Fishes in trees

Similar to many other guys here, I own many different brands of rods, can't recall all of them right now. My last few purchases have been Fenwick AETOS rods for a couple of reasons. The independent tackle store I frequent in Liberty, MO - Rogers - nearly always has them on sale for 20% off. List varies from rod to rod but for the most part it is within $10 of $180 to start. That gets the AETOS brand somewhere around reasonable, IMO. Secondly, I've been a little sloppy the last few years and I've broken (mostly my fault) a few Fenwick Rods (AETOS & HMG) and Fenwick customer service has always been nice to me, that that counts for a lot in my book. Makes me loyal.

Over the years I've been betrayed by Big Game too many times. One ten yard length might be perfect, the next 10 yard length might be of variable diameter or have a kink in it or whatever, I just don't trust the quality of that stuff. If I were using it to hang pictures, I would double or triple or quadruple it before I would trust it to hang a picture on the wall. Just don't trust that stuff. Over the years, too many issues.

Have several pairs of those fingerless fleece gloves. When they get damp they ain't so effective. A dry pair solves that. I think that fingerless wool gloves are nearly as good. This fall I got a pair of fingerless Glacier Gloves. They are ok for just wearing around but I haven't had a chance to fish with them. When I'm driving my Mule around my property those fingerless gloves don't work worth a darn. From mid fall on, through mid spring, those fingerless gloves don't work well for driving the boat either. I got a decent fitting pair of Glacier Gloves neoprene and those absolutely stop the wind and the cold. Bottom line is that when you are working or playing outside in cool to chilly to ultra cold weather, you need a variety of gloves for different purposes. One size or style definitely doesn't fit all situations. JMO '

I've owned and fished with several different fiberglass cranking rods. Be mindful that this was 8 or 10 years ago. I didn't like them. I think that if I fished a couple of hundred days per year and had finely honed reflexes that I could probably learn to appreciate the so called advantages that glass offers. But I don't. I fish square bills and med divers on a 7'4" graphite stick - rated MH but really on the medium side of MH. This rod is more sensitive than any glass rod that I've ever owned. I can throw lures as far as I need to most of the time with that rod.

There are dozens of different lipless cranks on the market. I've probably mentioned this before in other threads. Neither of the two baits you've mentioned make my top two. Current have is an old Berkley Frenzy Rattle Bait - in the Threadfin Shad color. Actually it has been beat up so much it is hard to tell what color it is. 1st runner up would be a Cordell Spot.

I'm still having issues, in that when I am in the forums and then I want to go back to the home page to check and see if any of the newer posts are anything that I must comment on, it won't let me. I have to click on another place, like articles or gear and once I get there it will let me click home and get to the home page.

If there is any woody cover/brush in the areas you fish you need to check out Timber Tigers. In my experiences over the past 6 or 8 years, the Wordens Timber Tiger comes through brush & woody cover better than any other square bill I've tried. Most of the time I use the DC8, but I also carry DC5's & DC4's in a variety of colors. Texas Shad is probably my favorite color.

I tried the snaps for a while one season, a few seasons back. I found them to be more trouble than they were worth. Just tie a knot.

Same rod for both? My answer is maybe, maybe not, probably not. If I'm throwing deep diving cranks, I'm throwing 10 or 12 lb mono or fluorocarbon or maybe a light braid. If I'm throwing an A-Rig I'm most likely using 65 lb braid. My current deep/medium cranking rod is a 7'4" BPS Extreme. They call it a MH, in my opinion it leans way toward the medium side of medium/heavy. My current A-Rig rod is either a 7'9" Heavy Action Fenwick AETOS or an old 7' Team Diawa Muskie rod. My A-Rigs generally weigh in between 2 1/2 to 4 ounces, so the shorter old muskie rod does all right. I get more distance out of the longer rod, but it is more of a pain to transport in my truck so more often than not I'm using the shorter rod, just because it fits in my truck better. By the way the 7'9" AETOS also doubles as my frog rod. With 65 lb braid, it throws a 3/8 to 3/4 oz frog MUCH better than the shorter rod does. As always be mindful that these suggestions are my way of solving my problems on the waters that I fish on. Your waters may vary. Make your decisions based on your particular fishing situations.

Some softer lake bottoms are barren. Other softer lake bottoms are infested with crawdads. If I had it in my head that a particular soft bottom area was infested with crawdads, I'd spend quite a bit of time in that area.

The guy who re-started the Lew's brand used to work for BPS. When Lews first started showing up, Bassmaster magazine had an short article about it.

If it is a really soft bottom, I'd probably need a good reason to fish there. There would have to be some other features to the area.

My current favorite is a 7'2" Fenwick AETOS MH with the extra fast tip. This is paired with a Chronarch 50 reel. Light and sensitive, and while it wasn't cheap, it didn't break the bank either.

I wouldn't recommend desecrating your walleye system just to marginally improve your bass gear. Just get new gear. Consider yourself fortunate in that you have a first world problem that can be solved by throwing money at it.

One you've decided what brand of spinnerbaits you're buying, don't quibble over pennies. Get the size & color & blade arrangement you want and just pay up. One more thing, once you've decided on a color & size & blade arrangement you like, don't buy just one of them. I recommend buying 3 - 1 to use, one as a back up and one as a back up to the back up. If you take this approach to spinner bait purchases, over a decade or so you will accumulate LOTS of spinner baits. If you find one you really like, buy a dozen of them. You get to decide which is worse, i.e. having unspent money or running out of a certain size & color of spinner bait when you want/need one.

We've had many different threads about tackle management, both for bank fishermen and boaters and co-anglers… I'm not saying enough is enough, but enough is plenty. Here is my advice - pick one - doesn't matter which one, just pick one and try it out. Should that not be perfect for you, use your best judgement and pick another one. Repeat. Sooner or later you'll reach an acceptable compromise, a deep and personal understanding that no tackle management system is perfect. All it will cost you is a few dollars. Very cheap for an important lesson.

I fished quarter ounce jig worms quite a bit this year. Bait of choice was a quarter ounce Brewer Spider Slider Pro head and a 5" BPS Paddle tail sticko. The rod that worked best for this was an older Falcon Eakins Jig Special. It is 6'10", rated as MH, IMO it is on the medium side of medium/heavy. A Chronarch 50 and 10 lb Abrazx finished out the package.

I'm thinking you want to stay with 12 volts, so buy the Minn Kota or Motor Guide 55 lb thrust transom mount, variable speed and be done with it. BPS 2015 Master Catalog lists either one of them for less than $300. If you've never had a variable speed trolling motor before, you will be stunned, both with how you can crawl at very low speeds and how you can accelerate to faster than you're going now with none of that herky-jerky stuff.

Why not just call them up and ask?

If you are looking at buying new and you're going to fish tournaments, the different incentive programs offered by the different boat companies are something to consider. I'm not in that situation right now, so I have no clue what those different programs are, but it is something to check out.

Suit . . . . .yeah . . . . . not suite . . . . I tried to picture what a rain suite would look like and I failed. Anyway, I'm a Guide Wear & Frogg Togg fan. Here in Missouri, I'm a fan of separate spring & fall & summer sets of gear.

Has Christmas come to the point that you can specify what different people in your gifting circle can give you? I don't think you should expect those folks to fund your addiction. A large part of the Christmas gifting process is to find something that you think the other person will like. I'm in the club with the aforementioned relatives who believe that a gift card is "lazy". I did that one year and my older sister (who knows everything) told me it was lazy. If you were a junkie, would you expect people in your gifting circle to only give you good drugs? I think for the most part that you are responsible for funding your own addiction. Now, if you are in the habit of "dropping hints" and you are a bank fisherman, the best piece of tackle you can have, one what you will use EVERY time you go, is a good set of hip waders.

Consistent 4 to 7 lb bass can mean many things. Consistent to what? Consistently once per season? Once per hour? Per trip? What? My thinking is anyone who consistently catches 4 to 7 lb bass in Ohio has a scale that is weighing heavy. Or they are "just guessing" Whatever.

Faith in a bait is a function of where I'm fishing. If I'm fishing grass in 6 feet of water or less and I'm ticking the tops of the grass with some bait, then I have faith in an old Berkley Frenzy lipless crank. Every year, late March to mid April, I will catch a few 5 to 7 lb fish doing this. Early spring, afternoon from 1:30 to 3 is the best time to do this. ( at least that has been my experience in Missouri, in the clear to semi-clear waters that I fish in most of the time) If I'm fishing a deep weed line 10 foot to around 20, I have faith in my home made jika rig - with some creature bait to be determined by water color. Throwing soft plastics at objects in 5 to 14 or so feet of water, my bait of choice currently is a quarter ounce Brewer slider head with a 5" paddle tail worm - again, color to be determined daily. If I think fish are suspended in a tree line, my first choice is a Timber Tiger DC 16, probably in their Texas Shad color, but I really don't think that color matters much with this bait. Whenever I'm confronted with this situation, i.e. fish suspended in trees, there are always a couple of baits that I will always try. Choice #A would be a whacky rigged senko and choice #B would be a 1/4 or 5/16 oz tx rigged 10" Berkley power worm. I generally start with Red Shad color for this presentation but I think that there are other colors that would equally well. I've got lots of favorite baits for specific instances, but this is enough for now.

When I fished BFL tournaments (admittedly in Missouri), I didn't have a guaranteed boater most of the time. I always got in. Granted, this was several years ago. The only time I saw guys not get in ( boaters and/or co-anglers) was when they showed up late, after registration was closed, and they hadn't pre-registered.