RoLo

I really don't have a favorite company, because I choose different lures for different jobs. Based on the sheer number of different lures made by the same company, it's definitely Zoom. (e.g. super fluke, horny toad, big critter craw, trick worm, I could go on). Roger

Like KU, I'd also go with a Plastic Worm and Jig & Trailer. I know that a lot of fellows place their emphasis on lure size, but I believe the big difference depends on how close to her lips the lure is delivered and how the lure is worked. Roger

I'm willing to bet that the pros who use the "Pocket Fisherman" have full-roller guides, a polished tungsten tip-tip, and instead of zoom flukes they're probably tossing Banjo Minnows! It Just Isn't Fair! Roger

I feel exactly the same as JT (I use moss green PowerPro and tie direct without any leader) Of course, it's the angler's prerogative to worry about line visibility, but it's most likely an exercise in futility. Line diameter? Now that's a different story, and it doesn't apply to line visibility. Roger

Daiwa, Shimano and St Croix all make excellent mid-priced blanks. My personal favorite is the Daiwa Light-and-Tough 6'6 MH trigger rod - $120 They use an IM-6 blank with remarkable latitude: Lure Wgt: 1/8 to 1oz - Line Wgt: 10 to 17lb The Johnny Morris (an excellent rod) feels mushy by comparison. Roger

California lies outside the natural range of the largemouth bass, which were first transplanted into California in 1891. However, the first "Florida-strain bass" were not introduced into California until 1959...the rest is history. Roger

My sentiments precisely. Roger

I totally agree with Randall. That single fact is strangely ignored by fishermen, even though it's backed by telemetry study. Back in the 1960s, when I was still cutting my teeth on northern pike, my wife & I spent a week-vacation on the St Lawrence River. We stayed at Caigers' Lodge, Rockport, Ontario and chatted with other fisher people at the long communal luncheon-style table. During our first day there, the guests made it abundantly clear that the pike were now in shallow water, about 6-ft deep, and we could hear the rumble of agreement around the table. On the very next day, a fellow at the table warned everyone that the pike had moved deeper, from 6 feet down to 12 feet of water. Sure enough, on the following day the lunch-table consensus was indeed that the pike had gone deep. Then around Thursday I believe, a fishing party at our table made the announcement, you guessed it, "the pike have now moved back into shallow water". I whispered into my wife's ear, "Hey hun, do you see anything wrong with this picture?" It wouldn't take a nuclear physicist to figure out that the pike were 'shallow' all week AND the pike were 'deep' all week, that conditions dictated which population of pike was more catchable. The anglers as it happened were moving back-and-forth, between shallow and deep water, but the pike were not. BTW: We found all our pike that week straddling the 15-foot contour line. Roger

Naturally the bluff above the water-line is of little value, except for shade or lee water it might offer. The first break into 6 to 8 feet of water seems like a logical place for aggressive fish and maybe spawning smallmouth bass. The real meat though sounds like it might be the second-tier taper into 12 to 14 ft of water, which adjoins the "main river channel". What I normally do in a situation like this is spend a lot of time with the depth sounder and marker buoys. You want to pinpoint the "steepest" drop on the structure between the crest (shallowest point) and the channel ledge. A good starting point is where the depth lines on the contour map are most crowded together (compression point). It may be time-consuming to pinpoint the sharpest slope, but once the coordinates are acquired, they're your's for life. Roger

Get a load of Mike Long!!! Mr. Long boated 27% of the 100 largest bass in the world. Think about that feat for a moment, Mike boated more than "one out of every 4 bass" in the top 100 8-) Roger

I agree with PA Angler I use spinning tackle almost exclusively, and in my opinion, fluorocarbon is horrific stuff, and has no place on spinning gear! In fact, I even stopped using fluorocarbon leaders. The fluoro they use for leader material kinks almost as badly as wire Oh Here Fluoro....Cum'on Girl Roger

The Crank-and-Glide retrieve is my own concoction. When using a Lift-and-Drop retrieve, it's mandatory that the rod is lowered at the exact speed that the lure is falling (neutral buoyancy). If the rod is lowered slower than the worm is falling, it creates backpressure that destroys the natural freefall. If the rod is lowered faster than the worm is falling, the angler will lose contact with the lure, making it difficult to detect a pickup. With the Crank-and-Glide retrieve, only the reel handle moves, while the rod is held at the 2 o'clock position throughout the entire retreive without moving. The crank-and-glide has two big advantages over the pump & drop: 1. The worm glides slowly on a tight line to the bottom, so the angler remains in constant contact with the lure. 2. Gliding on a tight line eliminates also eliminates the need to match the descent-rate of a falling lure. After the cast, wait for bottom contact (signaled by a sudden sag in the line). Hold the rod at the 2 o'clock position, and crank the reel 2 or 3 turns then STOP. Without moving the rod, wait as the lure glides slowly back to the bottom on a tight line. During the glide, only the reel handle moves while mending the slack line that's created. Repeat the Crank-and-Glide delivery until the worm is out of the strike zone then rip it back to the boat for the next cast. Roger

Signal strength depends on the power of your unit and on the Gain setting. Also, the harder the object, the strong the signal, because most of the waves are rebounded The softer the object the weaker the signal, because many of the waves are absorbed Place your transducer over a known rock bottom, a known mud botton and a known weed bed. Before long, you'll get to know your own unit, and how to decipher it's signals. Roger

Actually, I leave semantics out of the picture altogether, so I'd have to say neither or both. A primary point that adjoins the "delta" side of a river channel could easily have a shallow basin and slow taper. A secondary point that adjoins the outside bend of a creek channel, could easily have a deeper basin and faster taper than a primary point. During chart analysis, I'm only interested in the base depth of the contour and the steepness of the drop-off (no semantics). POINTS You think that beating the shallows is bad? "Points" are highly popular and boldly conspicuous contours that are beaten to a pulp by the whole world. I myself prefer "POCKETS" to points (the inverse of a point), whether they're small, medium or large. Unlike points, which are divergent contours, "pockets" tend to corral baitfish and funnel gamefish. The best feature of any point is the drop-off, but what if there is no drop-off. The term "point" normally refers to a point in the "shoreline". However, it is only the underwater point that has any value at all (abrupt depth change). A point of land that is not associated with an underwater bar, has no more value than a straight shoreline. Paradoxically, some of the most productive holding sites on any lake are "underwater bars" that do not etch a "Telltale Point" into the shoreline for all to see. These are true sweet spots. Roger

I was at least expecting a punch line :-/ Okay, all those who never got skunked, please form two lines in the front of the room. The line on the left is for "NON-FISHERMEN"...The line on the right is for "LIARS". Roger

It's rare that two anglers can agree on any two methods, but we come remarkably close. I'd go with your zoom super fluke (white ice) T-rigged inverted on a 4/0 hook Gamakatsu Z-bend "Unweighted" if your working over submergents <> "1/4 oz bullet sinker" if you want to punch back into the bulrushes or reeds. I also like your idea of a plastic worm in the submerged weeds (I'm a patsy for a plastic worm). The 6 to 8" worm of your choice: Ribbontail, Trick, Ringworm, Kut-tail, Paddletail, Tassel-tail, ~ ~ ~ No more than a 1/8 oz bullet sinker, but here's where we part company. I wouldn't hop the worm (I save that for plastic crays), but would use a "crank-and-glide" retrieve. If you're using a ribbontail worm, the 1/8 oz sinker is enough to keep it alive on a freefall. BTW: If you're covering good weed beds, there's sand under that mud Roger

I like your style Mike

There's no doubt about it Cart. I've Told This Story Before: When my wife was a real estate agent in Georgia, we got exclusive permission to fish a 3-acre pond, which hadn't been fished in years (not legally anyway). A building project was in the works, and the pond was slated to be filled-in and developed, so it was a catch-and-KEEP situation. Though we only fished from shore, the entire perimeter of the pond was passable. During our first couple of visits to that pond it was Pure Heaven! We caught about one bass every 10 or 15 minutes, about 8 to 10 bass per hour between us. Oddly, there were very few undersize bass, but no lunkers either. All the bass ran between 1½ and 3 pounds, the heaviest being 3.5 lbs (a little disappointing). We fished that pond about 3 times a week, normally fishing about 1 or 2 hrs in the evening. With each successive trip I noticed that our success was in a steady decline, we were catching fewer-and-fewer and smaller-and-smaller bass. After about a half-dozen trips (couple of weeks) the fishing was extremely slow, and then after another couple of weeks we were getting skunked more than half the time. At that point, I quit fishing that pond altogether, because we had several others ponds that remained very productive. It's interesting to note that all the other ponds that continued to yield plenty of bass were different in many ways: 1. We released all our bass in all the other ponds 2. The other ponds ranged between 12 and about 200 acres (a long cast didn't come close to reaching the center of the pond) 3. All the other ponds had sections of impassable shoreline I now believe that a 3 acre pond can be fished-down in "one month" by "two anglers" who practice catch-and-KEEP. I'm sure that much larger ponds would experience a similar fate if they're subjected to proportionately similar conditions (one catch-&-keep fisherman per acre, a boat and a few months). Back At The Ranch Rather than kill all the bass, I came prepared with a large holding tank and transplanted some of the bass into my tiny backyard pond in Rico, Georgia. When I say tiny, I mean TINY, as it only taped about 20-ft across and 30-ft long, but on the upside, this allowed me to keep an eye on all the goings-on in that pond. At one point there were 6 hungry bass in there and I would test different lures and retrieves using hookless lures. In truth, the bass were so aggressive (starving perhaps), that I really didn't learn very much. I truly believe that a novice fisherman could've caught all 6 of my bass, literally "fishing-out" that tiny pond in about 15 minutes! As a footnote, I noticed that on most of the private ponds we fished, the biggest bass almost always fell first, generally within the first hour or so. I'd imagine this is due to the aggressive behavior of the pond Lords so to speak. Roger

I've been a member of B.A.S.S. since the 1970s, and now I'm an Ex-member (don't miss them either). Since I'm not on the pro-circuit, I'm not interested in reading about tournaments, anglers, organizations or promotional hoopla (Just Fishing). For all that other stuff I use the Internet on an as-needed" basis. I'm currently receiving "Fishing Facts", "In-Fisherman" & "Florida Game & Fish" (though not without trivia, they're highly informative) Roger

Yes....but I have a little trouble with "hypereutrophication" ;D Roger

I got reeeeal close one day, and brought a 20 pounder home. After I removed the skin, the rib cage reminded me of a dog carcass. I'm afraid that put the kabosh on my 'Carp Ala Elegante' :-/ Roger

Tugabasser, NICE brownie 8-) I agree with what you said about streamers mimicking "minnows". Here in the states, the "Muddler Minnow" and the "Mickey Finn" used to be the hottest streamers for brown trout. Roger

For Muskellunge, the southern-most fishery I'm aware of is Cave Run Lake, KY and Green River, KY Muskies are also found in Dale Hollow Res, Tennessee, but are mostly caught by accident. Northern Pike are even tougher, they've been stocked as far south as Tennessee and northern Georgia but no viable fishery has resulted. Pike have also been stocked in Kentucky but are caught infrequently. New York is the southern-most pike fishery that I know, but there may be some other southerly pockets. Roger

World-Record White Crappie: 5lbs 3oz Enid Dam, Mississippi River 1957 World-Record Black Crappie 5lbs 0oz Santee Cooper Res, SC 1957 A world record however is a world-class fish, which has little to do with trophy-class or record-class. On average, if you catch a fish weighing 50% of the world record you're midway between trophy & record class. Roger

I WHACK you over the head with a ballbat, then I explain: Hey that's me...it's my "MAJOR FLAW". Am I now forgiven? Mr. Baugher was not at all surprised by the response, it is exactly the response he was looking for. To take it any other way, would be calling him a social moron. Roger