Ellesar

I don't think its all supposition. We know that atmospheric pressure exerts force on all things. We know that the shallower the water, the more impact it can have because of the reduce volume of area that the pressure is being exerted upon. We know that atmospheric pressure can impact things bouancy in the water column. What we aren't sure of is if those effects really impact a bass or is it "all in the noise". I can't find much in the way of research that tackles this issue.

I'd also consider saving some of that money as your emergency fund. One of the reason so many people are in financial dire straights is because they don't maintain enough cash to get them through a couple bad months. They may be able to afford their lifestyles as long as their income stream isn't interrupted, but as soon as a hiccup arrives they discover they are in bad shape. Its not uncommon for a young person to lose their job and have to go a couple of months without income. Its really a good idea to keep some cash in savings in the event it happens. I don't know if you are doing this or not, just adding my $.02. You have to plan for the unexpected! In my case I recently bought a new boat. While I had the cash to buy a really nice, fairly high end bass boat, I didn't want to spend everything I have saved just to do that. I chose a cheaper boat that fits all of my needs (maybe not all of my desires, but all of my needs) so that I still have cash in the event something happens I haven't planned for. Also honest budget planning is something you really need to look at as well. I've noticed far too many people plan their budgets and find ways to make things turn out the way that they want, and that doesn't always reflect reality.

I've been using the Gammy weedless finesse hook as well. I've started using some yum dingers instead of senkos because they don't tear up nearly as easy. With the senko's I was losing the worm after about 20 casts. The hook just tore it in half. The dinger goes all day without tearing and I've been catching as many fish. I've ordered some sticks from *** and am anxious to try those as well. I love the senko's but they just don't seem very durable.

First off, let me state I am just a weekend fisherman so I don't have any experience in the world of sponsorship and so forth. But it seems to me, on just a common sense basis, that the best approach is to focus on your fishing and the rest will take care of itself. When/if you become proficient enough as a fisherman, I would think the sponsors will find you, or atleast the opportunities to interact with them and talk to them about sponsorship will come along. But until you reach that point, focusing on sponsorship seems to be a waste of time. I would think you would be better off focusing on improving your fishing skills. Just my $.02.

But I'm sure he will be willing to wear your hat if you give him some worms or stuff!

If the fact that basic spelling and grammar appear to be too much to expect from you, replies like this should certainly guarantee that no sponsor would bother looking at you for more than two seconds. Ask yourself this question. Would you purchase fishing products from some guy who is sitting around saying things like "You'ins outta buy this here bait. It done catches fish reel good. I'm a telling you that this here puppy is a maghic fish catch'n masheen! "? Ofcourse not, he sounds like he wouldn't know a good fishing lure from a hole in the ground. Well, thats what you sound like when you say things like "Thanks, you a REAL professional. ". You see that should be "Thanks, you are a REAL professional.". Or "Thanks, you're a REAL professional.", would also suffice. Perhaps we've misjudged you and you are totally aware of this. Perhaps your strategy for attracting sponsorship is intentionally geared towards coming across as uneducated, immature, and overly sensitive. I can't imagine why you would chose that approach, but perhaps you feel its the best way to reach the "average joe". If so, I certainly apologize.

I think informing you that your spelling and grammar are horrible is something positive. Would you rather no one bother telling you that? Would you rather be sitting around wondering why no sponsors are contacting you? Or would you rather get some constructive criticism that just might make a sponsor give you more than a cursory look? A few things I noticed : 1) If you are a "busy college student", would you have time to put into promoting my product if I were a sponsor? 2) How on earth did you get past your freshman year of college with spelling and grammar as bad as you've displayed? 3) When you say things like "domination" you make me think you are immature and a braggart. Neither of those things are characteristics a sponsor is looking for. 4) You may love the limelight and all the attention you can get, but as a sponsor I want my product to get the limelight. 5) As others have mentioned, what you did when you were 6 or the fact that you started at the age of 5 really isn't going to make a difference now. One of the things you will learn in life as you continue to mature is that constructive criticism is one of the most beneficial things some can provide you. And you will be well ahead of your peers if you learn to not take it personally and instead evaluate it and try to make some changes in the way you are going about things. If you take a look at a person who is successful in just about any career you will see that is a skill they have mastered. If you get defensive everytime someone says some negative to you, you will never improve yourself. People on this forum are glad to help you and show you how to make improvements in your resume, so that you may be able to get a sponsor at some point in time. And there are some folks here that do have lots of sponsors and speak from personal experience, you would do well to listen. Another trait that you often find in those who are successful in their chosen careers is that they are good at recognizing opportunity when it pops up and take advantage of that. This forum, and the expertise that visit here, are an opportunity for you to learn how to better market yourself to sponsors. Don't blow that opportunity by being disrespectful and immature to those who have taken some time to try and help you out.

My guess is that its a number of things. I think some folks are competitive and exaggerate the weight almost subconciously. Some folks just want to be "better" than others. As for judging from a picture, I think that depends on the picture. There are lots of factors that go into judging a fish from a picture. One of the most important is scale. If there is nothing in the picture to provide scale, it can be hard to determine from the picture alone how big the fish is. When you talk about not having that problem with your pictures you aren't really taking into account that you actually saw the fish in real life, and were in the picture, so you know how the fishes size relates to the things in the picture. But looking at other peoples pictures, where you haven't seen the area, etc, can be misleading. Thats my best guess. I know that some of the picutres I've taken don't do the fish justice, and some do.

http://www.saveourwetlands.org/garfish.htm That link talks some about the relationship between the two. From what I'm reading, not a whole lot of research has been done on this. But one thing that seems fairly consistent is that they both compete for many of the same food sources, like sun fish and shad. So it would seem logical that if a gar population in an area has gotten the edge over the bass population, the gar population would likely continue to dominate because they would get a large share of the available forage. And since a gar will eat a young bass, if a gar population gets ahead of a bass population, the bass population should stand to suffer more predation which would lead to fewer fish. Perhaps, and this is just my speculation, this is a localized scenario and doesn't happen everywhere. In some areas the gar get ahead and in others the bass do. And there are likely some areas where they co-exist due to the abundance of other bait fish that are easier to capture than going after each other. I can say, from observation, that the bass and gar on Lake Guntersville seem to co-exist more readily than they do in the TN river. I think the DO angle gives the gar the ability to exist where bass don't, but that doesn't mean that they don't live in areas habitated by bass. And I think what we are witnessing is what happens when they are both sharingthe ecosystem.

http://www.fishingmessageboards.com/showthread.php?t=5957 This is intersting article on how barometric pressure effects fish. Basically, it changes objects ability to float and that effects fish. The article does a pretty good job explaining how it effects fish. Its a piece of the puzzle, but not the whole puzzle itself. I think an additional piece of information you get from barometric pressure is a hint at the weather to come. If the barometer is dropping you can often bet that clouds are coming with it as the low pressure system moves in and that may change where and how you look for the fish.

Im not so sure of that. For instance, on the TN river, when I see lots of Gar, its up near the surface in the main channel. Given that it has a current, the water in the main channel, 20 feet from the shore should be some of the most oxygenated water present. Yet I find bass in similar areas, but not where I find the gar. I would find it hard to believe that the DO levels are different in those cases. In Lake Guntersville, I find gar and bass within 20 feet of each other, in similar cover. Again, I don't think that the DO levels are that different. I could be wrong but I don't know that DO is the cause of what I'm seeing.

I've wondered the same thing. In the lake and river I fish in there seem to be tons of gar. I do find bass in the same area, or atleast very close to it, but the gar seem to be out in the grass away from the bank while the gar are rolling around in the grass away from the banks. In the TN river I see tons of gar and, like you said, when I see them I rarely see the bass.

I've always heard that a steady barometer with high pressure is the worst for fishing. I thought bluebird skies aren't a good thing, and that a falling barometer was better. I can tell you that high pressure, bluebird days don't stop the bass from feeding. What the summer high pressure days do for us is allow you to set your watch on most days as to when the bass move up to feed every day in certain areas. The key to weather in the summer is the consistency of it. Its hot in Texas, and winds are generally out of the southern directions for about 3 months, that a steady weather pattern unlike fall when its hot one day and cold, when fronts are moving through every other day. One day winds are northern, the next southern, the next day east. Fall and winter and spring throw changing conditions, summer weather is stable generally. Alls a blueblue sky does normally, is hold bass tighter to cover. Whcih means the strikezone is shorter and casts need to be more precise to the target. They still eat. Gotcha. I didn't think they stopped eating, but that it made them less aggressive and tended to require more finesse than a falling barometer. I had always heard that a falling barometer made them more aggressive and therefore more likely to hit a wider variety of baits and not hold as tight to cover.

That is not a major problem. The answer is obvious. Roll Tide!

I've always heard that a steady barometer with high pressure is the worst for fishing. I thought bluebird skies aren't a good thing, and that a falling barometer was better.

Deer sers or madamz, I needz the gear for fishing and I'z herd that you bate peeple wuld give me warez if I like wear ur hat or somethingz. I would be willin to do this 4 u if u give me warez. I played the fishing game on my xbox and win lots of turnaments there so I think I can win the reel ones 4 u. u wuldnt be sorry. I will pimp ur company tottaly to the max if u give me good warez. I wuld probably also need a boat cause my dad said I cant use his anymore after the accident. Not sure why he is like that cause no charges were pressed or anything. If u give me a boat, I will put stickerz on it 4 u too. My shirt will need my nick on it, it is 3lit3d00dkillerklown. Lolz. You can email me or call me. I need the boat soon. Thanks, 3lit3d00dkillerklown aka - Rodeny Unfortunately I know a few of my sons friends just might write something similar to the above. Sometimes the younger generation scares me.

We've had some of that kind of thing down here in Albama, not quite as severe as you are talking about however. I've been noticing that a fair number of fish seem to be moving and staying in the deeper water around here. My guess is that the rapidly changing conditions are making them stay in deeper water more often than they have in the past. But, I'm not 100% sold on that because of the abnormally high temps we had a couple weeks ago. That stretch of hot weather may have been what's moved them deep earlier than normal. The one thing that makes me wonder is that usually the fish move back to the ledges and deeper areas in the main channel of the lake I love to fish. But lately it seems like they are holding in the deeper areas that are still in the creeks and closer to the bedding areas. There are a number of fish that have moved back to the main channel, but I am still finding a lot of them in the "staging areas" that I would expect them to be in right after the spawn. I don't think anything I said helps you, so I will go over here and sit down and let the smarter folks handle this! :-/

You will never get anywhere taking that approach with a person. If you tell me that I am not a true fisherman, you can pretty much bet that I am not going to listen to a thing you have to say. I will instantly be on the defensive and even if you make very compelling arguements, I'm not going to hear them. Its human nature. If you really want to get the CnR message across, you have to approach it in the right way. Perhaps chatting the person up, getting to know them a bit, then explain why you think what you do might work better. As it is, what the guy was doing was perfectly acceptable. And as for your observations, remember that the DNR folks take limits seriously and set the limits based on a lot of careful observation of the fishery. They are in a better position to judge the health of the fishery than you are. Since they have set a limit, they've judged that the fishery would be best served by said limit, and I don't think you are in a position to refute that.

Guntersville is all about fishing the grass. Hydrilla and Milfoil are everywhere on Lake Guntersville. During July it will be hot and I've noticed that some bass stay shallow and get in the really think grass, or they go deep. Your best bet is probably going to be main channel grass lines around humps, points, and ledges in 5- 15 feet of water. But early and late you can find some really good bass in fairly shallow water as well. Currently the evening top water bite has been tapernig off, but the early morning top water bite is still strong. That will likely start to taper off soon as well. Your best bets baitwise are crankbaits on the edges of grass on points and ledges where bass will suspend and cruise. Senko type worms pretty much anywhere. I've been having a lto of success with wacky rigged senkos so far this summer. Big worms on grass lines work well too. The jig bite is supposed to start really kicking in in the next few weeks, especially in the shallow thick grass areas. Hope that helps. I love Lake Guntersville because there are a lot of fish in that lake and many of them are good size fish. Its a big body of water but there are lots of places to fish unlike some lakes I've been on.

In the past week I've had 2 occasions where a storm rolled through while I was fishing that required me to take cover for a bit. On both occasions, after the storm passed, the fish got really active in the shallow water next to the grass. Last Sat this happened, and in about 15 minutes I landed 5 4+ lbers. They were right up next to the thick grass.

This past weekend I used the weedless variety of Gammy finesse EWG hooks and was pretty happy. Only had 2 come off and that was more likely due to the grass they got wrapped up in than the hook. But the hook did a good job of keeping the weeds off and I was throwing it into and around some pretty nasty stuff.

Just a note, my local Gander Mtn was out of the Black w/blue flake which I use alot and I tried the smoke with flakes and it works well too. Although it looks more purple than "smoke".

I caught my son doing something similar when he first started fishing. His first fishing method was using bobbers and crickets. So when he decided to start using artifical baits to try and catch bass he would put a rapala minnow under the bobber and throw it out and let it sit there.

I'd be looking to pitch it into any holes in the grass you can see. Never know what might be hiding underneath. One of the lakes I fish frequently has lots of grass, and if I am pitching a jig, I often pitch it in the thickest stuff I can, the places where (hopefully) other anglers haven't tried.

I have a song and dance that I do at the start of every fishing trip. Once I get to my initial fishing spot I do this little dance where I sort of slowly dance in place and move around in a circle while chanting "bring the fish! bring the fish!". Obviously I can't dance around too much in the boat. If the day turns out really slow, I've been known to perform this ancient rite again in an attempt to placate the fishing gods and have them bestow upon me great fishing success.