EmersonFish

Make sure you have enough line out when you start your cast. Not having much line out will make it more difficult to feel the rod load, particularly with a fairly stiff rod. Make sure you make a smooth enough backcast and cast to feel the lure the load the rod both directions.

Not sure what rod you are using or how you are setting the hook/playing the fish? Sounds like you are putting too much heat on them. The hook seeming to not penetrate may be it initially penetrating and then working its way out because you are putting too much tension on the light wire hook, making the hole bigger. I can't imagine hook penetration being an issue with that hook unless someone was not exposing enough hook when they rigged the bait in the first place, or just wasn't ready for the fish to bite and didn't reel up on it well enough to get a good set.

Buy the Rage. Great blank for such a low price. Cut off the black cover on the handle. You can shape the foam underneath a little if you like. Wrap it with tennis racket grip tape. BOOM!

Like they said. You might want to focus on the weight ratings. A St. Croix medium fishes a little "heavier" than a medium rating according to a lot of other companies (not so much others, see Abu Garcia, etc...), but if I were specifically looking for one typically thinks of as a medium rod, I'm not sure the medium-light rod will be quite what you are looking for. You might fall in between. To be fair, I'm not as familiar with the Mojo rods, but a MXF St. Croix might toe the line just right, depending on what you plan on doing with it.

You mentioned an early to mid 90s Tracker 160 or 170? With an early 90s boat, we are now looking at something that has been around for over 20 years. It will have to been very well maintained. I have a Tracker Pro Team 185 that we bought new in 2000, and we have never had a problem with it, but we have babied that thing since the day we towed it off the lot. Not everyone does that, particularly guys who are at that stage when they are looking to get rid of them. With older boats, it's not so much a matter of how many hours they have on them, but of how well they were taken care of when they were off the water. Concentrate on how it was stored in the off-season, ask him about his maintenance routine/winterization process, look inside every compartment, look at every wire, see if he appears to be the type who does half-butt wiring jobs on things if he did any rewiring, step on every square inch of the floor you can, if you find old leaves everywhere you look inside the boat, just move on, etc... You can probably find a comprehensive checklist of these sort of things before you go look at older boats for sale. You might only be able to afford a boat with problems initially, but you probably can't afford a boat with problems going forward. And worse yet; boats that are always in need of work are no fun, and having fun is the whole point.

First of all. it's important to remember that a lot of guys you see with those "big expensive boats" you mentioned are not really able to "afford" them in the sense of the word you or I might consider affording them. They might be able to make the payment, but they did not make a sound financial decision when they bought the boat. Obviously many people CAN afford new trucks and boats, but not as many as you see out on the lakes and highways. So if money is tight, you are budget conscious, and you are looking for a boat that runs great and is big enough to accommodate your family needs, you can forget about keeping up with the Joneses. By the time you save enough money, the kid part will take care of itself, that is for sure. You'll need to look for a good, quality used boat, and with three small kids, a bass specific boat might not be ideal from a safety perspective. Like tomustang mentioned, a boat with a front deck but fishes a little deeper out of the middle and the back might be better for now. As far as buying a used boat; do your research, don't get in a rush, look for information online as to what questions to ask and what to look at when you are checking out boats that are for sale, and if you can, have some cash in your hands while you are out shopping. Prices tend to come down when people see greenback stacks.

They are predicting a cold winter, but really, the weather won't be much different than what you would expect in Muskogee. In other words, you never know what you are going to get. Could be mild; could be brutal. If the sun is out and the wind is down, it can be downright beautiful on the lake, and you'll catch you some fish. If it's unseasonably warm it's probably really windy, but TRL isn't a bad lake to be on in the wind. If it's really cold, you can still catch fish, but it depends on your tolerance. Usually that time of year, it's fine if you stay dry and don't plan on making any long morning runs. Table Rock gets fished quite a bit in the winter. Tournaments run year round there, and you better have a good limit if you expect to cash. To be fair, those are primarily locals who know the lake like the back of their hand. There are some great guides who work year round. You can research their reputations.

From a technical standpoint, it depends on the regs in your state. I assume most places, if you are not sight fishing, a fish hooked outside the mouth is a legal catch. He attacked your bait, you caught it. In most tournaments, that fish would go in the livewell, which is significant. I think in this case, what makes it a debate is your personal pause about the situation. It is a "personal best" after all. If you are not comfortable with it now, you never will be until you catch a bigger one. Personally, I'm not sure how I'd feel about it. I think I'd feel more conflicted about the fact I caught it on an A-rig at all than the fact that is was hooked outside the mouth.

My concern about it is I think it oversells what it can do for average dudes that are realistically never going to get sponsored. It lets you build a resume, or whatever term they use, for free, but then charges you a fee to apply to the sponsors you want to apply with, promising they will get it into the "right hands". It then makes sure you understand that your only real shot of this working is having a $49.99 "Amateur Pro" membership so you have the profile. My suspicion is that the sponsors involved with the site want a good presence on there because it encourages more people to join and pay for memberships. At the very least, these new members see their products heavily endorsed by guys like you, who they have encouraged to open up accounts for that purpose. The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if they don't get a little taste of the fees people pay to apply for these sponsorships that are never going to happen, and if they were going to happen, would not require an intermediary such as NPS. That might be a bit much, but in any case, based on the traffic on the site, how many views people get, and so on, it's hard to justify the membership fee. Your case might be different from a networking perspective, although I doubt you need NPS to do that.

So that begs the question, would an A-rig get even more bites if it could constructed in a way where fish could not see the wires? If one's opinion is "no" than we are heading toward a logical fallacy known as "proving too much" where people make an argument that, if true, would lead to ridiculous conclusion that bass will indiscriminately eat anything moving around in the water, and that they as likely to eat a piece of plastic tied to a cable as they are a live shad or minnow.

Bland sandwiches, Pringles, whatever little random things my wife sticks in snack bags if she gets around to it. Little Debbies seem to get in the boat quite a bit. It's your basic nutritionists nightmare. Water, diet pop, and Gatorade in the cooler. I always forget to eat and drink as much as I should when I'm out there. I'm usually starving, and a little dehydrating at the end of the day.

I don't know about BASS, but when night fishing for catfish I use Berkley Big Game in Solar Collecter color (neon green) for my main line, and BATS and far more prone to fly into my line when I use it versus clear or low-vis green line. So there is some completely irrelevant information about line color. Maybe I'll go to Steel Blue from here on as well.

Everyone believes what they believe. We can't think like a fish. All we can do is make decisions about what we are going to do based on our personal experiences. If you don't think the color/visibility of your line makes any difference in the number of bites you get, than use whatever line is easiest for you to see so you have that advantage. If you are like me, and believe that in clear water, line visibility can be the difference between maker on a few bites over the course of a day, than use line that helps mitigate that problem. There's really no point in arguing this topic too much. People tend to dig there heel in pretty deep on this one.

Fish don't see things the way we do. They don't know what line is. They don't know what a hook is. If they see something that typically triggers their instincts because it resembles in some way something they eat, but that thing has a line shooting out of it toward the surface, does it give them some instinctual pause? I don't have a clue. My human brain cannot conceptualize that. Here's what I do know. From my experience, fishing bodies of water like Bull Shoals, Table Rock, and other clear water reservoirs, ANECDOTALLY, line visibility has "mattered." However, in your situation, with lower visibility, you probably will not see a big difference in the number of bites you get. With that line, I'd focus more on whether I liked its other qualities or not. If I had that much of any kind of line, I would certainly give it a fair chance. It might be a long time before you come to any conclusions.

BPS is a nationwide, big-box store. They are numbers driven. Smaller companies can be more influenced by a smaller sample size of anglers. A local company can be more influenced by what the local market wants. BPS has some regional flexibility in a broad sense, but a company that big makes decisions based on figures. And as big as those stores look, every inch of shelf and floor space matters. It's unfortunate that baits people love disappear some times. Happens to us all. There are usually alternatives, but if you really believe a bait is unique and indispensable, stock up as much as your budget will allow.

You are right. I know it's just a time on the motor thing, and to be fair, if most people saw me out fishing, they would have no idea I was having a problem at all. I'm not out there doing doughnuts and getting pushed into the bank. It's just a little internal thing where I have to give a smidge too much thought to what the muscles in my lower leg are doing at times, which takes away from my concentration.

My biggest weakness is BOAT CONTROL, the most underrated skill in fishing, and one I struggle with. So much of my bass fishing up until now has been with my dad who co-owns a boat with me and he's the boss, so he runs the boat most of the time. It's only been lately since his health has been as issue that I've had more time up front, and I'm finding that it takes time for concentrating on precise techniques, and simultaneously maneuvering the boat to become second nature. Using electronics to the fullest of their capabilities is another weakness of mine. I feel as far as applying "techniques" go, once I locate the areas I'm looking for, is my strength. Perhaps an advantage of being in the back more and focusing solely on those types of things.

Depends on the body of water, where we were launching from, weather, and lots of other variable obviously. I think I'd do fine, because I'm accustomed to a pretty modest setup, but I also know that if I could afford a fully rigged, state-of-the-art, 21', glass boat with a 250 on it, I'd have one; and that's for a reason.

Never done one, but would be willing to try one under the right circumstances. Maybe if there were one on a site like this that was just for pride, over a relatively short period of time against people in my region; that would be cool. I don't think I'd lay real money down on that type of thing.

I'm an ICT kid, although I live in Missouri now. A kayak would be nice where you live to take advantage of some of the 'State Fishing Lakes' around your area of the state that are small, but actually have some pretty good bass fishing. Of course, you can use it at El Dorado as well and get into some areas that bigger boats can't and probably do okay. Anyway, welcome to the forum.

I do everything right handed, except use baitcasters (apparently). Spinning reels, I use on the "right-handed" side which put the crank on the same side (left) as my baitcaster, just like you (except the opposite side). Everybody has their way of doing things. Whatever feels right, do that, so you can focus on other things while you are fishing. It's funny how the topic of left vs. right hand retrieve reels comes up from time to time on forums/facebook pages/etc and there is actually some level of debate about which makes more sense. Usually it is someone like me who is right handed, but uses left hand retrieve baitcasters, and wants the world to know that he is right and most other people are wrong. Occasionally, someone will suggest that right handed fishermen use left-hand retrieve reels for flippin' and a bunch of people lose their minds as if that's such a terrible idea. Everyone should just do what feels most natural. There is enough to think about while bass fishing.

I've never used Sniper. Have Invisx from 6 to 15 pounds. Do notice the stretchy feel a lot more in the lower diameter versions, which you would expect. Not enough in 15 to be a deal breaker for me, but a little more stretch in that line than in other 15 lb. fluoros I've tried. I actually think the feel and manageability of the Invisx is a good trade off for a tad more stretch. And I have not had a lot of abrasion issues with that line (12# and up); and I fish a lot of bottom contact baits in rock here in the Ozarks. It's not the toughest stuff around, but if you are good about checking it and retying from time to time, I think it's fine.

It's been in wide distribution, is cheap, and probably performs well enough for a lot of folks who are less picky than the kinds of guys who frequent places like this forum. The same can be said for the original Vicious Fluorocarbon, I guess. It's been around for a long time and is still carried in big box stores, even though it has a pretty terrible reputation in bass fishing circles.

Probably good advice. That's what people come to this forum looking for. Some people might even come here looking for answers first, which is a testament to the good reputation of bassresource.com

I'm not sure it's a "trend." Certain people do it for certain reasons. I alluded to some of them in my original response, but I guess I didn't "make it simple" enough. It's not just about the numbers on the packaging, it's about the properties of the line, how they impact presentation, or how they handle the conditions you are fishing.