Lund Explorer

Expanding on that side note, it is always fun to post this kind of question in the "general" section and then watch to see where the Mods move it to. Most end up in the NE, but at least somebody throws them in the Central.

Close. I see Okeechobee Craw!

Obviously, neither did I. But the fact remains that the boat owners (and you've said you are one as well) are the base upon which any normal bass tournament can be held. Take your choice between the chicken or egg, one had to come first, and in this case the answer is clear. The other truth is that when you get into tournament fishing, IT IS all about the money whether we want to admit it or not. Where money is concerned, you have to consider what is called return on investment, and without a doubt, the boat owner's investment is larger. Simple cold hard facts, no emotion needs to be tied to it, just rational realization of the truth. As far as all of the bad stories, it goes both ways, and the majority of the time they are not all that common. For every bad day there is an outstanding day, and then the majority of the time it falls somewhere in the middle.

If I can offer a little advice, you may wish to adopt my views on this subject. I don't care for country rock, or to pop music, or whatever it is they call most music these days. I look at these "celebrities" and think to myself, which one of them would I be proud to have as a daughter or granddaughter. So if you were posed the question to decide if you would be happier with Taylor or Miley sitting at your dinner table, or who your friends talked about when you weren't around.... Who you going to choose? And for you young pups, which one would your mother want coming home with you for an introduction!

I want to thank all of you for your thoughts and prayers at this time. From the very start of this, I tried my very best to do what I thought was right for my mother, and now that she has passed on I know that she is in a better place. The pain is gone and her memory is restored. I know that my final duty to her is to follow her wishes for this time. She wanted a small family memorial and for her cremains to be put near my grandparents in the home of her birth, and this shall be done in the spring. In the meantime I will perform those duties that an executor/trustee must do to though I'm already sure that some will not appreciate those efforts. And then it's time for me to turn my attention to the other most important woman in my life. Jackie will finally retire on September 14th and I hope we can figure out how to enjoy ourselves and maybe leave a dollar or two for our kids when we are gone! A final thought, on dogs. This furry little beast that for the last three years looked at Mom as her very own Grandma Jo. She is completely lost, and it breaks my heart to see her mope about the house.

Great Job! Are some of the guys starting to groan when you pull into the launch?

Oh dear......... Rather than going through all of your points, could you please link us to the successful tournament trail where no boaters need to show up?

Lots of pike! In all of the trips I've made to your home country, it always seems that the lake is going to hold large numbers of toothy critters. Not too bad if those are what you're looking for, but they can and do have an adverse effect on where bass will locate. And location is going to be the key. As I stated before, I've fished some of these tea stained waters. Some of the more productive baits I've used include several spinnerbaits. The first one is the old style Hank Parker's "Manns Classic" spinnerbait. The increased thump from those Indiana shaped blades seems to draw them better than most tandem or double willow baits. I've also had good luck using a heavier willow leaf bait call a Stanley's Wedge. Both of those had a gold colored blades. Another great search bait (a style Sam alluded to) is a firetiger colored lipless crankbait. My favorite in this color is the Rapala. Unfortunately, all of these baits will also attract lots of attention from those pike! The key is to move to greener pastures if you start catching them instead of the bass. My experience is that the two species just don't mix very well. I would think shallower, but only on the water is going to tell you.

Everybody has their own definition of success, and some just feel that a scale is how they justify it. I choose not to use a scale because it doesn't fit with what I'm looking for. Nobody's choice is better or worse than the next guys.

After a long fight with the effects of COPD and Dementia, Mom passed away peacefully in her sleep yesterday morning. She had gotten up in the morning like normal and after breakfast had asked if she could go back to bed. When her hospice nurse showed up later, she was gone. It has been a very long day. From all of the phone calls to pass on the news, to our trip to the funeral home in the evening, everything seems like a blur of activity. Everything was pretty much planned well in advance, and I know that the next several days will be a hectic mess. But tonight, I can’t fall to sleep. Perhaps it’s the fact that her oxygen generator isn’t humming away as it constantly has these last three years. Maybe it’s the realization that the one defining duty I’ve had for so long is now over. What in the world am I going to do now?

Okay guys, copy/paste my first post, print it out, and put it in a calendar for 2030 something. A whole world of difference from being a 20 something and someone who has a hard time remembering back far enough to when AARP first started hounding me to join their merry little group! Clubs for the young guns can and will make a difference when you consider swing weights, stiff shafts (please no extra comments, as we're talking about the golf clubs) and woods made a metal and are the size of "fungo" bats. My advice is more for the older guys where not all of our parts are still as limber as they once were.

It's not the clubs. Back when I had hair and it was dark, I could bomb them out there with the best of them and carried a 2 handicap. As the years passed, I tried harder and harder to keep up with the youngsters off the tees, and refused to adjust my club selection when it came to approach shots. All I did was make myself over swing and accuracy went down the drain. Handicap ballooned to double digits. I finally got back down to a 5 when I did the following. My advice is to swallow your pride, and be happy with the distance you can get off the tees. Then when you are standing in the fairway looking at the green, add at least one club to your approach shot and take a nice easy swing. Spend more time on the range with nothing but a 7-Iron to Wedge. Learn to bump and run more, and look for the big backspin less. I use my putter stroke and an 8-Iron on many shots around the fringe. Work on your putting skills with the same philosophy. Shake out the kinks, use a gentle grip, and keep your head still. You can save way more strokes with a good short game than you can by winning your leagues long drive pot every week.

My Grade - Incomplete. You have to able to get on the water more than 10 times a year to make any kind of grade.

At this point, way more questions than answers. Q: What kind of boat are you going up there with? The size/speed of the boat you have is going to determine how much of the river portion you are going to be able to cover. Q: Predominate species of bass LM or SM? Q: How many northern pike in that lake? These two questions can both play into where and how you attack those waters. LM should be somewhere around those weed beds, whether on the inside or outside edges, or buried right in the middle of them. SM may relate to cabbage but could also be found up the river if current is available. If the lake has a good sized population of pike, they could very well have an influence where bass setup shop. My experience on lakes of that coloration shows that "gold" can be a hot color. Also, firetiger colored crankbaits, and soft plastics with some chartreuse doesn't hurt either.

You're welcome. The article came at a time when I was thinking about this issue as well. Most of those thoughts were based on a book I am currently reading, "The Remains of Company D" written by James Nelson. The book revolves around the authors search into the history of the men who fought in the battles of WWI as part of the 1st Division, AEF. The search started around the time of John Nelson's 100th birthday. On this birthday, John had received a number of birthday cards from people he didn't know, and would only later find out that they were connected to the families of fellow soldiers he had served with. Even though the author had known this elderly gentleman for thirty some years, he knew very little about what he had gone through during that war. He knew that he had been wounded in battle, had returned home to raise a family, but rarely if ever talked about. Probably the most powerful statement in this book came when author stated that in his search for the heirs of these men, that it was easier to find memories of those who had died in battle than those that survived. It seems that if a person had died that his family held onto every letter, every snippet of information they had on their loved ones. In the case of the majority, who indeed survived to return home, that the veterans themselves made sure that very little information of any kind was passed on. Fast forward to the future, and the soldiers in that linked article. Perhaps the best thing we can all do is to give them respect they deserve for their own choices and the sacrifices they made. If this generation of soldiers would just as soon put their deeds aside, then I think they've earned that right. Maybe excessive displays of gratitude takes away some of the meaning of those words.

Great timing on a subject that I have been thinking about since reading the linked story this weekend. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/sunday-review/please-dont-thank-me-for-my-service.html?_r=0 Mr. Garth has certainly earned the right to express his feelings, I'm just not sure how to reply to that sentiment. And just to be clear, this opinion comes from a peacetime veteran who never served anywhere more dangerous than the frozen tundra of North Dakota. It was my choice to join up, pretty much my choice as to what career field I'd get into, and as hard as it might be to believe, I actually had Grand Forks AFB as one of the choices they offered me. I don't think I have earned the thank you that many others truly have earned, I don't seek it, and feel uncomfortable when I do receive it.

I'm going to agree that placing a bunch of brush piles doesn't guarantee that a person is going to win a tournament. Around here, some think the key to victory is the more nefarious practice of stocking a brush pile or dock with keepers during the days prior to blast off. There are others who scope out the lake to see where the last tournament was held so they can target what are known as "retreads". I'm starting to think that Ray Scott had a best idea back when the classic lake was announced to the anglers after they had all boarded the same plane!

In other words, turn it into NASCAR!

I was trying to figure out how to hang a mower deck underneath that thing. Boat sounds better!

Sounds great. Our Bass Resource Moderator turned Pharaoh!

I don't think it hurts the sport one iota to see the supposed greatest anglers in the world trying to catch fish under less than perfect conditions. If NASCAR drivers can survive having to make right hand turns several times a year, then it can't be too much to expect that BASS anglers be forced to compete when all the fish aren't locked down of those funny looking shiny spots. The current trend of holding classics in gulf coast states during the early spring does absolutely nothing to prove that these guys can overcome the same conditions that 3/4 of the nation's anglers must do every year.

Many years ago I was asked by the "sports writer" of our local small town fish wrapper (AKA Newspaper) to send in a weekly fishing report. I agreed to do so, but didn't realize at the time that this report would go under his byline and that I wouldn't receive any credit for it. The reports always included tournament results from our local bass club, reports from the local bait shops, and other interesting news regarding the current state of fishing in our local area. Once a month, I would also write an additional report highlighting the accomplishments of a local fisherman. In short, I always endeavored to make sure that these reports helped draw attention to the anglers and businesses that supported them, and to give them the credit they deserved. For a while, it kind of bothered me that my efforts were being credited to another person. That was right up to the day that I happened to run into the wife of one of the men I had written a profile on at the start of my so-called anonymous career. "That was a great report you wrote for this week's edition." she told me. When I asked her how she knew that I was the author, her answer floored me. "Everyone I know can tell when you've written the fishing report" was her reply, "All the words are spelled correctly!"

So if you get a piece of that wood stuck between your teeth, what do you use to dig it out of there? Isn't it already like having a toothpick wedged in there already?

Posted on the road trip thread, Long Mike says our very own RW has a brand new job. Perhaps..... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTh2GdZ88ds

Rumor has it that Casey has picked up the NE Patriots as a sponsor!