RoLo

Excellent point. The faster the sink rate, the higher the odds of an impulse strike. Roger

Really Not 'Humor', But Rather Intriguing 1t's hrard to belveie thaht yuo kan aktcully raead annd udnrstnad tihis rububbish. 1t claer1y demnstaitss the phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnind. Thhe huamn mnid deoz'tt raed ervey Ltter, bvt decphifers eaech worod az a wlohe. To Tihink thaat I alwlyas thgtht slpelling was ipmorantt. Azmazng 1zns't 1t? Roger

I used to be under the impression that cotton is the best material for perspiration, but living in Florida has changed my mind. Cotton is hydroscopic (absorbs moisture), and once cotton gets wet, it stays wet. Synthetic materials like polyester and nylon are hydrophobic (repel moisture). Water vapor that isn't absorbed into the fabric is forced to remain in suspension where it can be expelled through strategic vents. Now I only fish with long-sleeve polymer sunshirts, but the key is finding a shirt with good ventilation. We fish during the hottest time of day, but the heat rarely bothers me (but did when I wore cotton). A well-designed sunshirt will provide ventilation flaps along the flanks and across the cape of the upper back. The better shirts also incorporate a mesh-lining of synthetic fabric to storehouse the moisture until it's bellowed out. In addition to repelling moisture, polyester repels dirt better than cotton and is less prone to wrinkling. Although it's not as popular as polyester, nylon is stronger and lighter than polyester and also offers a little stretch. Stretch is a nice feature when you're wrapped around the gunwale lipping a bass. Columbia makes quality shirts, especially their 'Silver Ridge' & 'Airgill' lines. Roger

In Florida, the most common culprits are bowfin and pickerel (toothy creatures), where a 7" plastic might come back 4" long (runs into money when they're Keitech swimbaits). Roger

Punching pads can be very fruitful, from the small 'watershield' pads up to the pizza-like 'lotus' pads (my favorite pads are spatterdock & waterlilies). Pads generally don't create dense, hard-to-penetrate mats as do hydrilla, milfoil, peppergrass and hyacinths. Getting to the bottom of these dense mats often takes 1-1/2 oz, but pad-punching rarely requires more than 3/4 oz (pads to rhizomes). Roger

Shimano Core is my favorite casting reel. Roger

I have a liking for popping frogs and popping toads. The late Lubina and myself were the only 2 members on the boards touting the Sizmic Popp'n Toad. My favorite frog is the Spro Bronzeye Popping Frog - rainforest yellow. Roger

A 'nice fish' is any fish that gives me a thumbs-up when I set it free. Roger

Consider yourself lucky for getting the opportunity to hear a big cat (I'd be in ecstasy). I love the sound of fox barking in our backyard, we also have bobcats but unfortunately they're not vocal. If it were a moonlit night, I'd be inclined to stalk in the direction of the cat to get a glimpse. Not having a firearm wouldn't bother me (for starters, predators don't scream when they're hunting). Roger

I strongly suggest that you re-read this thread.

11 pages later, there's still a line to the Toy Box No wonder our country's in dire straits Roger

Catt and I were not in an argument, we were in a discussion. Like a game of chess, we both knew what the other was thinking, and where the other was going. It's threads like this where the members can learn the most, threads that stay on point and expose nuances in learning experiences. Yet, in mid-discussion you invited (hijacked) readers from a 'patterning' thread to a thread about 'prey'. You mentioned Glenn Lau who I happened to follow closely, but Glen's findings never concluded that bass are long-distance foragers. I simply related to our most recent outing (2 weeks ago) because I thought it was relevant (i.e. Fish determine the pattern, not the fisherman). Although you weren't even there, you suggested the notion of a mile-long wolf pack. Your motive confuses me. Roger

It's more of an 'aggregation' than a school. Any lair that's ideally suited to bass habitat will attract more than one bass, which tend to aggregate at that site. In a healthy lake where forage is plentiful, adult bass do much less wandering than anglers might envision. Whether it's pike, smallmouth, muskies or walleyes, when you bone up on the preferred habitat of the predator's primary forage, you invariably find that predator and prey occupy the identical niche. Consequently, predator and prey are destined to cross paths simply by seeking their preferred habitat. which inspires predators to lie in ambush. In waterbodies where the primary prey grows scarce, it will be replaced by another form of prey. For instance, in Lake Erie the round goby filled the gap left by spottail shiner (automation at its finest). Bottom terrain is basically constant, but vegetative cover is subject to change, both seasonally and from year-to-year. However, I would bet the ranch that as long as those cabbage coverts remain unchanged, they're going to hold bass all summer. There are waypoint coordinates in my GPS unit that are 15 yrs old, and those founded on bottom contour produce today as they did 15 years ago. Roger

I agree (It was released in 1959 - got my driver's license that year). Also Bobby's song "Mack The Knife" (ya gotta love the lyrics) Roger

You mean beside Gansta Rap? If I enjoy the music, the genre isn't important to me. R&B (I Will Always Love You - Whitney Houston) Funk (Thieves In The Temple - Prince) Southern Rock (Sweet Home Alabama - Lynyrd Skynyrd) Disco (Stayin' Alive - Bee Gees) Roger

Don't ask me why, but they're also called 'Ten-Pounder'. The world-record ladyfish weighed 8 pounds Roger

If we were targeting breaking bass, I would agree that it was a 'schooling' pattern, but I was targeting a plant pattern, with or without breaking bass. We see a lot of true schooling patterns here in fall (locals call it 'jump fishing'), but they usually, but not always involve small, mobile bass that actively chase bait schools. In late June, I really wasn't expecting to find bass busting the surface, moreover the first fish weighed about 3 lbs. Bass typically school in year-class, so I knew this wasn't a tight wad of mobile schoolies, but an aggregation of older fish, which generally hunt in ambush without leaving the holding site. For that reason, I positioned my boat on top of the spot where I seen the topwater commotion so I could study the cover there. In the gin-clear water, it was easy to see lush clumps of peppergrass (pondweed) growing in 6-10 ft of water surrounded by open water with good visibility. That was the plant pattern I sought that afternoon, which we found intermittently along the entire eastern shore. Roger

I remember that era Hootie, and I'm betting it was a Lunker Lure buzzbait and a K-mart parking lot Roger

'Windward' is synonymous to 'Upwind'...not windblown. 'Leeward' is synonymous to 'Downwind'...not protected. Here's the pitfall: When you're fishing the leeward side of an island, you're fishing protected water. When you're fishing the leeward side of the lake, you're fishing unprotected windblown water. Roger

Tom, I don't 'think' it was a pattern, I 'know' it was a pattern, and a strong one at that. The term 'pattern' coined by Roland Martin, was defined as any 'productive' set of circumstances...period! Lo & I repeated the same pattern along the entire eastern shore of the lake, a stretch of real estate extending about one-mile. As you well know, there's normally more than one recognizable pattern taking place at the same time, but on this day that didn't seem to be the case. At the ramp we spoke with several other anglers who all had a very slow day, to say the least. Getting immersed in semantics is a costly distraction, and failing to recognize a productive pattern is a fatal error. Roger

Whether it's big game, small game, waterfowl or vermin, I put EVERYTHING on the first shot. I treat all my guns like they're single-shot firearms, where follow-up shots are few and far between. Roger

That video of Bigfoot in the Blue Ridge Mts leaves me with two disturbing questions: 1) Why was the clip shot by a photographer riding on a Pogo Stick? 2) Why was that King Kong costume discontinued by Toys-R-Us? Roger

Yeah, I can see that too.

I wish more anglers judged fish by their length rather than their weight. Length is a far more intuitive metric than weight (funny how we mock fat people, but put obese bass on a pedestal). An 8-lb bass might have a 1-lb shiner in its stomach, but if it regurgitates that baitfish during the battle you're going to land a 7-lb bass. However, with or without the 1-lb baitfish, the length of the bass will remain unchanged (7-lber = ~23"). Roger

Whether I'm in Florida or Canada, a 'Nice Fish' to me is a 3-lb largemouth bass (~17.5"). I hasten to add, I catch more Un-nice fish than Nice fish Roger