Sparse

I'll try the kastmaster, I've got a few lying around ... I've never caught anything on them, any standard retrieve I should try, or just try all sorts of retrieves?

I've never caught one before, so I don't think it's white bass ... but who knows what's in there ...

Thanks for the thought on permits, hadn't thought of it. Our lake is private, so I don't think we'll have to worry, plus it's probably only 4 or 5 participants.

Thanks for all the thoughts, I've tried a ton of stuff so far, the hard part is getting close enough for a cast, they move around a lot, so when I get close for one cast, then they move off in another direction 50 yards, and I have to paddle after them. The best luck I have had so far is using a spinner bait with a white fluke (don't have any spinner bait with skirts yet)... the baitfish chased after it, but that's about the extent of my good luck. Thanks I'll keep at it, and let you guys know when I get something that works.

On our lake in PA we have schools of little baitfish that cruise out in the deep part of the laker right on the surface. Throughout the day we'll see them scatter as bigger fish slash through them, I think these are bass, I was wondering if anyone has seen this sort of thing, and what's a good method to catch them? Thanks, Mark

Cool good idea on the paper. Regarding your thought on where to fish ... How would you deal with a situation where two or more fisherman are trying to fish the same spot?

We have a little summer place on a small lake in PA that has 11 or so other families on it. This year all of us fisherman thought it'd be fun to do a fishing tournament. I was hoping someone out there has done this before and had some tips on how to set it up. Our lake is about 50 acres, and everybody would be using canoes or kayaks. Our thought was to divide the lake up into areas and then each fisherman could draw 2 or 3 areas out of a hat. Each fisherman would get maybe 20 - 30 minutes at each spot and then everyone would switch to their next spot. The lake has bass and pickerel in it. Since the pickerel are a lot easier to catch we thought we would include those as part of the tournament. My biggest concern is how to keep all the fish alive during the tournament, I did see a post about a styrafoam cooler and an aerator, we were hoping we wouldn't have to spend very much ... Anyway thoughts/opinions/etc are greatly appreciated. mark

Cool thanks.

I am living in NE PA right now, on a lake that has lots of warmwater species. I've been catching panfish recently and decided to keep a few for dinner. When I opened one up, inside the body cavity was a bunch of white worm like things. None of them were moving, so I tried to convince myself that they weren't worms. When I started to deskin the fish, I found another one, that was definetly alive. I've been looking on line at freshwater parasites and have been having trouble identifying these. Any good way to id them and better still, are they safe to eat? Thanks, Sparse

Hi All, New to the forum, and bass fishing in general. This is my second summer learning to really gear fish for bass and it's been a lot of fun. I'm primarily T-rigging or C-Rigging right now, and doing a little drop shotting (though haven't had much luck). Anyway got this picture the other evening and thought I'd share. MS

Hehe ... as aggresive as CP's are I could certainly seeing them try. I was more interested in the difference in ecology between our two ponds . Though I thought you meant that the pickerel were eating the baby bass ... whcih I'm sure they are. I know our lake has tons of other fish as well as bass. Sunfish, perch, shiners, catfish, etc. anyway a 3 1/2 pound CP is huge!

Interesting ... I'm not good at figuring out how much a bass weighs ... what's the length of a 1 to 2 pound bass? In our lake there is a very health population of CP's and Bass fortunetly for us we haven't seen any detriment to the bass population. Matter of fact, all of the pickerel we have eaten have mainly had crawfish in their stomachs.

Just for fun here's a picture of a CP i caught recently, little guy.

We eat a few pickerel every summer. I'd say if you have other fish that are easier to prepare then throw the pickerel back, but they taste like fish, and aren't too hard to deal with the bones. I watched one of those videos, while a bit complicated, I'm going to give it a try and I'd certaily eat more pickerel if there were less bones.