Bluebasser86

Say you set your drag to 75% the breaking strain of your line in your garage with a fresh knot. You make a cast, hook a big fish, fish drags your line across some kind of cover, abrading it and reducing it's strength by 40%, fish surges at the boat and your drag doesn't give because it doesn't know your line is weakened, and your weakened line breaks. Backreeling, I'll feel my line rubbing or know the possibility of it being damaged if I cast into a bad area, and can play the fish lightly once it's in open water. I can do the same when I visually see that a fish is hooked poorly to attempt to keep the hooks from pulling out. Conversely, If I hook a fish near heavy cover and it surges for the cover, I can instantly apply extra pressure to attempt to keep it from getting to the cover when a drag might have given line and allowed it to get to the cover. Like I said though, I don't believe either is wrong or universally better than the other, but for me personally, I can control a fish way better by backreeling than any drag will allow me to.

Tell the truth now, I've been to Oklahoma more than once. Thankfully I'm still working so I don't have time to watch all this nonsense ?

I saw people trying to do that with trout last week. They launched a boat, one drove to the back of a cove to fish while the other drove the truck around to the same cove to bank fish with a big cooler. Neither of them were catching anything, but I know what was going on. I don't get a chance to try to walk the bank for walleye very often, but I find plenty of short fish filleted when I do. I wish we had more wardens and they weren't spread so thin. The poaching in this state is unreal.

That's weird, I use 15lb Tatsu a ton and it's some of the smoothest, most memory free fluoro I've ever used. Maybe got a bad/damaged spool of line?

It's all about control for me. Like he said, I can sense that fish surging and decide how much and how quickly to give line to the fish. The drag can only give line as fast as the force applied to it allows. Drags are typically set using a new line and freshly tied knot in a controlled environment, something we never have on the water. Add in a lightly hooked fish or a frayed line, the drag may no longer be set correctly, but by backreeling I get to decide the correct amount of pressure for each situation. IMO, neither is right or wrong, but that's how and why I do it.

I never even tried mine for frogging. I could tell just from the first time I made a couple cast with it that it wasn't going to be a good frogging rod. Seems to be a pretty universal opinion on it too.

Smackdown Flash Green.

The one I had didn't seem like it had a lot of torque. I'd hook a fish and it really seemed like the reel was working to crank the fish in. I'd probably fish topwaters like poppers and WTD baits with it because they do cast pretty well and are pretty smooth on the retrieve.

It works, hard to get that red skirt color now though.

The biggest bass I've caught in Kansas was on a Red Shad YUM Wooly Bug, a color they no longer offer it in ?

Siebert makes his that is pretty similar. A lot of bait makers make and sell them. I just ordered the new Do-It mold that makes 6 1/16oz Ned heads at once so I can stop making them one at a time. My eye can stop twitched every time someone orders 40 Ned rig heads now.

Crocs, either regular style or flip flops. Super durable, dry fast, won't stink when they get wet, pretty inexpensive, they float, extremely comfortable, and what other shoes are going to give you a sweet polka-dot tan on top of your feet?

For a second time...

Both the spots are pretty fat? Stripers aren't typically really fat fish. They can be for sure, but their pelagic nature tends to keep them more lean.

I was thinking 20lb bag ?

I pour my own, 1/16oz head, #2 Eagle Claw Lil Nasty hook. The bait doesn't touch the bottom very often.

A H2O Ethos Micro.

Reeling a grub painfully slow, scrubbing it along the rocks. You can use a swimbait too. It's how I caught most of my fish at Table Rock in April a couple years back, like this skinny little fella.

Missouri waived the need for fishing licenses until everything clears up. I'm just working and fishing, so pretty much everything is business as usual for me.

We have a free gym in each building at work, so I sold all mine a year or two ago. Of course the gyms at work are closed now ?

10-12 inches are about perfect. Once they get bigger than that, they're so tall that they're hard to fillet. Not that I hardly ever keep any, so I can be pretty selective when I decide to keep some. Is that a stiper and a hognose sucker? Looks like a pretty solid striper.

Nobody turns walleye loose here. Same thing with crappie. Everyone hammers them right before they spawn and then complains when the populations are down a few years later. A lot of times it gets blamed on blue cats eating the walleye, and smallmouth bass eating the crappie ? OP, not talking about your fish specifically, that's just 1 fish and not going to throw the balance off any. I'd love to catch one that big, but like you said, they don't get that big here very often. I know of guys who keep excessive numbers of fish during the spawn for no reason other than they can. Like they have to have a freezer full of fish to show people because a picture isn't enough. A fish or two doesn't hurt anything, take what you need when you earn the right by catching a keeper fish, but the tailgates covered with big female 'eyes and stringer upon stringer loaded with slab crappie that never got to spawn wears on me.

Biggest fish of the year so far Thursday, 6.79 pounds. Elephants eat peanuts few other good ones too.

I have the Okuma TCS. Great jig rod, but I've never used it for frogs. IMO, it's not nearly as heavy as it's rated. I use a different 7' 3" H/F rod for frogging and it's way stouter than the Okuma is. No way, no how are you throwing a Spro Rat 50 on it, a 130 plopper you could do.

I mainly pitch with fluoro or copolymer, unless it's grass, then I use braid. Wood, docks, sparse grass I typically use a 1/4-3/8oz bullet weight or 1/2oz jig. If it's thicker grass I move up to a 1/2oz tungsten weight.