Fishes in trees

I generally fish alone. Sometimes me and a bud will go fishing at the same lake, but we will both take our own boats. The primary rule about fishing by yourself is don't do anything stupid.. I always wear my inflatable life jacket. Back when I first got my boat, I took one afternoon ( in 85 degree water) jumping out of the boat and practicing getting back in it. That little exercise paid off once, i.e. the time I was fishing in 15 mph+ winds in March in 45 degree water, I hit a stump and went over the side. I remembered how to get back into the boat and it wasn't a big deal. Launchng & loading your boat by yourself is just a matter of practice. I try to confine my fishing to lakes that have decent ramps.

Never fished out of a kayak, but back in the day I had to fish out of canoes from time to time and I owned a a couple of different pond boats for a decade or so. Anyway, the best advice I can give is learn how to drift. Get good at positioning your boat so that you drift over the best spots.

I have the blue Kistler ( I think it is the Argon series), IDK, the 7'5" pitching stick which telescopes. It is a good rod and I use it for my primary bubba drop shot rod. Back in the day, All Star made a 6'10" Super Jig MH telescoping rod. I have that rod and for the most part, it is on the bench, but when I fish as a co-angler, for space saving reasons, I bring that rod as my primary jig rod. I used to have a 7 1/2' Team Diawa pitching/flipping rod, but a buddy borrowed it and hasn't returned it yet. That was a few years ago. Keep looking, there are lots of telescopic rods out there, in all kinds of different actions, you'll eventually find one that you like. Back in the day, I was in a fishing tackle store, with not enough money and I came across a Team Diawa Guido Hibdon 6'4" finesse rod, that telescoped down to 5 1/2' or so. I couldn't buy it that day and when I went back a few days later it was gone. I've looked for a similar rod ever since then and never came across one.

Good place to start - look around - there are other companies out there that have similar starter boats for similar prices. When I got my last boat (2002) I liked the Lowe WF 180 better than the similar sized BPS offering, mostly because it was made out of sturdier metal. For me, the number one choice in which boat to get was which dealer was closer and which one did I interact with better. The other thing that made a difference for me was that I was dead set on getting a Yamaha 4 stroke motor and that was unavailable on the BPS and Crestliner boats that were available to me at the time.

It depends on the season, but generally "low and slow" is my overall approach.

The trick with rain gear is when do you need it. Late Spring/summer gear is a different animal than early spring/fall gear. I have a set of Guidewear and a couple of sets of Frogg Toggs and I use each when appropriate. Next, and this is important with high dollar rain gear - get a set that fits - not just "kinda" fits, but fits like the fit you'd expect on a 3 piece suit. Different brands fit different guys different ways. In my case, when I bought mine (circa 2001 or 2002) the two primary brands available were Guide Wear and the BPS 100 MPH suit and I went and tried them both on. I would have bought the BPS suit had it fit me better than the Guide Wear suit did. (allowing for layers under neath, of course) Back in the day, Cabelas offered a parka style jacket and a shorter "bomber " style jacket. I went with the shorter jacket. Both of these brands of rain wear have lots of pockets, you almost need to make a list of what you put in each pocket or stuff will get lost. One spring I found a couple of candy bars in a zip lock bag and a couple of different line clippers in different pockets and I really thought I had emptied the pockets before I put the stuff away for the winter.

I use chatter baits interchangeably with spinner baits. I am more likely to "slow roll" a chatter bait than I am to keep it close to the surface. An exception to this rule is when you are fishing grass flats that are 3 to 7 or so feet deep. Anything that you try to slow roll will immediately become tangled in vegetation, so I try to tick the tops of the vegetation. Chatterbaits just go into the rotation with rattle baits - spinner baits and for a slower more finessful presentation - a slug go. If the fish are hanging out in the grass flats, one of these presentations generally work. On any given day, it seems to be a toss up which one will work, but one will always work much better than the other 3 on any given day. If the subject is grass beds in the 5 to 7 foot range, sometimes a flashy jerk bait, like a Rogue, that dives down, but doesn't get really close to the tips of the vegetation has been the ticket. The Rogue has never worked for me in shallow grass beds( i.e. 3' or less) because it hangs in the vegetation too often.

My number one Bubba drop shot bait is a crazy legs chigger craw - green pumpkin party with chartreuse dye on the tips of the claws and the long loose antenna. Second favorite is a Powerbait jerk shad that starts out as the Arkansas Shiner color and then I shade it in with chartreuse and orange and red spike it dye markers. Finesse options are, in no particular order - Chompers centipede - 4" Berkley power bait drop shot minnows, and of several brands straight tail 4" to 5" worm.

I always have a drop shot rig tied up - two of them in fact, one kind of a bubba rig and the other more finesse oriented. To further clarify, I generally have many rigs tied up and ready to go - generally around 20 give or take. That being said, a couple of times each year for the past several years the drop shot has turned a very average day into a decent day, picking up fish that I probably couldn't catch with any other approach. Most of the time the drop shot rig that I pick up first is the bubba rig, a 7 1/2' pitching stick with 20 lb abrazx fluorocarbon. I can drop that bait just outside the shadow pocket of a stump and leave it there - a foot to foot and a half off the bottom and just wiggle it a little bit. I will use the finesse option ( 7' M Mojo rod, 1000 size Shimano reel, 10 lb braid connected to a fluorocarbon leader) on deeper, less cover oriented situations, like a deep weed line or that place in the lake basin where rocks turn to clay. If I were only limited to a few options due to space or whatever, I don't know if drop shot would be an option I'd start with or not, just depending on where I was fishing I guess.

Strike King makes ( or used to make) a trick worm style bait out of their elaz-tech material. You might try fishing something like that wacky style, on one of those wacky jig heads. The elastic worms last forever, it seems and the exposed wacky hook, in the middle of the bait might get some more hits. I don't know, maybe something to try. Option B might be to down size. Back in the day when I was a bank fisherman, I had access to a few ponds that were in the shape yours seems to be in, i.e. lots of little fish. 6 lb line - 1/8 or more likely 3/16 oz slider hooks and a 4" worm got me lots of bites. Back in the day, I was keeping and eating those 8" to 11" fish. I got pretty good with a fillet knife.

I don't have a lot of experience with spiral wrapped guides, but what I do have is pretty positive. In the early 90's, I bought an old Bud Erhardt composite crank bait rod that had the spiral wrapped guides. and it worked great for a decade. I used the rod mostly to throw rattle traps with. Then, a couple of springs ago, like a dummy, I decided to use braid to throw traps on that rod. Early 90's rod guides do not stand up to braid like current rod guides so and it wasn't even summer yet and I had worn grooves in the first guide, closest to the reel seat and the tip guide. At some point I will find someone in KC to put new guides on that rod and find the time to get it to them. Currently that rod is on the injured reserve list.

The good thing about the old carrot stick rods is that they were light and sensitive. The bad thing was that they broke fairly easily. Poor customer service didn't help their reputation. Their reputation is bad enough that they would have to pay me to use one of their rods. I wouldn't buy another one. That being said, I still have a couple of the Black wild carrot stix, a 6'8" one that I use to throw spinnerbaits and a 7'2" one that I throw jika rigs & other soft plastics on. All my friends who had carrot sticks, those rods are all broke now. I know that it is just a matter of time before I break these, but I'm not as hard on my rods as some of my buds are.

You mean the old versions where they had kind of a double hook, like a small double frog hook? I recall buying some of those in the late 80's, but I never did any good with them, probably because the places where I threw spinnerbaits, that double hook just gathered too much vegetation. That was my issue with them, anyway. I didn't think that they fished well in grass, much worse than a standard spinnerbait.

I think that tiny zip ties are the easiest, but I have mounted jigs in a fly tying vise and wired the skirts on also. (I did this prior to someone telling me about tiny zip ties) I use a couple of 2 inch squares of tin foil to gather and keep the skirt together on either side of where I'm going to put the zip tie to give me a kind of open area to work in

Do your research. If you can find a copy of Charlie Brewers "On Slider Fishing" that is a good place to start. Keep i mind that we have much more sensitive gear now than he had access to when the book was written. If you want to go "ultra finesse" google "Ned Rig". Those guys start with 4 lb test and 1/16 oz jig heads and often go lighter from there. Ned has a blog in the In-fisherman web site - Midwest Finesse and that is also a good place to get started.

There are lots of half ounce stick baits on the market now compared to a dozen or so years ago. Take your pick.

A Lucky Craft Pointer in the Table Rock Shad color is my first choice. In the Ozarks, the recent tournament record over the last few years of the Megabass Vision 110 and the Lucky Strike knock off is impressive.

They look like a little bit heavier version of a wiggle wart. Regular wiggle warts work best for me when I take one suspend dot and place it ahead of the front hook hanger and behind the lip. I wonder if that is necessary with this bait.

The recently re-introduced Berkley Iron Silk is a great cranking line. 10 lb is a great deep cranking line. 17 or 20 is a great square bill/rattle trap line.

Apparently, like lots of different guys here, I fish lots of different brands. On those occasions when I lose a fish, which happens more than I would like, I don't think that it is the fault of whatever hook I happen to be using at the time. I blame it on operator error, if I must have a separate culprit, I blame it on barley pop, which occasionally slows my reaction time..

I have a few made by Gambler, that admittedly are a few years old now, that very closely resemble bluegills, which in my neighborhood are a very common forage. A cut down Zoom fluke with a painted chartreuse tail completes the illusion, as far as I'm concerned. I will continue using this style of chatter bait until I lose them all, at which point I will have to get a new favorite. What I like most about this particular style is that while they don't present a particularly large profile, they do weigh half an ounce. They are a football style jig head. They have a fiber brush guard. They have what I would call a medium size blade. i.e. I have chatter bait style lures with both larger and smaller coffin style blades. I have no clue as to if these baits are still available or not. I know that they are all gone at the store I bought them at.

In my experiences, the lighter I go with leaders or line in general the more I get bit. The trade off is the lighter you go with line & leaders the more you get broke off/ line snaps/stuff happens. Make your own decisions and knock yourself out. Me, I generally go lighter in my week to week fishing than I do when I am fishing a tournament because breaking off a fish during a tournament because of too light a line would mess with my head. I haven't fished tournaments in a while, with the exception of a few charity tournaments and the wounded warriors deal every October on Truman Lake. Tournaments are a good reason to make sure that the lines on your reels are in good to great shape. If you need new line anyway, a tournament is a good reason to put on new line.

Years ago, I got a good deal on several of the old Green Curado's, only problem was that they were in the 3.8 to 1 gear ratio. I had all 4 of them changed over to a 5 to 1 gear ratio and it didn't cost that much. I got the reels cheap enough that even considering the cost of the change over and shipping the final cost was a little less than buying a new reel. I don't think that happens too often, though.

I wouldn't bother with putting soft plastic lures into plastic boxes. Keep them in their original packages. Group similar lures together in gallon zip lock bags. Be mindful that the zip lock freezer bags are a heavier duty plastic than the regular zip lock bags. I wouldn't mess with the regular zip lock bags. Sometimes you will tear up the original packaging. Have some quart size zip lock freezer bags on hand and transfer baits into that bag. Take out your sharpie and be certain to label brand & color. Take the gallon zip locks and keep them in a cheap duffle bag. Myriads of different sizes of cheap duffle bags are available. Pick one that suits, be mindful that as your soft plastic assortment grows, you will probably need more than 2. 3 or 4 is a good number to start with and allows you some room for growth. A few years ago, Walmart had cheap, wheeled, soft sided carry on size luggage on sale. The ones I found measured roughly 20" x 12" x 7". I bought 5. These stack easy in my Explorer and are easily bungeed down on the back deck of my boat when I fish by myself. I've been doing this for a few years now. After you have been doing it for a few years, you will find that there isn't any perfect system. I try to have one or two carry ons for each season. Spring soft plastics - fall soft plastics and summer soft plastics. There is some overlap, but that don't matter. The point is to have a bag that you can grab and go and have enough options within that bag. Another option is to divide baits by water color, i.e. baits for clear water - stained water - dingy water - muddy water. Experiment with your secchi disc to figure out what these different water color titles mean where you live. By this I mean that what is considered clear water in Texas isn't the same thing as clear water in Missouri. Even in Missouri, Lake Ozark clear isn't the same thing as Table Rock clear and neither of those are the same as Bull Shoals clear ( which is mostly in Arkansas, I know) Whatever soft plastic system you decide to employ, be sure and label it. Do not count on your memory because it will betray you at the worst possible time. I have went through several different labeling systems. I have found duct tape and permanent marking sharpies to be my current best system. I hope this gives you an idea of how to sort your working assortment of soft plastics. How to sort your spare & extra soft plastics that you keep back in your fishing shed is a different topic. Here is a hint for that storage issue. Dust, insects & mice are your enemies here. Go to Walmart and buy many plastic shoe boxes. I think that the ones with the attached lids are better than the ones with the separate lids. Buy several different colors of duct tape and label everything, trying to stay organized. For me, Berkley plastics are one color of duct tape, different brands of worms are sorted by length and type of tail and are another color. Baits that I have a lot of, like trick worms, get their own box (or 2). Lizards get a different label color than worms; same goes for tubes, craws, creature baits, swim baits, what have you. If I have aided you in your soft plastic organization strategy or added to the confusion, then my work here is done. On another side note, once you have decided to take an afternoon and devote it to soft plastic organization, I find that several IPA's and a blasting stereo help. Bridgeports (out of Oregon), Boulevard Pop-up IPA (out of Kansas City), O'Dells (out of Fort Collins, Colorado) and Deschutes (another Oregon Brewery) are a few good IPA choices to start with. Don't get bent out of shape if you don't get done in one afternoon. There will be more afternoons and more IPA's. Tune wise, on the stereo, I have found that Bob Wills, Billie Holliday, George Thorogood, Dwight Yokum, Lynnard Skinnard, Count Basie & Bob Marley to all be good soft plastic sorting tune choices. Oh, by the way, in your profile, it helps to know where you live. Guys who live more or less in your neighborhood will be more likely to respond.

If I'm throwing jigs from the bank, I am probably not throwing any kind of skirted jig/trailer combination. Most likely I am using a quarter ounce Brewer slider head and a 5" paddle tail worm. This is a tx rig style jig head that comes through most cover you throw it at. A fairly slender profile, but the paddle tail moves some water. Anyway, that is where I'd start. I'd use spinning gear and a light braid/fluorocarbon leader combination, so I wouldn't be as bothered by the wind.