Team9nine

TRD's have salt. From Daniel Nussbaum, Z-Man Fishing Products general manager, via Ned:

Huge fan of Toray lines, especially SHU, but sadly it has become almost impossible to find it here in the U.S. Will be curious to hear your thoughts on Structure. Have been avoiding Sunline because of access to Toray, using Seaguar as my backup fluoro line, but that might have to change before long. -T9

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't see how the Trokar hook would much different than using the internal weights and Grigsby HP hook setup with tubes. Haven't tried the Trokars, but have used the HPs with shown weight for years. The gap on the weight should be big enough to accommodate the Trokars, even if a little finagling or creative shaving is needed. -T9

Not as good as the original BPS Stud Fry, IMHO, but certainly worth having in your box for the techniques mentioned above. The rings make Texposing a breeze. -T9

That's my "crappie" rod wink wink nudge nudge -T9

On my 4th, and LAST new boat (2 Stratos, 1 Triton, 1 Alumacraft) - so says the wife Never had any regrets with the new ones. Nothing like getting to pick out, outfit and customize a boat exactly as you'd like it right from the get go. Also have never been comfortable with purchasing a used boat - though I've also owned at least 3 of those, though all were smaller boats. You just don't know how they've been treated and taken care of. Heard too many horror stories to drop big dollars on a larger "used" rig. You just have to decide if the cost of a newer boat outweighs getting along with the existing boat. Just like a car, they can nickel and dime you to death if you get a little unlucky. -T9

The question has come up on these forums several times, and whatever "floats your boat" or works for you is fine, but Ned just put up a piece on "Ned Rig" rod testing and selection that is worth a read, especially if you have a fondness or appreciation for Ned's finer personality traits. A couple excerpts are quoted below.

As you can see, there is no "one" correct answer Trailer hooks frequently depend upon how much or how heavy of cover you are throwing the bait into and around, while trailers are more personal preference, though do get the nod for larger profiles (in murky water) or slower retrieves (like at night - more bulk creates more drag in the water). Try both and see what works best for you on your waters. -T9

Snap or light split ring - or loop knot if you feel lucky. Does depend upon bait though, as there are several that are more commonly tied direct to. -T9

That's because there is no one correct answer, only common guidance passed along. -T9

From everything I've researched, it depends If you base a test on just line rating, say 15# braid vs. 15# mono, braid will outcast mono because the thinner diameter and extreme limpness will more than offset any increased surface friction via thinner diameter (surface area) and decreased mass and wind resistance. However, if you base the comparison on diameter, say 50# braid vs. 12# mono, then mono will likely cast as far or further, especially if you're using one of the softer, more manageable lines (e.g., Trilene XL). If you use a stiffer, abrasion resistant mono like XT or CXX, then the stiffness and coiling will tend to decrease casting distance due to increased friction through the guides, more so than braid, and braid would likely win out, though it might not be terribly different. Though not thrown into the discussion, fluorocarbon would likely fare the worst in all comparisons. -T9

Could really use a little bit more info. Brand and pound test fluoro., on certain setups only, proper use of reel drag, etc. Until further info, it sounds like you are simply overpowering your knots with your setup. It's pretty rare for me to break knots on hooksets with fluoro, and if/when it does start happening, it's usually because the line is finally starting to go bad, or I failed to properly maintain that aspect of the setup. That said, in tests I've seen, InvizX had the best overall knot strength of most major brands of fluoro tested. I'd have to believe Tatsu would be right up there with it. I use them both, along with Toray. Usually the softer and more manageable fluoros will also have the better knot strength, while the stiffer or harder brands will have less strength. -T9

Usually it's the males that do the nest and fry guarding... -T9

What, no details... -T9

While I always carry markers with me and believe that they are the best/easiest overall, in many situations I don't want to drive over a spot first, or get too near, or I might only be planning to make a few casts just to check a spot. In those cases, I have no problem using both casting rings and SI to position myself. I use a 40' ring, and it is usually a simple matter of knowing direction of approach to get the right lineup. In other words, I'll approach a spot head-on so that the initial casts are going to literally be straight ahead of me toward the target, making sure to slowly stop the boat at the rings edge. If for some reason winds won't allow a direct approach, I'll slowly idle by one side of the casting ring using SI, then drop a buoy when I see what I'm targeting. That way, I only need to keep my boat positioned on the buoy to make the correct cast. If you use some other method, the idea of dropping a buoy right over the front of the boat the first time your cast contacts your target still is a great aid for all future casts and positioning on the spot. -T9

Haven't found a high limit yet (well, I have stayed home a time or two with 40mph sustained gusts). If I was in FL like you, hurricane force winds might get me to stay home also - LOL I will eliminate some bodies of water based upon speed or direction, but I can pretty much always launch and find some decent fishable water somewhere. Our winds typically top out in the low to mid twenties with gusts to 30, so not too terrible. More an annoyance. It pays to know good areas all over a lake because you never know which direction or how strong the winds are going to be when you want to go fishing. -T9

Gotta' love friends was pretty breezy out there. Now we're going post frontal with NE winds - good times - LOL. -T9 If you really want to keep it pretty simple, spend most of your time in the large protected bay with the small island out front (Party Cove) on the lower right hand side of the lake fishing post spawners around docks and emerged vegetation (water willow) and also the main causeway bridge area (Carrigan Rd) including the right hand shoreline between it and the ramp. Two of the most consistent areas on the lake. -T9

A couple other thoughts while were on the topic. Ask about any biologist and they'll tell you that most bass anglers almost always overestimate how much a female bass will weigh when getting ready to spawn. You've likely heard it before, "If only I had caught her when she was ready to spawn, she would have weighed xx pounds." In reality, the average female bass only carries eggs which weigh about 4-6% of her total body weight. At the very high end you might be looking at 8-10%, but that would be the exception in most cases, on most waters. The point being, a healthy female fish that measures in that 20-22" range and might normally be expected to weigh 4.5-6 pounds isn't going to be carrying around 2-3 pounds of eggs. It's much more likely to only be 4-8 ounces at best, most of the time. As such, assuming she completely spawns out her eggs, she will only decrease her overall weight by that same amount. Now, if you are seeing or catching quite a few fish with big heads and skinny bodies, then you most likely have a food/feeding issue, most likely a shortage of available food, and this can be seasonal on the same body of water. In other words, they look fat and healthy at some point in the year, but many months later, they are looking light and skinny. Some waters simply don't have a good enough (or diverse enough) food supply to keep bass fat and healthy all year long. And yes, it could be a case where several factors combine to make fish unusually thin, but by and large, a single isolated incident (like @Mastermarsh indicated in his response) is most likely a sick and dying fish, while skinny or thin fish being more the norm on your waters is probably a food or environmental issue. -T9

Not a post-spawn thing - that fish is on its way out. Here's a good piece by I-F contributor Ralph Manns on the subject: Big Headed, Skinny Bass: Why? By Ralph Manns Bass and other fish live in a very hostile environment. On average, 20 to 40 percent of all adult bass die every year. Very few live more than five or six years. That's why any fish that reaches lunker size is rare and should be released . Bass waste-away and eventually die for many reasons. Disease kills some. There are many fungus and bacterial diseases in every bassing water, just waiting to find a host in slightly weakened condition. And now we know there is at least one virus out there that attacks stressed bass. Even careful catch and release stresses bass, but fish are also stressed just by the processes of normal living. They race for food and lose to a faster or closer bass. Many bass accumulate burdensome parasite loads. Practically everything a bass eats bring with it some additional parasites that then set up housekeeping inside a bass' guts, liver, eyes, skin, and muscles and sap its energy. Tapeworms steal food, and a wide variety of parasitic flukes nest in various tissues, reducing the fish’s ability to function at full strength. The older the bass, the more parasites it usually contains. A few flukes migrate into a bass' eyes and live there. These often blind the bass, even though the damage isn't always visible externally. Bass live in a competitive environment. They aren't perfect predators, they merely function well enough to survive. Prey are equally efficient escape artists, and bass don't catch food every time they feed. If a lot of bass try for a limited amount of catchable food, the may get insufficient food if they are not able to compete at full strength. Preyfish seem abundant to anglers, but in most lakes, even our best bassing waters like Toledo Bend, they are usually in a population that is fairly well balanced. The number of prey and predators tends to come to equilibrium, with neither too many nor too few predators or preyfish. The result is that any bass that is only at 90 percent physical capacity tends to starve. It takes a lot of visible shad to support the full population of bass in a water like the Bend. The result is that in most healthy bass populations there are always a few fish that are in some stage of dying. They are either sick with diseases or parasites (or both) or injured and can't compete well enough and are slowly starving to death. Almost nothing is know about the effects of aging on bass, but some lunkers stop growing, waste away and die. Apparently, just like in humans, some organs just stop functioning as well if a bass gets too old or too fat. My wife caught a 29.5 inch bass at Santee_Cooper years ago with a huge head and skinny body that only weighed 9 pounds. We saw a 16-pounder from the same lake on the wall that was the same length. It was obviously declining. Since then I've seen many bass of various sizes that were on their way out. Anglers often think bass with one eye out, or obviously blind, can feed effectively with lateral line alone. In a normal lake environment this is NOT true. Bass need full vision to feed effectively in competition with other, healthy bass and to catch elusive prey that can both see and sense that the bass is near. Other fish beat them to any prey that come within catchable range and they slowly starve. When anglers catch a fat, blind bass, its almost always because the fish was only recently blinded and its slow decline isn't yet visible. At Falcon Lake, on the Texas/Mexico boarder, underwater brush is often covered with thorns. Anglers frequently catch healthy-looking blind or one-eyed bass there, as the fish injure themselves chasing prey. But, few of these fish live long or continue to grow. Skinny bass with large heads are normal in most bodies of water, as long as they remain a small part of the total bass population. If most of the bass appear underweight, there is a gross imbalance of prey and bass numbers or a rampant disease is effecting most of the fish. These are stunted, sick bass, and should be removed from the population and eaten if apparently in good health and retention is legal. Catch and release of such fish is not beneficial or appropriate in almost all waters.

Not necessarily. Bass are pretty adaptable and will often be where the best food supply is. In a small pond, the center of the food universe is frequently the shoreline edge. -T9

Fairly common, though prevalence varies by waters, and no, not much you can do about it. Most likely what you are seeing is a very small leech known as Myzobdella - at least those are the ones that hang out in bass mouths around here Mixed reports on whether they are harmful or not, though they will leave ulcerations on the bass. -T9

Just a guess, but channel catfish usually don't reproduce well on their own in smaller bodies of water, especially non-riverine types. So my guess would be that what you are seeing is simply a good age class from one of the earlier stockings in the lake that have all survived and grown up together. Very similar to the hybrid stripers - they're all within about 6" of each other between 25" and 31," all stocked one year at the same time and length. -T9

Sadly many have already forgotten the pioneering efforts of some of these men and their colleagues, especially Binkelman, the most underrated of the bunch. I'm a bit of a historian and collector of all things related to those guys and what Ron Lindner refers to as "the modern angling revolution." For those interested in learning and reading more about that great time period, and as my small effort to make sure their story is not forgotten, see my profile listing. -T9

Since nobody else has mentioned it yet, you'd have to throw out the name Buck Perry and his spoonplugs/spoonplugging. Buck is credited with coining the term "structure" along with several others still commonly in use. The spoonplug, which was developed and patented back in the mid 1940s, were a series of metal crankbait equivalents for lack of a better description, each designed to run in a very specific depth range regardless of speed. The smallest size ran as shallow as 2 feet, while the largest ran up to 25' on a pre-stretched monofilament line called "No-Bo." If you ran them on wire line, which Buck also made for his lures, you could easily reach 40'-60' of depth. By following a defined protocol of fishing from the shallows to deep, you could find all types of structure such as ledges and channels, points, humps, roadbeds, etc. This was also all before there was what we consider "pros," at least if you define pros as organized and recognized tournament angling which arguably began in 1968-1969 with the formation of B.A.S.S. and their national tourney circuit. By then, flashers were well popularized and available, and paper graphs were soon to follow. -T9

Honestly, if you're just tying fluoro to braid to use as a leader, for the most part, brand doesn't matter because the shortened leader takes the biggest complaint (stiffness and subsequent poor handling and casting) out of the equation. If you are spooling up a full spool of fluoro, then some of the more softer or easy to manage lines like InvisX, Tatsu or Toray (Finesse) would be great choices to start with depending upon budget. -T9