Bluebasser86

Life has turned out nothing like I planned, and other than some dumb choices I made as a teenager I wouldn't change any of it. I've got a good paying job that puts food on the table and pays the bills. I've got good friends and family that I know are always there for me. I've been blessed with finding a passion for this sport and lucky enough to be fairly good at it. I married a wonderful woman, we bought a house together, and in a couple months we'll get to meet our son

Well I'll probably be out there with basshunter0731 and Scrogg is trying to make it work too. Between all of us we ought to be able to catch a fish

I rotate between Seaguar Red Label, Vicious, and Sunline Super. I have pretty recently started fishing the Sunline Super and have been really impressed with how easily it handles and it's strength and abrasion resistance. Vicious is some of the toughest stuff I've ever fished but if you aren't willing to deal with some line memory it isn't for you. Red Label is a great line too but the Sunline seems to do a little better around the zebra mussels that are in so many of our lakes now.

Nice fish! I'm always amazed how small of a bass will eat those things. One of the first bass I caught on the weedless 6" was barely a 15" fish.

1/4 or 3/8 ounce football head slow rolled along the bottom or ticked over the weeds.

Send them to me, I'll get rid of those defective baits for you I've got a black Bandit with scratches all over it. I've had my best success on it in dirtier water.

X2 on the BPS Pro Qualifier. Get it on sale in the spring for around $80, even less if you trade another reel in. Another option would be the H20 Mettle by Academy. I got mine on sale for $30 and it's an amazing reel for the money. I don't think I'd do any heavy flipping and pitching or big swimbaits on it but it's been a great little reel for spinnerbaits so far, very smooth and cast a mile. The BPS Pro Qual is a workhorse though.

I'll be there Thursday unless the wind is terrible. The smallmouth are always biting there, just depends how you want to catch them.

Congrats man! I still don't even have a deer tag bought yet

I wish they'd bring our men and women home so other families wouldn't have to go through this anymore. Here's to a fast and full recovery for him and any other soldiers injured in the war!

Never a bad time for chili! We have chili cook offs at work once in awhile. I won the last one on my shift with my dad's chili recipe

I too thought about trying one until I read the reviews. It's a good looking bait but I'll stick with the proven baits, even if they cost a little more.

I strongly disagree about the guide giving a discount or free trip due to bad fishing. If it's because the guide is bad at his job that's one thing or if they guarantee satisfaction or a certain number of fish to be caught, but they can't force them to bite. I understand the OP's frustration, but at the same time that trip probably cost the guide a lot between having to buy the truck and boat and upkeep of both, gas, all the time spent figuring out that big lake, the equipment if he provided it, and he has to be able to make enough money to make a living while he's at it. A very popular Table Rock guide broke down the numbers on another forum one day, I don't remember the exact figure but it was way more than I expected for him to take someone out each day. As long as I could tell he was trying hard and not just parking me on a spot and leaving the rest up to me I'd have a hard time being upset with them.

No bass?

If all anyone had to do was come here and search instead of ask questions it would just be a bunch of guys showing off pictures of the fish they'd caught.

Looks right around 40 pounds, very nice looking blue and a lot of fish to handle on a light spinning rod, especially in current!

Like any mass produced items there's going to be some of them that have defects. My buddy that works in the fishing department at Cabela's in KC told me they're one of the most commonly returned broken rod besides the Cabela's brand rods. A big part of that may be their popularity also because if they're selling a lot then there's more of them out there to be broken. I'm sure a lot of the broken rods are user error also.

50 degrees is about the cut off for a good topwater bite here. I like walking baits in the fall because most lakes have lots of shad in them but buzzbaits seem to get the big bite.

VMC's are about all I use except when I find Owner's on sale. Good hooks at a good price. Really glad they started making short shanks and in odd sizes, the #3 short shanks are on a lot of my baits. As for the OP, my buddy Jon (basshunter0731 on here) didn't use to buy into the premium hook thing. Then one day he was fishing a Strike King KVD 1.5 straight out of the box. I warned him about the hooks but it wasn't until he'd lost 3 over 6 pounds and a couple more in the 4-5 pound range because his hooks keep straightening out that he became a believer. Now he's like me, a bait isn't ready to fish until I replace the hooks on it except for a select few baits.

I cut a little bit off the head of a 5" stick bait and use it on a jig all the time, works great at times.

Not the giant I was hoping for but it was still awesome to get one on it! Fishing a strip pit in SE KS, it was about 26' deep and she caught it on the drop and just swam off, I set when I saw my line start to sink a lot faster. Between 19 and 20 inches and 3.88lbs. Hopefully be many more to follow!

Nice fish! I agree that a fat 18" fish would be around what your scale is saying. I've had some super fat ones go 4 or better but those ones are as big around as they are long.

Unfortunately true in some cases. I've had to stop being as descriptive on some of my local spots after a couple of them got hijacked. Now if someone wants detailed info I have to do it in a PM. Sucks but some people just want to take and give nothing in return. My spots that got jacked NEVER get fished like I was doing and aren't popular spots at all and all the sudden after I made a post there was people there all the time doing what I had been doing. Maybe I'm just suspicious but it seemed to be more than happenstance to me.

$20 for a cheap, digital scale will make it so you don't have this problem in the future! Nice fish regardless of the weight!

It's awesome your school was willing to work with you on putting a team together. I tried when I was in high school and they didn't want to hear anything about it.