MIbassyaker

Ah, excellent -- these are a better price than the do-it bags I've been using. Thanks.

I understand pros getting emotional when something they can't control gets in their way and they have career achievement on the line. They're human, they're subject to the same self-interested lapses of reason everybody else is, and they will make mistakes. But, the fact that this sort of thing happens so frequently tells me it is not just about individual hot heads and bad actors. It tells me there is a culture within the tournament organization that is fostering a false conception that pros are owed deferential treatment on public waters that is not afforded to anybody else. That sort of thing needs to be challenged more seriously at the organizational level.

Nope. They seem to have gotten rid of it.

Are you asking if there is some kind of presentation you "absolutely" need to get an additional rod for? I'd say probably not.

I assumed you were right and didn't double-check this...but lo and behold, there's a new Zona show sitting on my DVR when I came home. Good news, since we still need a vicarious fix up here for another month at least. I really dug the last episode -- so many of the lakes around here I fish are just like the one he was on for the "bluegill beatdown". BTW, just skip the powerball ticket....you know what the technical definition of a lottery is, right? A tax on being bad at math....

Brian Latimer https://www.flwfishing.com/news/2019-03-10-b-lat-becomes-a-champion

To me, this is an easy one: It's not his spot. OK, he fished there for 4 days. Suppose I had fished the same spot for 8 days in a row previously before the tournament. Would it actually be my spot? No, it would not. Public water is public water.

You know I thought about getting that rod, as I prefer shorter rods (and especially rods with shorter handles), and I could use frog rod that makes walking easy. But I realized I already had a "Medium-Heavy" rod (totally different company) with the same lure weight rating, that is just a few inches longer, and also has a short butt, and I wondered just how much different this model of the muse would actually be from what I already have.

Find the steepest break to deep water you can cast to from shore, and try to parallel it with the jerkbait. I am not a jerkbait master, but I have been successful doing this from shore in gravel pit lakes with a smithwick suspending rogue, in water down into the 30s. And take Zona's advice: Fish it as a pullbait:

I'm a subscriber too -- good stuff.

Excellent -- a most-productive channeling of energy.

OK, I thought everybody was crazy when they were saying they couldn't smell Maxscent, or that the smell was weak. It smells rank to me. My wife has been paranoid for years that random bags of gummy worms in the cabinet will be be replaced with powerbait when she isn't looking.

Yup, deet is the real killer. A scent needs to be water-soluble in order to stimulate bass olfactory organs...so they don't "smell" oils. Although, oils may contribute to texture, and may cover up other smells.

It looks like we may be turning the corner here. End of the month looks promising.

I have some of the grass, swim, and shot-caller, and they fish about the same to me. Same hook, i believe. Same angle line tie. I like the shot-caller design the best because of the protected eye, but they all come through weeds as well or better than you have any right to expect of a jig.

Look. You'll drive yourself crazy if you waste time worrying about everybody else's bad taste. I care about stupid youtube antics if there is some actual, material harm being caused. And if not, I just shrug and turn elsewhere for my entertainment.

Awesome -- a do-it-all mimic!

So they don't start this one a few days early, is what you're saying. It's not one of the sitewide %-off everything sales, is it? I seem to remember it was just discounts on select items.

I would think we see an announcement today or monday if they're doing it, does that sound right? They're on the west coast so the sales usually go live mid-day for those of us on Eastern time.

It is not that all industry is inherently unethical. It is that ethical and honest business practice is not consistently or universally incentivized, and cannot simply be assumed. Companies tend to behave as ethically as they want to be, or calculate they need to be in order to maintain profitability and public reputation, and to avoid legal trouble (or at least trouble they can't afford). How much that actually is varies greatly, but no industry is immune from perverse incentives toward dishonest behavior in business, even those that pitch themselves to customers as being principled or wholesome or having values. We don't actually appear to disagree on the substance here. As you say "there is no magic formula in business that requires you to be either ethical or not ethical in order to succeed." Indeed, that's the point.

Not at all wrong! But I already told you: I don't fish for musky, I don't fish much in waters where they are present, and I have only lived here 10 years. I'm now imagining you hauling in your first musky, "Well, that was easy! What's all this 'fish of a 1000 casts' nonsense??"

That perception has been sold to you as well, right along with all the material stuff. And it worked -- you bought it. The fishing industry does not differ from any other industry on the planet in this regard.

Of course there is! Give me a second first to check my current list of sponsors, and I'll be happy to tell you what it is.

Is it wrong of me to sort of smugly enjoy the spectacle of humble, earnest fishermen discovering, to their distaste and dismay, that the fishing industry is.........an industry? I mean ethics are great and all, but there's product to move.

The key principle here is, the purpose of a sponsorship is not necessarily for the pro to use the bait, it is for the pro to help sell the bait.