Surfcaster

When your wife demands no more fishing equipment purchases, until a separate building is built to house all fishing equipment.

That is why I always use cheap, worn out line and equipment. When I outfish everybody, it can't be the tackle it must be my great fishing skills. When I get skunked, it is always because of the sub-standard tackle. Which I am forced to use because the wife wants the money to go to more "home-improvement" purchases.

I worked for 17 years as a technician in a car dealership and had to deal with a lot of customers who thought we were not taking good enough care of their cars or we were not doing an adequate job or looked down at us as grease monkeys. We called them Corvette owners. In my opinion, the people who go around saying stuff under the banner of being honest, are just looking for a confrontation or have an overinflated view of their own self importance. And if there ever is a real issue that needs to be addressed (child sampling the food at a salad bar and putting back what they don't like, couple changing their baby's diaper on a table in a restaurant or excessive vulgarity at a table next to you in a restaurant) then you better be ready to deal with the ramifications the second you address it.

So what did you say to the waitress to make her cry.

I use Kick'n Bass, but I put the plastics I am going to use in a ziplock bag and add a few drops to the bag. also, I never mix colors; it is the same colors in each ziplock bag. The Kick'n Bass will blend the colors.

Berkley Lightning Shock rod. WalMart $40.00.

A friend of mine in Florida met Dean Rojas in Gander Mtn and told him about his frog fishing woes. He asked Dean for advice and Dean told him to always use braid when fishing frogs.

In my tournament experience a lot of potential shady stuff goes on. I fish with my friend in his boat in local club tournaments but I'm competing against him. The tournament rules allow this because they want more people fishing the tournament. Neither one of us has won any money this year but I guarantee you when one of us does win some money there will be talk of us pooling our fish together and splitting the money. That accusation has been brought up in the past with other people. In BFL tournaments I have been involved with (Piedmont and North Carolina divisions) the top finishers and big bass winner (boater and co-angler) has to pass a lie detector test. The Piedmont Bass Classic tournaments require a lie detector test for top finishers. The GPS waypoints borrowed electronics issue is just another example trying to gain an edge that goes on in every tournament. Tournament fishermen have rockpiles and brushpiles planted at various places in the lakes around here just for tournaments and those guys are hard to beat, but sometimes I outfish them. I think there is a thread on Bass Resource about Casey Ashley planting brushpiles at Hartwell, but it was within the rules of the Tournament. Stuff like that can rub you the wrong way but it is not cheating.

Back in 1981, when I was about 12 years old, I subscribed to Outdoor Life magazine and there was an article about bass fishing with live bait. I read and re-read that article many times and they told how the crawfish was the ultimate live bass bait. There was even an underwater photograph of a bass getting ready to inhale a live crawfish just walking on the bottom. I got my small seine and went to the small creek by the house and loaded up on crawfish. ZERO bass on a live crawfish. Now, I was fishing in local ponds but still no bass. Maybe the big lakes would have been different. I did catch a lot of catfish at the river with live craws but no bass. Currently, I have fished the ZOOM Speed Craw and scented them with Kick'n Bass and have caught many bass with it. No doubt, bass eat live craws, but not when they are on my hook. Not yet anyway.

Envious. What is the year, model and hp. I did not look at the CL site before it was removed.

I try to retrieve all my stuck baits, but if it is something other than a soft plastic set up, I am going to try my best to retrieve it, and my tournament partner will do the same. Even if it means moving in a fishing zone to retrieve the lure. If I am on a pond, same thing.

Eagle Claw hooks, Mann's Jelly and Augertail worms and ZOOM Super Hogs. Also Deep Creek Lures in Dunn, NC. These fishing products are the only ones I have purchased recently that I know were made in the USA.

FG knot works good. Others with more experience may comment on its light line effectiveness.

My 8 year old son was walking back up to the house after fishing at our pond with a sad look on his face. He was holding his favorite Rebel crayfish crankbait in his hand and the lip was broken off. The lip was still tied to the line. I asked what happened and he said, "It just broke." Now I have heard the "It just broke" phrase many times and have used it myself during my youth. He could have stepped on it, slammed it into a tree, my 14 year old "pro-wanna-be" son could have been involved, however it happened is not the issue. What caught my attention was there was no wire running from the line eyelet through the lip to the body. I have noticed this on crankbaits over the years and preferred an eyelet connected the body which I assumed was connected to the hooks, but it did not keep me from purchasing a crankbait if the eyelet was screwed or molded to the lip if I liked the lure. I surveyed my crankbait stock and found that only some of the eyelet in the lip crankbaits have an eyelet that is connected to the body. Some of my crankbaits have an eyelet right where the body meets the lip, which according to an article I read is David Fritts preferred crankbait setup. Now I have caught fish with my crankbaits and have never had an issue with the eyelet pulling out or lip breaking so it is probably not a big deal, and I will continue to fish them. But I am wondering if other members on the forum look at eyelet position or crankbait/lure build design when considering a lure purchase.

The lake I fished was Shearon Harris in New Hill, NC. It is close to Raleigh, Apex, Cary.

Fished at a lake Saturday that had weedbeds starting to take over some coves and the only thing that worked in those weeds was a texas rigged, weightless, laminated, black and blue Senko.

I recently got some Liberty Sport prescription sunglasses which my optometrist offered as sport/active sunglasses. I got the Trailblazer DE version and I really like them. They have a removable cushion around the inside of the frames that feel good against your skin and the lenses are of course polarized. My particular glasses are marketed as motorcycle sunglasses and they work good on a fast moving boat. Liberty Sport also makes the Rec Specs line of sport glasses, if you remember those. The Trailblazer DE version was a bit pricey, around $165, but they are prescription.

I work as longer than I should trying to get a lure free, but I want that lure back. If it is just not possible without getting wet, I break the line.

There are a few lakes/big ponds in the Croatan National Forest that you can fish and may be the easiest to get access to. There is the Neuse River that a lot of people fish in on boats; I don't know about bank fishing access. About 2 hours north in the Plymouth/Creswell area is Phelps lake that in times past was an incredible bass lake but I think it may have slowed down and I think it is best fished by boat. It is shallow so there are a lot of places you can wade and fish you just have to find access to the lake. Raleigh area lakes (Jordon, Harris, Falls) are about 3 hours from you. Neuse Sporting Goods in Kinston which is west of you, I think, on Hwy 70 is a good place to go and look at stuff and ask questions. I don't think you will find any smallmouth in your area only largemouth. I would also investigate the waters closer to the ocean for Red Drum. Make sure you have a NC fishing license and a CRFL (coastal recreational fishing license) if you fish the ocean or water ways. You possibly could be exempt from a license if you are in the military but check first it may be only for full time NC residents stationed outside NC and on leave.

I have caught one bass with a jig and it was on rocky/hard bottom, so I would say in my jig experience 100% of the fish I catch with a jig comes on hard/rocky bottom. I have seen videos of KVD swimming a jig off the bottom and through bushes and such. I believe to catch bigger fish I must fish a jig more often, but I just don't have confidence in my jig fishing abilities. Maybe tomorrow in my local tournament I will exclusively jig fish and see what happens.

I think Ike's bass class has a video/article on the Carolina Rig that I found very informative and he goes into leader length. I generally start out with a 3' mono leader and I use a swivel.

I know, I like NC better too. Especially the Red Drum fishing at the outer banks. Where the world record Red Drum was caught at Hatteras Island off the surf.

I am 46 years old and I have been fishing since I was 4. I like Power Pro yellow and green and Stren blue florescent mono. I think fluorocarbon line is useless, but I have never tried it so my opinion about it is useless also. I love to fish, and I also love the fishing line debate. I guess it strikes me funny because when I was young, I remember the old 10lb mono on the Zebco 33 would be semi melted together at some point during the summer, and I just pulled it all out and reeled it all back in and fished on. My biggest bass was 8lbs caught back in 1987 on 8lb stren mono that was at least 2 years old. What I really like about these types of discussions is that it gives insight to the vast majority of opinions that really good fishermen have and I am sure that a majority of the members on this forum are way better fishermen than me. So even though it seems like we have this type of discussion every other day, I feel that I learn a little bit more every time I read them. And 2 days from now when someone posts, "What is the best leader for braid?" I will eagerly read it hoping to glean a little more knowledge about bass fishing.

North Carolina is my home and I believe the Carolina's (NC/SC) as a whole offer some of the best outdoor options in the country. Beaches to the east and mountains to the west and a lot to offer in between and all four seasons (for the most part). However, I went to Washington last May to a friends wedding and we flew into Portland, OR and drove to his house in Centrailia, WA and that was some beautiful country. We drove right past Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens. Beautiful rivers also.

I read a story about the first Bassmaster Classic tournament. Bill Dance claimed to have caught the first bass in the first classic because his boat had the most horsepower of any boat in the field and he got to his spot the quickest and started fishing while others were still riding.