N Florida Mike

Caught 25 bream yesterday .

^^^^^ This.

Caught an 8 pounder on a golf course lake with one...actually it was a super fluke , come to think of it.

There are Magnum flukes, super flukes , flukes , Jr flukes, and very small flukes( not sure what they call them.) Ive caught the most fish on super flukes BY FAR. But Ive caught the second most on flukes. I only use them with spinning reels. 8 pound test is good for casting them . I never use any weight. I can throw them far enough. Most fish hit it on the fall.

I like how he takes the jig out of the fishes mouth before he claims his prize...

I use the zoom speed craw in watermelon red or a big bite craw in pumpkin. I catch more on the fall or reeling across cover , also sometimes just reeling in toward the top of the water column. I try hopping it or a very slow stop and go retrieve but rarely catch any like that. They often have it by the claw and when I set the hook it breaks off. I texas rig mine with a bb split shot . Do well that way usually, esp. with the big bite one. me too.

They bite the horny toads well on my home lake too, but usually with a moderate speed retrieve. And they are usually a better average sized fish also. My son had a hawg to the boat and it threw the hook , and I lost another in the same size class ( 7-9 pounds) when it slammed the toad and I momentarily hooked the fish. I fish them weightless also. What hook do you do best with? .

Have you ever fished zoom z- hogs? They are a similar bait, but softer, so the hookup rate is much better. I dont get as much on the retrieve with them though, but great for dead sticking.

Hows your hook up rate though? Mine wasn’t too good when I used them.

Got this one before work on a baby brush hog...

I resemble this meme!

Im more into westerns but like thrillers occasionally. I dont watch gory ones anymore. Ive seen some of the 70s-80s horror movies. After seeing The first friday the 13th , I came home , loaded my gun, checked under the bed and closets before going to sleep.The first halloween was really scary imo, esp. when M. Myers gets shot and falls out the window. They look down and he’s..... gone... Seen “ the Fog” too, “poltergeist,” the “ amityville horror.” Whats the one where one man is killed by several others and comes back to kill them? One of them dies when he gets trapped in a grain silo and gets suffocated by the grain. Maybe the ghost is a scarecrow? Thought that one was pretty good.

I dont change anything except the reel speed setting.

Maybe things are fixing to get better...

Got 17 by lunch time, mostly on zoom flukes. Nothing on the frog or pop-r first thing in the morning. Caught a couple on a watermelon orange finesse worm, and the june bug uv speed worm. Still no hawgs, but I got this one at least off our big spring at the southeast corner of the lake.

Ive been skunked but don’t remember being skunked more than once in a row. And what’s the criteria? I don’t consider a few casts off the bank being skunked if I dont catch a fish. If it is , then Ive been skunked more than I think.?

? • baby brush hogs • craws either zoom ,big bite or havoc • Small zoom flukes • Honorable mention: Tubes lucky strike worms Roostertails

So sorry, Tom. Prayers and thoughts for you and family. You’re always welcome in my boat if you visit Florida.

Congrats! You sound like you really know your stuff. Sounds like you really enjoy it. Next year should be great now that they have experience. I coached a teen boys softball team for a couple years and have great memories. We had a similar story as yours. First year we competed and did ok. The 2nd year we were like the third best team at the start and finished first! We almost lost to one of the worst teams though because our #1 pitcher decided he didnt want to pitch. Our 2nd string pitcher was out for some reason. Our 3rd string pitcher was very inexperienced and couldn’t get the ball over the plate. They went up 18-0 in the first inning( no time limit then). We didnt score. I had a talk with the #1 pitcher and we worked things out. The other team didnt score. I just told the boys, keep your heads up and play hard- we can still win this. Bottom of the 2nd- we get 18 to tie the score!! We went on to win , I think 23-20. One of my favorite games.

Rules are rules but I dont see why it would matter to anyone.

I could write a book ... It sounds to me in the 2 incidents that novice fishermen see a lone person fishing and think he must be where the fish are otherwise he wouldn’t be there... so they get as close as possible. I think I would have done the same thing you did. I am very laid back about most things. I am a people person . But there are a few things that still get me very angry. Kids getting in the way are not one of them. One of them is adults that are violating my space while Im fishing. I was surf fishing with my son and a friend. We were on the beach as the sun came up. Nobody else on the beach. 2 casts =2 fish.We’re thinking its going to be a great day. We hear voices. People coming over the dune. Surfers. One goes directly in front of me, one directly in front of my son, one directly in front of my friend. I couldnt believe it. The one in front of me snagged my line somehow with the fin. He was spooling me. Im yelling. He cant hear me ( or is ignoring me ) I tightened down the drag. Saw the rig come up over the fin, just missed his leg. Dont think he even knew. I was waiting for him when he came in. I told him what happened in a loud voice and asked him , not nicely , why he couldnt just move down the beach some. He actually complied. His buddies didnt though. About 10 minutes later my son said he was starting to get mad , my friend as well, so we left. To me ,that was rude behavior. Knowing how I get , more than once I’ve just left before I get into it with someone, so something like this wont happen:

??