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I'm not saying anything hence I vex the Cardinals September run. I think their hot streak may have started a tad too soon though.

Welcome to BassResource.com!

Welcome to BassResource.com!

Welcome to BassResource.com!

Welcome to BassResource.com!

Welcome to BassResource.com!

Welcome to BassResource.com!

Welcome to BassResource.com!

BassResource.com!

BassResource.com!

Welcome to BassResource.com!

A lot of cookie cutter bass stuck at a specific size range would indicate too many bass and a forage base too small to feed them. Most lakes in that category would wind up with a slot limit, 15-18" and encourage anglers to keep those under the slot.

BTW, back on topic. I'm more deliberate in my approaches when I'm not fishing a T vs when I am. I'll try and hit the transition times, dawn and dusk which isn't possible during a tournament and get off the waters between 8-10am and 2-5pm and rest or do other things. Unless I'm finding a really strong bite that holds out all day long, I no longer turn my fishing days into marathons.

You LIVE on the lake for goodness sakes. The ability to spend time, lots of time on the water in between weekends cannot be underestimated. It gives those with that ability a huge advantage primarily because they can stay more in tune with what and where the fish are up to. It's the reason some clubs have exclusions for those that live within X amount of miles from a lake and why some T's prohibit guides from entering. The typical weekend warrior is hitting the water green, unless he/she has the ability to take time off from work to gain some pre-fishing time and that's IF the tournament doesn't have a rule against that. Even within a given seasonal time frame of the basses cycle, there are a multitude of variables that exist that Mr. Weekend warrior must eliminate before finding what works. On top of that, he/she is facing a number of possible patterns that can find the fish in feeding mood that spans from negative to positive. Given the relatively short time frame of a typical tournament, it's pretty understandable that so many of those guys are fishing towards shore. Since most lakes have some sort of shallow bite year round, that's the fastest way to try and put some fish in the boat.

Sorry to hear Jack. Good to hear about a understanding woman. I feel lucky that I only had a trailer tire blowout on the way to my Tournament Sunday and then lost my eye glasses overboard when fishing.

It reminded me of that green wire the florists use when making flower arrangements.

I ordered from BPS a number of months ago. The shipment went via UPS. I was amazed, the order left their facility in Springfield and was at the UPS sorting facility in Earth City, Mo. in less than 24 hours!! Yippee!! I'm going to get my shipment early, Earth city is only 27 miles from my house!!! It sat in the sorting facility for 4 days before it was put on a truck to deliver to my house. >

In late 1978 I was working for McDonnell Douglas (Boeing now). They were in desperate need of flight line electronics people or just about anyone for that matter, to care for the Irans F-4 fighter fleet. It seems the Americans that were there wanted out as things were becoming too hostile. The company offered double your salary with a $50k bonus. That amounted to nearly $90,000, a lot of money in 1978. I envisioned getting off the plane in Iran while worried looking Americans, the guys I was taking the place of, got on the plane to go back home. I decided the money wasn't worth that scene. The Shah's regime was toppled months later. The hostages were taken not long after that. I'm glad I chose not to go.

I remember first using braid when I was fishing the deep brush piles on lake of the ozarks way back when. With mono you had to overcome hook points that weren't near as sharp as these surgical instruments we've got today, penetrating a 10-11" worm along with mono stretch and the fact the line was often laying over the top of branches when you set the hook. Attempting those strong hook sets with braid in the same conditions got me a couple broken rods. I soon learned to back off the drag so the drag actually slipped when I set the hook and used a more fluid motion that was less jerky.

Manuals for outboards, yes. Boats? no.

At home or at work?

Uh.. the first thing we learned way back when braid first came out was that it was not necessary to tighten the drag down tight or even close to tight. If you did you'd wind up with a broken rod or reel. With todays ultra sharp hooks, the amount of hook setting pressure needed to impale a fish is minimal when using braid vs. mono. Turn your drag down some more. Something has to give, in this case it was the reel.

Slack water in a river doesn't mean a lack of current, there's still current there just far less than in the swifter areas. Much like the swifter areas, look for current breaks created by cover such as downed trees, boulders and rocks.

I'll give you a couple examples on that boat that just absolutely floored me. These were intentional. These were right at the starting point of the construction of the hull in the mold. Suppose you ordered a boat that had a nice accent pin stripe that ran from the transom to bow. Suppose the day came on the assembly line that the boat was to be built. Suppose they noticed as they began the building process in the mold that there wasn't an entire roll of that accent pin striping in stock. 99.9% of builders would obviously not proceed with the build and would instead, wait till that pin striping arrived. Not Tracker. They used remnant scrap pieces of striping and created an dashed line from stern to bow. A piece a couple feet long, a space, another short piece, a space, etc. etc. I can barely comprehend that. They didn't even try and make the spacing between stripes nor the scrap pieces the same size to create uniformity (not that it even matters). Upon further examination, there were a series of dimples in the hull about 12" below the rubrail, 3 feet apart all along the hull side. Looking closely, each dimple had a tiny star crack in it. The only thing I could think of was the dimples were created by whatever they used to pop the hull out of the mold. They were so obvious it was beyond belief that at this point in the build that particular hull wasn't just sent to the shredder. Nope, not at a Tracker marine builder. Looking down the starboard side of the boat, I noticed the right rear corner looked funny. As I examined, it was clear that the right rear corner of this boat had been crushed, somebody had attempted to fix the damage with a build up and a poor attempt at color matching. Amazing. : It didn't stop there, the boarding ladder pulled out and was loose and difficult to deploy. Why? Just looking and the hardware used to put it together, the nuts and bolts weren't what were supposed to be used. They looked like something they picked up at ACE hardware in an emergency and weren't even SS hardware. They didn't fit correctly nor flush. Scary enough for you? To think this would pass QC at the factory is amazing. To think the boat got to Springfield and then passed the new boat checklist the riggers go through is beyond comprehension. What worries me most is the shoddy construction that was allowed to pass through the system. This was blatantly obvious stuff. What about the stuff you can't see, the important stuff internal to the hull and structural. What if a screw up happens there? will they take shortcuts like they did with this boat? If nobody can see the errors how would you know? I have no reason to believe this wouldn't happen.

Mike, my friend had an experience buying a Tahoe deck boat from BPS HQ in Springfield. Whether it was a tracker or a nitro or a tahoe or suntracker the issue he had and I was shocked at was what Bass Pro Shops considered a Deliverable, NEW boat. First off, my friend was.... to put it mildly....an idiot for taking delivery of the boat in the condition it was in. I'm talking about VISIBLE construction flaws so bad that had I been along with him, I'd have advised him to tell BPS to take that thing out back, pour gas on it and burn it and in the meantime, build him another boat ASAP! The fact a boat builder would allow something so badly put together be representative of what they're capable of, opened my eyes. I'm not saying every boat they build is a POS. What I am saying is there are enough horror stories of Tracker marine boats having serious issues and a less than stellar Tracker customer service department resolving said issues, that anyone buying one needs to know that ahead of time. BTW, his dealings with the BPS service department the first summer he had the boat were a nightmare. Yes, it took more than the entire summer to resolve the serious problems he had with the boat along with new problems Tracker service introduced (how do you punch a hole in the bottom of the hull when all you're fixing are all the leaking plumbing fixtures inside the boat?)