MIbassyaker

General rule of thumb in Michigan is that if you catch a 5-pound largemouth in most waters, you've got a 10-year old fish (or older). A 5-pound smallie, however, is often younger if it comes from a place where there are gobies to much on, or older where there aren't. One thing about fish growing older in the North, though: every year that passes is another opportunity to be killed by a bad winter, eaten by some large predator, or caught and harvested --or killed by mishandling-- by human anglers. Just because you can live 20 years doesn't mean you do...

Seems like the answer is simply, "No, it's not too easy"

is this part of the Sabine considered tidal?

An all-around "meh" event for me, with three fishing tomorrow: 16th, 32nd, 47th, 57th, & 78th At least Kelly Jaye caught some fish today; he netted me zero points after day 1.

The first sale of the spring is usually for the Bassmaster Classic, but the Classic got moved to June. The classic sale has variable discounts on some select items. The other sales usually follow holidays or other notable days of the year: Tax-stimulus sale (April) - 10% off sitewide Memorial Day - 15% off sitewide Independence day - 10% off sitewide Labor Day - 15% off sitewide Black Friday - 20% off sitewide 12 days of Christmas - variable, selected items. At least that is what it's been in the past.

This is the only thing that has me hesitating until I get a chance to physically hold one in person. Long handles are the bane of my existence (although not as bad on spinning as casting). When I saw SC making a big deal about how these rods are better balanced than previous lines, I wondered if they had achieved this in part by lengthening the handle section.

It's hard to have a well-formed opinion without knowing more about what, exactly, the suit alleges. The boat operator was the father of the kid whose mother is the plaintiff, and the administrator of his estate is named as a defendant. Going after his estate for damages makes sense, although targeting the school district and BoE too seems weird.

A Senko. When I first tried it, skeptically, on a wacky rig, I could not believe how quickly and how often it got bit. They get more use from me these days on a weightless texas rig, but still a top-3 producer every year, everywhere I fish, spring through fall.

All I hear when anyone says "fairy wand" is deep insecurity...

Yellow with black stripes. But only because that was the first one I had as a kid. All the colors work.

I think of 1/4oz and less as "smaller". Booyah colorado single spin 1/4oz is good quality for the price. Smaller than that is the Booyah Pond Magic which has a willow/colorado tandem. There's also the Mann's Hank Parker classic which I think is a double colorado and comes in a 1/4oz size.

I'm a right-hander an I have heard this before and......I confess, I cannot intuitively comprehend the notion that reeling, of all things, should require my dominant hand whereas working the bait, setting the hook, and fighting fish should not. But I learned how to fish on spinning -- cast right, crank left for everything. I came to baitcasting only of late. My left hand & arm knows how to turn a reel. What it doesn't know how to do is hold a rod, cast a rod, work a rod, thumb a spool, or set the hook, or apply proper leverage with a fish on. When I picked up baitcasters for the first time, I immediately discovered left-handed reels were what I wanted....Cast right with both, reel right with both. No difference between the two. Sounds like the guy you were fishing with simply treats spinning the way I treat baitcasting. He switches hands with one, so he switches with the other too. I don't switch with the one I learned first, so I don't switch with the other either.

Ah, this is what @CountryboyinDC is referring to above: In 1993, Rich Fry caught an 8-pound 3-ounce bass from a Pennsylvania mine pit that was genetically identified as a first-generation hybrid of a largemouth and a smallmouth bass. Indeed, why was this not the record?

Is there any indication what, specifically, those conditions are? I would expect necessary requirements to include (1) both species use the same spawning locations and (2) the spawns overlap significantly in time. I would expect this to be less common in waters where both LM and SM are native as most likely reason for different LM and SM species in the first place is reproductive isolation within their native ranges. I found this from a study by Near et al. (2003) who analyzed genetic similarity of Largemouth, Smallmouth, & Spots, as well as other members of the sunfish family. In the study they find that smallmouth and spots diverged about 1 million years ago, while Largemouth split off much earlier, about 11 million years ago: Hybridization among species of Micropterus is rare under natural conditions, but extensive introgression between M. dolomieu [smallmouth] and M. punctulatus [spotted] has been documented on two occasions when either species has been introduced into areas not naturally containing the other species (Koppelman 1994; Avise et al. 1997). In other words, you get these hybrids only under the right conditions, when you put different species together where they didn't originate.

So I'm not the only one! I have had much better success with football jigs in scattered vegetation than rock. I mostly use footballs now for specific spots i know of in gravel pits, that appear to have either the "right" rock or no downed trees.

What I don't understand is why we don't already catch Breen/Grown bass in MI. A wide variety of lakes and river systems have healthy populations of both Green and Brown, and in some cases they occupy the same locations (not all, of course -- prob. more common in smaller waters) . In one particular place I fish that has both species, my green and brown "Lake PBs" came from almost exactly the same spot, one week apart. And while ideal spawning areas are somewhat different, I would bet the available spawning areas in many smaller waters are more or less the same for both species. Perhaps it comes down to timing, with SM spawning at slightly cooler WTs than LM. Compared to southern waters, our spawning periods up here tend to be shortened. Maybe in southern waters LM and SM spawning overlap for a longer period of time, creating more opportunity for (rare) hybrids to occur.

Snow is now completely gone from the neighborhood, birds are out in force, neighbors are doing some early yardwork, kids walking around the block in t-shirts... And I'm buried under a pile of work with multiple looming deadlines and no escape. ?

I'm short, not particularly limber or athletic, and I fish from a kayak, mostly in a seated position. I own rods between 5'6" and 7'5" and prefer my shorter rods most of the time for a few reasons that are at least partly related to height: 1) Limited armspan. Seated in a kayak, I find it awkward at times to land fish, or thread line through the guides, as I occasionally have to do on the water, with rods over about 6'8". 2) One of the main things I need a rod to have is a short handle so I can use it without my PFD constantly getting in the way. Long rods tend to have have long handles, whereas I do not have long arms. 3) While short rods aren't strictly necessary for jerkbaits and topwaters, they are much easier to work and control than longer rods when in a seated position low to the water. If your torso is short, you're even lower. 4) And not related to height, but in tight quarters on skinny water (especially moving water), when trying to dodge overhanging trees and other obstructions, long rods can be a major burden. They stick up or out too far, bump into things, get caught on branches, etc.

Pickwick team

Picture on the right, the two in the middle row....what spinnerbaits are those? The blades look like something I need and don't have....

Maybe I'm weird, but I I like gold and copper blades with dark skirts in clear water. I always prefer some color in the flash when I'm fishing waters that have mostly bluegill, other sunfish, and yellow perch forage. I fish the whites, chartreuse and silver blades in darker/murkier water.

I like the BBB version too. The Strike King KVD Game Hawg and the Yum Christie Critter may also be worth looking at. They're slightly bigger and bulkier than the baby brush hog, but not nearly as big as a full-sized brush hog.

Good question. The only answer I have is an anecdote from last summer: One day in august it was bright, bluebird skies, almost no wind. I was in a shallow, swampy river bayou that is usually a frog & buzzbait heaven. But wasn't seeing any surface activity at all, so after spending a little time with topwater, I switched to a 3/8oz swimjig. An hour later, after alternating between the swimjig and pitching a few different plastics... with still nothing so much as a strike, it came to me that maybe I needed something flashier/noisier to take advantage of the sun and get a reaction bite, but that still ran subsurface. So I just switched to a spinnerbait, and within three casts had the first bass of a dozen I would catch (along with couple of pike and a bowfin) over the next couple hours. So: Maybe sometimes the blade matters! But you don't know for sure until you try it.

Fishing is absolutely loaded with experiences that act as fuel for superstition. There are a number of well-known biases and illusions that can cause the perception of a "jinx" like this. What Paul mentions above is a version of the Primacy Effect, where an initial event is over-weighted in importance compared to subsequent effects. Another is Illusory Correlation, in which people believe they see a relationship that isn't really there because they are not paying attention to all occurrences of an event, and only focus on the ones with unusual or distinctive outcomes. For instance, you notice when fishing is bad for the remainder of the outing after getting a bite on the first cast, but you ignore all the times fishing was just as bad, or worse, after NOT getting bit on the first cast. There is also the Availability Heuristic, where you misjudge something as being highly likely just because it's easy to remember, imagine, or think of an example. However, often what makes something memorable or vivid to imagine is precisely that it's distinctive because it's NOT likely. getting "jinxed" from first-cast success is very frustrating, because your expectations were raised, and then violated...and so it becomes more memorable than all the times fishing was bad including the first cast.

A couple of guides worth checking out for Michigan specifically, and maybe northern waters in general. They're not specifically about fishing, but have tips on identification and the second one has a lot of info about ecological role, including use by fish and other wildlife: https://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq/wrd-anc-CommonPlant_408518_7.pdf https://www.canr.msu.edu/resources/guide_for_the_identification_mapping_and_management_of_aquatic_plants_of_mi