TnRiver46

Well, kind of. I worked for a small business and my boss got older and refused to make any changes whatsoever. He’s now too old to run the business (memory) but won’t sell it or stop it or promote anyone or hire anyone. I always thought since I was his only employee left maybe I could take over one day but it didn’t work out like that my issue was more business related than passion related. I could work for the govt in my field and pay my bills (barely) but I’d rather starve than do that 😂

Dang @Woody B, I can change oil! Call me!! 😂 If I had grandkids I would probably discourage them from trapping skunks . Everyone told me there was no money in wildlife when I was in college but I didn’t care about money then. Still don’t but Im at the age where I kind of need some benefits going forward. funny story how I got into wildlife. I always made straight As in school but I didn’t want to go to college. I just wanted a paycheck so I could go fishing. When I graduated high school, mom said welp time to go to college. I said no thanks, she said well that’s too bad now go to college 😂. She said here is a list of majors, if you pick one instead of being undecided, you are more likely to get a scholarship. Well naturally I picked the one with the word “fish” in it (wildlife/fisheries science) and got a full ride to UT. Student loans are quite the burden on my wife and many friends so I’m grateful I avoided any of that mess. I made it quite a while on extra low salary and learned a skill, just time for something else I reckon. If it wasn’t for health insurance costs I could probably ride it out til the end

@Pat Brown, ole RB is sitting in 21st place in that tourney I posted the pic from on KY lake right now with 16.5 lbs. Also excellent point on the hasty bans, Kentucky lake is a good case study. They placed some sort of live bait restriction there (you can still fish with but can’t move it I believe) because they said juvenile Asian carp look too much like threadfin shad. Fast forward a few years and there have been 0 (zero) juvenile Asian carp in Ky lake whatsoever. Maybe a good preemptive measure but also good example they don’t really know what’s going on. They made a rule for something that doesn’t exist based on political pressure, money, and worry

Asian carp “ruined” this lake. That was so 2 yrs ago

I do it all the time, but I’ve sure got more than one. Many trips I just take one, especially in little kayaks. And as yall probably already know, it’s a spinning rod with a jighead on it. Interchange worm, tiny fluke, or paddle tail on the jighead. They WILL bite one of them

They still brought in some bass over 24” to weigh in but not a whole bunch. When I was camping at lake for 18 yrs ago a guy told me he was snagging slot fish off beds and eating them.

Don’t look now, John cox in second place at lake amistead with 27 lbs and no live sonar

Theres a little tiny pond we used to instruct fly casting on. You could catch a bluegill and two 5 lb bass would eat them off your line and usually break the line, jump and spit it , etc. They eventually became conditioned to follow anyone that was fly casting around the pond. They also followed the guys weedeating because it scared frogs into the water. We showed a young kid the trick and he did it a few times a week and those bass or bluegill wouldn’t touch a hook after that and totally quit following us 😂

I still like skunks I just needed more cash. Bout 1 out of 50 of them is problematic tho

@gimruis, they were in Hawaii , I couldn’t exactly understand what was going on. It seemed like they had gone feral 😂

That guy said he catches 20-30 lbers on the regular, dang!

Steve Kennedy on the bilge podcast today with some truth bombs

Rumor has it Billy westmorland lost an SMB that would have challenged the 12 lb record with a tail spinner . After that he was always going out at like 2-3 am trying to catch it 😂. I don’t care what’s out there, 2-3 am is spooky on dale hollow. It wouldnt surprise me to see something that ate Bigfoot’s papaw out there

Joe’s fly ?

My shadow box needs re glued but I’ve got some too. My dad swore by those meps on the bottom right, he wouldn’t let us dream of casting them because they were $5. I wouldn’t dream of casting it now and I keep another lucky 13 hanging in front of my bass mount

@KP Duty, I made less money than minimum wage in some states for a long time, it’s hard to comprehend 😂

@Zcoker, perhaps the bass got into vegetation and broke the line itself ?

Eat the leftover bluegill bait with big flaky bass meat in the boat? I don’t imagine your imaginary angler being that silly haha

I’ve seen it done locally for catfish and crappie

it was a reintroduction , they weren’t there at all (zero) until maybe 2000-2003 somewhere. It has been quite successful and they even somehow spilled over into watts bar. Watts bar also has some of the native strain that come in from the Emory River but there’s a whole bunch of them right below melton hill dam (that people catch with live skipjack on double hook rigs ) melton hill Muskie are completely artificial as it is a tiny lake trapped between two massive lakes separated by big tall concrete dams. There is occasionally a native Muskie caught on Norris (upstream) that comes from the clinch river but it’s rare. Muskie are quite common in melton hill so either the small fish or eggs have spilled over during floods and established a population directly below the dam. This doesn’t really happen directly below norris dam as it rarely spills over the top and it’s 200 feet tall, and they are extremely rare in Norris lake to begin with in summary they would be in all the water here if they didn’t make dams. They never left the freestone streams, there is even a Cumberland strain subspecies

@Mobasser, there must be quite a few young guys interested in carpentry here because there are a blue million houses and apts being built every day

@JediAmoebaI go thru lots of jigheads and get them way cheaper, jighead worm is my presentation 99% of the time I’m fishing. Trust me, when you are as broke as I am, you factor it in. Can I pay insurance and eat lunch today or buy a single $1.50 jighead and lose 4 in an afternoon? I choose the 10 pack of jig heads for $2.50

@OmegaDPW, it’s good firewood and BBQ smoke wood. Always available since they constantly fall over

If they limit to one transducer and one screen, you still got your tournaments on TV with people looking at a screen