Bluebasser86

I've got 3 years on my Dakota 100Ah in my kayak that gets ran hard all year round in a variety of conditions and it will still run my motor for a couple days without charging.

Glad you're okay. This is a big reason why I wear a NRS Chinook in my kayak. I was on the water one day it was rough and the idea that I could end up in the water became a reality. The next thought I had was would my PFD inflate if I did end up in the water? I couldn't say with 100% certainty that it would. Sure, the indicator is green, but things fail. Foam floats 100% of the time though. I've only gone in once with it on, but it worked perfectly and I didn't have to spend $40 to rearm it.

I've been a big fan of the palomar for braid and mono and SDJ for flouro for years, but recently started using the Shark Knot/Double Clinch for flouro and have to say I'm a huge fan. Very easy to tie and it's been extremely strong.

I think it would be really interesting to go, but like Glenn said, it's an invite only event.

The only one I care about being better than is the fish.

Zman FattyZ Worm is just slightly shorter but super durable. I use the Zman Big TRD with a ring and a button style Neko weight super glued into the end of it. You can catch literally dozens of fish on the same worm.

The discontinuted Berkley Surge Shad and jointed Surge Shad are my favorite standard wakes. Big wakes are some of my favorite in the swimbait category and I'm a really big fan of the BioLab Wake Shad 6", MS Slammer, and Bull Wake.

I use the same 1/80th oz jigheads as pictured above, but I just buy cheap 1" grubs and tear the tails off so it's just the body. Cheap and super effective. I can cast them without a bobber on my UL but they work well under a bobber also.

I don't do it as much as I use to, but it sure is fun. We use to go out on the river a couple times a week during the summer months and try to shoot silver carp out of the air while it was light and then spot light bigheads when it got dark.

I had a huge grass carp slam into the side of my kayak Friday night when I spooked it out of the shallows at about 3am, that was pretty spooky. I couldn't imagine a Great White coming up next to my kayak.

The hooks are pretty decent in those frogs. My local Walmart is missing several frogs now and I suddenly have several hookless frog bodies laying around in my garage. I'm doing the nail weight/worm rattle/heat shrink around the hook and shoving the whole thing through the middle of the urchin. Not sure why other than maybe because the hooks probably tend to stay pointed up and have a little more clearance, but I've seemed to have a little better hookup ratio with them than I was getting with a treble.

Took my boys to a little creek this weekend to avoid the crowds and get out of the house. The creeks have been high all year with all the rain we've had but some of them are finally getting down enough to fish again. The upside to the high water is fresh fish in the creek. We caught quite the mixed bag and saw some fish we don't normally see in this one. Pretty deep and all rock bottom too. We all ended up in the water by the end but my youngest loves playing in the water and it only took him about 20 minutes before he was in there.

I have a ton of confidence in a TRD type bait, or a tube, which both resemeble a craw with no claws. However, if I'm fishing a craw or a craw trailer on a jig and it loses a claw, I'm replacing it 100% of the time because I lose all confidence in the bait as soon as it loses that claw.

Is the water normally muddy, or did it just recently get really muddy? Water that is newly muddy, they'll take a minute to adjust, but then it's usually game on as those fish that are use to clearer water tend to be easier to catch and less wary about your presentation. If it's normally muddy, they tend to stay very shallow and tight to cover, but I've found they can still be very picky about your bait and presentation. I think maybe it's because they're high percentage hunters in dirty water where their prey can't detect them as easily, so they learn that they can be pickier, which requires us figuring out exactly what they want to make them move. I usually go for a lightly weighted, dark colored plastic or a dark colored bladed jig as my first option.

Most everything has been covered already but it's possible you're overthinking it also. The lake near my house isn't real deep but has some good offshore structure like rocky drop offs, a roadbed, a couple sunken docks, several brushpiles, but it's also completely rimmed with residential docks. The last couple times out, I've been stubborn and stuck to trying to fish the offshore fish, with pretty minimal success minus chasing roamers on scope, those fish are chasing YOY shad and have their feedbags on, but they're also almost all smaller than 15". Each trip, I eventually get frustrated and give up on the offshore fish and start skipping docks with an urchin and fishing the slop with a frog, and the bites start coming and they've been bigger fish every time. I see the other boats, and every person I pass is fishing a wacky rig under the docks, or a finesse bait under them. I haven't seen anyone fishing the frog and only a couple urchins and they're just fishing the edges, not skipping under the docks. The fish were right where everyone else is fishing, I just had to do something different to make them bite.