Maineiac

1. Linders Angling Edge 2. In-Fisherman 3. Denny Brauer Schooled 4. Fishing University 5. The new Strike King show especially the KVD segments. 6. Bob Izumi. Your right still a good show. 7. Tony Dean isn't on very often but great panfish segments and ice fishing. 8. Shaw Grigsby 9. Every so often Jimmy Houston. I can OD easily on him. 10. Hank Parker. My wife would probably move him to the top of the list.

Thanks jt. I have sent it to all my buddies. I just get akick out of some of the Rapala adds like the one where they throw the guy out of the plane because he forgot the Rapalas or the guys at lake side having the little prayer. Going to mount a fish if the missus lets him. Gawd can I identify with that.

LD if it makes you feel any better I remember when the only soft plastic available was those Nick Creame worms back in the 50's. I remember dad just loved those ole rigged ones and caught a ton of fish on them. I tended to try and find ways to fish the unrigged ones and threw a bunch of purple and black back when...... Yeah that jig and tube thing is a little intriguing. Hey Mainer Palermo isn't that far away maybe we could hook up in the spring and you could show me the trick. What do you know about Lake St. George? Seeing as how it's almost in your backyard and seeing as how I have a tourney on their this next year and can't say I have ever really figured the lake out. Where does one find this super pork stuff? Is it real pork? I fished years ago with pork eels on black hair jigs. Haven't done it for years not sure why as it caught fish. But I almost never swam the rig. What I did do was fish pork eels off a Shannon Twin spin and I did swim them. Man that was effective at times. Don't know why I haven't used them for some time either but it popped into mind after reading the post on the flicker blades with the jig. I bet I still have some of those Shannons in storage, somewhere, I think. Hmmmmmm weather is pretty bad, got the snow shoveled, may have to do a little digging in the ole tackle closet this afternoon. The 7 year old grandson that fishes tourneys with me is here and loves to get into that closet. Mother can get a little alarmed when I go on a major walk down memory lane through that closet but hey she gets into it too. There seems to be enough appreciation of pork fat on here to make Emeril happy. I think one of the things that made V&M plastics so good was the pork fat in them.

Always liked the Power Worms and for awhile the Power Lizards. Like most others I have wandered away from some things but intend to have some black worms rigged and ready this next year. I have also started using Power grubs again for certain things. As far as being soft, I'm not sure I see them as being any worse than some others especially Yamamoto products. What I can't seem to get a handle on is their new Gulp line. I have played with them a little and haven't spun a wheel. Any thoughts?

I am just plain living in the wrong place and for the next 3 years, 6 months and I think 14 days I am cursed to have to balance fishing with the need to earn a living or as the case is right now being on active duty. But a normal year finds me starting fishing (open water) on or about April 1st. The state says we can try starting one April but it is mother nature that really will decide the issue. I'll be fishing from shore in water opened by streams and such entering local lakes and ponds. As soon as some of the launches are free of ice (about the middle or a little later in April) my Tracker aluminum becomes a some times ice breaker and we go at it in ernest. I then fish through the summer and fall and try and get at least one day a week on the water plus a week or two of vacation or leave time all here in the state. I fish right up until the state or mother nature closes the open water fishing world at the end of November yet once again playing ice breaker at least a little. December can be hard to take as it often doesn't provide safe ice to fish through and one can only sort, clean and store their gear so many times. I have even taken to spreading the process out over the winter so as to keep my sanity. We have one local river that is fishable at times in the winter and that helps as does the ice fishing trips through March then it is back to April 1st. Thrown in for spice in the winter are a handfull of sportsman/boat shows. Bass club meetings, various chat and forum groups, a little fly tying, some jig making and a pile of reading about the sport.

Defining success in terms of fishing could almost be like defining how high "up" is. It is also something that is absolutly transitional and often situational. That which would have constituted success for me 20, 30 or 40+ years ago might not even get on the list of items of importance today. I think you all have a handle on it by your posts. In a tourney I guess it is doing well and maybe cashing a check but I have seen times when even getting a limit made it a pretty good day. If my grandsons are with me, success is measured by what they catch and how much fun they have. I often measure success by what I can learn about a new lake or by what I can learn new about a lake I have fished often. I can even think of a few days of fishing when success was measured by me and my equipment still being in one piece and able to fish again another time. It sure wasn't measured by what I caught. Oh wait refer back to that learning thing, I learned there are some days you should just stay home by the fire, so I guess even those days were successfull.

I suspect that if you were to connect electrodes to the average bass fisherman and sit his butt in front of a TV on an average winter Saturday you would have more tracers on the telemetry monitor than the first day over Baghdad. We see it we buy it. We hear about it we buy it. We are manic optimists, always figuring we are going to find that one bait that will crack open the secret to fishing nirvana. I avoided the Helicopter, bought the Banjo (but then again the designer used to be in our club), and drool at Rapala ads. Ok so I have a closet full of stuff I rarely use, I have it I like it and while it may be some sort of phobic response I probably belong to a very large group.

I think maybe at this point I might well stay with the same make. I fish tin and have a Tracker Pro Deep V 17 with a 40 Merc I bought new in 95. We are looking at one more boat before I retire and I have found a Tracker Targa I like pretty well. The way I use a boat and the places I like to go almost precludes a glass boat. Will stick with Mercury, Motor-Guide, and probably Hummingbird. My problem is that if it swims up here I probably like to fish for it so a boat that can chase bass one day and troll for Togue the next then maybe do some striper fishing in the rivers. I start as soon as I can push the boat through the ice in the spring and don't stop until I can't push it through in the fall. Fish a bunch of small unimproved beach ramps off tote roads in the middle of nowhere and want to haul with my Cherokee for 4 wheel drive and the very necessary short turning radius. But these days even good aluminum rigs set up properly aren't inexpensive.

Hey Kajun, they make neat little plastic thing-a-ma-bobs that you slide down over the hook and the pig slips right off. Wouldn't fish pork anymore without one. Chris for swimming do you use pork like the crawfrog or kicker frog to get more action or do you tend to go with the standard pork chunks? The last few years I have also used more of the twin tail grubs such as the Yamamoto or Chompers ones. Both work pretty well and impart a good deal of action but I find the Yammy ones get torn up rather easily especially by those pesky small smallmouths. The 5" Kalins grubs work great for a trailer as well. Has anyone played with the larger Berkley Power grubs as a trailer? I've been curious as to how they might work.

Neat thread to follow. I think over the years I have tried almost every type of scent out there that are available commercially and a few that friends have concocted that probably would have qualified the garage bench where they were created for Super Fund clean up status ( a word of caution here...it is not recomended to make a scent up at home consisting of shrimp, sardines and Vasaline and forget it in the ole storage locker in the boat, in July, with the cover on. Partner did that once and he found himself in the back of the boat for the day with me on the trolling motor fishing briskly upwind. Man was he a treat to ride home with dang near made him ride in the bed of the truck but for the fact it was his truck) So I use commercial scent. I agree with several of you that there is perhaps a preponderance of times where the absence of scent will not be a deciding factor in the bite you get but there are other times where I am convinced that the presence of scent has allowed me to get fish that others were not. So what do I use? I carry a number of different ones actually because I agree with Chris that there are times when you can change scent and get fish that had become turned off or warned away by a particular scent or get fish that perhaps didn't like the first offering but reacted positively to a different scent. I use Smelly Jelly in the Bass Feast or Crawfish flavor and have found the 2 pink types to be better than some of the other colors. My partner swore by the yellow or orange one until we had a couple outings where it appeared the pink stink just did better. I use it on soft plastics primarily but will also wipe a smear on crankbaits and especially topwaters if I am getting follows or bumps without hookups. I am also a fan of Jacks Juice in the aerosol cans and have found Crawfish again to seem to have the edge though my wife likes the Garlic Jacks Juice better. The good thing about the Jacks Juice in the aerosol is that one can put it on with out wasting a ton and the stuff seems to sink in and stay effective longer on soft plastics. In my kit one will also find the Berkley Power Bait goop. About all I use it for is squeezing it inside a tube. I do this for several reasons. One is to pick up a little weight for casting ease in certain windy conditions and to get a different sink rate. But I have found that on those days when they want to play nip and run that the tubes with Power goop in them may make the difference between converting nips to stuck fish (I fish alot of smallies and have found this more of an issue with them than LM) be advised though that in hot weather depending on how you cast that your partner can get a pretty good over spray of essence of Power bait on a number of your casts causing them to expound at length about your parentage or lack thereof. Using scents has caused me to make at least one change in my fishing though. About all I take to eat now on fishing days is tuna fish sandwiches. The tuna seems to hide the taste of crawfish oil on my hands and sometimes on the sandwich better than some other items that have been on the fishing menu and contray to what some might think a little film of Anise oil on the top of a cup of coffee does not improve the flavor as much as one might hope. In honesty I had never heard of Smelly Jelly in thick liquid form. Up here in the spring and fall one has to keep the jar inside their coat in order to keep it soft enough to use. after keeping it on the defroster for the trip to the lake (wife isn't too impressed with the after fishing trip load of clothes she finds in the hamper either) Anyone here remember people using WD-40 as a scent? Seen it done but couldn't bring myself to do it. We have cone a very long ways from those days or folks using the oil from a can of sardines (that I have done). Todays scents are so much ahead of such crude offerings that it is like night and day. So do they work?????? I think so at least they are one more item in my confidance bag and there are days when I will take any edge perceived or real.

According to my wife in the middle of nowhere. Actually Guilford, Maine. Pine trees, lakes, pretty good fishing and blackflies and mosquitos. The county I live in is about as big as Conn and RI combined and has about 17,000 people. More lakes than a man could ever fish. I don't worry about all of you flooding up here and spoiling my solitude because usually one winter and then one mud season followed by one good blackfly season is enough to keep the population in check.

OLN needs to lose this puppy before ole Tred becomes the next poster boy for PETA. This show is like a fusion of WWF, Samuri Sportsman and Lesiure Suit Larry with a little Ted Nugent thrown in for spice. But not all is lost I have an idea for one last episode. Lets have ole Tred go Brown Bear hunting with a club while using himself as bait. If it gets a little too messy for OLN I'm sure Realtv will snap it up. Before watching this travesty I thought Charlie Moore was hard to take......ok he's still hard to take but not compared to this dolt.

Hmmmmmmm, Mainer Palermo..... 5 acres..... not far away. Now where is my Gazetteer????? No I wouldn't do that. At least not today. I don't know if I have a favorite but I had a great time on all of the following: Harlow, Big Indian, Unity, Sebasticook, Stetson, Indian Pond the Forks, Webber, Tacoma, Silver, Upper Ebemee, Plymouth Pond and Phillips. Most years I would add Great Moose, Messalonskee, Great Pond, China, Cobbossee. Cobbossee Long Pond Stream, Wassokeag, Wesserunsett, Corundell Bog, Toddy and Megunticook. But I either didn't get to fish them this year or can't say I did real well. Of course I fish 2 clubs and some opens so I get out on more water than some, and as I fish more moe now with my grandson (even as a partner in tourneys, not every one has a 6 year old partner) I have a warm spot for every place he has done well and that has added to the list this year or that I got to fish with my son or friends on. Hmmmmmm 200 acres you say......

Twas an odd year way up here in the North East. Weather seemed to keep us all guessing (including the fish). Still was able to take some good fish on a number of baits but the best 3 came on a 1 and 1/8th ounce rattle trap that is made for striper fishing. At the right time of year in lakes with Alwives they are deadly. 7 inch Senkos in Black with large blue flake (021). And Tiki Bamboo Sticks in the same color (another message on here about that sorry issue). Then it was standard 5 inch Senkos in Black with large blue flake, black and blue laminate (the grandson's favorite) and then peanutbutter and jelly. After that I guess Chompers Techo Tubes in 4 inch and Bitsy Bugs with Yamamoto twin tail trailers.

Not sure how you made out on this but I just joined the group and went through the same thing this spring. The answer was a control module that I believe is located under the fly wheel. It is a little deck of cards sized hunk of epoxy sealed electronics and when it starts to fail strange electronic things start to happen. Such as the Tach giving you some very odd readings or no reading at all. I think it ran about 150-160 to get changed but it made a large difference.