Bluebasser86

One of the best toads out there. The Rage Tail Shad is a great bait for using like a toad as well.

Booyah Popping Pad Crasher and it's not even close. Cricket frog, sunburn, night train are my go to colors. I have 2 Spros because they're colors I can't get in the Popping Pad Crasher (white and orange). I have several Toadrunners too that I like other than those terrible Trokar hooks they put on them.

Shakyhead is strictly a bottom fishing bait for me, while a Ned rig spends very little time on the bottom when I'm fishing it. A Ned rig is a much more versatile bait, so I fish it much more often. Add in the fact that zebra mussels make fishing shakyheads almost impossible in a lot of our lakes, explains why I don't fish them often.

The littering really bugs me. It's terrible right now after so many people who don't normally fish have hit the banks and are throwing trash everywhere. Another one that bugs me is the "Hero Shot". I see it a lot around here and it makes no sense to me, when guys are fun fishing, but decide to put fish in the livewell and carry them around all day just to take a picture at the end of the day before turning them loose? I'm sure those same guys harp on folks for keeping fish, but they'll stress a fish hauling it around in a livewell just for a picture when it could be CPR'd immediately and they'd still have a picture of it. It continues into the heat of the summer when our water temps sometimes reach the high 80's. Just seems odd when bass fishermen as a whole seem to try so hard to take care of the fish, especially larger fish (keepers), and then needlessly do something like that.

A weightless flipping tube makes a great toad substitute. Pull it over grass and let it drop into holes. It's heavy enough to pull itself down a little bit and cast even on heavy gear needed to pull fish out of cover. Then when it hits open water, twitch it like a fluke and it darts around quite a bit too.

Weeds are finally growing, so I broke out my Savage Gear weedless pulse tail bluegill. Not exactly what I was looking for, but man it's a fun bite when they smoke a bait like that.

Appears to have blood coming out of it's gills and running down it's side. Not a lot, but enough to produce a drop like that.

If that's the issue, then there's fish that get much bigger on average, that are also easier to catch (looking at you catfish ?)

I do all the cooking at our house. My wife does some baking, mostly cookies and cakes, everything else is on me and I hold my own.

I'm too cheap to pay someone else $15 to buzz my hair. Buy a new pair of clippers a couple times a year and do it myself with a little help from my wife, saves a ton of money and I also gave up caring what other people think a long time ago.

Gary Yamamoto Tate.

That's a giant walleye, just a few pounds short of the state record here. I'd love to catch one half that big.

You need to let Missouri Conservation know where you caught that Silver carp if it was in a pond unless it's attached to a stream or river that already has them also.

They've been a menace for me lately. They'll eat anything but my jerkbaits, ned rigs, and paddletail swimbaits have especially been getting harassed. I've caught several pitching Menaces and baby brush hogs, 5" wacky rigs, 3/8oz jigs, 1/2oz spinnerbaits, they're annoying when they're spawning. Had a day several years ago fishing with a buddy where we ran into a friend of his that was crappie fishing. We weren't fishing for them but told him we'd keep any we caught for him. I caught 14 keeper crappie that day, 13 of them were on a popper. I could see 10' down and I'd watch those jet black slabs stalk my popper and if I'd just barely twitch it, they'd pop it. His buddy came in with 1 crappie that he caught on a minnow.

Leader material is much harder (stiffer), it would be impossible to spool and cast with a reel.

Okuma Cerros, 7' M/F Ethos Micro, 20lb KastKing Super Power. I use it for launching WTD baits and ploppers.

Dock post got my last 2, at the same time. Pulled into a covered dock to get out of a pop up thunderstorm that blew over right as I was finishing cleaning some white bass for people I'd been guiding. Forgot about the rods they'd been using that were sticking out the passenger side at an angle, backed out of the dock stall and almost saw my mistake in time, those Lightning Rod Shocks are something else, the Veritas went quick, but the Shock dang near stopped my boat before it snapped. My favorite was when my dad bought his first Ugly Stick, back when the commercial with the guy bending one in a full circle was on TV. He was bragging how you couldn't break them, tried to bend it like the commercial, and promptly broke it.

I hear it all the time, but I guess I'm not sensitive enough to notice it. I still manage to catch a fish every now and then with my tip heavy sticks.

Reel left handed with spinning, right handed with baitcasting, and I CANNOT interchange the two. I don't know why, I've tried, but I just can't make a left handed baitcaster, or right handed spinning reel work right.

It's a fun bait to fish, but the standard size is better than the Jr IMO. The Jr struggles more with any kind of surface chop.

The 75 is shorter, but very heavy for it's compact size and cast like a bullet. Caught a lot of fish on them (just like all the other sizes).

Don't fish them on the bottom, you won't get snagged nearly as often that way regardless of how rocky it is.

The bagged ones are not nearly as good as the ones that come in jars. I'm assuming you got the ones from the MEAT lineup of Uncle Josh baits.

No, they're different baits with different uses in different situations for me. Bladed jigs have done much more to displace squarebills in my boat than spinnerbaits.

The family and I went on a 3 day camping fishing trip this past week to use of some of the time I was off from work. Went to a lake I grew up not far from and love fishing but rarely make it to, it's been 3-4 years since my last trip there. I'm hoping this time around will remind my wife why I like going there so much. We caught fish nonstop the entire time we were there and it's a really nice lake with nice campgrounds (minus the marauding raccoons that stole our hotdog buns and tried to break into our food totes the first night). Lake caught probably 2 dozen smallmouth without any assistance, my wife caught her biggest fish ever (although it unfortunately was a big ugly drum), Finn was a fish reeling in machine, and I managed to come up just short of my goal to hit 1,000 bass on the year before returning to work (986 so far). Ned rigs, jerkbaits, small paddletails, and a Menace on a swinghead were the best baits.