the reel ess

That made my day. Thanks.

More painful than scary, but watching a $30 bait sink when I broke the line the first time I used it.

Whenever I'm using a superline hook or a jig I set it as hard as I can. Good hook, 30# braid, cross their eyes. But when I get a bite on a liplesss crank I hardly set it at all.

That's the cool part about the big ones that get away. They're always bass and they were always a potential PB.

I don't disagree with any of this. I would show anyone who was fishing with me or I knew would be receptive. But we live in an age where people will shoot you because you changed lanes in front of them.

Meh, SC is OK. The state record is over 16 lbs. But a bass over 10 is a major trophy. Depending on where you fish, there are lots of bass in the 5-7 lb. class. But you can catch largemouth and smallmouth as well as spots. We have a diverse geography from mountains to ocean.

I had a good winter last year. I don't think I got skunked all winter. I even caught a bass on a Whopper Plopper in February. I caught most of my fish with a blade bait. I also caught decent amount of crappie on it. It was pretty mild and I had a good number of Saturdays with full sun and little to no wind. But you can't count on that. When all else fails, I watch YouTube videos and shop for tackle online.

I'm really good at drinking beer. As for fishing, it's not a technique. I just try hard. I don't get discouraged because I know the big bite will eventually come if I'm doing the right things. I guess one thing I do well is not targeting small bass. But that means fewer bites.

I've always wanted to do this with a shad imitation fly as the dropper. Another method is the Frontrunner in front of a Spook, preferably a baby bass pattern Spook. It looks like the bigger bait is a small bass chasing a small shad.

I tried only braid on every bass rod. It certainly operates fine, but I noticed I'd lose some fish, throwing a treble bait near the boat. I think you can mitigate that by using a slightly less stiff/fast rod. But I don't have 50 rods at my disposal. I kept straight braid on my frog and jig/T-rigs rod. I went back to mono for spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, topwaters, lipless cranks and pretty much any treble lure. I do use braid main line on the spinning combos with a mono leader most of the time. I also like straight braid for blade baits because it's so easy to lose them on stumps and brush. With straight 30# braid, I can almost always get them back even if I have to bend a hook out. I've tried fluoro and I can see its advantages. But I really don't like it and I don't fish deep very often. "Deep" where I fish is about 12-15'.

I was discussing the consumption of fish from waters with a PCB warning with a chemical engineer who worked at my last job. He thought you would have to scoop mud off the lake bottom and eat it to get anywhere near enough to cause damage. I'm not suggesting people pay no attention to them. I don't even eat fish from clean waters much anymore.

Keep an eye on the news. If it reached Cuba, somebody will probably paddle it back to FL.

This. It helps if there is another kind of cover around like vegetation. Double whammy! And it also helps if deeper water is close by. Anywhere I see 2 kinds of vegetation. Weed edges. Around here, weed edges are the dividing line between shallow and deep water.

Touche. Not many rocks where I fish. I can only remember a couple of times I broke 30# braid. I even use straight braid with blade baits to avoid losing several per trip. And my frog rod is a dedicated setup, so it always has 50 lb braid on it. If I were to dedicate a rod to C-rigs it would be this one. It's XH-XF so no matter the line, you get all of the action on the hookset.

I use braid and mono depending on the technique. It was mentioned that mono will suffice for every technique. Mono can have 10% stretch. So lets say you are using a C rig. You make a 70+ft cast. You get a bite out there and you swing the rod. You need to take 7' out of that length of line before you're getting all of the force to the hook. You might not get a good set. I was a believer that mono was all I needed until I tried different braids about 15 years ago. My hooksets and fish landed went up. It's a useful tool.

A friend of mine told me he only eats saltwater fish like flounder. I asked him if he knows where all that water from lakes and rivers ends up. You should be able to find these advisories on your state's DNR website, like thus: https://scdhec.gov/bow/aquatic-science-programs/fish-consumption-advisories

I use a net for trebles most of the time.

After Hurricane Hugo in the 80's on Lake Wateree, the water level went 10' over the dam. You could sit and watch trees float down the lake. It took about a week for the level to drop to the point you could put a boat in, but there was still floating debris everywhere. But my dad did hook a bass off the bank that got hung under our dock, which was still underwater. I swam in and got the bass for him. I think it's like any storm front that is followed by high pressure and bluebird skies...not the best. But after several days the bass should be catchable in the new shallows. Whenever there is flooding, fishing can be good in the new habitat. Watch out for debris.

No

8 lb. even on a stick worm June 25th at 9:20 AM.

Spinning reels, by their very nature, twist line. You can minimize it by flipping your bail by hand and giving the line a little tug to be sure you're not winding line over loose line on the spool before reeling. Using braid as the main line greatly reduces the line twist problem.

This reminds me of when I fished with a guide in So FL for peacocks with a walking bait with 3 trebles. I got 4 lbs. of angry peacock to the boat, expecting him to lend a hand. He told me to "control my fish". I said "I'm not paying you $400 a day to catch a hand full o' trebles on the very first peacock." I fish from a kayak and I lip almost every bass caught on a single hook. But I net every decent sized bass on trebles. Once in the net, I can dig the hooks out with pliers if necessary. But if you forget the net, cradling the bass against the boat, holding it upright, hand under the stomach makes it docile enough to then lip it. This is pretty easy in a kayak.

There are a few guys that used to fish from a jon boat where I fish. I call them the bucket brigade. They've asked me for a 5 lb. bass that they saw me catch before. I just said "Nope" and let it go in front of them. I'm sure they called me names. If you're gonna take 5 pounders out of my watering hole you gotta catch your own.

My dad was that guy. But I'll say we hardly ever caught enough fish to hurt any population. In fact, we helped, if anything, taking smaller bass out.

My pops was of this generation. Never threw back an eating size bass, crappie, striper or catfish. In his opinion, if you didn't bring it home it didn't happen. But then I've never known real poverty.