John Cullum

It's a Bayliner Cobra. It's not gonna make a very good fishing boat. It's more of a fish and ski. Plus it has an older Force motor and thats a BAD thing so make sure you have a good set of oars. See the long storage in the front? Thats were the trolling motor gets stowed when your not fishing. As far as rods and tackle is concerned it has very little useable storage for fishing gear. I think you could get a better FISHING boat than that for the price.Just my 2 cents.

Great story...Thanks for sharing.

I fish boat docks all year round. Depending on the time of year which docks will be the better choices to fish.

I use a 5'9 med/hvy spinning rod for skipping in stained to dirty water. I use a Symetre 2000 with Trilene XL 10 #test. Distance isn't an important as accuracy in stained water. Most dock fish in stained water are less likely to spook than those fish in clear. By using a shorter rod you are less likely to hit a over head shore station or bang your rod tip on something when you setting the hook or fighting the fish. In clear water I use a 6'6 med. You need distance in clear water so you don't spook the fish. Your further away from dock, shore station and other objects so setting the hook won't be a problem. I will spend as long as it takes to make sure I get the angle I want. Most guys are in to big off a hurry to skip the close to the water docks so those are the ones I really key on. When the don't get it on the first try they tend to move on to the next dock. If a dock is close to the water try to skip the bait as far back as you can. In the spring the docks with metal sea walls or rocks on shore will be better than most others. The sea walls and rocks heat up fatser than the rest of the shoreline. I prefer wood docks over metal ones and posted docks over flaoting ones. If your going into a cove the first and last docks in the coves are usually the best. Docks on points are the same way the first and last are usuallt best. The docks with a deep drop off are good also. In the summer shallow docks in the backs of coves or shallow docks that aren't getting any wind are the best. I know this goes against most bass habits with deeper being better in the summer but I have boated more quality fish form shallow docks that are protect from the wind in the summer than any other dock there is. I started off skipping a tube with an HP hook and weight system. But the best bait to learn to skip with is probadly aweightless Senko. Just texas rig it and it'll skip a mile and it'll catch fish too. If you practice enough you can skip jigs, lizards, brush hog and most other baits even those with arms or legs. The centipedes,tubes,Slugg O', Senko type baits skip the best thou, because they create less drag. I also was an scent to my bait for added distance I think a bit of slim creates less drag and scent on your plastics is a good idea anyway. I like Mega Strike for this, it's a great scent and will give your bait slick feel.

Over 1000+ 8 pound bass in only 35 acres?? It seems your odds of catching a monster would be very good after the water clears up. Big baits. Like 10 inch worms and musky sized spinnerbiats and crankbaits in rainbow trout color.

10# test is a good all around line to start with. If you have a smaller spinning reel you can't go really heavy on the line weight anyway or it won't work properly.

2002 Ford- F-150-FX4-5.4L 4X4 Great truck, 75,000 miles run and looks brand new.

I fished the rivers here in Indiana as a kid with no boat and caught fish. Jim and I would backpack a few mile stretch of river and fish alll the eddies and blow downs or rip-rap banks. We actually did pretty well. Alot of times your able to get to spots on a river by foot that you can't by boat. Most of the time we used rubber worms and fished all the currant breaks. We always packed food and water and dry clothes and would fish from dawn till dusk. Depending on how high the river was and how swift the currant was we were able to walk out on the bigger tree and fish them vertical. Some of the tree have been there so long they had trees and weeds growing form the eddies they provided. Those were the best ones to fish. Those eddies would fill up with branches,leaves, and other debries and would form a floating pad of trash. If you reel your worm to your rod tip and poked a hole thru the trash you could fish it. As your rod tip punches thru the floating trash pile let your worm fall to the bottom. Then you just dead stick it for awahile and wait to get a bite. It works like a champ almost everytime we would find one of these "floating trash piles" give it a try It'll probadly work for you too.

My favorite lake would have to be Shafer Lake in Monticellio Indiana. It's full of docks and rip-rap with a few bridges mixed in. It had some stumps and some blow downs but the docks seem to be the key to the big stringers of bass.

A pet brush with the fine steel brissels will work. The kind you would use to brush your dog or cat with. The guy a few houses down from me has a cat that seems to think the boat is his home. I know Ed uses a dog brush made by Hartz. He brushes it all to the end of the flippin' deck and pulls the chunks of. His carpet looks better than mine when he's thru. Can't wait to see him on monday he'll never believe he's not the only one with this problem.

scooter had a great point about pontoons. The Barbee Chain of Lakes here in Indiana is very weedy. In the summer the shoreline is almost choked out with weeds. I have won two of the last three touneys I've fished out there on a pontoon boat pattern. The weeds will not grow under a pontoon because there isn't any light penitration. Most of the boats on a lake will sit there all week so the weeds will grow all around the pontoon. This makes a little pocket of bare bottom under most of the pontoons. Bass will stack up under the pontoon in the little pockets and are usually easy pick-ins. I use a Bitsy Tube in water melon or green pumkin or a Senko in watermelon or black weightless with a 4/0 Owner hook. I've also caught them on floating worm in bubble gum or white and Zoom centipedes in watermelon weightless. Give this pattern a try during the dog days of summer it will produce some nice fish.

I use a 5'9 med/hvy spinning rod for skipping in stained to dirty water. I use a Symetre 2000 with Trilene XL 10 #test. Distance isn't an important as accuracy in stained water. Most dock fish in stained water are less likely to spook than those fish in clear. By using a shorter rod you are less likely to hit a over head shore station or bang your rod tip on something when you setting the hook or fighting the fish. In clear water I use a 6'6 med. You need distance in clear water so you don't spook the fish. Your further away from dock, shore station and other objects so setting the hook won't be a problem. I will spend as long as it takes to make sure I get the angle I want. Most guys are in to big off a hurry to skip the close to the water docks so those are the ones I really key on. When the don't get it on the first try they tend to move on to the next dock. If a dock is close to the water try to skip the bait as far back as you can. In the spring the docks with metal sea walls or rocks on shore will be better than most others. The sea walls and rocks heat up fatser than the rest of the shoreline. I prefer wood docks over metal ones and posted docks over flaoting ones. If your going into a cove the first and last docks in the coves are usually the best. Docks on points are the same way the first and last are usuallt best. The docks with a deep drop off are good also. In the summer shallow docks in the backs of coves or shallow docks that aren't getting any wind are the best. I know this goes against most bass habits with deeper being better in the summer but I have boated more quality fish form shallow docks that are protect from the wind in the summer than any other dock there is. I started off skipping a tube with an HP hook and weight system. But the best bait to learn to skip with is probadly aweightless Senko. Just texas rig it and it'll skip a mile and it'll catch fish too. If you practice enough you can skip jigs, lizards, brush hog and most other baits even those with arms or legs. The centipedes,tubes,Slugg O', Senko type baits skip the best thou, because they create less drag. I also was an scent to my bait for added distance I think a bit of slim creates less drag and scent on your plastics is a good idea anyway. I like Mega Strike for this, it's a great scent and will give your bait slick feel. The way I skip is I almost roll my casting hand clockwise as my arm goes foward. Kind of the same motion you would mix something by hand with a fork. It's kind of a rolling motion with the start of the cast with the back off your hand facing up and then as your arm goes foward with the rod tip low to the water you turn your wrist so your palm is facing up at the end of the skip. Most of the lakes were I live are over crowded and stained so skipping docks is a must.

Cephkiller,I thought it was GREAT. When I seen the post earlier I was thinking of all the things to have a type o on. It had me cracking up. Snag,I didn't get a chance to take a picture. I'll be on the lake tomorrow so I'll take it then and send it to you.

In some cases the Mom and Pop deals are better. The marina that is one of my sponsors is considered a little guy. If and when my boat has a problem I'm treated with red carpet service. He stops what he's doing and gets my boat in and fixed. He works hard for me because I do my best to take care of him. On the other hand the mega boat store down the street that my buddy is sponsored by, he is on the "waiting list" to be serviced. He waits 2-3 weeks to get his boat in and is kicking himself for taking the deal. Not to mention he is also on the highest level they have of sponsored anglers. Big isn't always better.

By keeping them in a "dress"er nobody ever wants to borrow them and they never ask if I'll send them any. I'll take a picture and try to post it. I got them from WalMart. I think I paid a buck something a piece.

I have a 10 Tupperware bins that are 7.5 inches wide and 12.5 inches long. They are wide enough to fit most kinds of soft plastics bags in. You place them in the bins like they hang form the hooks at the store. The bins will fit around 20 bags and they are standing up so the labels are easy to read. When your looking for a soft plastic you can easily find them. I put Senkos in one, lizards,Norries Bugs in another and so on. I can fit 6 bins full of soft plastics under my rod organizer. I don't even put the lids back on they stay in the bins even in rough water. Most of the water I fish I've fished before so I will take the bins out of the boat and re-fill them with the types of soft plastics I will be useing. After the tourney/pre-fishing I will re-fill them again for the next lake. Most of the water I fish is stained so there are some bins that stay in the boat almost all year. I keep all my "extra"bags of soft plastics in a dress with like kind in each drawer. So far it's the fastest most organized way I found.

I agree about Stratos, you get alot of boat for the money. They ride nice, fish well and have a pretty fast hull. A few guys that fish the water I do run Stratos's and they are very happy with them. I haven't been in to many Bass Cats so I'm not gonna comment on them.

Prayers on the way from my family tonight.

Whether he's good for the sport or not I'm not sure. What he is thou is a marketing machine. If he was like everyone else this thread wouldn't have been started. People talk about him. Whether it is good or bad theres always a buzz about the "IKE". I think what seperates him from everyone else is he's has the cockeyness/swager about him that may turn alot of people off. But he more than backs that cockyness up on the water. He's never to far down on the list for Angler of the Year and seems to be in the Top 5 several times a year. I had lunch with him and his wife at the time in Chicago back in 2000. He explained to me and my tourney partner what he had to do to get to where he was today. He said he borrowed money from anyone and everyone he could. He was dead broke when he made thru the Federation Finals. He didn't even have a truck or boat payment to make and he was still in the red. We talkked for around an hour or and I left with a better understanding of the Federation and maybe of life. He put every thing on the line to follow his dream. The guys paided his dues and he is reeping the benifits bigtime. It's good to see a Federation guy have success on the tour. He's not my favorite angler out there but he is one that I follow.

http://home.comcast.net/~xcusme/2070.wmv Great commercail.

Big balsa crankbaits.

Post spawn bass are in transition from. They will be moving from their spawning grounds to the deep usually when the water temp is between 75-80. Migration routes between shallow and deep and some creek channels or main lake points are good to fish during this time. When the bass stop moving some will be deep on humps or other deep structure, while some will remain shallow in the deep cover like wood or slop or shallow weed lines. C-riggs and deep crankbaits are a good choice for the deep fish. Also a texas rigged worm or a grub will get you a few bites. For the shallow fish use frogs over the slop, cranks and spinnerbaits around the wood. Lipless crankbaits can also be a good choice early in the morning and late in the eveing on the flats.

I pretty quick sometimes to part with a $100 but not that quick.... It sounds like a gimmick to me. Unless he's buying in huge bulk I don't see how he can sell a $100 All Star with the vibrating mech. attached to it for $100 bucks. It seems if the rod retails for $100 he would have to charge a few bucks more to make ends meet and turn a profit.

If your fishing post spawn fish in that temp some may already be up close to bedding. I would fish the shallow coves, or shallow flats close to the creek channels.The fish should be shallow and maybe really shallow depending on water color. Any shallow rip-rap or wood I would also fish with a buzzbait early then crank both prefurably a big balsa bait thru the wood. Any cat-tails? If there is I would pitch them with a jig after the sun comes up. Rattle traps, shallow crankbaits and buzzbaits would be my lures of choice. That cove with the breaks off into the main creek channel should hold some fish.

I fish Braidwood, which is a power plant lake just south of Joilet, every year about 15-20 times in March and early April. The key thing I usually look for is which way the wind is blowing. Most power plant lakes are windy whether it's windy out or not. I will key off the windy points or wind blow coves, the more wind the better in my opinion. I use a Cordell Big O in firetiger or craw color. Most of the fish seem to be tight to the rip-rap and facing it. At Braidwood and a few other lakes I fish knowing the fish are facing the shore line is a big key. I will keep my crankbait very tight to the shoreline rocks. Most of the fish I catch tend to trap the bait against the rocks when they hit it. I didn't get as many bites if I kept my bait a few feet of of shore because I believe the bait was behind the fish. The best spots seem to be windy banks that have a point the wind is blowing across. I put my boat facing the windy and fish the point. Most of the time the wind will be heavy so I crank with spinning gear. I would key off the wind and the current produced by the plant drawing water. Anytime you have current going across a point in a power palnt lake the fish seem to be there. In the slackwater or eddies we c-rig Senkos or baby brush hogs.