Bluebasser86

Mine get a small, square Milk Bone treat each morning when I let them out in the morning. They also get plenty of scraps when I'm cooking dinner. I grate cheese instead of buying it in a bag, got to pay the cheese tax whenever I get the grater out.

They'll still be the Kansas City Chiefs, it'll just be KCK instead of KCMO.

I was wearing one, the DD22 hit me with so much force the hooks drove through the hat and into my scalp. I can't fish without a hat.

I wasn't the caster but the cause of the backlash, Dad snagged me in the top of the head with a deep diving crank and blew up his baitcaster. So I kinda did backlash the reel, even though I wasn't casting it. That would be the worse one for sure, it was really painful.

Well I'm way behind on my reports, but I guess better late than never. Day 1 Launched at Sizemore Landing with about 12 other kayaks. I was the only one without a motor so at 0630, I watched everyone else blast off, then hopped in my kayak and started kind of kicking around and scanning since I hadn't fished this area at all in practice. As soon as the sun started to lighten the sky after lines in, the schooling started. I hadn't had much luck getting the schooling fish to bite, but I had a different bait ready for them this morning and it flipped the switch for them. The Rapala Crush City Freeloader on a 1/16oz Hover Head just slowly swam through the schoolers did all the heavy lifting in the morning on day 1. I started with a 16" fish. Then went back to back with 16.75" inchers. A 17" fish and a 13 incher rounded out my limit. It all happened so fast, I had no idea what I had, what time it was, what had even happened really. I culled the 13" with another 17" fish. And then culled the 16" fish with another 16.75" fish. It was about 0830 at this point, only 1.5 hours into the day and I was already into the mid 80's on my limit, which was my goal for the day. My buddy Jon and his son pulled up in the boat to watch me and then another boat pulled up. I thought I was going to have someone park on top of me and fish because it had happened so many times, but it turned out to be Mark Cisneros from Bassmaster. He introduced himself and told me he was going to take some pictures. My heart was already going, but I knew what it meant having the camera boat pull up on me, even if it was early in the morning on the first day. Trying to fish when I knew they were there watching me, I haven't been that nervous since I drove my first born home from the hospital. Jon took a picture of the camera boat, taking pictures of me. Some action shots, unfortunately the bite had died by the time they got there and I only caught 1 tiny smallmouth while they were there. Now when I tell you that my bite died, it was stone dead. If I only knew how close I was to the motherlode though. I fished until 1330, with 1 more dink largemouth to show for it, before I decided to move to another ramp where I had 1 short stretch of bank across from the ramp where I'd done well in practice. I caught several more there in the last hour and hooked 2 that felt good, but both just came off my jig for some reason. I ended the day in 20th, but it was a tight race and it wasn't out of reach. I never looked at the scoreboard, couldn't make myself do it, but my wife took a couple screenshots. Sorry about the audio on this video, but there may not be a day 2 video so this is all I've got for now. I did go out for a few hours yesterday on Easter and caught myself an overinflated football. 17.5" and 3.75lbs on the Strike King Rodent with a Gamakatsu Nano Alpha 4/0 EWG Superline hook.

I don't use the Beetlespin, but I do kind of a DIY version. I like to use a black/chart 1.5" crappie tube on a 1/32 or 1/16oz ball head clipped to a #0 or #1 jigspinner arm on an ultralite. Catches anything that swims but the standard fare really loves them (bass, bluegill, sunfish, crappie).

French Pearl OB Wakin React PM Twighlight Chart Back Spawn Cherry

I'm pretty good at guessing, but it's a lot harder on a video than in person. I don't understand challenging the size of someone's fish who obviously has weighed their fish though. I posted a short of a 22" fish my buddy caught last week that weighed a little over 6lbs and someone commented that it was "More like 2lbs". It doesn't really "look" like a 6 pounder in the video, but they never do when Jon is holding them. Jon is 6' 4" and well over 300lbs, he makes everything look smaller. I saw the fish in real life though, it was a toad and just a hair shy of 22", every bit of what the scale said it weighed. I don't know why people need to challenge a fish's weight like that.

@J Francho I will check that out. Does it have to be formatted first for that program to work or does it work without being formatted?

My Micro SD with my second day of my Bassmaster Kayak Classic footage isn't working. It worked a few days ago when I initially viewed the footage, but now when I try to use it, it says it needs formatted. I don't want to do that and lose the videos. I tried using a Recova program and wasn't able to pull any files with it. I tried switching cards, computers, leaving the card in the camera, no dice on any of it (GoPro says "error" when I put the card in now). If anyone has any ideas, I'd really appreciate it.

I use it on my spinning reels and have really been happy with it. It's a very good, all around braid. It cast well, color holds up well, doesn't "fluff" or unravel, holds up well around any cover that I'd expect it to, basically does everything I'd ask a good braid to do at an affordable price.

After spending a week on the water with my buddy and his son, this was our haul (including the bowfishing arrow and Spyderco Knife). Some of the highlights were 4 rock crawlers (including 1 custom painted one), a custom painted Wiggle Wart and a pre Rap Wee Wart, Vixen, MB 110+1, 2 whopper ploppers and a choppo, Lucky Craft Sammy, 1.5, and CB 20.

I'm slowly starting to work my way through this past week. I have so many stories and pictures to share. Everyone here was incredible with the support. I needed 1 big bite and I was walking the Bassmaster Classic stage, that sounds crazy to say but it's 100% true. We went straight to Grand Lake and stayed in a B&B on Monkey Island for the Classic and fished Thursday-Sunday after my tournament. so I fished every day for a week straight last week. There's a lot to get to and unfortunately work is going to get in the way of me doing that too quickly. I'd never fished or even seen Tenkiller before and it fished a lot different than I expected. Water was mid to low 50's the closer to the dam I got, upper 50's to low 60's the further up the lake I got and the water was much dirtier. I struggled a lot down the lake and did decent from midlake on up. One real key thing I noticed, every pocket that I went into had shad in the very back getting blown up on, every one. The further north I went, the more shad and the more fish there were chasing them. I fished around Chicken Creek where we were camping the first day and did pretty well on a shakyhead, tube, and micro football jig. Day 2 I went to Strayhorn by the dam and did terrible for the first half of the day. I think I'd caught maybe 3 or 4 fish and only a couple were the 12" minimum. I drove a complete lap around the lake, checking out ramps and looking at different areas. I wanted to fish the river but it was so windy that it wasn't safe in my mind. Hindsight, I wish I'd gone to the furthest north ramp and tried there, I think it was more protected and the winner was in the river. I ended up in Snake Creek the last few hours of the day. It reminded me a lot of Chicken Creek and I did well again on the shakyhead and micro jig. Day 3 I went to Barnacle Bill's and struggled a lot, but there was shad everywhere and fish chasing them a lot. The water was dirtier and I did catch a couple nice ones towards the end of my day. The rock snot made fishing a crankbait impossible, and I couldn't get bit on a jerkbait or spinnerbait. I really expected all 3 of those baits to be huge players. By the end of practice, I'd caught 2 on a jerkbait and 1 on a spinnerbait. It really felt more like I was fishing a late summer/early fall tournament than a prespawn tournament. I never found any really big ones, and certainly couldn't find the big smallmouth, but I did find lots of quality that I was pretty happy with.

I won't be doing anymore Bassmaster events this year, just my local circuit. Don't worry, I have a brand new pair of tie dye Crocs waiting to go for this season 😂

15th, moved down several spots from the sandbaggers but bringing home a little money and a good experience and a lot of video.

Top 16 at least, still waiting to find out what spot. Somewhere between 9 and 16.

I was leading for about 1.5 hours this morning. The Bassmaster camera boat came by and took a bunch of pictures, so that was pretty awesome.

Thanks guys. I should have just put it back on the trailer after 9am. I didn't catch 10 more fish all day. Thankful for the ones I stumbled on this morning. My goal was to catch 5 both days and I'm halfway there. I knew I couldn't compete with the scopers and that was painfully obvious today.

Took the boys out to drown some worms and spend some time since I won't see them all week. We had a good hour at the pond and burned through a bunch of worms.

We get both extremes here in KS. Had a day last summer with heat indexes over 130, and we had wind chills down below -20 this winter. I was catching big catfish on the river the day it was super hot. I was doing everything in my power to not go outside the really cold days. Anyone that fishes where your line freezes, knows how miserable that is to try to deal with. I'll take the heat all day, any day.

Started working at 13 for a private lake clubhouse, mowing, weedeating, painting, doing whatever basic repairs or gopher jobs needed done. Did that until I was 16 and started working at Cabela's. I worked there until I was 21. Started working construction full time at 18 (while also working at Cabela's 20+ hours a week), and did that until I was 21. When I was 21 I got hired on as a Correction's Officer at my first department. At 23, I moved to a bigger department and became a LEO and have been doing that ever since, I'll be 38 next month. Planning to go to 51 and retire with 30 years of service.

@ol'crickety it's actually the 20th and 21st, so 1 week from today.

@ol'crickety yes it is. I've paid my entry fee, signed my waivers, done my tax forms, and got most everything ready to be packed into my truck. I need to get a couple more big micro SD cards for my GoPro. 3 days of practice, 2 days of tournament, then we're going to the Bassmaster Classic after that, so I'm going to need plenty of storage space to get everything.

Had a very success day of catching on Sunday, just not really what I was after. The bass were hard to come by, but I also caught a bunch of trout, several drum, a couple walleye, a catfish, and a wiper, most of my fish fell for a Ned rig, couldn't get them to eat a moving bait hardly at all. First fish of the morning, I pitched a RI Sweet Beaver into a tree, got a tap and slight pull down into the tree, not at all what I was expecting. I actually hooked another that bit the exact same my next pitch into that tree, but it came off. It took close to a hour to get my first bass bite, but it was at least a pretty nice one. Again, not the flavor I expected but I'll never complain about a 18.5" 3.57lb smallmouth, especially for my first one of the year. It just barely breathed in a Ned rig in 6' of water. I made myself some "scoping jigheads", and found a flat loaded with fish so I tossed that rig, and caught another trout that could barely fit the plastic in it's mouth. Jumped across to a shallow bank I'd never fished before, but I spotted a nice laydown I had to pitch to, worth it. Kept picking up fish steadily, mostly trout and very small largemouth on the Ned rig, but then hooked a much heavier fish. Not a big surprise to catch one, but I've never seen a walleye that big from this lake. Not my longest kayak walleye, but she was super fat and 4.51 pounds, for sure my heaviest kayak walleye ever and probably my second heaviest I've ever caught. Released to get even bigger. I caught 1 more walleye I thought about keeping but couldn't remember if the length limit was 15" or 18" so I just tossed him back. This was the last trip before I head to Oklahoma this weekend to prefish for the Kayak Bassmaster Classic. The tournament is Wednesday and Thursday, the nerves are starting to set in 😬