CoBass

Agreed. Things vary by state but where I live you could actually be the one that gets in trouble for doing something like this. We have a law on the books here that prohibits interfering with someone who is actively hunting or fishing. There was a case several years ago where a guy took it upon himself to release a large bass from a shore anglers stringer. He was arrested and it wound up costing him a $500 fine. Sabotaging someones gear would definitely get you the same treatment.

I'm going to go the simple route here. Could it be that your gas gauge isn't entirely accurate? The only way to know for sure how many gallons of gas you've used is to go top it off and see how many gallons it takes. I'd suggest using the rest of the tank with a good mix of hwy vs city driving to get a better estimate on your true mpg.

I don't consider it to be lazy at all. If you have a decent breeze going, managing 2 or 3 slip bobber rigs with live shiners on them can take just as much effort as chuckin lures. Add 2 or 3 more from a second angler and between the wind and the shiners swimming around you will spend a lot of time keeping your lines from getting tangled up together. Especially if the fish are concentrated in a fairly small area.

Or maybe the warden writes them a ticket and they decide that keeping fish from that pond isn't worth it and move on to waters where it's legal to keep fish. Another thing you can do is call the local police dept. Just because they aren't wardens doesn't mean they can't write tickets for wildlife infractions. One of my local ponds is C&R, artificial only. If I see people using bait or keeping fish I politely remind them of the rules. If they don't stop, I call the local PD and they usually have a car there within 10 minutes. Most people don't enjoy encounters with the police and one run in is usually all it takes to get them to leave and stay gone.

Nice job, congrats to both of you. A buddy of mines wife comes out with us occasionally. Wherever we go the first thing she puts on is a gulp minnow on a jig head. I can't even count the number of times she has outfished both of us with her pink rod and reel and her gulp minnow.

If you want to catch bass in the Denver metro area your best bet is smaller ponds. The bass fishing community is pretty small here compared to other parts of the country and for the most part we're pretty tight lipped when it comes to locations. Use Google Earth to look around your area and for the most part, any small ponds you find will have largemouth bass in them. With few exceptions, the reservoirs are not the best place to look for bass but most of them do have pretty decent populations of walleye. When it comes to fish management in Colorado, you will quickly learn that trout come first, kokanee salmon and walleye come second, and everything else is a distant third. If you have a boat, Cherry Creek, Chatfield, and Aurora reservoirs all have some pretty good populations of walleye and Chatfield is also loaded with smallies. Most of them are pretty small but there's some decent ones in there too. Aurora has some really nice smallies (the last 3 state records were caught there), but it isn't the best place for numbers, and the smallies that are in there are not very easy to catch. Aurora is also an electric only lake when it comes to boating and shore access is fairly limited. Feel free to pm me and I can give you some info on a couple of local fishing forums where you can meet some locals and get out fishing with guys who have been here for a long time and have a lot of knowledge on the local waters.

Totally agree on the Charlie Moore comment. If I wanted to watch people sit around eating dinner and drinking wine I'd watch the food network, not a fishing show. His old show wasn't too bad. If I remember correctly it was called Beat Charlie Moore. People would write in to the show and invite him to fish their local waters. He would show up and they would have an informal little fishing contest. I think you won some kind of prize if you out fished him.

Some of the early reports I read mentioned him also re-using IV tubing. If that is true it would be pretty easy to convince a jury that you contracted HIV and or hepatitis from his procedures. A lot of times in cases like this you see an escalation of malpractice. It starts with a few minor missteps and then it snowballs from there. It seems like once they take that one little step across the line and get away with it they think they won't get caught and go all in.

Pete used to live across the street from my parents. He had several acres with a putting green on his front lawn. One day he decided to use the putting green as a helipad. Helicopter landed on the green, he came out the front door, hopped in and off they went. He got a talking to from the HOA. They didn't have many rules but one of them was no landing aircraft on your property. He did have some railroad ties incorporated into his landscaping too.

Nice job on the monster perch. How much did those pigs weigh?

What is the reason for not keeping trout alive in the live well? We can't transport live fish from the lake to home but we can keep them alive until we leave the lake.

Yup, you can get in trouble for having fish you didn't catch. You can have a limit of fish in you freezer for every licensed angler in the house. If your neighbor gives you fish they count against your limit. Colorado has some really strict fishing regs. If I'm out fishing for trout (daily limit 4) and I catch one and give it to my buddy it counts against both of our limits. I can legally only keep three more and he can only keep three more. Again, it's pretty much on the honor system. If nobody sees me catch six and my buddy only catch two it's hard to prove when together we are within the legal limits for two anglers.

Exactly. The possession limit here is generally viewed as being on the honor system but occasionally it does get enforced. There was a guy here who was observed by a park ranger catching a limit of trout then putting them in the RV he was camping in and returning to the lake to catch more fish. The fish and game guys actually got a warrant for his house and found a freezer full of trout. He was heavily fined, lost his fishing license for several years, and faced possible jail time. It doesn't happen very often but when it does it is well publicized to make sure everyone knows it could happen to them.

In the fishing etiquette thread Rambler posted about a guy he taught how to fish who went on to buy extra freezers to hold all of the fish he was catching and keeping. I thought I'd start a new thread to see how this situation is handled in different states. Where I live (Colorado), keeping freezers full of fish is illegal. Each species has both a daily bag, and a possession limit. In most cases, these limits are the same. For example, with bass, the bag and possession limit is five fish. This means that at any given time you can only be in possession of five fish, whether that's in your live well, or in your freezer. If you went out on Monday and kept five fish, you can't legally keep any more fish until you have eaten the fish in your possession. If you ate three of those fish Monday night you could only keep three fish on Tuesday because you still had two at home in your freezer. How does your state handle this situation? Can you keep a limit of fish every time you go out and stock your freezer or is there a limit on how many fish you can keep at home?

We have the same reg here but they went a little further and defined a hook as having a common shank so a treble hook counts as one hook. A crankbait with three trebles would use up all of the hooks allowed for one line. Funny thing is that the ice fishermen have figured out a loophole. They use three really long leaders with a single hook on each leader. Each leader is attached to one main line. They drill six holes and drop one baited leader down each hole and hand line the fish in when they hook up. Technically they are within the law because they only have two common lines with three hooks on each line but they wind up fishing six different holes at once. They are outside the spirit of the law but until the law is rewritten to limit the length of a leader they are still within the letter of the law.

Posting in the regional section of BR is a great idea. Another thing to consider is that most areas have local fishing sites/forums as well. Posting on a local forum can get you good info on who the good guides are and who to avoid as well. My area has two different fishing sites that have tens of thousands of members. Asking on either board would get you the names and numbers of guides that specialize in the type of fishing you want to do.

^^^This is why baby bass patterns are some of my favorites. One of the local ponds I fish has tons of sub 12 inch fish in it. Some of the bigger fish have figured out that the small struggling fish on the end of a line are easy targets and they will absolutely slam them before you can get them in. Baby bass flukes work very well in this particular pond.

In cold, clear water this time of year I'd probably start with a suspending jerk bait. Experiment with your retrieve and vary the length of your pauses until you find the magic combo of pauses/twitches. You're lucky to be able to legally fish golf course ponds. Around here there isn't a single course that won't have you ticketed or arrested for trespassing if they see you on their water with a fishing rod.

Nice Walleye, congrats. I rarely keep fish for the frying pan but when I do it's usually a walleye. As others have already said, they're very tasty. A bunch of the guys I fish with get together a few times a year at the lake for a walleye fry. It's a full day of stuffing your face and fishing for more eyes with your buddies. Doesn't get any better than that.

I do the same thing. Some of my best little honey holes are small little puddles that I've found on Google Earth. They're the kind of places people drive right past on their way to bigger waters and don't even know they're there.

Neither one of you will get any sympathy from me lol. Current conditions for me are 16 degrees, 8 inches of snow since last night, and 30-40 mph winds that have the snow blowing sideways and drifting. Snow finally slowed down late this afternoon but it's supposed to start up again tomorrow. Oh yeah, we're looking at single digit lows for the next couple of nights too. Gotta love Spring time in Colorado.

I like Zona's show. It's one of the few shows that doesn't turn into a 30 minute infomercial for the bait of the day. He tells you what he is using but doesn't ram it down your throat like some other fishing shows.

If your kastmaster is too big, you can get them in smaller sizes. I know for sure they make them in 1/8 oz, and I'm pretty sure they make a 1/16 oz model too. I catch a lot of smaller trout (10-12 inch) around here using the 1/4 oz sizes.

Around here we call stocker trout slimers. At least they only lifted the limits on parts of the Columbia. The fish and game guys in my state decided that northern pike were bad so they lifted all bag,possession,and size limits statewide. They also added them to the list of species you are allowed to bow fish for.

Very cool, good stuff. My nephew played soccer when he was like 5 yrs old. Games were funny to watch. There would be several kids from each team all kicking at the ball which wasn't really going anywhere. There would be a few kids running around aimlessly nowhere near the ball, and there would be a few other kids either sitting on the field picking grass or walking around looking at the sky.