Jeff_NHBA

LBH, Glad to see this was finally resolved. I was at Dick's Sporting Goods last night taking the Bait Monkey for a walk and it put up quite the fuss when I was looking at spinnerbaits. Evidently the BM didn't want anything to do with S/K until your issue was resolved. Fortunately, the Bait Monkey also knew where the soft plastics aisle was. Now the Bait Monkey wants to visit the spinnerbaits and jigs . Tight Lines.

Clunn KVD Ike

I recall both Bill Dance and Al Linder commenting on their shows that the red mouth is from eating shad. A bass typically sucks in their prey but they still have to make sure their dinner goes down head first (lessens the chance on getting hurt from the prey's dorsal spines).

I hope your Spanish speaking friend speaks Portuguese too. They are filming on the Rio Mequens in Brazil. Who knew a $300 boat and a spotlight could catch so many fish? Does the Bait Monkey entice people to buy water craft too or is that his evil cousin the "Boat Ape"?

Ben Jones of "Dukes of Hazard" fame lives in Sperryville, VA in the Blue Ridge mountains. He even had his own version of Cooter's Garage and one of the original "General Lee" cars out front but he's closed shop there. He is a very motorcylist friendly guy so it seemed like every weekend one group or another would stop there during a run. Eventhough he and his wife live in VA, he's the proprietor of "Cooter's Place" and the "Dukes of Hazzard" museum and shop in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. In case you wanted to know...

Make sure that when you check the NADA guide that you note that the price is for the boat only. You have to go elsewhere on the site for the price of the motor.

The Linder Brothers of In-Fisherman fame have a couple excellent books, one on LMB the other on SMB. I bought my copy on Large Mouth Bass at Borders.

I had a chance to fish the hot side of Lake Anna this weekend. The water temps ranged anywhere from 70 to 75 degrees, depending on which pool we fished. The best places we found were areas with moving current. The power plant was drawing water at the time and there was a noticable current as a result. We hit the edges of the channels between pools as well as areas beneath bridges. The hot side is very clear in areas so it gave me a chance to try some drop-shotting (caught a couple nice keepers) in the deeper areas. I tossed a C-Rig mostly though and the current really added some life to the bait (watermelon YUM zellmander). I think the warmer temps allow you to fish a little quicker but since bass are opprotunistic, they seemed to hang out in the slack water next to moving water ready to pounce on whatever comes their way. Tight Lines.

"I have an ultra-lite spinning rod with a shoe string tied on. My cat will hit and start walking down the hallway. Make that drag sing!!!!Best fishing done when not on the water, from the easy chair." Do you need a special license for terrestrial "Cat-fish"ing?

Soft baits can be repaired easily with Pro's Soft Bait Glue.

Great posts Raul, Everything you've mentioned is right in line with other things Ive read from my NAFC library. And come to think of it, some of your comments are even more specific and educational. Excuse me while I return to your posts to read them again... Simply awesome.

I went to one in MD last February. My instructors were Denny Brauer, Mike Iaconelli, Woo Daves, Shaw Grigsby, Mark Menendez, and one other. They all has a chance to cover various topics which most of the time were their strong points (Brauer - Jigs, Daves - soft plastics, etc.). Iaconelli was by far the most prepared and energetic of the bunch (go figure). He covered the movement of bass as they relate to the different water temps, and how to go about detrmining where fish might be based on that info. I still use my notes from that class to this day. Some of his pointers are also in his book, which I thought was interesting. On that note, a lot of his pointers in his book are also on his website. The course was a nice chance to get out of the house during a winter weekend. We also were given coupons for 15% off at the local BPS (came in handy). The course wer informational but I don't think they really covered the topics as thoroughly as we would've liked. If I had to I would go again, depending on the instructors available.

The tides during a full and new moon are called Spring tides. This occurs when the sun earth and moon are more in line with each other. This causes a greater gravitional pull on the earth's oceans thus creating higher tides. Conversely, there are Neap tides. This occurs when the sun, earth and moon are at a right angle (i.e 1st quarter and last quarter). The tides, although present do not have the same gravitiational influence so the tides then are not as great. All that said, I would think that if there is a full moon and high tide, the fishing would be a bit tougher since the fish have even more volume of water to roam about.

Clay is truly an inspiration for us all. He has a great attitude all things considered. In the piece aired by ESPN, everytime he caught a fish, you could hear Clay say "Thank you Lord." I wish him nothing but the best.

What other sites? There are other sites? This is the one and only site you'll ever need.

NBM, I just loaded that onto my PDA. Very cool. Thanks!

I just upgraded my cell phone and use the voice recording feature instead of writing reports. I will also copy fishing reports from various sources and paste them onto my PDA for quick reference.

I use Pro's Soft Bait Glue. It works great on the plastics but won't fuse skin together like regular super glue.

I plan on fishing tournaments in lakes (Lake Anna, Kerr Resevoir, Lake Gaston) and the Potomac River and anything else I can find in the VA area. I'm limited to boat size because it still has to fit in my half of the garage so 19 to 19.5 ft is about the max.

Thanks for the insight. I've been looking at either a Tracker Tournament V-18 or one of the 19' Stratos boats. There's a big price difference between the two but hopefully I can offset the cost a bit once I sell my motorcycle.

You can't go wrong with Wal-Mart when it comes to the basics for fishing. I wouldn't bother so much with on-line stuff since you would have to pay shipping costs.

I like to use the countdown method with a Rat-L-Trap to get a reaction strike.

One of the reasons why I joined a small tournament club was to learn more about fishing, to experience some different places to fish, and hopefully to pass on some nuggets of info to my fellow anglers. Some of the guys in the club will at least say what they've been catching with. I like to go a step further and mention the cover, structure, and technique as well as the lure.

I'm looking for my first boat and I'm curious to know what are some of the pros and cons of a fiberglass boat compared to one of aluminum. Seems to me like the Al boats are lighter so you should see some savings in gas economy plus the hulls should be more durable and possibly easier to repair. Does a fiberglass boat ride that much better? I'm interested in your thoughts and opinions.

Rick Clunn - Zen Master of Bass Fishing. Roland Martin - Self-promoting, arrogant, infomercial specialist. (Helicopter Lures... Need I say more?)