TOXIC

Yeppers, that one I’d say is too far gone. Being sponsored by SPRO for a number of years, I have thrown a lot of their frogs but never had one fail to that level. It looks in pretty good shape otherwise. I would box it up and send it back to them for replacement. As an aside, some people like to seal the area where the double hooks exit the bait and the nose area but I always liked a couple of mine (not the poppers) to take on water so that when I am fishing the heavy weeds on the Potomac, I could pause the frog in the open spots and it would slowly sink and getting hammered in the process. ?

I think heat will definitely mold some lines to the spool so the use of line conditioner products is always a good thing but I don’t imagine laying on the deck or rod locker is much cooler and you have the added uv damage. Braid shouldn’t be affected unless it is brand new and still has a heavy amount of whatever type of waxy product they coat it with. I really dislike braid until that coating is worn off.

It will heal. Believe me, I have seen smallmouth with 50% of their bottom jaw ripped off and healed up and some with their mouth like hamburger from being yanked off the bed time after time.

Mid 5’s. In a weeks time I probably had 40-50 that size and averaged 60 fish a day. Here is a weighed 5.5, we got tired of weighing them. ?

Now you know how lucky we were on lake St Clair for a week of 75-89 degrees and zero wind. It was a true freak of nature and we had a blast. Normally we would be there this week leaving tomorrow. Luckily I packed a couple of sun shirts along with my long Johns.?. Mornings were a bit cool but it warmed up nicely every day.

They do make weed less Ned heads but to me the real advantage to a Ned is that you can change up the profile of the bait with whatever plastic you decide to use. A tube is a tube and although you can change the size mainly you change the color. With a Ned, I can change from a long slender bait like a Yamamoto Pro Senko which is long and slender, to a 4” regular Senko which is thicker or to a Yamamoto California Roll which is thin with a large flat tail at the end to give them something different. Same applies to a dropshot.

You are not too far off with what just may be the truth. It has been said that when released, a bass will give off a “danger” pheromone that warns other bass. That is why a lot of old timers will well a fish rather than immediately releasing it.

Hope he is ok. He is a good guy.

Probably a good idea since replacing it at a later date might be more expensive than keeping what you have. This is a very odd market right now that I predict will cool some once most everyone gets back to work and won’t have the time to be on the lakes and rivers. When I buy or sell a boat, there is a base price that I come up with for a boat of the age I am looking at and the condition and hours of the big motor. After all, that is where your biggest expense goes. The rest is fluff pricing. In normal times, you never get a premium price for a lot of the upgrades you do unless it’s big ticket items like lithium batteries and a couple year old networked graphs. Right now boats are crazy high.

Being a guide and taking out a lot of inexperienced clients that I rigged up Senkos for here is my advice...l 1. lose the braid. Braid is very inefficient in the wind on weightless baits and does not carry the feeling of a strike if it is not somewhat tight with the Senko. 2. upsize your hook. My normal hook size is a 4.0 and I will upsize to a 5.0 if the wind is really whipping. I had clients gut hooking too many fish with a 3.0, cut it in half by upsizing. 3. keep the wind either in your face or at your back. Cross winds are the toughest to fish. 4. when you cast immediately after the Senko hits the water, put your rod tip in the water. This keeps the wind from pulling out extra line and making the bow that keeps you from feeling bites.

The old formula for WD40 included fish oil, it has since been changed. I do spray it in my terminal tackle box to keep hooks, weights, snaps, swivels, etc., from rusting. My boat compartments have a tendency to hold moisture and it helps to keep them from rusting. I will also spray it in my hollow body frog box to keep the rubber pliable and to keep them from sticking together.

No problem. Do it as early as possible because the guides get booked for the season pretty early.

You can’t pick a better place. I know multiple guides on the lake and they have clients come from all over the US and even some other countries to experience what this fishery has to offer. You can but it’s pretty limited. I was wrong in my original statement on how far we ran in the boat. It was 180 miles. You’d be better off saving up your $$ and hiring a guide for 1/2 a day.

Ice cream is in my blood. My all time favorite was made by my grandfather, hand churned with double cream made from cream fresh outta the cows in the pasture behind my great grandparents farm. Flavor it any way you want as long as he double boiled Hershey bars for a hard shell topping or used fresh squeezed apple cider for a float. Some nights he would make sherbet. Normally we didn’t go to bed without a bowl of ice cream of some sort.

Just got back from our annual trip to Lake St Clair and had one of the best years in our 18 years of going up there from Virginia. The threat of high water kept us out of our traditional cottage on Harsens Island so even though the water was down we secured another cottage. We had to suffer in a 1.5 million dollar waterfront cottage on the North Chanel.?. Only downside was we could not leave our boats in the water and had to launch them by Browns bar every day. We document our trips really well and I could literally put up pics of hundreds of smallmouth we caught. I’m not one of those guys so you’ll just have to take my word for it and I’ll post a few pics from the trip. Why was it so good? Well, we timed it perfectly. The first wave of really big spawners was moving up and we were on the front edge and were able to catch them on their way in. I have no problem bed fishing but as a rule we won’t do it as our only technique. There’s no thrill in catching a smallmouth off the bed whose mouth looks like hamburger. In all the fish we caught, I can say for sure that three had been caught before us. One I know for sure because I removed somebody’s dropshot hook and weight from its mouth. The weather was the best we have ever had. A week straight of 75-85 degree days in the first real warm front which is really odd because normally we would be up there this week if we went on our normal schedule and we have been snowed on in the past. Wind was not a factor for the entire week which allowed us to run anywhere we wanted and we did logging over 100 miles on the water. There’s not too many places we didn’t go on the American side. Here are a few pics of our banner trip.

What am I missing here? I want a dropshot when the bottom is mucky. While the weight is in the muck, the bait is dancing around perfectly clean above it. I adjust my tag line depending on the bottom composition.

Yamamoto Pro Senko and California Roll for finesse and a 7” Kut Tail for the big bait.

Never leave home without it. Saved a trip to lake St Clair one year because it was the only bait the smallmouth would hit. Drug it weightless like a tube. Yamamoto DShad.

Unless I am going deeper than 50 feet, I use a 1/4 oz QuickDrop weight. In my experience, the best dropshot weight on the market. Premium components make a big difference on how many you lose. I have used a single QuickDrop weight for an entire week on lake St Clair dragging it through cabbage, sand grass, rocks and wood. I use a #1 gamakatsu EWG hook tied directly to the line. I do not nose rig any of my baits, they are all Texas rigged. I’m not a fan of the hooks with built in swivels and harps. IMHO it’s not necessary to have a release point at the hook and the weight. I never knot the line below the weight harp either. That totally defeats the purpose of the harp.

My meat fishing is in the fall after the water temps drop close to or below the 50 degree mark. I find that cold water crappie taste better and the meat is firmer. I’m leaving for Lake St Clair this week for a week of fishing and if by chance we get into a walleye bite, then a few of them will for sure be coming back to the cottage for dinner. We have even talked about targeting them for a day.

I can’t tell you how many bags of Senkos and 3.0 gamakatsu ewg hooks I’ve handed out over the years. Yamamoto sends me bulk sample packs of baits just for this reason. Feels really good to help someone become a better angler.

Sounds like the website was lagging the sales numbers and whoever the retailer was did the right thing by refunding your money. To me, that’s good customer service. I have seen retailers just notify that your item is on back order and will ship when available. Sometimes you don’t get that notification until you receive a partial order.

Freaked me out the first time one of our local St Clair buddies showed us how to do it. We do it in big and little muscamoot bays. Depends on how low the water is but you run in and trim up as you sit down so you don’t drag too hard. Getting back up on plane is a bit more difficult but both of those bays are prime spawning areas so it’s well worth it. Your only other option is to idle a couple of miles out to deeper water. There are no rocks or hard bottom and we are not running junker rigs?. The “S” turn accomplishes 2 things. The first being laying the boat over gives a few more inches of water and second it creates a wake that you can run the boat up on like a surfer and get more water depth and speed. Obviously the key is getting the nose of the boat down ASAP and that’s why the #2 guy lays on the front deck. It’s only for about 15 seconds. In 17 years we have never damaged a prop or spun a hub. The local guys told us in the beginning, skegs were never meant for paint. ?

Unfortunately usually a lot of cats. Here is one from the rap that I caught on a Ned rig and 6lb test line.

We do it all the time on st Clair but like I said it’s got to be a sand bottom. If 2 in the boat one sits up on the deck, hydraulic jackplate up and get a rolling slow start and crank the wheel in an “S” pattern. Works about 75% of the time. When you do the S turn you can actually climb the boat up on the wave you create by turning. ?