MassYak85

My dad and I got out both days this weekend. Saturday on Quinsig. Perch (yellow and white) were schooled up and while trying to find a jerkbait bite we got them pretty fired up and probably got like 30 of them. We moved in search of the fish we were actually after (bass) but couldn't come up with anything consistent. I got a few, nothing big. I DID manage to hook into what I think was a pike. I set the hook on a stick-o and new right away I either had a PB bass or PB pickerel. I saw it come to the surface but I must not have gotten a good enough hookset. If it was a pickerel it was probably around 5lbs, but I'm going with a pike. I've run into them before a few times on quinsig but have never landed them. This one shook about 20ft from the boat. Went out today on Maspenock. Wind was blowing good and the lake is being drawn down, water was real murky too. Tried fishing areas I thought current from the drawdown would be going through. Couldn't really pattern it the way I wanted and overall it was a tough day. I managed one decent (2.5ish) bass on a squarebill and a handful of pickerel, who were uncharacteristically finicky. Like @Jigfishn10 said, I was hoping they'd be shallow getting their fall feed on with some bluegill or perch but it didn't seem that way. Tried a spinnerbait and cranks burned fast and the only one who would take was that one bass. I'm thinking I may not be fishing deep enough, especially after seeing @basshunterman9's report. Seems they may be schooling up deeper right now. And I definitely haven't been fishing that deep. That's still something I have to work on. Mentally I know 20ft isn't that deep but I struggle to fish deeper than that.

Must be some mistake. They probably have a new employee who hasn't had the "how to punt merchandise into the truck" training yet.

I generally fish spinnerbaits faster or when the fish are looking for that flash. Chatterbaits I like more fishing slower, or on hard bottom where I can hop them like a jig. I treat spinnerbaits like an all-terrain-vehicle of bass fishing and will throw them around ANY type of cover cause they are very good at coming through pretty much anything. Chatterbaits not so much but if I ma fishing more open water or flats with less cover I might try a chatterbait. If they want neither I try a swimjig or crank. I usually try and dial in one of those four lure types as my go-to search bait of the day to gauge their interest level. Doesn't always work out that way though.

I'll be out Saturday for sure, maybe Sunday afternoon. Although the temperatures just refuse to drop, gonna be 80 tommorow.

Yea I owned a RAV 4 and wouldn't have towed with it. Maybe a Kayak trailer or a crawdad, tiny John boat but that's about it. I've got a 4Runner now which is much better set up to tow with. Right now I'm just using it with a rooftop Kayak rack but I've hauled my father's boat with the vehicle and it performed well.

This but if I gotta catch one last fish I'm tossing a senko

If you're breaking off line you should wrap it around something like a stick or wooden dowel to pull on instead of stressing your rod.

Yea you're playing with fire landing them by the gills. Their gill rakers are basically razor blades. Id get some fish grippers. I like the plastic ones Rapala makes.

Are they actual breaks or just the line slipping? If it's slipping it could be that you are using too few or too many turns in the knot. Too many and all of the turns are not going to bite, like you said you want all of the turns to darken when you tighten the knot. Too few and you won't have enough bite to hold the leader. I found 16-18 turns was good for me generally. Personally, I settled on the Alberto knot or the blood knot (bigger diameter lines I prefer the blood knot). I liked the FG knot but I just couldn't put 100% trust into the finishing methods to keep it from unraveling. I like the Alberto and Blood knot cause if I screw up the knot at all I can see it immediately. You said sometimes they break hours into it, could it be that your finishing hitches are slowly unraveling? Some may say leaders add an extra weak spot and to not use them, just go straight fluoro/mono. You know what else also adds a weak spot? Kinked line....the kind of kinked line you get when you backlash fluorocarbon and the loops bind up and now you have a weak spot 30 yards into your spool and you later snap off on a hookset at that exact spot and now need to re-spool $20 dollars of line in the middle of a fishing trip or else decommission the setup for the day. Ask me how I know. At the end of the day it's what you have the most confidence in and what you trust. If I backlash fluoro I have 0 confidence in the quality of the line going forward. If I screw up a leader knot I can just retie without losing mainline.

Th 200 reels are physically larger and have bigger spools but I'm not sure if the bearings are any different. I would think no, but don't trust me on that. If you are ordering from boca bearings or someone else you could always call or email them and tell them the model of the reel you are trying to replace bearings for, they would probably be able to tell you exactly what you need.

This. And then not fall through the ice when ice fishing.

A little off topic but are the Sierra rods really that much better than the Fury's? I have a Fury spinning rod I use for most of my weightless and finesse plastics and love it, but the way everyone talks about the Sierra's makes me feel like I'm missing out on something.

The biggest thing for me is to just change it up. I'll usually start fast, cause honestly I'm not patient unless I have to be. So a cast could be 15-20 seconds for a moving bait (crank, spinnerbait, etc.). Maybe a minute for a jig or soft plastic. Biggest thing for a soft plastic is I give it at least enough time to fall to the bottom and then I'll give it at least a few hops with a little pause in between. I generally don't work them all the way back to the boat. I'm usually fishing bottom contact baits near a specific piece of cover or along some structure. Once it's out of what I consider the "strike zone" I'm reeling it back and making my next cast. Then time of year comes into play. Warmer months when the bite is going I can sometimes be fishing lures as fast as the reel will go. Burning baits past cover with slight pauses to make it erratic. But come November if I'm trying to squeak out that last bite before ice-in, I might be fishing a jerkbait with 20+ second pauses in between twitches. I mean if you really want to soak it in a spot you're confident in a cast could be 5-10 minutes at that point.

Finally got some confidence back. Fished local both days at places I'm very familiar with. Got a few good fish each day, with a 3.2 and a 4.36. I kind of went back to basics and what I grew up fishing with spinner baits and weightless stick worms and it paid off! That 4lber was my biggest of the year by almost a lb. Which is a sad thing to say for the season but good to get my mojo back. Things seem to be looking up for the fall.

Awesome catch @DogBone_384. Tough to say on the size. Judging by your shoe I'd say around 20 inches. Fish looks a bit skinny but I'd say around 5lbs.

I spent the last few winters looking for winter gloves I liked for fishing, Ice and open water. The problem is you run into a dilemma of dexterity, warmth, and waterproof and you really don't get to have all three. I settled on....the cheapest pair of fingerless fleece gloves on amazon/ebay. They're decently warm, even when wet. Surprisingly not too bad in the wind, you get the dexterity of your fingertips, and they're dirt cheap so buy lik 5 pairs and just change them out when they get soaked.

The northern ones up here definitely love to jump. But sometimes I feel they're lazy. One good head shake or dash for the nearest cover and if that doesn't work out they kind of give up until they get to the boat and they might try one last shake. Smallies on the other hand fight like theyre about to die of they don't get off.

So the turnover is something I've never really wrapped my head around completely. I know it's when the top layer of cooling water starts trading places with the cooler bottom layer from the summer and mixes up the water column and can throw fish for a funk. But I never had a grasp of when it was happening. The way I've always heard it described had me thinking the top water temps had to get to a specific temperature depending on the lake and then the whole water column would flop over a couple days, but that's not quite the case is it? Shouldn't it be a gradual thing, where a cool night sinks a thin layer of surface water, and this goes on throughout the fall and into the winter, slowly cooling the lake until you get that equalized 4°C where the water can finally start to freeze? But if that's the case I would think the change would be slow enough the fish could adapt an not be thrown into a funk. Is it just those first consistently cool nights (say, upper 40's low 50's) that cause a significant amount of water to flip flop that marks the turnover? Kind of me thinking out loud, let me know if I'm off base.

I used to use a Vendetta for frogging. It was a pool cue but held up well for me. Also hated the butt of the rod, very hard plastic cap that dug into my ribs on many occasions when setting the hook into some fish (and stumps lol).

I generally try to tie to the double part, but like @WRB said I generally try and use a snap for the line tie. My go-to's have been the Decoy Egg snaps. Size 2 or 3 for most baits. Size 4 or 5 for bigger siwmbaits.

I'll be honest and say that a lot of it just comes down to a feeling of "imperfection" in what I currently use and trying to fill a niche need in my tackle. I'm a bit of a perfectionist sometimes and when I'm fishing and some technique I feel was not quite what I wanted I buy something else to try. A lot of times it's simple, not-so-expensive things. Like my thought process might be something along the lines of: Try new jig..."hook is too light wire"...try a new jig..."hook is good, but the skirt doesn't flare as much as I'd like it to"...try new jig...."Great jig! Now I need three different weights to cover different depths and sink rates, and maybe two or three colors for each weight"...Now on to trailers and repeat the process....one trailer is too small and gets smothered by the jig skirt, one has to much action for fishing cold water, one doesn't have much action on the fall, one's claws don't stand up when on the bottom....and on and on and on. That's not to say I'm trying to find a "do it all" lure, but in the process of finding the "best" presentation for various fishing situations I usually end up trying a lot of stuff and settling on a couple that I really like for those specific conditions. It's nice in a way cause when I do settle on something I have a LOT of confidence in it, but it ends up in some stuff just not getting used. Plus....it's fun to buy and try new stuff I won't lie lol.

Yea make sure whatever you do get, get a transmission cooler. You can get them aftermarket but many vehicles come with one if you get the tow package. My father also has a Pilot and tows his 18ft Lund just fine.

As much as that hurts, good joke.

Probably depends on the specific ramps you plan to fish. Steep wet ramps you're gonna want 4WD. Some ramps also have a nasty lip at the end underwater the trailer wheels can get stuck on. That boat is light so pretty much anything with a hitch should tow it on the roads without much issue but you don't want to be stuck in a position where you can't get the trailer out of the water.

This past year was the first year I fished every month. I made a seamless transition between open water and ice fishing on both sides of the winter. I even took my kayak out in February on the assabet River in the middle of ice fishing season (yes you read that right) . Sometimes you've just got to scratch that itch lol. I wasn't very successful in the colder months but I was trying to use jerkbaits fished slowly and Huddleston swimbaits mostly. Also some blade baits which I did get some bites on. Generally October is the last month I do well in but warm days in November and December can get them biting. I remember a few years ago it was 60 degrees on Christmas day and they were chewing. Each year is different too, we can have 4 months of ice some years and others the Cape ponds won't even freeze. But every month of the year you will have opportunities to catch bass somewhere in the state.