stanlje2

I keep a pair of side cutters with me and cut the hook so that I can remove it. Usually you can cut the point and barb off. If not, I cut it as close to the gut as possible and pull the barb end out. Very rarly lose a fish doing this.

Picked up my Power-pole today! woohoo!

Don't be discouraged. She was only about 20ft off the bank in shallow water.

Te shad rap was actually 2.5 inches long. I noticed I left the .5 off in my original post. Amazing that big girl wanted that tiny little bait regardless.

I caught her on a 7' 6" Duckett cranking rod with a Lews Tournament speed spool 5.4:1 spooled with 12lb Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon. Thanks for all the congrats guys! Couldn't ask for a better start to the year!

Caught this 9-6 today in 6-8ft of water. Rocky point with water temps hovering just above 50 deg. Caught her on a 2in shad rap. My new personal best! UPDATE: Just for the record, she was released immediately after the picture was taken and she was weighed. It takes a long time for a fish to grow to that size and I feel much better knowing I could catch her again one day versus seeing her on the wall.

If its part of a system, you dont forget. Just like you wouldn't forget to tie your boat down when you pull it off the ramp. Also, I have owned boats all my life, saltwater as well as freshwater and and much as we would all love for the light and connections to be water proof, they are not. I'm not referring to the light housing it self, but also the connection within the trailer. Water causes lights to blow. Its not a fix...just my experience.

On shore and boat combined I would say 3 times a week. The way my work schedule is, its usually only 3 times every two weeks that I have time to take the boat to lake. Luckily, I have a pond on my property that I can wet a line in if I have an extra few minutes.

I always unplug my lights before backing the boat in the water. That seems to help with me since the lights and connections are not 100% waterproof. Haven't had to replace lights since 2008.

I did search for quite a while to try to figure the problem out but didn't think to look at the kill switch for cracks. I'll take my business elsewhere in the future. Sometimes you want to kick yourself in the ass when a simple problem like that beats you. I consider myself pretty mechanically inclined but I just dropped the ball on this one.

Almost two months ago my boat died just outside the no wake zone after a day of fishing. None of the cylinders were firing when I got it home. I took it to my local boat shop and they kept it for three weeks and charged me $140 in labor to tell me that there was nothing wrong with it. When they tried to start it, it ran fine. Obviously I disagreed but took it home and hit the lake the next day only to get stranded about 3 miles from the boat ramp. Lucky me, my trolling motor batteries had a full charge and a couple hours later after fighting a 20mph head wind I made it back to the ramp. Took it back to the shop and two weeks and $106 later I was informed that my kill switch was cracked. So all said, I lost almost 2 months of spring fishing (boat sat in my garage 2 weeks) and $250 in mostly labor costs for a $14 part. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy it was a simple and cheap fix but it has been frustrating.

thanks guys

The pressure was not bad at all the day I was there, although there was a tourny a couple days before. I talked to the owner of the local tackle shop and he said fishing at the tournament was terrible that weekend. He didn't recall what the winning weight was but said 2nd place was just over 10lbs which for this lake is extreemly bad. The last two tournaments weighed in over 30lbs 5 bass limit so the fish are for sure not biting. I did mark several of the locations and will give them another chance soon. looking back, I'm sure I should have moved out a little deeper....its very hard to do that when I can see all the bass on and around the beds but I'm sure that was part of the cause of my failure. Thanks for the input guys!

Thanks for the info. I made the mistake of trying to cut the first two after carving was complete. Do you you mind sharing where you purchase your bills?

I just carved my first couple of cranks and they turned out pretty well but I'm not happy with how my process of cutting a slot and hand cutting my bills is at this stage. Can you guys give me some insight on how you insert your bills? Do you order them or cut them? Any help is greatly appreciated.