Bluebasser86

It catches literally everything. Most of the lakes that Ned fishes here don't have smallmouth, just largemouth. I've caught bluegill, several kinds of sunfish, crappie, yellow perch, walleye, white bass, wipers, channel cats, blues, flathead to 21 pounds, drum, gar, even carp.

We usually have a KC area meet up every year at a local lake, it's always a good time. You just have to set a place and date and run with it.

Yes it can, I don't. A crawdad or minnow doesn't suddenly become louder or smellier because the water is dirty, and bass still have no problems finding them.

I catch a lot of Ned rig fish in water with less than 2' of visibility, including some really nice ones.

I use braid for all my topwaters except buzzbaits and double propped baits. I've never had the issues with my bait catching the line, even with walking baits, but I usually fish them pretty fast so maybe they aren't getting to glide far enough to tangle up.

Shimano Cardiff 300 or 400 is probably your best bet in that price range. However, I'd seriously reconsider getting into swimbaits if you're on a tight budget. I've got swimbaits that cost quite a bit more than what you're wanting to spend on a reel, and that's just one bait. Even the "cheap" ones run about a quarter what you're wanting to spend.

I mainly use the swim, shake, glide Midwest Finesse retrieve.

I have a 15ph tiller and a 9hp tiller. Probably going to end up putting the 9 on it, because the 15 is a short shaft that I don't think will be far enough in the water on this boat. I thought about the sand blasting option but trying to keep it as cheap as possible. Hadn't heard of the gravity fed type, and they're pretty inexpensive, so I might look into that option. Thanks for the suggestion.

This is a good point also. I always tried to launch near as possible to where I'd like to fish and if it wasn't happening there, put it on the trailer and pull it to a different launch on another part of the lake. A long run through rough water may not even be an option in a small boat.

I did exactly that with a worm hook. It was really stuck, pretty hard to get it out even though he wasn't hooked. Love a good jigging spoon bite!

Welcome!

Welcome!

When I'm in my kayak or johnboat where space is limited, multipurpose rods are a big bonus. I've found the Berkley Lightning Rod Shock in a 7' MH to be about as versatile of a rod as I've found. I've used them for all kinds of moving baits, jigs, T rigs, weightless Senkos, frogs, and even flipping some grass. They have a good backbone but a little softer tip that allows me to fish treble hooked baits. They're not the lightest rods out there, but maybe something you might consider looking at.

Agree with the above that nearby fish tend to move towards it, but fish further away aren't as effected by it. I have noticed if there is a sustained wind blowing the warm water plume towards good fish holding areas, those areas that are far away from the actual discharge can get red hot, even though it only warms the water up a few degrees in a day or two, so I pay a lot of attention to the wind direction the days leading up to when I'll be fishing one.

Tons of different options out there. I pour my own but I have some from Strike King that are really nice too. If you can find some with a strong enough hook to hold a big fish, but light enough to straighten if they get snagged, that's ideal to me.

I did some cat fishing in the yard this past week when my new BFS spool showed up. 5lb tabby pulls pretty good when they get their claw stuck in piece of nylon rope and starts to freak out.

Most of our lakes are smaller than 500 acres. The biggest in the state is only 16k acres, and there's only 3 or 4 bigger than 10k. I don't do a lot of running.

Working on it

I thought about that, but it's about twice as much for a double hitch as it is for a 2" coupler, and I don't have to worry about flipping it around each time this way. The locking mechanism on that coupler seemed like it wasn't working well anyways.

Maybe floral wire? That's what I used to use to tie my baits until I switched to copper to stop the rust. It's not really flexible, but I think it probably is enough so that you could pull it out of the mold.

https://www.academy.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10151_10051_10729_-1?gclid=CjwKCAiAmvjRBRBlEiwAWFc1mOePfjoMZCBza8nyQ3O8KJ0FV1P3KfBAPhY6JTHVCvyYYZI0g_xWrhoCZHIQAvD_BwE The Optimax Pro XS likes the expensive stuff, but at least it's cheaper than what my BIL has to put into his Evinrude!

Welcome!

I use a Calcutta 50 for my jerkbaits on a 6' 8" M/F Ethos. My main cranking rod is a 200E5 Curado on a 7' MH/M Quantum KVD cranking rod.

Thought I'd start this for anyone wanting to follow along. I'm not at all a professional repairman, not even very good at it, but I'm going to attempt to fix up the boat and trailer I recently stumbled across. I only gave $300 for it and all appears to be in pretty good shape, just needs a little TLC and it could be something pretty nice for the little lakes I often fish. This is what I'm starting with. Could be used as is, so I don't think it's in that poor of condition, but I want to make it a bit nicer and have something that will last a long time hopefully. It's a 16' MonArk semi-V johnboat. It has obviously been sitting for quite some time and had a ton of leaves and debris in the bottom, that's all been removed as well as all the old foam and anything not welded to the boat to make things easier and so I don't damage anything that might be salvageable. It's a nice wide boat and pretty deep so I'll be able to take my boys out in it once it's fixed up. Not the 14' it was listed as being. I've removed the boat from the trailer and hosed the interior of it out to get all the debris out and let it dry really well before I start working on it. The trailer clearly has a lot of surface rust and the old paint looks bad so I'm planning on grinding the surface layer to remove it all. Going to be a lot of work, but I plan to break it down into hour or two blocks of grinding to make it more tolerable. I tried to start it yesterday but my grinder lasted about 5 minutes before it quit working. With a new one in hand, I got about an hours worth of work in on it this morning. I decided I wasn't going to deal with switching my hitch every time I wanted to use it, so the 1 7/8" coupler had to go. I got both sides and top of the tongue cleaned off and called it a morning. Probably won't get much of a chance to work on it the next few days at least with Christmas, but hopefully a couple mornings next week.