Bluebasser86

Several companies make rib worms that all do basically the same thing. I like the Zoom big dead ringer but have had luck with several others.

I used to setline for catfish a lot and always used circle hooks so I could release big fish. Not every fish that bit got hooked in the corner of the mouth and a swallowed circle hook is even harder to remove than a regular hook. Even had one big fish swallow a hook and it went through the top of it's heart and killed it. They are a great tool to catch and release fisherman but they aren't going to work exactly like they are supposed to 100% of the time. I think it's safe to say that fish would have been hooked in the throat with or without a circle hook.

I have had a lot of luck on the YUM wooley bug and the Havoc pitboss. Lots of green sunfish around here but they don't get the claws very often unless you swing on them.

I have a pair of Keens that I like pretty well and keep my back from hurting. I also have a pair of regular crocs and a pair of their flip flops. The flip flops don't look goofy like the regular crocs but they are just as comfortable and you don't end up with the polka dot tan spots on top of your feet! I used to fish barefoot until I saw the clip of Bill Dance stepping on a Fat Free Shad in his socks, I have no desire to get a hook in the bottom of my foot! Plus the aluminum boat with no carpet gets a little warm during the summer time! Do I smell bacon? (little cop humor for you)

Looks like you guys had a good trip and a good mixed bag of fish! I'd much rather have a slow trip with quality fish than catching tons of dinks!

Thanks guys! She goes fishing with me quite a bit and has the basics down pretty well. I bought her a St.Croix Avid Pearl spinning rod and a Quantum Energy PT reel this spring so she'd have something nice to use and she seems to want to go more often since I got that for her. I was really hoping she would get a keeper but like I said that lake is really tough. There is already talk of fishing again this Wednesday night.

You know what they say about a bad day of fishing! Trust me, I would rather be having a bad night of fishing than a quiet night at work like I am now! Sometimes if I'm having a slump I hit some ponds. They don't have to have big fish, just lots of fish. Kind of a confidence boost to remind me that I really do know what I'm doing, I just have to keep doing it!

Just because it's the traditional way or the way everyone else is doing it doesn't mean you have to do it that way. If you're catching fish with a weightless worm then fish a weightless worm! With heavy vegetation on the bottom that may very well be the best option going.

Man I wouldn't sit in one spot catfishing more than an hour unless I had no other option. It's just like bass fishing really, hit a spot and if you don't find any active fish fairly quickly then move on. Usually takes less than 10 minutes for them to find your bait if they're moving.

Man I wish I was going fishing tonight! It was nice out! Calm and humid and no bugs! No fishing for me though, just surfing BR at work until I have to wake these clowns up for breakfast and then home by 9am and do it all over again tomorrow night before I get to go fishing on Monday!

Everytime I've fished Truman it has been very tough. The fish are still there because I've done really well a couple times but it is usually tough to get anything big enough to weigh. LOZ is one of my favorite lakes to fish and has always been nicer to me than Truman. The heaviest limit I've ever weighed in came from Truman but that is the only time I've ever caught a limit at Truman.

That's a good solid fish for Kill Creek. I took a friend out there last year and he had a fish pull him down into a tree and break him off. We assumed it was a cat but I guess there is actually bass big enough to do that out there too. Good luck at Hillsdale, I've heard it has been tough, even tougher than usual.

Thank you for your service! Here's to hoping to staying safe for the rest of your tour and a speedy trip home!

Get a 1/4 or 1/8 ounce jig with a nightcrawler and drift it down the lake jigging close to the bottom. If there is walleye in there you will find them doing that. As for walleye hurting the bass population I've never seen the bass population go down because of walleye being stocked. Some of the best bass lakes I fish have good populations of walleye also.

That thing is a monster! There's some monsters in the Missouri River around here but they're chasing calves around in the pastures right now with all the flooding.

Went to Kill Creek for a couple hours after I got off work this morning, man it was tough! Wind was blowing harder than they said it would be and more sun. Seems like it's always tough out there for me when it's sunny out. The wind was kicking my butt in my little jonboat, started just letting it float against stumps and flipping everything before I pushed off and fished another area. Tons of weeds, hard to even flip the deeper trees because of all the weeds. Just a couple light hits flipping jigs and plastics. All of the fish I caught were on cranks or traps and all pretty small. Think I'll stick to fishing out there when it's cloudy or late in the day.

Man that thing is sweet! I'll never own one unless I find it for half price maybe but it still looks awesome!

I don't know about the hibernet but I do have a Frabill net that folds in half and you'd think that thing was a Rubiks cube when someone is trying to open it that never has before when a big fish is one the line. It's nice because it takes up very little room but it's so hard to figure out I guess that I end up hand landing a lot of my big fish instead. I guess I should start showing my friends how to open it before we go fishing.

If you can put some pictures up it would probably help with IDing them.

For lightweight gear Frogg Toggs are awesome. I have a new pair and the zipper still sucks but with just the velcro on the front I still stay dry and never get hot. Cabela's Guidewear is good if you need something for colder weather. Their Dryplus is pretty nice too but you do have to treat it every couple years to keep it waterproof.

I always use the glass rattles, never really had a problem with breakage. I think the ones I have were made by Venom and when Cabela's in KC discontinued them I bought about 10 20pks of them. They stay in the bait very well and make a big difference in the number of bites at times.

Well last week was my first time fishing the Wednesday night tournament they have on a local lake. Fished it with a friend of mine and we won the thing and had a lot of fun fishing it. So I was trying to get the wife to say it was ok for me to fish it again but I got one of those loaded ok's, you know the one, the you can go but you're going to be in trouble when you get home kind of ok's. So I tried a little while longer and came up with an idea, why don't you come fish it with me? She wasn't real big on the idea at first until we ran into one of my friends at Cabela's who was also going to be fishing it. Once he started ribbing us about we should come out so he can take our money she was in. So I run home (she works at Cabela's and didn't get off until 4:30) to get the boat. I went to unhook the chargers from the batteries, they aren't on. My batteries got run down completely fishing the day before, this could be bad. When the garage door shut I guess it pulled the cord out of the wall. When I plugged it in they were still almost dead. I cranked the chargers up hoping to shoot some life into my batteries. Well they only got about 45 minutes but I hoped with the wind supposed to calm down I would be alright. Swung by and picked her up and headed to lake. We continued the ribbing with my friends at the boat ramp until it was time to draw. I let my wife draw because she actually has good luck at that kind of thing. She gets number 3 out of 10, good enough reason to have her along right there! This lake is extremely tough, lots of 14 1/2 inch fish but getting one to go over 15 is tough, and smallmouth have to be 18" so that's even harder. It's only 400 acres so not a lot of water to share with 10 boats plus anyone else fishing. The week before there was 8 boats, 5 fish brought in, and we won with 2 fish that weighed 3.64 and had big bass with a 2.08lb fish. It's tough to say the least. We get to our first spot and put the trolling motor down, it's moving so slow it's hard to tell it's on. Great start to the night right there. So we are basically drifting with the wind and fishing. I catch a couple short fish and we run to the other end of the lake. My wife hooks up with what appears to be a keeper on a 6" worm and right when I grab the line it jumps and comes off! Dang the luck! Then the wind switches directions so now we're barely moving into the wind so I have to start the big motor and keep it running slowly as we cast and putt down the bank, not fun. We get to a small protected cove right by a point where I caught a 4lb smallmouth a couple weeks before. Right as we get there a boat across the lake roars over and starts fishing right in front of us! I could have hit their boat with a long cast. I was about to boil over but I didn't want to do it in front of my wife so I grabbed my buzzbait and cast it into a lane in the weeds and bingo! fish on! Swing it in with a little extra celebrating for our new neighbors to hear and drop keeper number 1 in the livewell! Feels real good with the circumstances. Run back to where we started to fish the weedline again. I flipped my bait to the edge just as one of my friends runs by. I'm in the front of the boat dancing around being stupid so when I start fishing again and notice my line is moving steadily towards deeper water I'm caught a little off guard. I reel down and set and my line breaks instantly. As if that wasn't enough the dang thing jumped and was obviously a keeper! All the wind left my sails, 2 fish won last week, that should have been number 2! We keep going though and with 30 minutes left I was going to run back to the marina but stopped to fish a short stretch of weeds real quickly. Second cast with a buzzbait on the weedline it gets sucked under and I swing keeper number 2 in the boat! I was pumped and my wife was pretty excited too! I jump up and fire another cast down the weedline and a couple cranks in it gets boiled on again. I swing it in and put it on the board and it just touchs 15, keeper number 3! We jumped into the marina and caught a couple more shorts before weigh in. Well the guys that usually win it had 3 fish too and they almost always seem to have one decent fish so I'm thinking at least we should get second and our money back at least. 2 boats had 1 fish, 1 boat had 2 fish, and then the 2 of us had 3. We weighed in first and our 3 weighed a whopping 5 pounds even. The other boat bagged their fish and dropped them on the scales, 4.84! We won it! With no trolling motor and at least 2 fish that were probably keepers being lost we came away with the win! My wife was so excited she must have called everyone in her phone book on the way home to tell them. It was a really good time and a pretty neat experience to have her in the boat for it. Sorry no pictures, none of them were worth taking a picture of anyways!

Your line should be fine, it might have broke 15 or 20 pound test when your drag stuck as it ran. That is the reason I never use my drag. I set it tight to get a solid hookset and then either release the spool on a baitcaster if the fish runs or back reel with a spinning reel. I feel like I have so much more control on the pressure I'm putting on the fish and no chance of the drag sticking that way!

That 3rd one is a fattie! Very good day indeed!

I'm assuming what you're seeing are cruising fish at this time of year. Cruising bass are usually really tough to catch but for me a small soft plastic jerkbait like a super fluke JR is about the most consistant producer. It is very exciting and a real challenge to fool a bass that you can see. If all else fails a live nightcrawler with a very small hook through one end and no weight is a great last resort.