Bluebasser86

I do all the cooking in our house. I follow a few different pages on Facebook and get suggestions off there. Tonight is cheesey Ritz chicken and probably some mashed potatoes and green beans or something on the side. My boys love the chicken. 4 large boneless skinless chicken breasts cut in half – or use an equal amount of chicken thigh or tenderloins 2 sleeves Ritz crackers – One sleeve of Ritz crackers contains about 35 crackers and makes 1½ cups of crumbs. This recipe calls for 2 sleeves (or 3 cups of crumbs) ¼ teaspoon salt – or onion powder, garlic powder, or paprika. Add cayenne pepper or red chili flakes for a bit of a kick. ⅛ teaspoon black pepper 1 teaspoon dried parsley ½ cup sour cream – or plain Greek yogurt 3 cups grated cheddar cheese – use mild or sharp cheddar, or change the cheese and try mozzarella, pepper jack, Monterey Jack, Colby, or smoked Gouda. fresh parsley for garnish Sauce1 (10.5-ounce) can cream of chicken soup – or cream of mushroom soup or make a Cream Soup Substitute ⅛ cup sour cream – or plain Greek yogurt 2 tablespoons butter – We use unsalted butter. 2 tablespoons milk – We use whole milk or 2% milk. How to Make Ritz Cracker ChickenPREP. Preheat oven to 375°F. Place Ritz cracker crumbs in a shallow dish or bowl along with salt, pepper, and parsley. Place sour cream in a separate dish, and cheese in another. COAT. Dip each breast half into sour cream, coating all sides. Place it in the cheese dish, coating it with shredded cheese. Finally, place each breast into the cracker mixture until well coated. BAKE. Place into a greased 9×13 baking dish. Cover and bake for 50-55 minutes. Remove foil and bake for an additional 10 minutes or until edges are golden brown. SAUCE. As the chicken is finishing cooking, place the sauce ingredients into a small pot and cook on medium-high heat. Stir until well combined and serve on top of the chicken along with fresh parsley. ENJOY!

Good luck, Costa is a shell of what it use to be. It's now a limited warranty and up to them to determine if the damage is covered or not. If they decide it's not covered, you can pay a repair fee to have them fixed. I use to have a few pairs but sold them and have Bajios now. Great glasses and great people to deal with.

I want to be more versatile this year. Last year with the Catch 2025 challenge I was doing, I really didn't fish for much other than bass and it really was tough missing out on fishing for some of my other favorite bites. I've already got a decent start after catching a limit of winter crappie from my kayak last Sunday. I want to get my kids out more. They're old enough now to be able to go for longer trips and it's going to be just us with Mrs. Blue starting a new job and likely working on weekends for the forseeable future. I'd like to get them on some big catfish and maybe take a trip to one of the Ozark streams to chase some smallmouth and goggle eyes while wading around and playing in the water. I hope to be able to do well at the state championship for my kayak tournaments and qualify for the national championship again. I missed out this year but hopefully will make it next year.

I've done it with some big 7" stick O's from BPS. They work decent but I've yet to have any real great success with a dice bait.

I've bought a few off Ali and Temu and had pretty good success with them. I've never fished a real one, so I can't compare the action, but they're good enough to get bit and offer a different enough action to warrant carrying them.

Pretty unique find in the trees today. Definitely a first for me.

Practicing my scoping skills and finally getting some fish for a buddy from work. Hardest part of the day was catching keepers. Caught about a thousand 9-9.75” crappie but those 10+ inch fish were elusive.

Another factor to consider is sink rate. When fishing light baits, the floating braid will slow the sink down even more.

It's kind of both. You can crank them steady or stop and go and they catch fish, or crank them down and twitch them and use them as a deeper running jerk. It's a pretty finesse presentation and a very good fish catcher in cold water.

How is the bulk? It looks like it would be difficult for me to fit my winter suit over the top plus my life vest and still be able to move.

Black 8" Mann's Jellyworm. I was shocked to actually see some in BPS last week, hadn't seen them in a store in forever. Hard baits, it would be either the old Wiggle Warts, or a not as old timey but still long DC'd Zell Pop. I've lost and found this bait twice and it has just been a fish catching machine for me throughout it's lifetime.

@Swamp Girl pointed out one big option that I missed, chasing them at night. Fish in clear water lakes often act like completely different animal at night. I use to go at night a lot but I haven't much the last few years. I'll be doing it a lot more this year with the changes in schedules here. It's one of my favorite ways to fish and something I absolutely suggest trying if your're comfortable with it.

I have a cheap lock on my mount system for my kayak spare but one good whack would break it I'm sure. It's all to keep honest people honest and even then, the spare isn't a brand new tire or anything, I couldn't imagine someone wanting to steal it.

I really like the flat black. Much easier to keep looking nice than a gloss black finish on a motor.

Just get ready for the "You got enough stuff in that little boat?!" comments on the water. I hear it all the time in mine and I really don't feel like I'm that loaded down but I doubt any of the people making the comment have ever actually been in a fishing kayak.

I'd be fishing the trout pond with big swimbaits down where you are a lot if I was looking for big fish. I fished it several years ago this time of year and had a lot of fun throwing A-rigs and jerkbaits but never found any of the big ones. Table Rock has big fish and a big glide is a good way to get them to bite, but you have to commit to it.

Unless those guys are 7' tall that fish is barely 250 pounds.

I wish, I've only ever caught one that was 24" and it was so skinny that it only went 7.5. It's rare to catch one over 21" here because our fish just don't get very big. There's never been a bass over 12 caught in Kansas and I've never broke 8 in my home state. I should have taken some graph pictures, the shad are thicc out there right now and these bass pull up to that buffett line and just make fools of themselves. The downside is they can be very difficult to get to bite when there's that much of the real thing around.

I got out Saturday for my first trip of 2026 to the power plant lake. The stack was pumping this time, and the water was about 10 degrees warmer than my previous trip. Started on my favorite little channel swing point with a rockpile on the end and a few stumps mixed in. Didn't take many cast with a Ned and I was on the board for the new year, with a keeper to boot! Just a few cast later, I got my first good one of the year. Unfortunately, they were doing a much better job biting than I was doing of catching them, I'm blaming it on rust from not fishing all year 🤣 I still caught another 12-15 fish, with a couple more over 18", one of them was just a blimp of a fish at barely over 18" and 4.43lbs. I messed up on my big fish of the day though, likely one pushing 7. I got lazy and didn't retie my leader on the rod I was using, no idea how old the leader was, and I broke her off at the kayak. I had a near heart attack moment throwing my new Baby Boss glide when a big gar came up after it on my very first cast with it. Had to take it off after that.

Doesn't take anything too fancy for those temps. I'm usually dressing to fish in weather that likely won't make it up much above freezing for a high. Merino Wool is the way to go for the real cold stuff, but I've got an assortment of cheaper thermals from a bunch of different brands for warmer temps and they all do just fine.

I record all my trips and share them on Youtube, as much for me to review as for others to watch. It really can help a lot to be able to go back through and see what I did right/wrong on each trip. It's always surprising when I think I was doing the same thing as I was to catch my smaller fish when I catch a bigger fish, but then I watch and find out that I was doing something a little different without even realizing it. It's also nice to be able to go back and review past trips to lakes to gather information for future trips to help speed up my fish finding if it's a place I don't fish often.

I had pretty much stopped hunting once we moved away from our old place and I didn't have private land to hunt anymore. Once my oldest decided he wanted to try deer hunting and decided he really liked it, it got me back into it. I still don't really care to go shoot one myself, but seeing him get excited gets me more excited than shooting one myself anyways. We were really lucky to get invited to hunt private land also, because I was not at all looking forward to hunting public land.

Homemade 1/2oz black and blue flipping jig. Half silicone, half living rubber. 9.72lbs, the anchor to a 35lb bag.

I use the smallest size of this style, from Topwater Co. I use them on all treble hooked baits but my smallest jerkbaits and only on my larger topwater baits. Any other crank, lipless, or jerkbait gets one of those snaps. I can tie a knot no problem, but I like to be able to quickly rotate between baits without retying. It's a very valuable asset in a kayak when rods are limited to be able to switch between different baits without having 20 rods on the deck. It 100% contributes to me catching more and bigger fish and I can think of plenty of specific examples of fish that I wouldn't have caught if I wasn't using a snap.