moguy1973

Had my kayak out yesterday on my in-law's lake behind their house with my Lowrance Elite 4x-DSI on it and noticed a distinct line between 5-7 feet wherever there was deeper water than that. Is this a temperature thermocline showing up or something else? Pictures attached..

I cast with right reel with left. Much more natural for me.

As with most things prices vary for everything... There are a lot of high quality canoes such at Wenonah's that cost well over $1000 for a 14' solo canoe, but then again there are 12' Old town Disco's that cost around $600. Same with kayaks though, there are 12' sit on tops like the BPS Ascends that cost around $500, or you can get Jackson's that cost $1000 or more... Generally speaking though from what I've seen kayaks tend to cost less than canoes...

Last summer at a local park pond I caught a ton of smallish bass 8-12" long all on a white senko rigged texposed style. Half the summer I used a normal black coated or regular bronze colored offset 3/0 worm hook. The other half I used some red Vicious 3/0 worm hooks that I saw on sale at Wally World so I bought some to try. Didn't really see a difference in hookups or strikes between the two...I do know after about 5-6 fish the red coating rubbed off and left a brass colored hook and turned the holes where the hook was inserted into the worm red. So long story short, I didn't see a difference...Still caught fish regardless...

Lots of smallies have red eyes.

Most people here in Missouri where you can only have 3 hooks total on a rod and reel use either willow leaves on 2 arms or they cut the hooks off two swim baits and use those on 2 arms. Yum actually makes a 3 arm umbrella rig now that would work perfect for restrictions like this.

Looks like a parasite to me.

Looks like a normal smallmouth bass to me. But then again I've never heard of a shoal bass until I just looked them up and it might be one of those due to the striping pattern. I've seen smallies with similar stripes too though.

Weightless texposed rigged...Twitch twitch pause...repeat

that's the thing though, you get them a basic phone and they'll be embarrassed to use that too since it's not easy to text on or it's not what their friends have, or it doesn't get the internet, or it doesn't do this or that...Then you have to hear the constant begging for a smart phone, then the latest and greatest...it just escalates from there...

You know country music has taken a turn for the worse when Darius Rucker now sings country.

I need to get me one of those...wouldn't need to paddle the kayak around anymore!

You can always get them one of these: It has a mom and dad button, and a list of 20 other numbers it can call and that's it...Hey, all they said is they wanted a cell phone, they didn't say which one and what it could do...

Walmart carries it. Saw it at our local store the other day when I was there.

Before we had our daughter 3 months ago I would stop in at a local park near our house 3-4 times a week after work. The small lake inside this park has lots of small blue gill and lots of small 6-8" bass with a few up to 3 lbers I have landed. I didn't care about catching the lunkers but I caught fish probably 90% of the time and that made me happy. I also spent about an hour and a half there and just the calming effect fishing had on me made me forget the previous 10 hours I spent at work and that's really what made it all worth going fishing and kept me stopping just about every night to fish. Relaxation and stress relief couldn't be better. Now my daughter takes precidence and I can probably count on one hand how many times I've gone fishing since she was born, but I really don't care anymore because the times spent with her far outweigh any fish I can catch. She'll be old enough to fish soon enough and I'll be more than happy to teach her all I know about fishing.

Ahh. Longer and wider than my trident 11.

The problem with the manual inflatable ones, if you fall out, hit your head and get knocked out it's not going to do anything for you if you can't inflate it since you are comatose...I'm not a big fan of the inflatable ones myself. A buddy of mine has one of the automatic ones and we were kayaking one day on a local stream. He wasn't wearing it and had it in the back of his kayak. All of a sudden we hear a "POW!" and I look back and his vest had inflated by itself. It's a Bass Pro vest so it's not a cheapie, and it made it pretty much useless the rest of the trip since they are quite big when they are inflated. That's another thing, if you do happen to fall in, make sure you have a recharge cartridge with you so you can reset it, he didn't have one with him at the time.I personally use a standard type III kayak vest. It's lightweight, has lots of ventilation, and it's a fishing version with zippered pockets on the front for some lure storage. It's made by Stohlquist...Don't even know I'm wearing it most of the time unless it's 100* outside...Then I just jump in and get it wet and it helps me keep cool...I got it on sale for around $75, and my wife thought that was pretty pricey for a life vest, but then I convinced her it was what I needed because my life had better be worth $75.

Is that an 11' or 13'? I've tried standing in my 11' OK and it's not real stable once I go to make casts.

Depends on what you are wanting to do. If you like day trips where you'll just be hauling your fishing equipment and maybe a small cooler for water/soda/beer a kayak is great. But if you are wanting to do 2-3 day trips a solo cano can't be beat. They hold a lot of stuff and can be paddled with a kayak paddle if you so wish... Kayaks tend to be slightly cheaper than canoes also...

I've replaced my #4 hooks on my Bomber Square A's with #2 KVD's and they work great...

The mustad KVD short shank ewg trebles work great. And you can step up to the next bigger size on your cranks because of the short shanks.

"We are having twins"

Problem is, most stocked trout are too big for bass to eat...They would if they were stocking fry trout but most stockers are at least 10", far too big for a small mouth bass to eat usually...

Sometimes you just have to pay to play. It's the same here in Missouri, a lot of the trout stocked streams also have a nice abundance of small mouth. You just learn to buy the stamp so you can fish for the smallies. Then if you do hook into a trout or 4 you at least have dinner for the night I'd never keep a small mouth to eat out of a stream just because it takes so darn long for them to grow big, but I'll eat those stocker trout all day long.

I thought it was "you can't go fishing"