Marty

I use Jitterbugs a lot and it sounds very unusual to have so many boils without actually striking the lure. The Jitterbug is often (always in my case) fished with a steady retrieve and is easier for a fish to home in on than a lure fished erratically. Sometimes after a boil, the fish will strike a few casts later. But you should think about throwing a topwater which is fished more slowly or quickly toss a soft plastic into the area of the boil. Are you sure it's bass that are doing the boiling?

I fish mine in western New York. ;D (Sorry). Generally shallow water, with weed cover, submergent, emergent or both.

That reminds me... I had a friend and colleague who didn't fish locally, but went to this one place in Canada once or twice per year. In addition to some panfish, what he always told me he caught were smallies and pickerel. One time I talked him into fishing a local lake. Pretty soon he caught a pickerel and as he was hauling it into the boat he said, "what the hell is that?" I said, "Mark, what do you mean what is that, you've told me for years about the pickerel you always catch in Canada." He said "they don't look anything like that." Well, after discussing the Esox family, we determined that what he'd been catching in Canada were pike and we've always had a good laugh when we think of that outing.

I'm sorry about your misfortune and hope something good happens quickly. I have no advice except to hang in there, stay positive and make finding your next job your current fulltime job. Good luck.

Dolphin and porpoise are not interchangeable, although some refer to dolphins as porpoises. The common porpopise is in the genus phocoena, while the dolphin is genus delphinus. I don't know the history of the usage, but virtually every dictionary lists dolphin as the mammal as the first definition given.

I tend to use a light drag setting which has served me well. A few years ago I took one of my combos to a Lake Ontario pier to try for some king salmon. I was fishing a crankbait and sure enough I had a hard hit and the reel was screaming immediately, then it all went limp. I'm no physicist, but I think the energy generated by that hit and running fish went into pulling line against the drag rather than driving the hooks home. I'll never know if I would have hooked that fish with a tighter drag, but I know for sure after the fact that you don't fish for kings with a light bass drag.

Interesting that you posted that. Yes, that's a good site. This year I got serious about identifying vegetation. I spent many hours on various sites, assembling pictures and text to create my own little "field guide." And I can now identify a number of plants. My remaining problem is not having a list of the plants that are present in western New York. When there's a plant I don't know and that's not in my homemade guide, then I have a problem narrowing it down. But I've come a long ways from when all I could identify was lily pads, arrowhead, duckweed and cattails.

I certainly can't guess why you haven't gotten bites. Just a wild guess, but I wonder if it's clear water, that they see you and are spooked. If you think that's a possibility, then maybe try standing further away from the bank. I have always used corn, that's as good a bait as any, in my opinion. My setup is spinning, usually with 8# line. I have a slip sinker or egg sinker about 12-18" up the line and a BB shot just below it to keep the big sinker in place. I fish with the bail open so the carp can pick up the corn and move off without feeling resistance. Once I see the line moving off, usually just closing the bail is enough to set the hook. Before fishing, you can chum the water, which means throwing a bunch of the bait into the water to attract the fish, which in my case, would be a few handfuls of corn. I use frozen corn, less messy than the canned stuff. Good luck. Carp on the end of your line are a lot of fun and for many of us, that's the one fish we encounter that really makes the reel sing.

I don't know that I've had hooks actually ripped out, but they sometimes get bent. And the paint jobs are affected by teeth marks, but I never experienced a paint job dotted with teeth marks to lose its effectiveness.

I catch numerous pike, sometimes more than I want to. They cut the line and cost me my crankbait at times, but when I land the fish, the crankbait is intact. What do you mean when you say they're "destroying" your cranks?

My personal experience says LM, SM, plus pike and pickerel will readily hit anything you throw, in any color, at one time or another. With so much overlap, I wouldn't even know whether a given lure, with some exceptions, is classified as a SM or LM lure.

Some of the ones I like are: Baby 1-Minus Heddon Swim'n Image Spence Scout Bomber Flat A Bomber Fat Free Guppy Lipless cranks--Traps and Rattling Rapalas Deep Shad Raps in size 5 Shallow Shad Raps in size 7

First, a disclaimer: I'm not a pro, I have no sponsors and have never fished a tournament. I don't know if studying business will give you a "1-up", but you should know business, period. After all, pro fishermen aren't employees, they're independent contractors running their own businesses. So it's obvious that business skills are needed, as are marketing skills. You need to market yourself to potential sponsors, and if you have sponsors, you need those skills to promote your sponsors' products. And communication skills are a must, not just for a fisherman, but for just about anything you do with your life. This is just speculation, but I would guess that getting sponsors is similar to getting a job. There may be 100s of applicants for one position and everyone wants to be sponsored, but there are a limited number of sponsor dollars available, so you need to demonstrate why you should get those dollars rather than the many people you're competing with. See above for the skills that might help you do that. Good luck.

ESPN is gonna televise whatever can draw ratings, that's the TV business. I don't know of anyone who thinks poker is a sport. ESPN also televises billiards, spelling bees, hot dog eating and other stuff. Don't forget, the "E" in ESPN stands for "Entertainment." (Entertainment and Sports Programming Network).

The Sunday Mirror reported that last week's World Angling Championship (whatever that is) required drug testing in order to bring the sport up to Olympic standards ahead of a bid to make it an official sport. I first learned about it from ESPN, see below. http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/archive/archive/tm_objectid=17808999%26method=full%26siteid=62484-name_page.html Late last night I was watching Stephen A. Smith's "Quite Frankly" on ESPN2 when I heard a tease about drug testing for fishermen coming up. I wanted to hit the sack, so I taped the rest of the program for morning viewing. It turned out that it was not a program segment, but one of Stephen's editorial comments on his "Three and out" feature. My opinion is that I don't really have one, but I'm always fascinated by outsiders' observations about organized fishing and Stephen is not one to hold back on what he thinks. The following is Stephen speaking: "In a clear indication that drug testing can go too far, competitive fishermen at last week's World Angling Championship were told to submit to a urine test or risk losing their prizes. According to event officials, the tests were administered because of the belief that drugs like cocaine and amphetamines can actually improve reaction time once the fisherman gets a bite (audience laughter here). If that's not the most ridiculous and stupidest thing I've ever heard, I don't know what is. Fishermen! What is this world coming to? And by the way, to the Olympic committee, you should think about getting rid of some sports you already have rather than adding a sport like this. Fishing is gonna be a sport, my God, what the hell is wrong with this world, what's wrong with it?"

Do you know why they're not announcing it? I haven't seen anything on their site or some of the sites that cover pro fishing. No, they don't. I have no inside knowledge, but I think they're looking for sponsors in any industry, within reason, who will pony up. It's the only way there is to raise payouts and/or lower entry fees.

You might not get as much extra distance as it would superficially seem. That's because XL is thinner-than-normal diameter, while XT is thicker than normal. I don't have actual diameters for XT, but it might be more like changing from 12# to 10# of the same line, not as much as 14 to 8 sounds like. Check those diameters; they're printed on the packaging.

I'm sure you're not the only one mad. What do you recommend BASS do? Drop their title sponsor? Then what?

You don't say whether you're fishing from boat or shore, but either way, I suspect the problem is something more than just choice of lures. Have you been there at the higher percentage times, like low light periods? If not, try it. Otherwise, if you're confident that there's a good bass population, hang in there and keep at it, often things get much better in October and November.

Last year in the fall, I did well on crankbaits, spinnerbaits, inline spinners and topwaters during the early part of the fall. Springtime can offer some very fast fishing, but it can also be good in the summer as well. Laziness is a human trait, not a fish trait.

Another vote for topwater in the rain. Buzzbaits, Jitterbugs, maybe buzzing amphibians if you need something weedless. This year, my best outings were during fairly heavy rains. Of course, that's not to say that subsurface lures won't be productive in the rain, I just love to use topwaters.

Hardly the first time I've been accused of weird behavior. ;D I carry both a steel tape measure and a digital scale. I measure just about every fish that I think is a keeper, but weigh very few (too few), only those that I think may exceed my threshhold for what constitutes a big fish. Thus, in face-to-face conversations, e-mail and forums, I talk about most fish in terms of length.

Any 20" smallie is a helluva fine fish, but I think 5# is a real stretch. My estimate would be from 3.5-4.25.

I don't have an answer to that, all I have are my opinions. For the most part, I use the same lures in ponds that I use in lakes. A bass is a bass and it doesn't know what the acreage is of the water it lives in. I really can't understand why a bass in a lily pad bed in a 15-acre pond would act substantially different from the bass in a similar lily pad bed in a larger lake. For what it's worth, the large majority of my big bass have come from ponds of 15 acres and smaller and they haven't come on smaller lures than I use in larger waters.

Sorry the page didn't work. My friend is the owner of that site and I asked where the information came from, and he said it was from In-Fisherman. Since the page didn't work for you, here's what it said. LARGEMOUTH GROWTH CHART! NUMBER OF YEARS TO REACH 10 INCHES TENNESSEE 2 YRS. CONNECTICUT 3 YRS. MINNESOTA 3 YRS. FLORIDA 2 YRS. CALIFORNIA 2 YRS. YEARS TO REACH 15 INCHES TENNESSEE 4 TO 5 YRS. CONNECTICUT 6 YRS. MINNESOTA 8 YRS. FLORIDA 4 YRS. CALIFORNIA 3 YRS. YEARS TO REACH 20 INCHES TENNESSEE 8 YRS. CONNECTICUT 10 YRS. MINNESOTA 12 TO 15 YRS. FLORIDA 6 TO 7 YRS. CALIFORNIA 4 TO 6 YRS. RELATE THE STATES AND SIZES CLOSEST TO YOU.