Lund Explorer

My charming (?) spouse can't seem to live without a/c either. I just move into the other half of the house where my office is and close off the vents. It must work, because the dog moves right along with me into the spare bedroom every night.

Sorry to hear that. We used to suffer power outages until I found the one word cure - Generator. Probably won't find one right now under your conditions, but I would urge everyone to seriously consider buying one. The cost of one freezer full of food would buy you two generators big enough to run the critical items in the average home.

Take everyone's advice and visit your doctor. You'll either find out that its short term curable, or in the worse case, something that could become a life long affliction without treatment. I've limped along on a pair of knees that get worse with every passing year because I didn't follow a doctor's advice when I had the chance to. The inability to climb a ladder or rising up from your knees on the floor without pain is not what you want to look forward to. Edit: Of course if you've already gone through extensive knee surgery that we didn't know about, I'd suggest a half dozen tumblers of Vodka Martinis whenever you feel a twinge!

I can't imagine living in a part of the country that requires a/c to survive. We may get a week or so during the year were it helps a bit, but I don't like it much. Too hard to go outside (fishing) if I evr got used to it. My cure is two fans. One blowing in the cooler night air with the other blowing out the warmer inside air.

Great report and fantastic pictures. Those pike look like what I would expect only from a fly-in trip. It's also nice to know that Simco holds more than perch, because that is all we ever hear about that lake during the winter. I'm looking forward to seeing some of those huge smalljaw pictures from Georgian Bay!

#21 - How to bounce back from a tournament goose egg! Not trying to pick on you, but the topic could end up being a teachable moment for the author as well as the readers.

A golf course usually means some type of irrigation system. If the owner has the level of concern that you say he does, he might be open to the suggestion of diverting some of that system's capabilities into restoring the levels of those ponds. He may be even more open to that idea if you can provide a funding source to cover the cost (think electric to run pumps) of filling them. It could be easier to help sponsor a special golf/fishing tournament on this course to accomplish this. Course owner sees additional revenue from greens fees and food/beverage sales, golfers or fishermen have an extra event to attend, plus you and other fishermen see your ponds saved. I don't see a loser in any of this idea. Seems like an easier option than transporting fish, two at a time, especially when you consider that this pond will be greatly reduced once mother nature brings you that much needed relief.

Happy BD Mike! Anybody mention all the wrinkles in your suit yet?

The biggest difference between the two comes about when you compete in either at the club level. Copy and paste the following question using any internet search engine you wish to find the answer. How Do I Sandbag My Bass Fishing Handicap?

So how tall are these buckets? For your next step, you may want to consider using paper plates. As another part of flipping/pitching is for the bait to enter the water without a lot of splash, it will give you the chance to chance to practice laying your lure onto "surface" rather than dropping it into a bucket that could be 24" or so above your target. You can also reduce the size of your target which will increase accuracy. I couldn't find the video, but I can remember several pros talking about practice pitching into a coffee cup. Here's a clip of a guy doing just that! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0DV1NaG-Hw

How big is this pond, and how deep?

Your rod/reel combo sounds quite a bit like mine, a custom built 7' UL rod paired with a Pflueger President 25 reel. Like Tom & Crestliner stated, I use mono line like 4lb Trilene XL with this rig. If you want to stick with braid down to the 4/1 size, you could look at BPS/Cabelas in the ice fishing section where I've seen several brands of what would be called micro-braid. Spool up some mono backing and then top of the reel with the braid as most of these only come in 50-100 yd spools. My favorite baits include small topwaters like the Pop-R and Torpedos, inline spinnerbaits like the Mepps #1 or #2, 2"-3" grubs/craws fishing on 1/16 to 1/8 ball jigs, and a splitshot rig for 4" worms. Several sponsors on this site have baits you may want to consider. Northstar has a line of small jigs that you may like, and nothing beats Ragetail's Baby Rage Craw. Check'em out!

We have a 32' x 40' x 10' pole barn that doubles as a garage for vehicles, boats, and other toys.

Having just returned from a Northern Michigan fishing vacation myself, this advice DOES work. We were fishing along sharp breaklines (within 50' the depth went from 4' down to 35') trolling for walleye and had several crawler rigs tied on 17lb mono bitten off on the deep side. A switch to heavier flouro tied to minnow style cranks resulted in 5 pike over 30" with the biggest at a respectable 35". The pattern: 8'6" MH trolling rod, Diawa Accudepth17 reel, 15lb flouro with 15lb Big Game backing. 2oz bottom bouncer with a 36" leader of 25lb flouro and duolock snap with assorted minnow style baits. Most came off a Long A Bomber in wonderbread color. 35 feet of line down and another 20 feet out on the planer board. Trolling speed was 1.4 mph to 1.8 mph. All of these bigger pike came from at least 25' of water.

A good partner puts in just a little bit more than he gets out. You make a good partner by doing the exact same thing.

Robert - I've been to one of these roadtrips. If they all show up at your hacienda for a week, I know the first record your wife is going to be putting in the old jukebox: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdgKkjM4DTs On the bright side though, I do know a guy that still makes neon signs!

Every post of yours that I've read shows that you are serious about making this sport into a profession. Many of those posts have been questions regarding specific things that you've wanted to learn. If I remember correctly, another post mentioned a writing job about youth fishing which shows your desire to teach those things you've learned to others. It sounds as if your friend may have given you advice that you either don't understand or possibly agree with. As he is a professional in this sport, I can only suggest that you do your best to understand why he is telling you these things. His mentoring is a gift that many others would give anything to recieve. I'm sure there is a reason he had for telling you this that none of us can understand. Therefore, any advice I could give you to the contrary may very well be a disservice.

Finally a chance to take a real break from the everyday world, and it can't come at a better time. I'll be thinking of some of you guys while I'm sitting on the lake for the next couple of weeks. With nothing to do but chasing LM and SM Bass, Walleyes, and Pike, is going to be really rough. I might even bring in a few messes of bluegills for the dinner table for a change of pace. I don't even care if I never hook into something worth a picture. The mere fact that our destination is an hour long round trip to find a cell phone tower, and the internet is still nothing but a rumor is going to be well worth it. If everything goes as planned, I won't see anyone other than the four of us in camp for the whole trip. The one thing I WILL NOT miss will be getting called a spam shoveling kid on here simply due to the fact that I can post an "In Before Lock" reply before a newbie's inquiry about another so called fishing club is found by the mods. Nor will I miss being called a fool by some rump sore member just because I don't buy his rant about a property owner's right to use his property as he sees fit. It has gotten to the point that I hardly dare reply with a truthful answer to many posts for fear I'm not stroking some guy's bruised ego. I think it's time for me to leave before I start racking up warning points. Adios!

If you wanted to see those large community docks you would have to visit Higgins Lake prior to the court cases I mentioned. They were used for seasonal mooring of boats and often spread out in front of the lakefront properties next to them. As far as shoreline right of ways, a great example is Lake Cadillac which has several strips (up to 3/4 mile in length) of this type of land. The city government allows anyone to place a dock along these shorelines and even sets a date/time for when people can place them on a first come, first served basis. It can be a real dog fight watching these folks trying to stake out a spot. With regards to the property owner being discussed in this thread, I can't find any reason why he can decide to do what he wishes with that property. It doesn't and shouldn't matter how long he has owned it, nor what he paid for it. I know of no law that says that only certain people are allowed to purchase property in this country. If someone doesn't make enough money to afford such a place, it should be used as incentive to get a better education/job to be able to do so, not as an excuse to trespass.

Well I guess there should be a law against any person that has money and expects their private property being private. I suppose it should also be a crime that taxpayer money is used on a lake surrounded by properties like the one you describe. If I guy only spent $1.3 Million in this lousy parcel, he and the others that can afford to live there probably don't pay any taxes. By the way, you didn't mention how many times that you thanked this property owner for the use of his land.

I'm looking forward to Lunkerville's new theme song!

Ya did good Mike, I liked it!

This may or may not be the same thing in Florida as it is here in Michigan, but I'll explain what happens here. Public water CAN be surrounded by private property without access to non-property owners. That is because the State considers a lake public if more than one property owner has frontage on the waterway. A private lake is considered owned indivudally, either by a person or an organization. We have a number of lakes that have been accessable at the end of a roadway leading to the lakefront, or that runs along the shoreline if the lake is within the right of way given to the entity (city, county, state) that controls the road. While many of these pieces of property are legally owned by one or more land owners, access is granted because of the road's right of way. There have been a number of court cases dealing with these access sites when people start building large docks at these places. Most cases find in favor of the lakefront property owners as others are only supposed to access the lake and not build docks. The only way the State of Michigan gets access to additional lakes these days is when a suitable piece of property is gifted to the State from a lakefront property owner, or where the State decides to purchase a suitable property when it comes up for sale on the open market. A portion of the revenue from gas/oil leases provide the income for the State to purchase and maintain these types of properties. The comment made with regards to "the landowner recently stopped people from fishing due to problems he was having with boaters.", tells me that if you are going to get mad at someone, then it should be the slob boaters that ruined for everyone else.

In Before Lock!

Congrats Robert. 2nd Kitchen? Mr. Haney didn't sell you this place, huh? In case somebody doesn't know who Mr. Haney is, I'll offer up this vintage clip of real country living! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MzfDcAUkb8&feature=related