Bluebasser86

This is a power plant lake that they try to keep as many fish as possible in the lake to keep the shad population down so they don't clog the intake screens. By this time of year, a vast majority of the shad that are small enough to be eaten have been eaten. Once the YOY shad start to get bigger everything starts to fatten back up.

I prefer larger sized baitfeeder spinning reels for catfish, even larger ones and especially for blues. If you're set on getting a round baitcaster though, I'd suggest a round abu with a bait clicker on it. You can find them used for a very reasonable price and they're about bulletproof.

About what our screen looked like last Friday, only they were white bass and wipers. That's a boat load of fish.

Haven't ever figured out a way to avoid it with power bait. Even if you're quick on the trigger and tight line them, they still seem to swallow it more often then not. Use a barbless hook and use forceps carefully under the gill plate and you should be able to remove most hooks without doing serious harm to them. I quit using power eggs for that exact reason though. A small jig (1/32 or smaller) twitched under a bobber or deadsticked under a bobber catches me just as many if not more trout than power bait and they average larger. Little Cleo spoons catch me lots of trout as well. If there's browns then don't be afraid to fish a jerkbait like a 97mr slender pointer.

If you want to just catch whatever is around, then I'd agree with using nightcrawlers. Just a simple slip sinker rig fished on the bottom will catch anything in a lake. If I were just after catfish, I'd be using fresh cutbait (shad, herring, or carp), or live baitfish. I'd be fishing any of them near the bottom, either on a slip sinker rig with live bait, or weightless with the cutbait if I could get away with it.

None in Kansas. 1 lake with a fishable population of pike, no muskie.

Congrats on the trout. I wouldn't feed those nasty things to anyone though. They make good cutbait, that's pretty much it.

The Pro Qualifier is a great little reel for cranking, especially if you get it on clearance.

I use a Curado E7 for my C rig rod. I also use 50lb braid so not really any need for a high capacity reel IMO. High speed reel is a must to pick up line quickly though.

Sounds like Wyco in the summer time. Go out and catch 20-30 fish and not even have to measure a single one. Most of the ones we won last year were in the last half hour though. Couple specific spots we could go to and almost always have a shot at one that was either a keeper or very close to it.

What days work for you? I have weekdays off and have an empty seat occasionally as long as you don't mind fishing out of a jonboat and don't mind having a dog at your feet

I've fished an A rig quite a bit and never doubled on it. I've doubled a bunch on cranks, traps, spooks, poppers, and jerkbaits, but never on an A rig.

Super Spook Jr. no doubt about it.

With both of our odd schedules, my dad and I rarely have the chance to get on the water together. I was thinking about that a few weeks ago so I called and asked when his next Friday off was going to be. Plans were made and he picked me up at 5am to head to the lake. My dad is a walleye fisherman first (unfortunate for him since we have terrible walleye fishing lakes), so we had selected the lake that gave us the best shot at catching some walleye while having plenty of fish to fall back on if they weren't playing. Dad has been out several times this year by himself or with friends and just has had a terrible go at it. He made it very clear he really just wanted to catch some fish and not have to work real hard at it. We got to the lake, got checked in at the guard shack, and headed towards a spot that I'd received some info might be holding some walleyes. On the way to that spot I noticed some birds diving and then saw the water frothing. We spent the next half hour catching whites and wipers at will on walking baits and grubs. Once that died down we got back on track and made it to the area I had suggested. Started marking fish pretty quickly and wasn't long before I boated a couple short walleye (they have to be 21" to keep on this lake). Continued fishing the area and picked up a few more short walleye, a couple smallmouth, a channel and blue catfish, a nice largemouth, some whites, and a big crappie. Once the sun burned the thin clouds off it started to get hot fast! We worked our way back over to the end of the rock dyke we'd started at so I started casting a power minnow towards the end of it in hopes of finding some smallmouth. I was done with my cast and was burning it back in when a striped rocket shot off the bottom and engulfed it and started screaming off 6lb test from my light spinning rod. Several more runs followed before I got a lip lock on her. Shortly after that I was in the middle of a cast with the power minnow when my rod in the rod holder folded over. Cranking like crazy to get my other rod in so it wouldn't snag up while I was fighting the other fish, didn't get it back to the boat before it got slammed too! Dad gave me a hand in fighting one of them and I was able to get them both in the net. All the wipers on this point, I thought maybe I could get a topwater fish. I did, but it wasn't the kind I was expecting, not at all disappointed though. The wipers were just loaded onto this point and we caught 20-25 of them before we decided to get back to our hunt for walleye. The decision was made to try covering more water and going a little more aggressive for the walleye since we were catching a decent number of them, but they seemed to be spread out. Turns out they were everywhere in a spot the size of a football field, we just hadn't given them what they wanted. Dad suggest spinner rigs on bottom bouncers and boy did they want those! By the end of the day we'd gone through 5-6 dozen nightcrawlers and boated 30-35 walleye. Right before we left, Dad set into one that was decidedly different. Staying down hard with lots of big, heavy headshakes. I was just hoping it wasn't going to be a big drum, so when I saw the flash of gold and the big marble eyes it was a big sigh of relief. Dad worked her closer and she went into the net nicely. Dad's big smile made it obvious that he'd enjoyed himself and was looking forward to a fresh walleye dinner in the near future! We burned through our last dozen crawlers and the bite was slowing down so we headed back for the ramp. Made Dad pose for a picture with his dinner before we hit the road home. Was a great day on the water with my dad, don't get to do it often enough. Won't be too long before my son will be out there enjoying it with us too

I remember my first tournament, never even had a bite Went on that year to win back to back tournaments, back seater of the year, rookie of the year, and 3rd place overall in the bass club, I was 16 that year. Fish what you're comfortable with, tournaments are no time to try to learn a new technique. Pay attention to what your cousin is doing. If it's working then try something similar but until then try something different to help speed up the process of figuring out what is working. Enjoy the experience, it's extremely addiction to some people.

That's a terrible excuse for what they did. Killing another thing and laughing while doing it shows a lack of remorse, respect, and no concern of any consequences. Expecting their parents to right the situation is asking quite a bit anymore. Trust me, I make a living disciplining folks whose parents probably never did. I had a similar situation as the OP as well. Small public pond, mostly small fish but I had caught a few 3-4 pound fish and one beautiful 5 1/2 pounder that was very distinctly colored as she was almost completely black. It's an easy pond to fish from the bank and close to where I used to live so I was there often when I only had a short time to fish. One day when I got there I immediately noticed the smell of something rotten when I got out of my truck. I fished for awhile but curiosity got the best of me and I had to figure out where the smell was coming from. Didn't take long before I looked in the trash can by the edge of the water and there she was. Her jet black color had faded from baking in the sun, a dogwood sapling was jammed through her gills on one side and out the other. Looked like someone killed her just to get her out of the pond, probably thinking she was the reason they weren't catching any bluegills or crappie. They hadn't even filleted her, just thrown her in the trash to rot and waste. I've only been back to that pond once since and there was no sign of any bass bigger than 8". It probably didn't but in my mind the removal of the pond matriarch threw the balance off so badly that the gene for the bass to grow larger died with her and now there's nothing but small fish left.

A lot of places you can't relocate them because of the potential to spread unwanted species like zebra mussels, gobies, or snakeheads. People love to eat them around here so I have no problem finding someone who wants to eat them.

I was trying to break a jig off in shallow water one night when it came unsnagged and hit me in the forehead just above my right eye, amazing how much that hurt. The stretch of my line must have really sling-shot it back at me super fast because it felt like I'd just been sucker punched.

Welcome to the jig addiction my friend! Before you know it you'll carry boxes full of hundreds of different jigs of all styles and colors while you continue to use the same ones for 90% of your fishing

Congrats and remember that topwater isn't just an early and late deal. I caught my biggest smallmouth of the day last Friday on a Super Spook Jr. at about 11am when it was flat calm, sunny, and about 90 degrees outside.

There are actually times you can catch a decent number of bass at Hillsdale. I fished it quite a bit last year because I also live in Gardner and it's so close. Last time I was out there though, I managed 2 little crappie and 1 little bass.

The goods from Wolf Creek yesterday fishing with dad.

Well there's lots of trees, tiny crappie, and carp, that's about it. Welcome to the site and feel free to join my "Hillsdale sucks" club

We wrecked them at Wolf Creek today, mostly wipers and walleye but several smallmouth whenever we got closer to the bank. The 20 or so 4+ pound wipers we caught on light spinning gear made it so we weren't too worried about fishing for anything else for awhile. Probably around 30 walleyes that were biting very aggressively and fighting very well. Some blues and channels. a largemouth, several smallies, bunch of whites, a 13.5" crappie, and of course a drum made for a busy day.

Be careful not using the ramps, read on another forum a guy got a $153 fine for launching his yak from a random spot instead of the ramp. It says in the Jackson Co boating regs that you can't launch anywhere other than a ramp. I read that the don't patrol Prairie Lee much but we saw 2 park rangers today in 5 hours.