Fishes in trees

I'm trying to get a picture in my mind of what you mean. I've fished out of all kinds of boats that had front mounted trolling motors - v hulls, jon boats, pond boats, etc., rigged in various ways. Boat control wasn't that difficult with any of them, and with a very marginal amount of ingenuity, you can rig a rudder that will clamp on to the transom, and that helped a bunch in most cases. So, I don't get what you're trying to ask, or sell, or even what the question really is. Sorry. Good luck with your mystery product, I hope it solves whatever marginally identified issue its designed to fix. On further review, I'm sorry - kinda. I was being a smartass - kinda. I still don't have a picture in my head of what you mean - really.

It really depends. If I'm fishing by myself, I bring lots of stuff. 20 rods rigged isn't uncommon. There are multiple reasons for this. First, I like options. Second, I hate wasting time. Fishing tackle has a price on it. Fishing time is priceless. If I can save fishing time by picking up another rod already rigged and all I had to do was spend money, I'm ok with that. Next, conditions can change moment to moment. I can be throwing a big square bill crank, drift 50 feet or so and all of a sudden I need a deep diver. It is much easier to pick up the deep diver rod than it is to stop and retie. You apply that same logic to multiple fishing styles, i.e. drop shotting, spinner baits, top water, worms, add a few specialty rods like a dedicated rattle trap rod, and a jerk bait rod and so forth and all of a sudden you've got lots of rods spread around the deck. Other guys make comments about that all the time. I reply that should I step on a rod and break one, I've only got myself to blame, so I'm not that worried about it. Another reason, is that when my truck is parked back at the ramp, it should look empty. I don't want someone looking through the window, spy some goodie and decide to bust a window. That hasn't happened yet, but I fish some pretty isolated ramps and so it could happen. When someone else goes fishing with me in my boat ( which doesn't happen all that much) I cut back some to leave room for their gear. Or if I'm fishing with one of my bosses (2 or 3 times per year) I bring more gear cause they don't have any. Should I fish out of someone else's boat, it is a matter for discussion, how much junk should I bring. I fished Ozark BFL as a co-angler for a number of years, I know how to pare down and consolidate tackle should I have to. I'm not a big fan of doing that if I don't have to. So, to answer the question - "What is your fishing style?" - than answer is that it is variable.

The best time to go fishing is when you've got time to go fishing. Just deal with whatever conditions you've got that day.

I like the falcon boxes. It is true that they don't hold as many baits as other options, in a way that is a god thing because it makes me be a little more selective about what lures I take with me. Also, you can always buy more boxes. That way you can have a box for pointers, a box for the staysees, a box for the Stacy King jerkbaits, a box for the smaller 78 lucky crafts and another for the deep divers, etc, etc. And then there are the X-raps and the Husky Jerks and the Rogues and the Bomber Long A's, etc, so it turns out you needs lots of boxes. Most of the jerkbaits I keep stored in 3700 boxes, using hook bonnets to keep tangles down. I use the Falcon boxes to store Lucky Crafts

I like the Falcon KY weedless whacky hooks. Weightless or 1/8 pr 1/16. They come in two different sizes, 3/0 seems to work the best for me.

I heard that sometimes stores that sell fishing gear will have senkos. What color should I get? Also, how much is too much to pay for a bag of senkos?

Just me, but I'd much rather fish trees than grass - go figger. I know if I had a lake with lots of flooded timber and clear water, I would tie on some heavier fluorocarbon - 14 or 17 lb test and fish a wacky rigged senko on the shady side of every tree and bush I could find.

I've given it up on trying to explain catch & release. These days, should anyone ask, I just say that generally at the end of the day I know I'm going to be tired and I don't want to mess with getting dirty cleaning the fish, so I just throw them back. Then on they way home I stop somewhere and have BBQ or Chinese or steak. Should anyone press the subject further, I explain that it really isn't anyone else's business whether I keep a fish or not and leave it at that.

I've found that I need two suits. 1 - a heavy duty suit for early and late season duty - a Cabelas Guidewear suit fits the bill. Mine is going on 9 years old now. I don't need to wear it very often, but it is a good thing to have when you need it. 2 - a lighter weight suit for late spring & summer rain showers. Frogg Toggs fit the need there. The suit with bibs works for me better than the one with pants. I haven't had any problems with them being sticky or uncomfortable to wear.

I think it is tough to beat Timber Tigers for fishing around brush and wood.

Culprit makes lots of colors, so I'd assume you've got a color you like. I would suppose weightless texas rigs would work in this situation - me, for the most part I lack the patience to fish a texas rigged worm weightless. There might be better baits to approach this situation than the standard Culprit ribbon tail worm. but from here I don't know if that is true or not. If I was determined to see if a Culprit worm would work in this situation, first, I'd find the outside edge of the weedline. Then I'd find jig head style I liked. I'd probably start with a Brewer super snagless head - 3/16 or 1/4 and 8 or 10 lb fluorocarbon line on a decent sensitive spinning rod with enough of a backbone that I could count on setting the hook from 30 to 45 feet away. Then I'd fish from the exact edge of the weedline to 3 or 4 feet off the edge of the weedline. I'd swim the bait through the upper portions of the water column and I'd drag it or hop it along the bottom. If you've got a color graph that's showing weeds everywhere, the little blue specks that come and go on the screen are frequently fish. If I was facing into the sun, I'd make shorter casts than I would if the sun was at my back. Basically, length of casts is a judgement call. Once I was rigged and was committed to an outside edge area, I'd stick with it for an hour or so - be sure and give it enough time to thoroughly fish the area. Weedline fishing can get tedious - I might bust out a beer or two while I was fishing this area. On a positive note, weedline fish tend to aggregate, so if you do get bit, there is a strong probability that there are more fish near. Good luck

I got to go last Friday 9/17. A beautiful day, sunny with some clouds and a little breezy. Remembered the sun screen so there were no serious skin issues. Water temps were 71 around 9 am off the dam in deeper water to 76 later in the afternoon back in a cove. I tried a bunch of different baits. Got one fish early on a Stacy King Lucky Craft, but couldn't duplicate it with another hit. I got a couple of random hits on crankbaits, but couldn't generate anything consistent. Throughout the day, the only fish I was marking were very close to the bottom, so those were the ones I fished for. Caught more than 10 - less than 20 - 13 to 14.5" slot fish. All came on a drop shot. Water visibility was a foot to a foot and a half in the main lake, probably less than a foot of visibility in the coves. Tried a variety of baits, all fish came on various senko imitators - a slurpee, or a Chompers or a Gulp sinking minnow. I'd use the sinking minnows all the time if they didn't dry out so quick when they are laying on the deck. Highlight of the day was throwing the sinking minnow to the shady side of a stump in 12 foot of water and a 20" channel cat hit it. For a moment, I thought I had a personal best - it didn't want to come to the surface at all. I'm probably going to get to go next Friday, long range forecast is 70's with rain showers throughout the day. At some point this fall, fish will start to aggregate in the coves, that's where I'm going to start on Friday.

I like the dropshot weights with clips , because when you get seriously snagged, one firm tug, the line breaks and you're ready to retie and get back to fishing. I've tried different sinkers tied on and worm weights slid onto the line and secured with split shot, etc, but I've ended up using the dropshot weights with clips because they seem to work the best. For me, the window sash style weights seem to work better than the round ones. Sometimes you're drop shotting and the hook gets hung. I've wasted quite a bit of time, tugging on a line trying to get the weight to release only to find out the hook was hung. My current getting unstuck protocol is after it doesn't release after a few firm tugs, I figure 8 the line 5 or 6 times around the boat cleat and back it off with the trolling motor. Works every time. It also works every time with braid and you are much less likely to cut your fingers. I'm changing my thinking about how heavy to go as well. I used to try to go as light as possible, thinking I was gaining an edge in finesse. The more I thought about it, I realized I wasn't fishing the whole water column, and a bait drifting slowly down through the water column wasn't doing much except wasting time. My current thinking is that fishing a dropshot, I'm fishing a basically weightless bait x many inches above the bottom. I want my weight to get to the bottom ASAP so I can start fishing. So I mostly use 1/2 oz weights, 3/8 ounce if I'm using spinning gear and 8 lb line and if 3/4 or 1 oz weights were available in my neighborhood, I'd be using them - probably. I understand my current thinking is subject to change, but that's my current thoughts on the subject.

Seems to me, once upon a time, there was "hot pink" craze. Early to mid 90's - something like that. Pink poppers, pink cranks, pink worms, pink spinnerbaits, pink everything. One year in their catalog, BPS has 2 or 3 pages of just pink stuff that you could get. Like most crazes, it came and went. That being said, I still have a bag of pink & pink & orange stickos (BPS version of Senko) that I throw from time to time - primarily lightly stained to stained water. I probably have a pack of pink sluggos somewhere, not in my boat, probably in my gear shed somewhere. I can recall that bait working very well on a couple of early spring trips, years ago.

Late 80's - early 90's this company sold quite a few baits, primarily because of their clever packaging. I never did think that their baits were anything special. I bought a few back in the day and they currently reside in the " unlikely to ever see water again" box.

I have a slightly different system. I have numerous 3600 & 3700 boxes which hold different jigs assorted by different brand, weight, purpose, etc. Then I have a few boxes of ready rigs, assembled jigs & trailers of assorted weights and purposes that aren't worm out yet and don't need to be disassembled. These lie flat separated in different compartments.. Most of the jigs in the colors I normally use are in the ready box. I keep all my jig boxes & trailers in the boat, but I very seldom have to get into them while I'm fishing. I understand I'm not traveling light and that it isn't that efficient, but that is the advantage of an 18' floating tackle box. Kind of off the subject, different sizes of small zip lock bags are available at any Michaels art supply store. I would guess that other arts & crafts supply stores would carry them too.

yes, things can wear out.

How stained? 1 to 3 foot of visiblity you've got lots of options. Less than a foot I generally go with a 1/2 ounce single colorado blade. Either an all black one or one with quite a bit of chartruese in it.

Are the Frenzy poppers discontinued? The last time I looked they still had a bunch of them at Rogers Lures in Liberty.

My current favorite lipless crank is a Berkley Frenzy.

The drop shot has been my most productive bait this year. On blue bird sky days my best approach has been to fish the shady side of whatever structure/cover is present in the immediate area. More specifically, I want my bait in the light, within 6" to 12" of where ever the shade line is. I try to be mindful of where the shade line is 6 to 12 feet down, at the base of whatever cover I'm fishing. The angle of the sun is something to consider as is how the light might refract at different depths.

In-Fisherman magazine published handbooks on largemouth & smallmouth strategies. If you can get ahold of the Charlie Brewer book on Slider Fishing, it is a good read on the whole attitude of finess fishing. Sooner or later, everyone ought to read Buck Perry's stuff, on Spoonplugging & structure fishing. While much of it is dated, he did invent the language that most of us use to discuss fishing. I'm sure at one time that Homer Circle had some fishing knowledge to impart, but I can't get past his folksy geezer schtick to figure out what that might be.

I have a couple of the automatic inflation life jackets. Orignially, I got one of the standard automatic inflation models. It worked fine. I got rained on several times and it never accidentally inflated. I wore it in severe rain storms and in moderate rain storms going 60+ mph during a BFL tournament. Once during the summer , an exceptionally hot & humid day/evening, I took off the vest, threw it on the front seat of my truck and locked it up. Several days later, I had to go out to my truck and look for something and the vest had inflated. My guess is the humidity trapped inside the truck eventually melted the clay bobbin. I bought a re-arming kit and went about my business. Last year, Bass Pro had a spring sale and had the HIT inflatable vest on sale (I think $229 or something close to that), it was roughly $50 less than the standard price, so I bought one and now I have the other as a back up or a loaner. I have fallen out of the boat once (in 46 or so degree water) in 2006. Talk about a wake up call. I bought an inflatable vest that evening when I got home and I always wear it. I think that the vest is comfortable enough that it eliminates all excuses for not wearing one. JMO

I'm a fan of spinning gear for jerkbaits ( primarily pointers) because I feel I get more distance and it kind of takes the wind out of the equation. The just is still out on which spinning rod is best. This past year I used a 61/2 Med/Lt rod with an extra fast tip & it worked ok. I was using 14 lb fireline crystal with a fluorocarbon leader. I like how the crystal fireline kind of works like a strike indicator when you pause the jerkbait.

I fish out of an aluminum boat (18"Lowe) and I think the best way to deal with the wind is a strong trolling motor, the biggest you can afford. I've fished in other guys boats where we used wind socks, they work ok in open water situations, storage is an issue. I've tried drag anchors, i.e a length of rope, 40'or so with 5' of heavy chain. The idea is to drag something that is difficult to hang up. Again, the issue with the drag anchor is storage when it isn't deployed. Sometimes you can tie up to trees or stumps to really fish a small area thoroughly, but overall I think the best way to deal with wind is a strong trolling motor.