IndianaFinesse

Those lead bans would really be annoying and expensive, with the price of store bought tungsten so high, and how hard it is to pour without lead. Purely out of curiosity, of course, is there anyway for them to enforce lead bans?

Yep, aside from the shad rap (and none of that scatter rap junk either) I don't use any of their crankbaits. Tried a few others in rapala's line up, but other brands always have worked better for me.

A lot of my Johnson stuff and some of my rapalas still list a basic retrieve or two. Aside from the shad rap, x rap, sub walk, original floating minnow, and the jigging rap I don't use much for rapala's. Most of the new stuff they're putting out now are all gimmicks or just don't have anything special about them. I bet they're still going to have "new deadly action coming to rapala" in a month or so for the classic. Rapala has way over hyped new releases in recent years.

This thread went down hill fast.

We're going back and forth between having the main lake ice free but the coves still iced up, and ice thick enough to ice fish on. A week and a half ago I was ice fishing, and three days ago I plowed through some ice on the edges of the lake to do some open water fishing. The weather has been a rollercoaster, one day it's a high of 14 degrees and snow, the next it's in the fifty's and raining.

I think I've actually used all of my stuff at one time or another, but only a small portion makes it into my regular line up.

Benny hill? Never heard of that show.

Ouch. Once I was hiking though the woods in Michigan to fish a secluded lake, and around lunch time I came across a little clearing and decided to take a break and eat lunch. So I sat down, took my bacback full of gear off, and started eating. Problem was I didn't notice that the clearing was full of fire ant holes, tons of them. I was sitting down eating a sandwich when the first fire ant bit me, so by that time I was covered with them. I had fire ants on my legs, up my shorts, on my arms, all over me. I ripped my clothes off while running as fast as I could out there, while screaming and cursing. It would have been funny to watch, and it's funny now, but it sure as heck wasn't at the time.

You fishing in a power plant lake or something?

You need to drive up to the upper pininsula of Michigan in February, then you can see what a real blizzard looks like. Picture ten foot high snowdrifts and having to climb out the window because your door's buried in snow.

It's OK to hold them by their jaw, as long as they are hanging vertical. Just don't torque the jaw on big bass. There are several ways to weigh them, one is to attach some boga grips to the scale and then clip it on to the lower jaw, another is to attract a bag to the scale and place the fish in that, or yet another is to simply slide the scales hook under the gill plate through the gills, but not so that it's putting pressure on the gills themselves.

Your going to have to find your own ponds, truly great ponds are closely held secrets. Good lakes to start at depend on where your located in the state, but guist, Waveland, and eagle creek are all decent lakes.

Power is basically a rating of how stiff the rod is, unfortuanately there is no manufacturer standard for this so it will vary somewhat from the specified rating. Action is a rating of how the rod bends. A good way to think of it is that it's a rating of how fast it is for it to return to the straight position when bent/shook, the more time it takes the slower the action. A fast or extra fast action rod will have most of the bend in the tip, with a solid backbone. While a moderate action rod will bend farther down the rod, with less backbone. Fast action rods are the most versatile, but for crankbaits a moderate action helps to keep the treble hooks pinned inside their mouth. More barings does not neccasarily mean a better reel, that is mostly a marketing ploy. Gear ratios are the ratio between the amount of times the spool turns per turn of the handle. A better thing to look at is the IPT, or inches per turn of the reel. Faster reels are not always better. Drag is how much force it takes to turn the reel when it is engaged, you won't usually have it locked down unless frog fishing or punching with 65+pound braid. @fishnkamp explained the specifics better than I could, so i'm going to ditto him and save me the twenty minutes he spent typing his very helpful reply.

Big bass can definitely grow huge in small ponds, especially if they're private. Indiana's state record of 14 pounds 14 ounces was caught in a small private pond that hadn't been fished in years previously.

60-70 dollars, they are an awesome reel for crankbaits. They are little on the big side to palm easily, at least for my smaller hands, but that doesn't matter for crankbaits, swimbaits, spinnerbaits, etc. And casting is great with them, they are almost impossible to backlash.

Mono will work on all of the techniques you mentioned, with the possible exception of toads. I use braid or braid with a leader for all of them, but mono will work just fine too.

Booyah pad crasher in both sizes and the booyah popping pad crasher are my two top producing frogs, but I also use the live target frogs on occasion. Keep it simple with colors, get one with a white belly and one black. My favorites are cricket frog and dart frog\night train.

Ditto. I use medium heavy for all of the techniques listed.

Like fishnkamp, I also use both right and left hand retrieve reels based on whether the lures used on that combo are moved with the rod or the reel. I prefer right hand retrieve for baits that are constantly moved by the reel such as cankbaits, spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, etc. But I use left hand retrieve reels for baits that the rod is used to move, such as top water, jigs, jerkbaits, etc.

True, I did not think to consider half of a zinkerz weight. With the zinker on it probably weighs closer to 1/8 ounce, but that's just a guess. It definitely fishes stiffer than a medium lite fast action, more like a medium powered extra fast action rod.

Abu Garcia rods run stiffer than they are rated, so that is to be expected. But I have a medium lite villian also, and it casts 1/16 ounce Ned rigs a good distance with ease.

All of this rain has melted most of the main lake ice here, but the coves still have some ice left. The ice is still to thick to plow through with the boat in the backs of coves, so I took the canoe out instead. Water clarity's about 1.5-2 feet, and the water temperature is still hanging around 39 degrees. Started out fishing for white bass, but it was impossible to stay put out in the middle of the lake in the wind with the canoe. Switched over to crappie/bluegill (they seemed to be biting the same lures) and found them hugging bottom in 17-20 feet of water near some dying weeds. The bites were so lite that I had to use an ice fishing rod with a "spring bobber" flat wire tip, instead of regular rods. The most effective bait was a 1/100 ounce horizontal jig tipped with two or three spikes and an atomic wishbone plastic. They wanted it held as steady as possible beneath the canoe, not an easy task in the wind. Ended the day with 5 crappie, 15 nice bluegill, and one largemouth bass, in about three hours of fishing. It was basically ice fishing in open water, except harder because of boat control, but it was nice to get out again. Looks like it might have safe ice by the first part of next week if the weather forecast holds true.

On the edge of west Indianapolis, right across the street from the white river. They have some good deals on bass fishing stuff sometimes, but they specialize in catfish and carp bait and tackle, plus have the best selection of live bait that I have ever seen by far. They carry every live bait that I can think of, easily 25-35 different options.

I do own one veritas, and it's a nice rod. It fished stiffer than rated, just like all of the other abu Garcia's rod. I just think that the aotos is a better rod (it retails for $180), and you can get it for sale than the veritas.

I will sometimes put a trailer on buzzbaits, if they want it retrieved slower or just want a different look. When I do use them, I usually use some kind of toad, often a horny toad or Stanley ribbit frog. I start a day without a trailer hook to minimize tangling and snagging, but if I get short strikes i'll throw one on.