fishballer06

I've found in the past, that manufacturers understand their warranty process better than the random members of a message board on the internet...

Switch over to a rubber net, with thicker grommets. You'll spend less time digging tangled hooks out of the net.

We had our club "classic" tournament on Saturday on the city pool of the 3 rivers, here in Pittsburgh, PA. Only the top 20 guys in our club qualified to fish this event and it was our highest payout event of the season. If you're familiar with how the 2005 Bassmaster Classic and 2009 Forrest Wood Cup went on these waters, you'll know it's a dink-fest. So a 15-17" fish is a giant. My partner and I prefished the weekend before, and my partner fished again on the Thursday before the event. We weren't overly confident, but we thought we had a game plan figured out. Well, it ended up raining for about an hour on Thursday night, and this muddied the water up and totally changed the fish for us. After not getting anything in the first two hours with our original game plan, we switched to fishing the various bridge pilings in the river. We eventually came across a bridge piling that had millions of little fry everywhere around it. Upon pitching a bait at this particular piling and reeling back up, it spooked the little fry and made them act frantic. Immediately, 4 smallmouth came up and started snatching up the baitfish. This tripped me off on what I needed to do to get these fish to bite, and that was to stir up the baitfish that they were hanging around. So I backed off, and started throwing squarebills and 2.8" Keitechs and burning them through the schools of baitfish. This pattern started to produce for us and got us all the fish that we weighed in. I was the last person to weigh in, and I believe I ended up around 8th place. My fish got put into a weigh bag and I walked them down to the water to release them. Upon reaching in to get my big fish out for a quick picture, I saw something that I had never seen before. My biggest smallmouth (around 15-16" in length) had my smallest smallmouth (12.25" long) in his mouth and down to the back of his throat. How this happened, I don't know, but I was shocked to see that a smallmouth this small could fit a fish this big into its throat.

My bag went for 3.71. That weight alone would have put me in 26th in the '05 Classic with just my one day of weight alone. Had I put up that number all 3 days, I would have had 11.13 pounds. Putting me around 5th place in the Classic.

Honestly, it depends on the size of the lake you're having the event on, and the number of boats you plan on having entered. If you're fishing a 20k+ acre lake and having 100+ boats, that's going to be totally different than having a tournament on a lake that's 2k acres with limited horsepower and ~20 boats.

Last tournament of the year is over with. Here's the biggest fish I could muster up out of the city pool of the 3 rivers in Pittsburgh. If you're familiar with how the 2005 Classic and 2009 Forrest Wood Cup tournaments went, you'll know that this fish is pretty good sized.

Congrats on the fish. That fish looks to be around 3.25-3.75 pounds. Definitely not even close to a 5 pounder.

The city of Champ-yinz.

The Neko rig...

Is that a Brewer slider jig head?

Try using a snell knot on a straight shank flipping hook Or, use two bobber stops with your EWG hook. One on each side of the weight.

I'm looking for everyone's opinion on their favorite finesse craw/creature/beaver style bait and how do you rig/fish it? I'm targeting some river smallmouth and I'm curious to see if everyone is using something different than what I'm trying.

Like others have said, this isn't a collaboration. Shimano/Gloomis have been one company for many years. 10% percent lighter sounds nice, but keep in mind that on a 4oz. rod, 10% is only about a 1/4oz.

I have the HLC TWS reel (Japan model) and I use it for frogging. It does a great job skipping frogs up under overhanging trees and docks. It also can handle big fish in the thick stuff while frogging. Obviously the Steez is a Steez. So there's that.

3.3 and 3.8 are my bread and butter. The Lake Fork 3.5" Magic Shad's are another solid bait choice.

Don't go letting the secret out about the crappie colored Pointer's....!!!

I used to do this to my Bill Lewis Traps back in the 90's. It helps make them a little more weedless, which can be helpful whenever you're burning them overtop of the weed tops. However, like others have said, you're removing half your hooks, which can hurt your hookup ratio.

St. Croix Avid or Shimano Zodias would be my vote.

I would show this to your local fish commission/DNR.

St. Croix makes great rods (here in America) and has a good warranty program as well. I own 5 or 6 myself.

One would think that... But it's been over 80 degree's for the past week, so the water is still warm around here.

I'll 20th TackleWarehouse.com. So... What's your company and are you hiring? I'd love a boss like you.

Electronics can be your friend. If they're not around the weeds, there's a ton of underwater structure/cover in Raystown. Bridges, roads, houses, culverts, etc. If you have a Navionics chip, study it.

Around here, most lakes only have 1-2' of clarity. Having lots of farmland and mountains, means there's lots of runoff going into our lakes, making them very dirty. It's not uncommon to have water with less than 6" of visibility. So if I find water that has 3-5' of clarity, I consider that clear for around here. We have one lake around 300 acres in size that's on top of a mountain, so it doesn't get any runoff, and the clarity in that lake is around 6-8', so that's crystal clear for around here. However, up in Canada where I go, 3-5' of visibility is common, and I've seen area's where you can see rocks on the bottom in 10-12' of water. However, the water is more of an off color tea color, so it's a different kind of clarity. So like you said, it's all relative to the area you're in.

First off, congrats on the purchase. Owning your own pond will make you the envy of many fishermen on here. As a novice fishermen who is just learning Senko fishing, the combo you state will be perfect for you now, and down the road in the future. That rod/reel is extremely versatile and will cover almost any presentation you want to fish on your new pond. Do some searching around on this website and Google. You'll find lots of information on how/what/why bass can get stunted in a small body of water like your pond. Over competition for food in the main problem, which leads to the fish not being able to grow past the 12-13" range. Your best bet is to keep a few of the long/skinny fish in the 10-12" range, and if you want, go buy a pound or two of minnows (fatheads or shiners) and put them in the pond every month.