TOXIC

I must admit, I am more of a pico de gallo guy and I am a cilantro junky so I make my own from a recipe a friend who was a Texas native gave me. I double the cilantro and jalapeños and can eat the stuff by the gallon. ?. My wife likes salsa and buys Jacks all natural. It’s ok for salsa. It needs more cilantro though.?

Here is what is on the Gator Guard website: QUICK FIX FOR A PERMANENT SOLUTION Gator Patch is a UV Cure Fiberglass Reinforced Repair Patch Watertight, Impenetrable Repair Patch, Kayak Keel Guard, and Skid Plate Available in 4 sizes: 3"x6",6"x9", 9"x 12" and new 3"18" Kayak Keel Guard A Prep-Peel-Stick application that cures simply with UV light in under an hour Will bond to metal, fiberglass, wood, plastic and virtually anywhere you need protection Repairs almost any surface, moldable around flat or curved areas, dents, joints, or angles Made With Pride in The USA. Perfect in or out of the water! Great for any Fiberglass or Aluminum Boat, Kayaks, Canoes, Containers, Tanks, Plumbing, and more! Can be drilled, tapped, sanded, or painted within an hour Gator Patch™ is easy to use and apply with our Prep-Peel-Stick application. Cures simply with UV light in under an hour. Gator Patch comes with the extraordinary bonding and reliability promise that 100,000s of clients have known for over 20 years. Available in 4 sizes: 3"x6", 6"x9", 9"x12" and a new 3"x18" Kayak Keel Guard - suitable for any patch, repair, or hull protection.

Best way is to go to all of the sales websites, Facebook marketplace, Craig’s list, eBay etc., for your area and see if you can find any comparable boats. That will give you a starting point.

I have spent a lot of time talking up this river and how much fun it is to fish there and the incredibly large biomass that inhabits the water. I guess it was time for what we call a “dues paying day”. We normally do very well because of the time we put in there and can salvage most any day. Spent the entire day out there Friday and had the water mainly to ourselves but struggled mightily. I managed 5 from the back deck with the 2 pictured the best. What worked….Ned rig with an Yamamoto Cali Roll or a 3 inch Senko. Second place….5 inch Senko. Also thrown but zero caught…..crankbait, spinnerbait, fluke, chatterbait, dropshot, and a few I am probably forgetting. My partner who is as good of a stick as me caught 1 after 8 hours. It was a grind. There were also some real good tournament fishermen practicing that we know and they were all having a tough time. It’s like I always say, “If it was easy it wouldn’t be fun”.

There is a product made by Gator Guard (same makers of the keelshield) called Gator Patch. It’s specifically for your problem.

My current boat is great. My last boat was a NITRO 929 that I sold in Florida before I came back. The bells and whistles on the NITRO were failing or non operational but I put that boat through hell with guiding and tournament fishing and it never once failed me.

The inter coastal is a whole different animal but on a freshwater lake I used to guide on, I took out an angler pre-fishing for a tournament on a busy weekend and showed him a pattern that ended up winning the tournament for him. On one of the busiest sections of the lake the boat traffic created a mud line from wakes that extended about 4 feet out from the shore. I showed him how to fish a wide wobble crankbait parallel to the bank so that it weaved in and out of the outer mud line. The bass were just outside the mud line ambushing bait. Boat control was tough but it worked.

While I am inclined to go with this, they restrict their non catchable to dormant and inactive and that they had some inclination to feed, totally sidesteps fish on the nest who are not eating but rather protecting. It just means that there are in fact situations beyond feeding that will garner a strike.

Another thing to remember is if you purchase something on a credit card and after the charge is processed, you find something was not as expected, you can get it charged back to the vendor even if it’s a month later. It’s much harder with a debit card. I’ll admit that the debit card issuers have probably stepped up their game since I was involved with them. I’ve closed over 200 banks and S&Ls in my career and a lot of my info is from assuming banks and their responsibility.

You debit card users break me out in a sweat. ? Having been in the banking industry for 35 years before I retired, I don’t even own a debit card. I do have 4 credit cards structured in different ways. The reason I do not carry a debit card is that if they get hacked, it’s harder to get the charges stopped and depending on your bank, you may not get all of you funds back. Saw it happen too many times. My wife does have a debit card but I don’t like it.

Just goes to show how difficult it is to share the boat with someone. When you do find that person fishing can be an absolute blast regardless of how you fish or even if you catch fish. I have a good friend that I have been fishing with for 25 years. We have never tournament fished together but we are out most every weekend and we go to Michigan every year (18 years straight) and we have started going to Florida every February. Having been a guide for so many years, I know how to treat someone on the back deck and when I take someone new, I make sure they have a good time. Also, we NEVER have any requirements about paying for fuel, always be on time, bring your own food and drink and most of all, have fun.

Ok, a getting a bass to bite a lure when not actively feeding or protecting a bed is an involuntary reaction. Still a reaction but it is involuntary. I’m actually giving them less intellectual credit. It’s no different than the lizard part of the human brain kicks the fight or flight reaction.

Easiest way to remember a reaction strike is to compare it to a fly buzzing by your face. You instinctively swat at it without thinking. That is a reaction strike.

You just had to say it!?. Long ago I learned the one way to rile up a California fisherman was to tell them that their bass are a result of trout stocking. Tru or not I don’t know but what a nutritional treat those trout have to be.?

While I agree Tom, we are experts at screwing up the environment, Mother Nature is a cruel and uncaring wench and doesn’t think twice about cormorants or otters completely cleaning fish out of a body of water and then moving on to the next. We are the only predator species who cares about “conservation”.

I don’t use a swivel or a snap on any bait other than a c-rig. My favorite topwaters are “walk the dog” style baits. How far side to side the lure moves is totally dependent on my input on the rod and how much line I have out. I can turn a Sammy 180 degrees with a good old Palomar knot. ?

Honestly, I don’t think you will find anyone here will disagree with your points. It’s pretty standard knowledge. Even more important now that braid is so widely used and its no stretch characteristics.

Oh, we had behind the wheel instruction as well. ?. I don’t remember what the drivers Ed vehicles were but I do remember they had dual controls.? Growing up in Nebraska, I got my share of winter driving. I took my daughter to an empty lot during one of our few snowstorms here In Virginia and taught her the fine points of snow navigation and how different a 4wd acts than a fwd or rwd.

Back when I was in high school we had “drivers ed” which had textbook learning and we had simulators in a trailer next to the school. This was in the 70’s. ?. Here in Virginia my daughter had to take a sanctioned private company drivers course. Once completed and before she could get her license, she had to appear in front of a judge with a parent. Then I took over and taught her how to drive a stick in a 1993 Jeep Wrangler I bought brand new and used as my commuter vehicle. I knew this would be the end of the jeep but to my surprise at 24 years old, she is still driving it and it currently has 475,000 miles. As a part time gig she now hauls a 60 ft trailer behind a 1 ton diesel delivering horses across the country. Since she lives in the country and manages a horse boarding facility, the poor jeep has taken its share of bumps and bruises from multiple deer hits and even a bear. I taught her not to swerve when encountering wildlife. My advice is to ride with them and communicate all of the defensive driving techniques we have learned over the years. I even rode with her when she started hauling horses and was able to take her through a lot of learning tips.

Well, as I sit here right now having been a fisherman for 50+ years and a fishing guide and having been sponsored by some major rod companies, for the life of me I can not honestly recommend a setup that will cover all the techniques needed to CONSISTENTLY catch both largemouth and smallmouth throughout all the seasons. Not to mention we all end up preferring some techniques over others and tend to match our gear to that technique. The natural learning curve doesn’t lend itself well to “trial and error” with $400 combos. Sure buy once, cry once if you know what you are buying or you can keep on crying as you figure it out. As for $400 being not expensive…..seriously? In my budget that’s not play money. It especially wasn’t when I first started out.

Being new I get the feeling you think that spending more on a combo will make it more versatile in more situations for more species. Actually it’s the opposite. When you get to the price point you mentioned, the rods/reels get more technically specific to a certain bait or group of baits. IMHO you’d be better off to get a few more reasonably priced combos to cover more techniques.

Personally, I do not like tungsten for dropshot weights for a few reasons. First, I get too much bottom feedback with tungsten. Second, tungsten is heavier and therefore smaller in size to lead. Where I fish and how I fish dropshot, smaller weights get hung up more often and with the added cost, I don’t like them. Finally, I have yet to find a manufacturer who uses the quality of harps and swivels that QuickDrop does and that’s my preferred brand.

I got into a somewhat heated conversation on this site about the value of higher end rods. I still think there is a limit to what the human hand can feel and how that equates to cost but I will say this…..sensitivity is an acquired feeling. The more you fish and educate your hands, the more value there will be in stepping up to more sensitive/expensive rods.

I always thought it was just bad luck when birds take aim at you considering the intelligence level of most of them. Then I had this encounter: I was fishing a local 13,000 acre lake and went back into a backwater area on the trolling motor. I spooked up about a dozen Canadian geese. I watched them take off and head down the lake, they made it about 300 yards, banked hard left and came back along their flight path. When they got directly overhead of me, in unison they released a bombing run of crap which rained down on me and my boat. Luckily the boat only took a couple of direct hits but the water was white with missed shots. They then continued on and did not land anywhere near me.

After I moved to Florida and was still in my learning process about gators, I discovered 2 things. When laying on the bank, to the uneducated eye, they look like great fish holding logs. One cast later you discover that you can in fact jump out of your skin. Second, if you mess around and let a gator chase your buzz bait enough, eventually they will come right in the boat via the splashwell to get it.