Bluebasser86

I used to think guys looked like idiots wearing the long pants, sunshirts, buffs covering their whole faces, gloves, hats, and sunglasses. Well, after working with guys missing chunks from their faces, ears, noses, arms, and heads, I'm one of those idiots now. You just can't cover every little piece of exposed skin with sunblock no matter how hard you try and as much as I fish, that's a lot of repeated exposure. I have a couple spots on my hands already that I'm concerned about because I've never work sunblock on my hands and only started wearing the gloves in the last 5 years. I even get the jokes from my family "You fishing or robbing a bank?" I don't care, skin cancer isn't a joke.

I have to mess with how mine is positioned to get it to not fog up. Basically, it has to be up under my glasses a bit, almost covering my whole nose to keep from fogging my glasses. Sometimes I just opt to grease my nose. It's mainly the hard to reach/see/cover places like my ears, all around my neck, and my head (short hair), that I'm trying to cover with it.

Especially with a fast moving presentation like a trap.

I do use a leader with braid at times, although it's not often fluoro. The only time I use it is with spinning gear. I only use straight braid with casting gear. Loosen your drag with this combination, that will reduce the strain on your rod and reel, and also on the line and your knot. I always want my drag to slip a little when running a braid/leader combo. I'm a little confused by the leader length is excessive comment. Do you not add your own leader? I tie my own leaders on and will do them anywhere from the standard 2-4 feet, up to 10' or more if I'm fishing deep and need the sink rate.

15lb mono or copolymer of your choice.

I have a beater that is my back and forth to work car, a Suzuki Verona, think they only made it for 2 years. It lived through a hurricane while my great aunt lived in Louisiana. I bought it from my grandma when my great aunt passed away. It's ugly and beat up, so I put a couple big pool noodles on my roof, ratchet strap it down, and away I go ?

@nighthawk25 I got your baits in the mail Wednesday morning so you should be seeing them shortly.

I wish I liked them, but freshwater fish and my tastebuds do not get along. More than willing to take someone who likes to eat them to several different lakes I frequent to keep both our limits of fish under the slot for them to take home. I'd rather see the guy taking home a limit of 12 inch under the slot fish to eat than the the guy who kept a 10 pounder last winter to put on his wall from power plant lake that will just be skinned and the rest thrown out, when it could have been measured, photo'd and released. The same guy probably would have scolded and scoffed at a bank angler for keeping a 5 pounder to eat. Keeping those little fish is good for a fishery, keeping those big spawners is not so great.

Only app I use is the free culling app called RightCull we use for our Thursday night tournaments. It adds your total weight for you and highlights your biggest and smallest fish.

I like the 1/4oz when the shad are small and the bass are gorging on them. Great bait to give to someone when the trap bite is on but they can't operate a casting reel too because it works just fine on spinning gear.

I never used to do good at Hillsdale either.

That was the 8" Hudd I have not had a lot of success on the 68's. Looking forward to the new Savage Gear baits that look similar but are a line thru bait. I've caught some fish on the 3D trout, but it's a much faster retrieve bait than the Hudd is.

My 4 year old fishes a Ned rig and a wacky rig just fine. He loses some, but he's having fun, that's all I care about. Strolling a Ned rig works better than actually casting and fishing it sometimes.

I was in a boat, so I was able to horse this one in pretty fast, but it was still quite the tussle on 6lb line.

Haven't fished that one either, looks fishy though. Pretty close to Jeffrey Energy Center Lakes, fished those a lot growing up. The new lake has a ton of smallmouth, white bass, and wipers and pretty good walleye fishing. We always caught so many fish in the new lake we never fished the old lake much.

I haven't fished Pott 1 but my cousin's farm is up that way and he fishes it often. It's much shallower and has tons of fish in it, just not many big ones. Better place to go if you just want to go catch some fish though. I don't know how many bass the river pond has, but it has a great population of saugeye. You can even readily catch them from the bank.

That big Slammer fish had well over a minute to investigate the bait before I twitched it and never decided that it wasn't real.

You ever catch any smallies out of Pott 2? Supposed to be some big ones in there, just not many. My dad caught a giant channel cat out of there a couple decades ago on an ultralight and 6lb test, it was 17 or 18 pounds and about as long as I was tall at the time. Fun little lake to fish. I miss fishing there and the river pond at Tuttle Creek.

Go straight braid or straight flouro. I don't like fishing jigs on braid, it's a mental thing for me, I'd rather fish them on copolymer.

I don't know, big brand name companies could risk putting themselves in a lot of hot water is someone caught them bagging all the line out of the bin with their regular trash to be thrown away in the landfill. Potential big backlash with any environmental folks out there. As for the tubes, at our lakes I believe it's the biologist in charge of the particular fishery that is in charge of emptying them and mailing the contents off. Probably the biggest issue with them is the jerks that stick everything under the sun in them except fishing line for them to sort through.

I got this one deadsticking a Slammer. First hint of movement she crushed it. I do it a lot with big topwater swimbaits. Anything to make it look like a big, easy meal. I'll do it with frogs too just because that's how a real frog will do a lot of the time.

I used them a lot when I was a kid and had a great place to catch my own crawlers after big rains. Weightless on 4lb test and a light action rod with a small hook passed once through the tail is hard for a bass, or any fish really, to pass up. Watch for your line to twitch and set the hook by reeling into the pressure and lifting.

I'll fish swimbaits that are "too big" for any fish around here. I also have 1 color that is a killer in our lakes, don't know why but it is. I talk about it plenty and don't try too hard to hide it.

Welcome!

Welcome!