the reel ess

This would have been a good poll question. looks like Booyah FTW. I also like their popping model. I would add that, more important than the brand of frog to getting bites and landing fish, is the rod/reel/line you use. I use a frog model rod that's 7'3" H-Fast. Use the stoutest rod you have. Longer is better. Your flipping stick will do if you have one. Use at least 50# braid and a good strong reel. A high speed retrieve is helpful. Give the fish just a moment to be sure it has the bait, then cross its eyes with the hookset. The idea is to give that fish no slack after you set the hook. Drag it to the top of cover and reel it in quickly. If you let them play, they'll fill that hook gap with grass or lilies and get leverage on the hook or wrap a log. With a strong enough combo, you can all-but-cinch the drag and get almost any size bass out of cover. You will miss some bites so be patient. You'll develop some good habits. I know the one you're speaking of. I had the same experience. I wouldn't recommend that frog to anyone unless I was competing against them.

No doubt. But I have lost way fewer in the kayak due to not having a net than I have in a big boat. I'm sure that's because I'm at the water level and not reaching down 2' from a boat deck. It's a personal choice. It's more clutter to store in a small space.

Dinks don't excite me. If you're fishing a place you know has good bass and you're doing the right things, then those dinks are just the steps along the path to the next lunker. Often, this time of year, the bite can get really tough for bass around here. On those days, I'm grateful for the dinks. When you downsize and go finesse, to some extent, that's what you're targeting. My buddy has a pond chock full of stunted bass I like to refer to as the dink factory. A couple of bad outings will send me back to the dink factory to catch 15 or 20 and feel like I got my mojo back.

That depends on how hearty you are. I'm in the SC piedmont and I try to fish year round. I'll fish in winter in good conditions. But, honestly, there are cold snaps that I don't even consider fishing. There are days, sometimes several in a row, where the temps can be quite mild. I see FB memories in December where I'm wearing shorts, kayak fishing with bare feet. But then there's Jan-Feb where you get the occasional day or two in the mid 50's with full sun. If you fish those, you're probably fishing for one bite, but it will likely be a good one. Temps tend to be 10 degrees warmer near the SC coast in winter. March rolls around and you get a week of 70's. You go fishing and clean up. You think spring has sprung. Then you get a brutal cold snap with sleet or a little snow. So you can count on 3 months where you can fish, but it's not much fun.

Thanks. I need to get a selfie stick. My arm's not long enough to get the whole fish in the pic. Thus all my fish pics look like the same fish. But you know what they say? No pic, no fish. Especially for a PB.

Normally, my hands would be shaking and my heart thumping with a big fish. And I was certainly excited. But I was so reminded of my dad, it was kind of more emotional. He died two years ago, but I talked out loud to him like he was there with me. I just know how excited he would be to see that bass. We rarely caught anything approaching 3 or 4 lbs when we fished Lake Wateree, SC all those years. Someone asked me later that day why I didn't keep it to be mounted or give it to them to eat. Blasphemy!!! I told them because I want to catch it again and next time I want it to be 8 lbs and a 7.7 pounder won't reach 8 lbs in his deep fryer. People just don't get it. That would be like killing my spirit animal. Fishing is not the same thing as hunting to me. No way I'm going to give them my spirit animal to eat! I told him I'd bring him some dinks from my buddy's pond sometime.

I hear you. Bill Dance did a show on the Jointed Rebel Minnow where he used a split shot to get it to do just that. Just throwing it out there as an affordable swimbait. And I have one and it does work well.

Rebel Jointed Minnow. $6.00. It still works. https://www.rebellures.com/rebel-jointed-minnow-fishing-lure

How was the gar?

I just caught my latest PB on a WP Saturday morning, so I'll throw it early and often for a while. But my 110 is bone color and my 90 is monkey butt. I don't put a lot of stock in colors of topwaters because what bass see mostly is the silhouette. But conventional wisdom says black is generally best in the lowest light and lighter colors are generally better when the sun is up a bit. I rarely catch anything on any topwater in direct sunlight.

LOL I went to my friends' pond the other day and when I drove up his wife was already fishing. I walked the bank and tried every rod I had in the truck. I caught one on a Senko and two back-to-back on a spinnerbait. She was fishing a frog out in the middle of the pond and hadn't caught anything and she asked me how did I know what to use.That question's so complicated and based on so many years of trial and error I didn't even know where to start. So I told her YouTube. Start with the words "Beginner Bass Fishing" and go from there.

My wife fished with me once. She caught all the crappie while I baited her hook. When they stopped biting, I got a chance to fish and i only caught catfish. But that was just fine. It's just not her bag and I'm fine with that because I like the solitude of fishing alone. It's how I get away from the day-to-day stresses. My daughter used to go kayaking with me, but she's over that for the most part. She says I fish to long and too seriously.

I have a FeelFree Lure 13.5. It's a good, stable kayak. That wheel in the keel does very little for you when it comes to dragging through the woods and over uneven ground. It's really not even easy to drag on my lawn. That's because you can't help but drag it with one hand from the front middle. The kayak will sway left and right and you'll still be dragging the keel some. And it's heavy. I would still recommend a cart for that. Also, I'm a member of a FB group of FeelFree owners. Many of them who own an Overdrive unit (that's what they call the peddle propeller) aren't very fond of those either. They have the reputation for being easily broken.

I recently traded my FeelFree Lure 13.5 with GPS/Fish Finder to a guy for the same model kayak rigged with a transom mount trolling motor kit from Electric Kayak Company.It's the first one on this page. http://www.electrickayakcompany.com/#options It the 45 lb thrust model with variable speed. I took it out yesterday morning with good results as I mentioned in the Fishing Reports forum. I love the motor and was able to cover a lot of water with it. The steering is a good idea, but the design could use a little work. I didn't rig this one, but with this kit, you basically replace the foot rest assembly with ones that slide. To go left, you push the left foot rest. To go right, push right. If you put pressure on the ends of the foot rests, it's difficult to steer. You need to put toe pressure on it where it slides in the rails. One of the foot rests binds in its slide. I will continue to tinker with it on saw horses until I get it working better. Does anyone else have one of these that can lend any advice? Thanks

I recently traded my FeelFree Lure 13.5 with GPS/Fish Finder to a guy for the same model kayak rigged with a trolling motor kit from Electric Kayak Company. It the 45 lb thrust model with variable speed. I'll report on that in the boats forum. I had to get out of the way of some workers remodeling our living room. I had planned to be on the water at sunrise, but it was an overcast morning, so I made it there about 6:50. About 5 minutes into the trip, learning to steer and control the motor, I had a blowup on the Whopper Plopper 130. The fish missed it so I reeled in quickly and cast again beyond the same spot. This time the fish annihilated the bait. I knew from the bite that it was a good fish. But it made a run and peeled off about 15 yards. It was a good fight, but probably not as good as it would have been in spring water temp. I landed the fish by hand (because I never carry a net) and weighed it. My scale was stuck on KG! GRRR! Then it occurs to me I have a conversions app on my phone. I was praying it would be at least 8. It was 7.7, which beats my old PB from late last fall by a half pound. And I caught it on one of my late father's rods. I had a little moment afterward when I realized that. It also occurs to me that if that fish had not taken the bait on the second cast, I never would have any idea I had missed a PB. I went on to catch a few dinks and miss a few others. I was able to cover a small lake in 2 hours that usually takes me 3 hours to paddle, with more bait-in-the-water time. All in all, it was a very successful trip. That's what keeps me going.

An 8 pounder. I know people who have fished a lot less than I have who have caught bigger bass.

I do like fishing alone. I'm my favorite fishing companion. I do have one buddy I fish with a few times a year. But he's a lot like me. We can go a half hour and not speak and it's not awkward. Come to think of it, fishing is the only way we spend time together.

I can only comment on my experience.

You can also use the Booyah Popping Padcrasher. It walks a lot easier. Even if you fail to walk it, you can pop it in place without dragging it too far forward.

There are two things going on with this guy. There's the whole "I never catch this many so I'm not hurting anything by doing it this time" mentality. And there's the "It didn't really happen if I don't kill and freeze every one" mentality. My dad had this attitude. He and another man filled the freezer with over 180 crappie in one day. He didn't understand why I would throw back any fish, especially big ones. But then, we didn't have a camera in our pocket back then. This guy could easily have shown the kid how to be a good steward while having fun and started throwing them back after the limit. I assume in that state you can catch and release all day, right?

Yeah, email had nothing to do with time zone. I believe they had just been merged into one of the big parent companies.

The importance of walking the frog is overplayed. It's a nice skill but almost all my bites come over vegetation. The ones that don't are usually not induced by the frog's action. They usually happen when the frog hits the water. It seems to me the further the frog is from some cover, the less likely a bite is. One exception is to walk it parallel to the bank during low light periods. The walk gets harder with a stiffer rod, which is what is recommended for the technique. Give the frog some pops on a slightly slack line. There are a few model designed to walk better. The body on those is made with more of a keel. I use the Booyah Pad Crasher, which has a little bit of a keel.

I've owned both. They each have their place. I just sold my fish/ski and haven't missed it because I was getting no use out of it. It just sat under a shed, mocking me. You know what they say about the first and last days you own a boat being the best. In terms of getting into places where the bass are not pressured, nothing comes close to the kayak. Kayak Pros: Light, no trailer and very little maintenance required. Much easier to transport. No registration required almost everywhere if it's not powered Cheaper in pretty much every way Good exercise. I try to get some cardio almost every day. I skip my usual cardio on days that I fish. Allows access to paces a boat can't be easily launched Allows you to get closer to fish without spooking them. It will actually surprise you how many big fish can be very shallow that you didn't notice before because you used to spook them out with the big boat and trolling motor. Kayak Cons: Not motorized so getting from Pt A to Pt B takes time and energy Limited storage space. Not easy to carry a lot of gear and be prepared for every eventuality. I have a rigged crate and can carry 7 rods and some extra tackle. You can't paddle and cast and reel at the same time. You can get peddle kayaks or rig a trolling motor, but those still require a hand to steer and they start to negate the cost savings over a big boat. It's more primitive as electronics don't come with it. You need to rig your own. Electronics are necessary if you're going to fish deep structure, so you're a little confined to shallower lakes/ponds. Electronics push that cost back up. I mostly fish private, shallower places, so that's fine. I do have a fish finder on one of my kayaks, but mostly use it as a water temp gauge. LOL. The older I get, the more I start to see that a big boat is more comfy to fish from. After 5 hours in a kayak, I'm tired and I feel it a little the next day. I think the Ghenoe with a gas and rolling motor looks like a good compromise. But I'd still keep the kayaks. I want this! Take my money now! The wife and I plan to retire to somewhere coastal and this would be about exactly what I'd want. I have little desire to go offshore and if I do, I can pay someone to put me on fish way cheaper than I can do it myself. Being a bass fisherman, I like inshore much better.

If you read or watch fishing videos enough, you'll eventually hear the same fishermen say they like dark colors AND they like chartreuse or firetiger for the same muddy water. In late winter here, when the water has a permanent muddy stain to it, my best spinnerbait color is still gold with gold blades. Fish don't change what they eat to only include dark prey, so their usual forage colors should work.

Lew's. That is all. ABU Garcia might be quality, but they would not answer an email or answer the phone when I needed a part.