Scott F

I have a piece of foam mounted near my front seat and another by the rear seat that I hang the lure on when I change baits. It’s easy to get to if I change back, doesn’t get stepped on or caught on anything and keeps all the baits together when I pack up.

I’ve never been a fan of crankbaits in the rivers I fish. Most of my rivers are shallow and not very wide. On a bigger river, there is one pattern where I find cranks work well. I’ll anchor upstream of some rocks then let my lure ride the current downstream. When it gets next to or near my target, I’ll hold the bait in position and let the current cause the lure to vibrate and wiggle as it would if I were retrieving it. You can let it sit there and dance as long as you like. If you let the lure downstream stream you may be able to cover a few different hiding places without moving. Retrieving the lure takes time. If you wind too quickly the bait will roll over. This works well with spinners, spoons, tiny torpedoes and other prop baits too.

In my river, if I use any weight with this technique, I’ll get snagged. If the current gets too fast, the bass typically find other places where they don’t have to fight it

I drift them weightless

Several years ago, I was frustrated from seeing this kind of stuff on my screen all the time especially if I was crappie fishing and couldn’t catch anything when I thought I was looking at fish. I bought an Aqua-View camera to try to see what I was looking at. In the dozens of times I’d drop the camera down, I never saw those “blobs” become fish. Most of the time, it was clouds of leaves or weeds or something else I couldn’t identify. Because of the amount of time I wasted dragging out the camera and staring at the screen was taking away from my fishing time, I gave up and got rid of the camera.

Etsy is bad about this. They start begging for reviews before you even receive your order.

Most of the rivers I fish this technique on are shallow near the bank and often have lots of wood. The 4” doesn’t hang up as much and works well with the medium light rods I use most often.

You said you were floating with the current. Most of the time, unless the bait gets into an eddy, ideally, I’m moving the same speed as the bait as we both are carried downstream with the current. If for some reason the bait is moving faster than I am, I’ll throw the bait upstream, and let it drift past me, then make another cast. If I’m moving faster, I’ll twitch the bait to help it keep up. Bass are on the lookout for food to be moving with the current.

I’m in corn country. Orville Redenbacher started his business near here. Local farm stands will have corn in the next week or so.

Sometimes you didn’t really do anything wrong it’s just that the fish weren’t feeding while you were fishing. Just like days when it seems like you’re getting bit on every cast, it’s not that I was doing anything special, but the fish were just hungry that day.

I like drifting a weightless senko while I float. Toss it out and let it drift alongside lay downs or under overhanging trees on the side of the river with some shade.

Microwave it in the husk for 3.5 minutes, cut the end with the stalk on it off where the first row of kernels are, then squeeze the cob out holding the end with the silks. It comes out clean with no little silk strings. Add butter and a little salt.

Wow, it’s rare for me to be on a lake where a tournament is happening and I DON’T have a tournament boat cut me off or tell me to get out of the way because they are in a tournament.

So the larges holes don’t go all the way through the hull? If it doesn’t, I’d use a snap in type plug. I’d probably use screws and nuts to fill the smaller holes.

I’ve fished for bass from Canada to Florida but I can’t catch (and don’t enjoy fishing) them in deep water. Once the weather warms up and bass, especially smallmouth head deeper, I switch from lakes to rivers where water 10 feet deep is uncommon.

A lot of my fishing in the last 40 years involved driving between 300 and 700 miles and often then required flying a few hundred more miles. Smallmouth were only a part of what I was after.

Ive been using this tool as well when I’m fishing from my personal pontoon. I can keep the fish in the water, unharmed, while I set my camera up for a selfie. I highly recommend it.

I’m guessing that Garmin uses a different format than Apple does. Have you tried opening the card on a PC?

Two things turned me off to attractants. First, a friend and I were running out of Senkos so we put on a Powerbait, Senkos style worm. In the clear water, we could see fish turn away from the Powerbait, but continue to hit the Senkos. Second, a friend spilled some of the liquid attractant on the carpet of my boat. It took forever to get rid of the smell. I won’t allow it on my boat ever again.

My father taught me the game starting early when I was 8 when he got me a cut down driver and took me to the driving range. I broke 70 for the first time when I was 17. For me, playing well required me to play a minimum of 3 times a week. Once I got a job that had me on call 24/7 every other week, meant that I couldn’t play very often and I’d moved away from my usual playing partners. I didn’t like not playing up to the standards I was used to and switched my interests to fishing. Now that I’m retired, I took up golf again. It’s very different as a senior. I used to be a long hitter but that is a thing of the past. At least now, they have “senior “ tees and reduced rates for us old guys.

Is there a bounty paid on pikeminnows where you are? Don’t they pay out $6 a fish with more paid as the number you catch goes up? I read that in 2024, an angler made over $164,000 for catching them. They eat millions of salmon eggs and they are trying to reduce their numbers by 10-20%.

When I play music from the library on my phone, especially when we are in the car, I always put it on shuffle. She’s ok with most everything I have, but if something comes on I know she doesn’t like, I just skip that tune.

I LOVE fishing top waters for pike. When a big fish hits, it’s like someone dropped a bowling ball into the water. The only problem was that little “snake” pike are really bad at hitting top water baits. They’d come flying out of the water doing summer salts completely missing the bait. Sometimes, missing it so badly they’d hit the line and cut me off. At least when that happened, the baits was floating so I didn’t lose it.

While I’m a big fan of tieable wire, if you are going on short a pike fishing trip, just buy pre-made, steel leaders. To be safe, DON’T buy the cheap ones. High quality, ball bearing swivels, cross lock snaps in the 6-8 inches in the 30lb size should be fine, you can save some money and get barrel swivels instead but don’t skimp on the snaps! Make sure you have a set of jaw spreaders and a piece of rope to tie them to the boat. You’d be surprised how many jaw spreaders are tossed overboard, many still in a fishes mouth! A pair of long nose pliers will also come in handy.

I seldom use my electronics as a fish finder. For me, the biggest thing I use it for is the mapping and depth. I have dozens of rock piles and bars in my favorite lake and most are in open water that without electronics, I’d spend way too much time searching for. With GPS, I can motor directly to the “spot on the spot” and very often will catch a fish on the first cast to that spot. I’ll use the depth finder to keep the boat positioned at a particular depth while I cast to the edge of the structure. On occasions where I’m on a big flat, usually with scattered weeds or a weed line, if the weeds disappear on the graph, so does my chances of catching. If I’m crappie fishing, I’ll look for standing trees or submerged brush piles and will look to see if fish are present, but I don’t depend on seeing what appears to be fish. When I had my AquaView camera, I found too many of the “fish” I thought I was seeing on my depth finder turned out not to be fish at all. I’ve never had the chance to use ffs, so I can’t comment on how that would work for me. I have side scan and down scan, but actually prefer traditional 2d sonar.