Choporoz

I'm 62, cartop my Hobie and still spend 9 hours on the water in tournaments. It is admittedly getting tougher each year. Back to back 8-9 hour days does make for about a four day recovery, though. On the boat, a typical day in summer is 0530-1000 and 6PM to dark. If longer in morning, I may skip evening.

I'm pushing all my chips in on beaver

'Eyes by a lot. Coated with lightly seasoned flour (pepper, salt, dash of cayenne), and straight into cast iron skillet with hot lard

Squirrels have made a huge dent in our tomatoes this year. They will strip them off well before they are orange. Never had this problem before.

My first reaction was, Good Luck! Second, more thoughtful reaction was, 'Absolutely!' Do it early and keep doing it until you can do it reliably. It has taken me years to do this without spending an hour trying to understand a spot.... still don't do it all that well, especially in a kayak, but I wish I'd worked at it more. I can do it better in the boat, but sometimes it is crazy how hard it is to be sure I'm on top of something I saw on SI

Speaking of trolling, how is it that nobody is talking about the unfathomable tragedy that is crappie brakes!!! If Pangrac hadn't melted down on BTL the other day, I'd have never known what a huge issue those are

Disclaimer: I do not keep records....of anything. So, I have anecdotes clouded by crappy memory with zero context, like time of year, weather patterns, wind, grass levels, etc. Sometimes I catch them good in the morning. (I once won a tournament with entire bag caught before 7:30 AM), but generally, my biggest fish come between 11AM and 2PM. Sometimes I catch them good in the last couple hours before sunset. Right or wrong, I always assume a lot of feeding-related bass movement within a couple hours of sunrise/sunset. I just figure if I am not catching, they're eating somewhere else. (I acknowledge I'm probably more wrong than right)

@Team9nine thanks. Very well done. Funny. But, I almost started to feel defensive towards Randy...lol. ...and Kevin...and Hank...and maybe even Chris... Aaron is man after my own heart - almost passive aggressive-like. Hilarious

Lol... I'm always amazed watching gizzard shad... those guys are slick. I'm just glad I don't have to depend on them to survive

Good story. Ty. Hopefully next time, it will be your wife that hooks the memorable one. You'll have her hooked, too. No exaggeration, but I more clearly remember every detail of all of my wife's 6+ fish than any of my own. And if she hadn't landed a 3+ the first time out, I might not have had her as a reliable fishing partner all these years.

Not same at all, to me. If six or seven of the best sticks in the game are all made aware at that same that, say, bass have pulled off inside channel swings and are now on bait schools, well off weed edges on north side of dirtier creeks in middle third of the lake.... it means we aren't all on the same playing field

This has been my take all along, too. How about a Vision 110 with four micro HD cameras beaming picture back up through your line? Is a remote underwater drone with 4k live image out of the question? Sounds silly... but if you would prohibit those, you're going to have to pick a spot somewhere between there and today's FFS. Where's the tipping point? Those fuzzy hashed up images we see now are only going to get more and more refined. And probably with frequencies and wavelengths that don't spook fish. By the way those aluminum Vexus boats are sharp. I recall hearing they were going to build one, but had no idea they're this far along.

I think it was @WRBthat pointed out to me that bass don't own mirrors and limited reasoning capacity... most likely don't have any concept of how small they are when they decide they are hungry Scrolled past this thread a few times and each time I only glimpse it scrolling by, I think it's about me and decided not to acknowledge

https://www.robohawk.us/products/stinger-tether-system Or https://roguegear.com/products/the-protector-phone-tether I have used both and recommended both

Drew Gregory (24 Kayak Classic winner) in interviews over the last few years talks a lot about getting up skinny rivers often with a motor. These guys at the top of the game push the limits with motors, going places I'd never try even with pedals or paddle. (Of course the top pros might grind a prop and would have Newport or Toqueedo waiting at the ramp when they come in.)

The dog certainly makes for an unpredictable variable. Once you start feeling a little confident, move into a room with a ceiling fan.

8 on kayak. 18-20 on boat. I had a half hour to kill the other morning and walked down to fish off the dock with 5 rods ... even I began to wonder if that wasn't a bit much

I bought two of these over ten years ago. ( @J Francho recommended, IIRC) I lost one a few years ago and stole other from my wife. I am routinely searching for a backup. Stainless steel, rubberized grips, perpetually sharp cutting edge, locking, but easily unlocked with one hand. These are still sharp enough to cleanly cut braid. I dread the day that these are lost, too.

https://www.bassresource.com/bass-fishing-forums/topic/217261-lmb-on-long-deep-points-up-down-or-across/

They all get a quick once over, especially tail and inside the mouth.

If you are using dropshot, you don't need floating plastics.... in fact you may well want to avoid floating plastics in a dropshot. I don't know how the bass feel about it, but it looks very unnatural to me

Impossible to give much general advice about kayak fishing rivers. @Bankcand @TnRiver46are right. Very much depends on specifics...what river, what levels, tidal, above fall line, rapids and/or riffles; can you do a float, or do you need to launch and return to same ramp.... on and on. Unless it is a relatively slow and deep, I almost have to go with someone with experience there, or at very least go with someone and do a float together. Use Google Earth and Google Maps; gauge sites like NOAA, USGS, Army Corps of Engineers, etc. Tidal rivers below the fall line are a completely different animal.... not necessarily easier, but just different.

I must have fallen for some fake news. I thought they changed ownership

I wasn't talking specifically about this tournament, but in general. I'm glad some local PA and MD sticks cashed checks.... I know a few and they are really, really good. But even here, look at the top 20 and there are non-local pros that are so consistently at the top of the leaderboards anywhere, that it gives me pause.

Seems like a pretty small number of kayak bass anglers really dominates the sport. I applaud those hammers. But I also am a bit uneasy. This is an individual sport, but I think that many of the top anglers derive (almost unfair?) benefit from their 'informal teams'. I am not really proposing no info sharing, because that's impossible to enforce.... I am not even certain there is a problem, but I sense there is.