7mm-08

Love them. I liked the President so much, I thought I'd move up to a Supreme XT. I prefer the President and use it more than any other reel I own.

My first artificial lures as a kid were Roostertails and I fished with them almost exclusively for years. I've caught just about anything that can be caught around here on those things. All the sunfish of course; flathead, channel and mud cats; white/yellow bass.....you name it... I guess the one that I expected the least was about a 3 or 4 lb. freshwater drum.

BPS shipping was always slow and expensive for me. I used to order quite a bit of stuff from them, but got sick of it a couple of years ago..

I was in the same boat as you OP in that I hadn't had a shot in probably 20 years. I got my tetanus shot earlier this year and there were no side-effects that I could discern.

Bass are fun to keep but they get huge fast and I didn't have much luck getting them to eat flake or pellets. Kept a warmouth for a while (and he was awesome) but feeding it got expensive because it wouldn't take commercial fish food either. I have managed to get bluegill and other small panfish and minnows to take flakes/pellets if they were young when I caught them. Probably the most interesting residents of the native tanks I've kept have been crawdads.

Well I'm really pleased with the Mark Stoops hire. I don't think the Cats have the local recruiting base to ever be elite but getting decimated by Vandy two years in a row..frickin mathletes of Vandy...was too much to bear. I guess I kinda know how UT fans felt losing to us lol.

Currently I have 6 tanks with African cichlids. In the past I've kept tropicals and native fish such as bluegill and warmouth. The warmouth may have been my favorite fish ever but it got too expensive to feed. It could easily down a dozen feeder goldfish a night if I'd let it.

<~~~ See user name.

It usually takes me a handful of strikes to get settled down and get in time with them. Those first few I have an itchy trigger finger lol. I've never been one to wait until I feel the fish or wait a certain amount of seconds. I've found a short pause after the strike is usually enough. The length of the pause varies a bit from trip to trip but usually once I get it down the fish are fairly consistent unless conditions change. Oh, and using the right rod/line combo can make a huge difference. I upped my hookup percentage by a massive amount by switching to an appropriate rod.

Yup it's pretty cool how some traits are pretty much universal. I was fishing topwater one day and it hit me how fortunate it is that there aren't a whole lot more shark attacks than there are.

So now that the FF is set, who are you picking? I'm gonna have to pick my beloved Wildcats of course. Playing Lousyville in the FF is going to make this an unbelievable week around these parts for sure.

While I take pride in my work and do it to the best of my abilities, I fiercely protect my personal/family time and have passed up multiple jobs that would infringe upon that. The thing I hate most about the lack of job opportunites in the current economy is that it has empowered employers too much. They've got you by the gonads for lack of a better term and too many companies are willing to take advantage. That being said, I am lucky to be very close to my boss and coworkers so we will do what's necessary to cover for each other if the need arises.

I think only taking one type of lure might be a better idea for a more experienced angler trying to learn a new bait/technique. We all know that bass are temperamental creatures and sometimes you just aren't going to catch them but I can definitely see that being frustrating to a new fisherman.

After reading the thread title, I was going to suggest using peanut butter in your mouse/rat traps. Context fail on my part.

I've had more luck catching cats out of ponds using live minnows than anything else.