Matt B

Good stuff ProCrafter! I spent the better part of last friday (5/7) back out in the dunes. Fished a few hours by myself, finally ended up in a shallow protected cove where I lost one and landed a second, maybe 14" largemouth. First fish on the new boat! Went and picked up my wife after lunch and fished a few more hours out there in a different cove. Gave her a baby brush hog to throw and she proceeded to outfish me 2-0. One being around that 14" or so size and one quite a bit larger. No idea the size, I need to get a scale. It was a fatty though. I didn't go very far back in there for fear of getting lost. I don't have a gps to guide me back out. ;D I'm really looking forward to exploring that place, though. I love fishing all that submerged brush/trees! Definitely want to go try to figure out how/where to catch the smallies as well. I've had pretty decent luck catching them from the bank along the dam, but never fished from a boat there before.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the last bass fisherman on earth to have never caught anything on Rat L Traps. :'( To be fair I haven't given them a lot of time and chances are I was using them at the wrong time or place or whatever, but still... Gonna keep throwing it this spring, though, until I break this rattly little curse of mine.

I'm curious about this as well. My wife was asking me what the difference was and the only answer I could give was "It looks cool!" Not the most convincing argument. ;D

Were you back in the dunes? Should I look for particular types of cover to find them? Seems like I saw tons of "fishy" looking spots everywhere, but didn't even know where to start. I fished around a couple of beaver huts and along some brushy flooded shorelines to no avail.

Man, why didn't I see this before? I may be headed up there this friday (5/7) for the day. On my own for the morning, then I'll hopefully pick up my wife around mid-day to go back out again. I've never fished Potholes from a boat before and have no idea where to look for fish this time of year. I went out for the morning last Sunday until the wind kicked up. Poked around the dunes for a bit (my first time out there) but didn't have any luck at all. Wasn't really sure where to go out there. Anybody have any tips they could pass along? ProCrafter, not sure if you're online at all or not this week, but if you see this and are interested in meeting up for a while in the morning on friday, let me know. I'd love to spend some time fishing with someone who knows what they're doing. ~Matt

Backstory: Just over a week ago I purchased my first fishing boat: a 1989 Stratos 279FS. Last sunday was warm and calm, so I took it out on its first fishing expedition. Halfway through my day an expensive lesson was learned. Don't set your tackle box on the back fishing deck and then forget about it till well after you fire up the boat and move hastily to a new location. So yeah, several hundred dollars worth of tackle and a nice soft-sided box are making their new home deep in my local reservoir. > Now comes the painful (on the wallet) process of rebuilding my collection of lures and equipment. Fortunately I had a few of the plastic boxes out of the bag so I didn't lose everything. I'm hoping you folks can guide me in a couple purchases to get started with. Mostly I'll be picking up one or two of a few key items to get by with and then slowly add new stuff as I can afford. What I still have: My jig/trailer box Tubes brush hogs and flukes ewg hooks/bullet weights Grubs/jigheads Needs/Wants: I'd like to pick up two or three crankbaits. I don't know much of anything about cranks, but my plan was to learn them this spring. So maybe 2 or 3 (or 4 if needed) different baits to cover some different conditions. Spinnerbaits - I only had a couple and I rarely used them but again, I was wanting to learn this spring. Plastics - This is what I generally fish the most, so I mostly know what I want here. Will be picking up some senkos, finesse worms of some type and Berkley Power Worms. I've not tried them, but reading this forum has me interested in some fat ikas as well. Any other suggestions you might have. Suggestions on brands/colors would be appreciated. I realize this will have to be pretty general stuff and that's fine. Later in the spring I plan to stock up on topwater stuff as well. Sincerely, dummy in Washington. :-[