Ellesar

Just watch and you'll see why. Starting with Alabama. Clemson said the same thing last year.... VT > Clemson Alabama > VT > Clemson

Just watch and you'll see why. Starting with Alabama. Clemson said the same thing last year....

They have 2 because they dont play anyone and are likely to end up undefeated or with just one loss, which will get them ranked that high. The polls do consider the schedule strength, its not necessarily how good you are, but how good you play given the competition you face.

Lol, I had to clean the keyboard and monitor after reading that. Never heard that phrased that way before. I've had a fast attack of the squirts before and had to hang it over the side to bomb some germans. Luckily it was high pressure and it sprwayed out everywhere. Not long after I get done another boat pulls into this cove and I see the guys sort of looking around wondering what all this brown stuff is on top of the water. The wind had spread it out. I just left....

Well I'm fishing a big grass flat in the main channel. The two spots that I found were basically holes in the grass. The holes aren't big, maybe 25 feet across. The grass around these holes is thinner than much of the grass so that the bigger fish have more room to move around, yet still enough cover to ambush pray. I found one of these spots by accident as I was drifting with the wind that was present when the sun first came up. I looked down and saw three 5-6 lbers sitting in this hole and a bigger one cruising the edges. I marked a waypoint and left them alone for a little while since they had seen me. Eventually I spent most of my time trolling between these 2 holes in the grass. The area is almost like a cove. Three sides of it had grass scummed up on top like a land mass. The area in the middle is bowl shaped. The grass isn't as high because the water is deeper there. It goes from 4ft to 8 ft deep. Its within a couple hundred yards of the main channel and some good ledges so there is deep water close by. When they are pulling current, the fish come up on these grass flats and eat. When I first drifted over the area you could see why the fish are there. There was so much life, from small minnows to bluegill all over the place. I saw a couple of nice bass jumping bluegill on top.

Come fish Guntersville in the summer Paul, I'll show you how easy fishing can be! I lost a Curado and St Criox rod a few weeks ago. I grabbed my ledge worm rod and took the worm off and tried to use the weight and the hook as a dredge to see if I could snag it by some miracle. We were in the middle of the usual schooling actiivty and I actually caught 2 fish on an empty hook.

I really can't thank you enough for posting this. I really just needed validation that I don't totally suck lol ;D I think its all a learning process. When I first started fishing Guntersville I had some spots that would seemingly be hot and cold and I had no idea why. I didn't know if it was me, was I using the wrong lure, wrong color, etc. One day I would go and kill them and the next I wouldn't. To me, it seemed like everything was the same from one day to the next, but it wasn't. When the damns on Guntersville are pulling water to make electricity it really turns the fishing on during the summer. I didn't know that at the time, but that was what was causing the change in behavior. This past saturday they were pulling water and the fishing was incredible. Same spot 24 hours later was hardly producing fish. The reason for the difference? No current. I think this kind of thing can really effect you when you are unfamiliar with a body of water and haven't learned those kind of things yet. Sounds like there may be something on that lake you were at that effects the fish but you may not realize what that is. Besides, if you totally sucked, you wouldn't have caught fish the first night. 8-)

On Guntersville when it gets all nice and scummy up on top, some of the stuff undereath it dies off leaving a lot of room for the fish to roam around. That signals the start of the frog bite. Not all of the grass gets that high though.

A month and a half ago, or so, my buddy and I were fixing to fish a tournament. HE went out on a friday and fished an area that we had been having some luck with. He spent a good amount of time catching fish like a mad man. He caught over 30 5+ lb fish that morning, the shad spawn is a great thing. We were excited the next morning because we figure if that place produce anywhere near the way it had the previous morning we would have a real shot at winning. We caught 2 or 3 fish there, all shorts. We had to scramble to find enough fish to manage a 6th place finish. Fished that spot a week later and landed around 10-15 5+ lbers. I don't know where those fish went for that week, but that spot went from super hot, to dead cold, back to hot. Moral of that story is that it may not have been you or anything you did. I know that I have a hard time abandoning a spot that has produced for me recently.

Had a good morning on Sat. Most people will tell you that swimming a big worm in the grass is the ticket for the bigger fish right now, hitting the main channel ledges is a close second. I decided to try throwing some of Brent's Jaw-Jak swimbaits since I hadn't used them this year. The big boys seemed to really like them. My best 5 went 23.3 pounds. Had a really nice fish break off at the boat, it looked like it would run 35 lbs, but probably a 7-8 lber in reality. It was a good lesson in retying your lines after you've landed a few big fish. An interesting thing is that this spot has produced 2 days of big fish in a row. And when I say spot, it really is a spot. There are 2 specific spots in the middle of this grass flat. I moved all around it and only caught big fish on one of the two spots. The bad part is that the grass is really starting to grow and it will overtake those spots within the week. Guess I'll have to really work the new safari prop out so that I can pitch into those holes once the grass overruns them. In the picture of the water, all the little white dots are grass gnats. When it gets really hot like it was sat with no wind, those things drive you absolutely insane. I was covered in dead bugs and still had a huge swarm of the things all around me. Good thing the fishing was good enough to distract me from that misery!

The new Safari prop is awesome. I tried mine out this past weekend and the only time that I had to remove weeds was when they completely covered the entire head and shaft. The rest of the time it cut through some very thick and nasty stuff without getting loaded down with weeds. I had no problems driving up into the thick stuff. Wiht my old 3 blade prop I was having to pull weeds off every few minutes.

Man can effect their habitat however, reducing the amount of food and cover available to support their population. This can also effect predator populations which throws nature out of balance. Nature will restore the balance, but its not "nice" how she accomplishes this. Populations dying off from starvation and disease is a slow and painful process. This is especially true with something like Deer hunting where man has decimated the predator population and habitat. Without hunting to take up the slack, the deer die a slow and painful death. I've seen the effects and its not pretty to say the least.

The iPhone! Seriously, Navionics has released a version of their Lake maps for the iPhone. Its not quite as good as the platinum chip, but its good some pretty good detail. Definately worth the $5.00 they are asking for it. Its got some neat features too. You can take pictures and associate the pics with spots on the map. It has waypoints, routes, fuel consumption estimations, distance between points, points of interest in a bunch of different catagories, etc. I have a Magellan in my car but I don't really use it much. I've found that my phone works better, and it has google so that I can find places on the maps without having to know their addresses. My Magellan usually requires me to know the address of hte place I'm going and I have to use my phone to look it up. So I usually just use google maps on the phone and use that as my gps when I'm not in the boat.

The recall issue is something the dealer has to do. Basically there were a few cases where an improper screw was used, it was too long and it screwed into the gas tank. They will perform a pressure test on the fuel system to see if you have a problem, and that requires some specific tools. My dealer did it in a short amount of time. There were only very few boats effected, but its worth checking out and making sure. Some Tritons have had a problem with a gas smell in the storage compartments. I don't think I've heard of the x2 hulls having this issue though, Triton added some vents to fix that. If the smell is only in the storage lockers. If you are smelling it elsewhere, especially if its in the Bilge, DO NOT run your boat before getting it fixed.

The 175 has no problems getting my boat out of the water with full livewells, full gear, and 2 people in the boat.

So the fun continued into the weekend. Sat I caught a lot of fish, but they were all under 2lbs. I stopped counting at ~60, but probably caught around 100-120. There were lots of schoolers, but quality fish were hard to find. These cool temps we've had recently have the water temps below normal and the fish seemed confused. Combine that with the grass being behind schedule and the fish aren't quite where they are supposed to be. I started sunday off doing what I'm supposed to do this time of year, fish grass in the main channel. But after a slow start, I decided to try back in some pockets where I would've expected fish to be a couple months ago. I didn't know how this would work, but playing around with little schooling fish gets old and I figured since the water temps were down I'd give it a try. Turned out to be a pretty good idea. Found some bigger fish hanging out back in the coves and pockets. Nothing really huge, but a solid day with around 30-40 2-4 lbers.

So I had a pretty good weekend, atleast I got to fish this weekend now that the boat is fixed. I learned its a good thing to be sure the mechanic actually looks for a problem and that you sometimes have to insist they look again. Especially when your dealer is a good distance away. I took my daughter out on Friday night. She caught a nice one and I lost a St. Criox rod with a Curado in the lake. Still sick over that. We started with some schoolers because she usually just wants to catch fish. She eventually tired of that and we started moving around a bit to see what we could find. She did land a nice one with an Anaconda. She actually pulled it out of my bag because it looked "pretty". Well eventually she got a little too cocky and had to go for a swim. She "slipped" and fell off the back of the boat. I had nothing to do with it!!!!

I got one stuck in my hand putting up halloween decorations!

I have one for cold, rain, bugs when I'm going down the lake. It works pretty good. I like that you can swap out the lenses for different light conditions.

I would say no to the 18 and a half foot champion. I don't think any 18 1/2 foot cookie cutter boat is going to ride as good as a 20 1/2 foot boat. Depends on the driver... remember. Obvioulsy I was implying that with equal drivers that was true, figured that was fairly obvious and went without saying. 8-)

I do wish it were multiplayer, but its still pretty fun. I've found that working the bait actually does make a difference so that's a nice little bit of functionality that reflects the real thing. I get tired of big ones breaking off though, and I know its designed that way to maek the game challenging, in real life I can adjust the drag or use stronger line. Can't do either of those in this game.

So, I'm suffering withdrawls while my boat is in the shop and I come across this game for the Wii. Its called Sega Bass fishing. Its comes wiht a little fishing rod thing to put the controllers into. Its not a bad little game, especially the tournaments. Its giving me a small fishing fix while I wait for my boat! If any of you have a Wii, give it a try, its worth the 30 bucks!

I would say no to the 18 and a half foot champion. I don't think any 18 1/2 foot cookie cutter boat is going to ride as good as a 20 1/2 foot boat.

I think this is an important point. Its been my experience that the driver has more to do with how comfortable a ride is than the hull does. There is no boat made that won't ride like absolute crap with someone who doesn't know how to drive. I think the biggest issue you will have is just figuring out how to drive the boat to give you the most comfortable ride you can get.

SI isn't something that I've felt that I really need yet. I got Lowrance units on my boat because I felt that the 2d sonar performance was better. Both HB and Lowrance can use Navionics chips so that wasn't much of a factor for me. If the Lowrance SI ( called StructureScan ) is as good as it looks I will probably go that way one day. But for where I fish most of the time, I don't know how much its going to do for me.