Amarley

Depends on the day and weather conditions, but generally in the fall you can get away with fishing larger shad imitation baits. The bait fish have had all year to grow, so they will be as big as they're going to get before possibly dying out over the winter. I'll fish bigger baits on my swim jigs, a-rigs, jerkbaits, etc. in the fall than the spring.

One thing that has helped me this year is narrowing down my tackle for each trip. A lot of us get in the mentality that we need all of our tackle all of the time. What I have done when time allows is keeping one extra plano clear box. Each trip I do my homework and fill that box with what I think will work that day on the water. I will also pre-tie all of my rods before I get on the water. One trip I may have A-Rigs, jerkbaits and rattle traps. The next I may have jigs, shaky heads and deep cranks. Then I may have spinner baits, frogs, swim jigs and square bills. I almost always have jigs and shaky heads in the box. My catch rate has improved tremendously since I've taken this approach. Very rarely do I wish I had something that wasn't in my box for the day. I think it's hard to have one box for all of the time. The only thing I could think to keep in a box like that would be jigs, senkos, shaky heads and maybe a spinnerbait. But it's all on personal preference and confidence. I think it's also important to pair the kids together based on their fishing styles.

I like the $2.99 price of the Havoc Beat Shad, especially to throw on A-Rigs where I could lose a whole pack in one cast. How do these compare to the Keitech's on an A-Rig? I really like the wide action of the keitechs and the beat shads look similar.

The Keitech plastic is softer than other paddle tails I've fished. Even the Reaction Innovation Skinny Dippers get bent in the ziplocs. You could try it out with a couple of them. Biggest loss is a couple baits.

Wow, that puts things in prospective. I might have a nervous breakdown! I left my boat docked with my tackle in it one night and couldn't sleep I was so worried a night fisherman may hop in there and get my tackle!

I lost an entire A-Rig this winter. $10-12 for the A-Rig, $5 for the jig heads and another $4-5 for the swimmers. I was not happy.

The jigs were excellent quality btw. I made a big deal about the service, but the product is excellent, too. I can tell he took time to clean paint from the hook eyes and used a good quality finish paint when baking the heads. I tie my own skirts, but I've heard his skirts are excellent as well.

Big bite baits makes a few plastics that look like bluegills.

I order quite a bit of tackle online. Most of the time I have to track down my orders and make sure everything has shipped. I just placed my first order with Siebert, 20 football jig heads for some upcoming tournaments. While it wasn't a very big order, all of the jigs were shipped and received within three days. Things like this are huge in fishing, especially when you need an order in a hurry. I didn't ask for rush shipping, or pay extra, but Siebert gave me excellent customer service. I was really impressed with such fast shipping on such a small order. I will be a return customer.

I went a little unconventional and got the 109-HU. Now I can turn it around when I'm on the deck and look at waypoints and a fishfinder.

There should be an option when you power on to go system status: http://www.humminbird.com/Category/Support/FAQ/CheckingSoftwareVersion/

Personally, I'm a fan of the Mustad Short Shank triple grip trebles. I learned a hard lesson when I lost my biggest fish of the year last year on some stock trebles on a BPS blade bait. Never again. The gama's are good though, I keep them on my spro cranks. I will use a size 4 or 6 depending on the size of the bait. I like to use a 4 when I can, but sometimes the bigger hooks change the action or can get hung up on one another.

Run some seafoam through it when you think the carbon is building up. Works great for me.

Tubes

For those of you who think I'm completely crazy, here is some science to back the idea: "Let's start with what is universally true: craws do change color. In a study performed by the University of Michigan, Dr. Robert Thacker found that crawfish have red and blue photoreceptors. In lakes where blue-green light transmitted best, the craws were lighter in color. And in lakes where red light transmitted best, the craws were darker in color. There has also been clear data to support that swamp-like bottom composition results in very different coloration than rocky bottom lakes or tributaries. I'm not carrying around a spectrophotometer from lake to lake measuring the color intensity, but I do have a few traps that I'll place at different points around the lake to collect samples of crawfish, which is ultimately the most effective way to match the hatch. This is really important to do because local bait shops often import what they sell from farms, where conditions can be completely different from what you're fishing. When they'll change color is when they're molting, or shedding their shell. This results from outgrowing the one they'd worn previously. This process has also been known to change the color entirely based on habitat. What researchers have found is that molting is initiated by a chemical that's released in the body that's been linked to the different phases of the moon. An article in Bassmaster Magazine had this to say about colors and moon phase: 3-4 days before and after a full moon throw brown and orange or olive and orange,black and red as you move further into the moon cycle, new moon nights should warrant dark brown and black, and to use black and blue as you move to a sickle moon."