Bluebasser86

Men brave beyond comprehension. We owe them so much for running into the teeth of such a formidable enemy and surely knowing the odds of survival were not good. Who knows how different things might be now if not for them.

Speaking from experience, there's no time restrictions on when people feel it's a good time to insult the police ?

If you're going to eat fish, that's the only way to do it, straight from the lake to the plate.

Congrats to her and you!

Those look really nice. Really wish more spinnerbaits were made with the closed eye still.

Mag Ned rig? It really sounds like we're talking about a jigworm, which has been around forever, just a plastic bait on an open hook jighead and fished mainly on the bottom. One of the very first In-Fisherman videos I remember watching when I was a boy was Al and Jim Linder jacking fish on a jigworm rigged Salt Craw and Power Worm. I think the only real advantage to the open hook was in grass or where there's very few snags, you get an easier hookup.

Welcome!

One of these 2; 185 Shine Glide 7" Slammer

YUM Craw Papi and Christie Craw.

I'm not nearly obnoxious enough to be a Googan ?‍♂️

What kind of catfish are you targeting and where is going to be your main factors on what gear you need. Channel cats in still water don't require the same gear as blues in fast current. For standard channel cat fishing, a medium spinning rod and 20lb braid will handle a majority of your needs. You can use a larger rod to catch smaller fish, but it's like trying to bluegill fish with a MH baitcaster and 15lb mono, it can be done but it's not nearly as efficient. Fresh cut bait is the best bait, hands down. It will catch all species and sizes of catfish, and tends to catch the larger fish much more often than prepared baits. Livebait is good too, but the hassle of keeping it alive outweighs the benefits unless you're specifically targeting flatheads which prefer livebait but will still readily take a fresh cutbait (rarely caught on prepared baits). All species of catfish readily feed during the daytime, with flatheads being the least active during the day. Channel cats will cruise a lot of the same areas as bass, weedlines, rocky shorelines and rock piles, docks, and around laydowns, searching for food. Blues tend to be more open water fish, following schools of shad or cruising dropoffs and offshore flats and humps looking for food. Flatheads will almost always be by some form of cover, large rock and wood being a couple of their favorite kinds.

I was just rigging up rods this morning for a trip Thursday. Tipped my jig with my trusted green pumpkin Christie Craw, put a weightless black Dinger on to follow up any misses I might have on my topwaters, and put a green pumpkin Genie Worm on a bubba shot for pitching into the trees. One of my favorite plastic makers for sure, and the fact that they're make in the USA is a big bonus.

Like everything else, it varies. Some days they want it moving super slow and paused for long periods of time. Other days I can't fish it too fast. A majority of the time, I'll give it a few quick twitches to walk it or twitch it forward a bit, then let it pause for a couple seconds around likely ambush areas.

If you figure up cost per fish, probably a Zman TRD with a homemade head. The jighead cost me less than $.10 to make, a TRD is about $.50 each. Not unusual to catch over 50 on a single one if it's not lost first.

I consider the time of year, weather, water clarity, a few other factors, then I'll often look for something that looks similar to what I'd fish on my home bodies of water under those same conditions.

This isn't a picture of one of my boys, but me about 32 years ago. One of my first pictures with a bass. They weren't the target back then, too much work to catch and not enough fillets as a result. Really got bit hard by the bass fishing bug when we moved to the KC area and when I got my first truck to drive around to all the different lakes.

Welcome!

What style of keeper are you looking for?

My usual night lakes of choice are either small, so I can idle, or the main bigger lake I fish is fairly well lit thanks to this.

I get the thinking, and it's probably kind of a wash. There's the MF "let the fish eat the bait", camp, then there's the fast action "drive the big hook" camp. Both have their valid points. I've seen too many baits in the fish's throats to feel like they need more time to get the bait I use a 6' 9" H/F.

Some days you lose them, some days you don't. I'm not a fan of the moderate or MF rods for bladed jigs because I felt I missed and lost far more fish than I do with a fast action rod, especially around grass. It's a big, heavy hook that takes a good amount of force to bury, especially at a distance. If it was a regular jig, would you feel confident in your setup to get a solid hookset? It's the same size hook. 12lb fluoro is going to stretch a bunch on a long cast, combined with a little softer rod, while it might "feel" like you're getting a good hookset, you might not be.

Like the saying goes, arguing with idiots is like playing chess with a pigeon, or an owl in this case I suppose.

My buddy that fishes it often has been doing really well with a popper early and then switching to a wacky rig or swimbait when the stop biting that.

You can operate a boat without a driver's license and without passing any kind of test as well. I use a spotlight that runs off my boat's 12V adapter plug to navigate when needed. Water is different than driving on land though. The reflections off the water can really mess with your perception. Sonar units with GPS are almost a must for navigating at night.

That rod pod really is terrible. It kills so much room. I use it to store some tackle, but then it's so far down that it's difficult to reach from the seat, at least for someone with zero flexibility like myself it is. IDK, when I flipped mine, it went over with surprising ease. I was seated in the high position and didn't even lean far past center. I didn't have a lot of gear with me, just a few things while I was trout fishing early in the season. Water was in the high 40's, 1/10 would not do it again.