lmoore

Congrats. It can be an awesome experience. Where and when?

No answer I could possibly provide would come anywhere near this one!!!!

Great attitude. At 14, I was still chasing Walleye around deep ponts, so you're waaay ahead of me in Bass fishing. My advice, take it or leave it: 1) Focus on school, keep up that 4.0. That will help a lot when you go looking for college money. 2) Promote those companies you're currently affiliated with and be the best staffer you can for them. 3) Learn everything you can about bass fishing 4) Join a fishing team in college and get a degree 5) After college, do this again. By then, hopefully you've done really well in some tournaments and have something more to offer companies. The temptation is always there to go chasing "sponsors" when you love fishing. The idea of getting paid to do something you love is unbelievable, but a lot will change between 14 and 23, trust me. Get to that point, where you're ready to get out on your own, and then go after it hard. Good luck,

I've heard concerns from several places abou breakage with the older Kistler models. I only started using them heavily a couple years ago, but I've never had problems with the Magnesium or Helium lines and I'm very hard on rods. This year, they had the lowest reported breakage rate at 1% (or maybe just under). That number may not be completely accurate because I believe it's based on customers reporting it. Still, they've really made good strides with durability form what I've heard. I can't really compare to Falcons, as I've never used those rods. I have a good friend who uses Falcons almost exclusively and really likes them. You'll be getting a pretty good rod either way.

I respect the guys ability to keep the fish he catches, but with as good as they can make permamounts, I don't ever see the reason to keep a true trophy like that. Very few (like less than 1%) of all LM ever get that big, and it's a shame to remove them, IMO. Still, a great catch for that guy and probably a once in a lifetime experience.

Some great advice already. Talk to your boater before the tournaments and he'll let you know what type of water he's fishing and you can set-up based off of that. One thing you may want to think about is the umbrella rig is illegal in TN in it's 5-arm form.

100% reccomend it. I fish that division and there are some very good boaters there. Pretty consistently have 1 or 2 in the All-American and doing well. Go in with an open mind and learn as much as possible so you're more ready when you go in as a boater in a few years.

When you start losing weight, you'll lose a lot of water weight initially from excess carb and sodium, which can make your initial gains look high. After that, the rate of weight loss that's healthy depends on your body composition. The generally accepted number for a long time has been 31 calories/pound of BF/day. It one pound of fat is 3500 calories, so your safe rate is about 1 pound per week for every 16 pounds of bodyfat. That number is based on the idea of the maximum rate your body can rid itself of fat. However, there was a study done recently that indicated loss of lean body mass (mass other than fat) wasn't a problm, even when losing a lot of weight quickly, until you get to very low body fat pecentages. The biggest concern with a fast pace is binging and rebounding. If you can keep yourself under control, and you don't notice strength losses (for best results, start a good weight lifting routine along with your weight loss), then you shuld be fine.

Correct, which is why I made the comparison between him (or anyone fishing just for fun) and someone fishing a tournament. When I'm just fishing for fun, I don't really care if I miss a fish either (let's be honest, I do a little ). EDIT I definitely wasn't trying to say tournament fishing is more important, either. Recreational fishing is the backbone of our sport, and any tournament angler who thinks he's better than people who just fish because they enjoy it, needs to realize there would be a very real threat of losing our sport, if not for it being one of the more popular hobbies in the world. All in all, I definitely agree that the line is the most important factor. The difference in a $20 rod and a $200 rod is much less than the difference betwwen a high-stretch mono and braid, IMO.

You're right, I misunderstood your second post. I would disagree that feeling the structure doesn't tell you anything useful. You outfish your buddies and their high dollar rods while feeling the structure, is it possible that the reasoning is you're outfishing them is because you feel structure? There's a lot more that goes into sensitiity than the price you pay for a rod. It's quite possible you've never missed a fish with your rods, it's also quite possible you've missed one and never know it because you coudn't feel it. If that fish that get's missed is a potential tournament winner, it makes sense for tournamet fishermen to pay the extra for the rod that lets them feel that 1 more fish. When you're fishing just for fun and relaxation, the cost of a higher rod might not make sense for the "potential" of catching one more fish, that makes perfect sense.

Post 1, can't tell difference in sensitivity. Post 2, can't feel the bottom. The new electroncis go a long way, but I find the more in-tuned I am with what's going on on the other end of my line, the better I fish(regarding contact baits obviously). I've had times fishing where the best way to get a bit was to pull a jig along a sandy bottom until I hit a rock line, pop it over the first rock, and let it sit. The fishing were sitting right on that change in bottom content. You would be able to see the change was there on your electronics, but you'd never be able to tell if your bait was there or not if you can't feel the bottom. All it does is increase your efficiency.

Great idea for a thread, lots of hard work already put into it. The 2 main factors in sensitivity of a rod are flexibility and weight, which is were the graphite rating comes in. I 100% agree that there's little to be gained from IM6 vs. IM7, and all that, because that's just a label the company uses. Graphite ratings (tensile modulus) for fishing rods are in the 10's of millions psi, and there's no correlation between the label one compny uses for a rating and the label the next compny uses. The overall purpose of tensile modulus is a comparison between flexibility and weight. As the rating goes up, a rod of similiar power can be made lighter, and will have slightly higher flexibility. The thing is, even though the rod is lighter and should transmit vibrations better, the increased flexibility serves to dampen the vibrations as they move along the rod, so you don't get the full effect of the decrease in mass. You still gain some sensitivity by using a higher tensile modulus graphite, but it's not as huge of a difference as it might appear due to the flex increase. Now that I've rambled on about stuff nobody cares about.....I've used some of the best rods in the world and still trust my fingers on the line a LOT more than my fingers on the rod!

You'll be paired up as in he'll have you as a guaranteed co and you'll have him as a guaranteed boater. That's how they word it, and it's ery misleading. All it means is that you get bumped ahead of others for entry into the tournment. You'll still be in the draw for your boater on the tournament day. If you haven't signed up yet, you'll want to immediately. The co-angler spots fill up fast, especially early in the year. There's likely already a waiting list on the co-angler side. If you get a guy to put you as a guaranteed co, you can call in and link up with him to get in.

Just so you know, you won't fish with your boater. They do a draw the night before. I don't have any Pickwick specific tips, but learn from your boater. The BFLs are at a level where you get all sorts of boater skill levels. Some who would struggle to catch fish in the local farm ponds, and some who would have a chance to make it on tour. Either way, they all present a really good opportunity to learn a little bit more about tournament fishing.

Big KVD fan?

Personally, I wish more fisherman would limit themselves to learning X numbers of new techniques every year. It would make things a whole lot easier on the tournament trail. It would be quite easy for me to write a whole article about this, but let me just say that the first year I fished tournaments was my sophmore year in college. Of the 7 tournaments I fished that season as a co-angler, I was introduced to 4 techniques that I had never done before with any kind of regularity. Rather than doing wht I knew I could do, I learned as much as possibe from the boater I was with. The fishing weather here lasts about 8 months, plenty of time for experimenting with new techniques if you'vegot the drive and determination to become the best.

Not quite true. Mono also sinks. It's significantly less dense than flouro (I think the sink rate of similiar diameter flouro is like 5x), so it will definitely help getting your bait off the bottom, but braid is the only line that actually floats. I wasn't aware of that property of braid until just recently, but for a true "floating" property, briad i the only line that offers that.

Just got the ok from my boss to take 2 extra days of vacation this year and do this for the one at LaCrosse....and it's sold out already!

It'd be really cool to see him do well....mostly because I have him on my fantasy team Biggest thing for the rookies will probably be practice. He's certaintly been under pressure before, but I would imagine nothing like the Classic. Getting on some fish and building early confidence would go a long way towards him making a run at the final day. Best of luck to him!

Good luck out there! Kepp your head down and go to work, maybe you'll get on somethin and make it to that third day.

It would help the spawn if the pond is a situation where the fish don't have much for hard bottoms. Fish will spawn in basically any habitat, but the results of the spawn will be effected by the specific conditions they have. Even if they already have good spawning areas, adding a gravel bed won't "hurt" the ecosystem. It may change it slightly at the level of plankton and that type of thing, but a 10 foot gravel bed in a 6 acre pond won't make any significant impact overall. If you have the time and the money, I would do it. Really a low-risk high-reward type of situation.

I think it could be a good idea, especially if the pond is mostly soft bottom. What was his reasoning on the effects to the ecosystem?

http://www.insideline.net/1999/xiques-0910-99.html That site has pictures of a guy setting up the wacky rig. I would imagin there's an article on this site too, but IDK.

My order of preference would be Martens, Ike, G-Man, Evers, Grigsby and then KVD. Martens and Ike are waaay out in front of that list.

Depends what your using the technique for. I'd use a normal T-Rig setup, and choose plastics based on the cover and food source that time of year.