Junk Fisherman

I don't doubt that FG is a superior knot but the Alberto is easy to tie and I have caught so many big fish using that knot with a leader that I don't even question it anymore.

I remember when the BPS opened in the Chicagoland area. It was such a big deal. Now I go there maybe once or twice a year.

Throw a wacky rig with a shad-colored 4" Senko and let it sink through. Try that a couple times and if nothing, move on.

That's really hard. Sorry for your loss. There's a lake I fish a couple times a year (Newton Lake) that my dad and I would always meet up and fish at. The first trip after he passed was really hard. I'd remember the tree where he threw his spinnerbait in, where we ran aground on a sandbar and I had to get out and push the boat off in 50 degree water, where we each caught a 4 lber on back to back casts on a beaver dam. I actually dreaded the first time going there but knew I had to. I still think about him all the time but the sadness turned to just missing him.

For the last couple years I have always fished alone. I used to have a fishing buddy but we had a falling out. I really enjoyed fishing with him and we fished just about every weekend for years. It's great when you have someone that you enjoy being with even if you're not catching fish. Good conversation, laughter, and sharing memories on the water is what it's all about. Since my dad passed, I have no one that I really share fishing info with. My wife listens and is supportive but it's not the same as someone that knows exactly what you're doing and can relate to everything you experienced. On a side note, my dad passed 4 years ago in December. Probably the saddest moment I had was the first time I went fishing a couple months later. After a good day on the water as I was driving home the realization that I couldn't call him and tell him about my day was just crushing and hit me unexpectedly. I hope my son (10) develops a love for fishing. I'm trying to get him into it but video games and Youtube is currently winning. Actually, tonight I am rejoining my bass club after a couples years away with a main reason being to fish with others and have a little more camaraderie on the water. Great topic.

So hard to answer. 1) I love March when my local powerplant opens and I can get out on cold days and fish 60 degree water putting some good bass in the boat. It always feels good after the long winter. 2) Prespawn largemouth in my central and southern Illinois waters is always an anticipated mainstay of my fishng calendar. 3) June in Northern Michigan for smallmouth is when I catch my best fish of the year. Granted, it's not as good as it used to be. 4) I love fishing Lake Michigan locally in the summer. 5) Late fall can be fantastic. I also enjoy the fact that I usually have the water all to myself. Hunting, football, and a lack of tournaments greatly reduces the number of fishermen around me in the fall. I really enjoy fishing till dark (early evening) and the almost lonely feeling that the water gives as another season is just about over. But to answer the OP's question, prespawn Great Lakes smallies is my favorite fishing season.

I agree 100%. My dad had a 16' tiller Alumacraft with the same floorplan. I could bass fish very well in the front of the boat with the little platform and bow trolling motor. I never felt at a disadvantage fishing from that boat compared to my traditional bassboat I had at the time. Without a console, the boat was very spacious for a 16'er and we had a lot of good times in that boat. If cost is a major issue, this would be a great boat. My dad sold his for around 4K. It was over 20 years old but in great shape.

Exactly. Plus, if you're a new boat owner you don't want to spend a lot on a fancy boat. It's very easy to ding the boat up while docking, fishing shallow, or backing it up. Learn all the basics on an older boat and upgrade when you're ready. Good luck.

I've used my Steez 761 to throw many 1/16th oz Ned rigs and it is tremendous. I originally bought the rod (1st edition) for dropshotting but after using it for Ned rigs (my #1 presentation), I rarely use it for anything else. Nowadays, I use a 2nd edition 761 for Neds while I use my first edition 761 for primarily Neko rigs and all-around but it handled Neds great as well. It's crazy how versatile the 761 is with its 1/16 to 3/4 oz lure range. The rod has been flawless with 3/8th oz dropshots and cracking 1/2 oz tubes in addition to Neds and Nekos. It's just a stellar workhorse rod.

I have 2 Steez spinning rods (761 first and second edition) and they are the finest rods I have ever used. Very light, crisp, and incredibly sensitive. They are an absolute joy to fish with. The only reason I would not buy a Steez is because of their breakage policy. Loomis's Expiditor policy allows you to replace the rod with a fee that is relatively reasonable. I have broken too many rods over the years (none in the last several) and I am very fearful of breaking one of my Steez rods and being out $500+ dollars.

I like catching big, easy bass. I get enough of the challenge of fishing for heavily pressured big bass all the time locally. My best fishing memories are days of catching a dozen 4-6 lb smallmouth up north before everyone knew of the place and locals started keeping those 5 lbers. The challenge is there now but I liked it better when it was easy.

For dropshots I typically make a little longer leader since if you have to retie one, the whole presentation takes up more line. Like Bird, I keep my leader knot right above the reel except for dropshots. I fish a lot of abraisive-filled water in Lake Michigan and I have to retie often. I pretie some leaders in late summer when the fish are deep and I'll be dropshotting a lot. Having the leaders accessible cuts a few minutes off how long it takes when replacing a drop shot presentation.

Quite a few people complain about the downgrade in quality of the Lund Pro V Bass on the owners' Facebook page. Nothing terrible and it's still my boat of choice the next time around but the reports are a little disappointing.

As time goes on you will have more confidence baits for different conditions. To answer your question, I would find different water to fish as long as my techniques were matched well with whatever cover and structure I was fishing. I think back when I was a novice fisherman and if it wasn't calm enough for me to throw plastics or a Senko, I struggled. Now, I have a variety of power fishing techniques that I have confidence in as well. I have my finesse techniques that I feel I am best at (dropshot, Neko, Ned, plastics, wacky) but I also have a number horizontal baits that I have confidence in (swimbaits, topwater, bladed jigs/spinnerbaits) so I know I can match a presentation that I am confident in my ability to fish with practically any situation I am faced am. And I'm always working on presentations that I'm not confident in my ability to fish. If the fish are active and I'm catching them on a confidence bait, I will always try a similar type presentation but something I am trying to learn. For example, I've been trying to get better at jerkbaits for years. On days when the smallies are hitting my swimbaits, I'll always bust out a jerkbait and mix it in. Hair jigs and Daiki rigs and a couple other finesse rigs along with my FFS are what I'm working on now. Finding new presentations and getting better at them is one of my favorite aspects of fishing. Good luck.

These reels are earlys 00s and they were elite at the time. Finding that TDS on clearance at Dick's for $36 was one of my best finds. While I retired the TDS, after years of heavy use, I still use the TDX. I have another one but it's in the boat. Those TDX reels still hold up and perform comparably to high-end reels of today. They were way ahead of their time.

I enjoy the fight as long as I get it in the boat. Using light line makes it difficult with large smallmouth. You have to let the fish tire itself out and try to keep it from jumping. As someone who fishes deep water in the Great Lakes often, I routinely give the fish line when it gets close to the boat and you know it isn't ready to be netted yet. I'm glad these fish don't know that they can break your line by running the line against rocks on the bottom. But seeing a 2-3 lber jump a foot or so out of the water is so much fun (as long as it's not in a tournament).

I have always closed my bail by hand and I used to always get them. The shorter leader is what eliminated the wind knots for me. I think it was Brent Ehlers who had a video that he mentions this. Like I wrote earlier, I went to a shorter leader to protect my connection knot and in the process elimated wind knots too. Win win.

Wind knots were a big problem for me in the past but I have eliminated them. I don't recall having a single one the last couple seasons and I used to have them just about every time out. What did I do? Shortened my leader length. I used to run a 10'-15' leader that went into the spool. I reduced my leader length so that the knot was just outside the reel so about a 7' leader. Now, I reduced the length since I was having intermittent issues of having the connection knot fail on the cast and losing my entire leader and lure but solving that problem has also eliminated wind knots.

I had no idea what I was doing the first time I went to Grand Traverse Bay in 2011. I was a shallow, weedy lake largemouth fishermen who would throw topwater in the morning and pitch plastics all day to weeds and docks. So I was lost going on the Great Lakes and fishing smallmouth in water that had 20' of clarity. That first day I headed out without a clue as to where to go. I passed a boat fishing what looked like a point and didn't think much of it. I went to a dropoff area and threw wacky worms and a dropshot for a few hours and caught a couple small bass but I had no confidence in what I was doing. I was getting ready to leave and on the way I decided to check out the area where I saw the other fishermen. Note- this was before GTB really blew up. This was a Monday in mid June and there were only a couple of guys fishing the entire bay. I only saw one other boat that day with just a few trailers in the parking lot. Anyways, I pull into the area and I immediately see what that fella was fishing. All sorts of rocks and a nice tapering flat out to the main basin of the bay. Plus, there are acres and acres of bare sand bottom on GTB. This area had about the greatest concentration of rocks that I had seen. So I start fishing the area and it had been cloudy all morning. The sun came out and all the rocks and sand lanes and dropoffs just popped due to the water clarity and polarized glasses. I threw a tube on the edge of a rock ledge in about 4' of water and I just see a black blur hover over it. I set the hook and it was a 5.3 lb smallie. A few minutes later I caught a 5.5 lb smallie. I continue to fish the area just hopping a tube and I probably caught 20 more fish that day with everything over 16". Would of had a 23 lb bag or so which is still one of the best days I've ever had. The next day was too windy so I came back on Wednesday and caugth a 5.9 lber and probably 20 smallmouth between 4 and 5 lbs. It was rare to catch anything under 16" and 75% of the fish were 18" or more. And these were all fat, feisty, prespawn fish that often jumped and put on a display all while using light spinning gear. What do you say to that? It was easily the best fishing I'd ever experienced. I fish a lot of heavily pressured water around Chicago and it would take me years to catch the number of quality fish I was catching there in a morning. I literally had goosebumps and would shake at times since I knew how special the moment was. The fishing in that area was never that good again. I did catch a 6.6 lber there (profile pic) and had multiple 22-24 lb days from that area in subsequent years but I caught mutliple 20 lb bags in the same day off the same area on my first trip without knowing much at all about smallmouth fishing. The area is the size of a football field or so. I've seen KVD there a couple times. Sadly, the spot is not nearly as good as it was and it is a major community hole now. The first year after the pandemic was the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen with probably 12-20 boats in the area nonstop during the middle of the week. The last two years the area has been mediocre at best but I still spent too much time there. So yeah.... If I could go back and fish anywhere at any time it would be Grand Traverse Bay in 2011.

Grand Traverse Bay, MI June 2011

Been using the Trilene knot for over 20 years and feel no reason to look for anything else. I do use a Palomar for a few techniques though.

My wife is very supportive of my fishing hobby. She tells me to go more often, take fishing trips, she never worries about my spending, and she told me years ago to buy a new boat when I wasn't even ready. It all comes down to trust. She trusts me financially and knows that I am responsible never allowing fishing to get in the way of family responsibilities or my career. Plus, she understands that fishing is a healthy hobby. I'm waking up at 3 AM and fishing all day. When I go on trips I am staying in a campground by myself fishing all day. It's about as lowkey and chill of a hobby a guy can have. Her sister asked my wife once if she was jealous when I went away on tournament weekends. My wife laughed. She know it's mostly a group of middle age men that are asleep by 10 PM and waking up in the middle of the night to fish all day. As long as a fella is making sure he's taking care of all his obligations and not spending irresponsibly, a significant other should embrace fishing as a his hobby. If she doesn't, some communication or some behavior tweaks from the fishermen should be made. A fishing hobby can be balanced in nicely in any relationship and it really shouldn't be that hard.

6 hours is my mininum. Usually 8-9 hours. I will go shorter at the start of a fishing trip in order to conserve energy. It took me a couple trips of going too hard at the start only to get burned out by the end when I was fishing a tournament to learn this.

That's a great bait. Add blue fleck Baby Brush Hogs, watermellon red Super Hogs too. Cotton candy is great color too. Those are some of my favorite all time plastics to pitch. In the same relm, get a little bigger hook and try some 4" Berkley Chigger Craws. Black/Blue and Green Pumpkin are standard colors. Those are all confidence baits for me.

I'm more likely to come back to a spot rather than cast at it 28 times. I would definetely change angles and presentations within those 28 casts if I was that persistent. I'm of the mindset that I fish spots too long and should fish faster since the majority of the time, you catch the fish quickly and not after multiple casts. Granted, after saying that I realize that my biggest fish earlier this week came after I had picked apart a spot and was just about to leave. There are just so many examples of catching fish quickly, never catching the fish after spending a lot of time on the spot, and occassionally catching the fish after saturating the spot with multiple casts. So I guess I don't really know. It also comes down to confidence and having other spots and areas to target. If I have other spots, I'll move faster. Also, fishing pressure plays a role. I have local spots that on the weekend, if I move off an area someone will immediately jump on the spot. That will always make me fish a spot/area longer. Basically, I'm just winging it out there.