist or anything like that.... I just don't like eating fish. Especially not bass which live in nasty lakes and get all the surrounding run-off. Also, when I get home from fishing the LAST thing I want to do is carve up a dead stinkin fish. When my nephew goes fishing with me, I just throw the first few bass we catch into the livewell. He spends the next few hours opening up the livewell and checking on them and naming them and whatnot. And at the end of the trip, we throw em back.

Last night, I found a really cool website that lets you enter GPS coordinates and shows a map of that spot. In fact, you can change the map from street map to aerial map to topography map to other stuff, and you can zoom in and out. It's GPSVisualizer.com and it's totally free. Just thought I would pass it on.

Power Pro - revolutionized my fishing. 8) Before using Pro (3 years ago), I needed extra thick mono line to cast into heavy cover, but I mostly used light line due to the clear water lakes I was fishing, so my casting range was limited. But with Power Pro, I found out how many fish I was missing in thick cover and grass I couldn't get to before. Now I can cast into anything and it always comes back, sometimes with fish on it. That's with 10 lb Pro which is dang near unbreakable. At first I was worried about it's visibility, but I'm still fishing the same ultra clear lakes and I'm still catching fish.

Coincidently, I ordered a MegaBass Type X Frog Crankbait about 2 months ago. The website says "back ordered". > I had forgotten how much they were. The frog I bought also cost $25.00. But they sure make some nice looking lures. This will be the first MegaBass lure I've ever bought. And probably my last.

Raul, what's type of bait is that in the picture under your name? Cool looking little lure.

Holy mother of Budah!!! Dat's the biggest bass I've ever seen in my life!!!

In Orlando, we've got ponds EVERYWHERE. Me and my fishing partner used to throw the canoe on top of the truck - pull out the war map and look for ways to sneak into them. It was great. Of course, I've been kicked out of a bunch of them, but I've also found a lot of great little ponds/lakes full of fish. The best pond we ever found was entirely owned by Semen corporation who had security gaurds drive golf carts around the lake kicking people out. But the fishing was incredible!

That's what I've been saying. But most people think the fish are better off by cutting the line. In the saltwater, I would totally agree. The hook will rust out in less than a week. But in freshwater, it doesn't work. You have to remove that hook.

brown nosers!

I agree in the short term, removing the hook will kill more fish. But in the long term, I disagree.

I'd guess the crawfish since they're probably the easiest for the bass to catch.

They made it 2 weeks. I wonder if they would have made it in over a year? I'm sure some do. And I would bet that a lot don't. I always remove the hook with my extra long needle nose pliers. They easily get the worst of the worst gut hooks out.

Sounds like you're talking about atucally cutting the hook itself? I've never heard of anyone doing that. But it's probably the best thing for the fish, if you have a tool that can reach down into a bass's throat and quickly cut through metal.

If I badly gut hook a bass during a tourney, I'll just cut the line and put them in the livewell. BUT, if I'm going to release the fish, I ALWAYS remove the hook no matter what. There's a big debate about whether or not the fish has a better chance of living by leaving the hook in or cutting the line. My educated guess is that most fish will die if you leave the hook in their gut and they're better off by removing it, even if you have to tear up the fish a little. This isn't salt-water. That hook won't rust away in less than week. It'll probably take a year. And I bet most bass can't keep catching bait and survive with that hook in their throats. I recently read an article about this subject where some northern fish were electronically monitered after they had been gut hooked. The results basically agreed with what I had suspected. That contrary to popular belief, the majority of gut hooked fish will eventually die. But that was a northern fish, for bass who knows? I wish I knew what the REAL scientific answer was. For the short term though, fish obviously have a much better chance of living through the weigh in by just cutting the line.