TOXIC

Luckily for me, I have productive rivers around me to fish. They do not seem to be affected by the dog days of summer as much. Dawn and dusk feeding patterns and current that sets up spots that hold all summer. As for pre spawn and spawn, we go to St Clair for spawners in May (we got totally owned by the weather this year) and Florida in February. I’m all about road trips and different ecosystems altogether. That makes fishing fun for me.

Just a note to those who are experiencing higher than normal temps, it might be good idea to have your AC serviced. Nothing like losing your AC in a record breaking heatwave. Went to my daughters farm last night for her birthday and for one of her gifts, I bought her a commercial very large pedestal fan for her horse barn. She has box fans above every stall but nothing for the center isle. I cleaned up the downed tree in my side yard and will now not venture out unless absolutely necessary.😂

Yamamoto via GSM has come out with so many new plastics, it’s going to take me more than one season to give them all a try.

Well, those summer intense storms rolled in and we took another hit yesterday. My roof looks like a logging camp again. Tulip poplar decided to shed a widow maker. Luckily it’s away from the house. I’ll leave it down for a couple of days since the deer are feeding heavily on the leaves.

I follow a private meteorologist who works for airlines, farmers, etc., for longer term forecasts, and then I verify with live radar. He has gone into great detail why weather apps will never be correct due to how they analyze data and models. He has been wrong himself but always has a reason or explains how he missed or misread a model.

I am in the East Coast crockpot and expecting the heat dome in full force. I’m going to take the boat to my daughters farm and put it in one of her barns while an asphalt company comes out and reseals my driveway. They did it last spring and over the winter, almost all of the sealer came off and gathered at the foot of my driveway next to the house. Left the same rubber pellets you would find if someone was doing burnouts on dry pavement. 😝

The easy way to flesh out a scam because the scammers can mirror everything about a site or product, including web address, even going so far as to use AI to make it look like a famous fisherman is endorsing it (I think it happened to Zona) is to open your browser and go directly to the products homepage. I saw it with HUK gear selling shirts 6 for $26 or some other stupid discount. Went to HUK’s website and no mention.

A lot of “what ifs” in your questions. Also different species may act differently. Generally speaking, a bass quickly released will return to the bed depending on what stage of spawn it is in…pre, post or guarding fry. Spawning areas are consistently reused as are some bed locations but I would doubt it’s by the same previous years occupants. First come, first served, they then will get protective.

Define “vintage” both rod and reel. I have 15-20 year old gear that casts just as far as my newer gear. As an aside what are you fishing where you need to bomb cast? The one and only lure I’ve ever found that I need a cast longer than normal is a deep diving crank. I see a lot of fishermen thinking every cast has to empty the spool when in fact it doesn’t.

In my part of the country it’s a definite problem. My daughter went to a private school in the Blue Ridge mountains for high school and when she got old enough to drive I told her to NEVER swerve or brake for wildlife if above 45mph. She drove my jeep wrangler and the chances of losing control or god forbid, a rollover were much increased. Especially since she was traveling at dawn or dusk. The amount of wildlife that jeep hit was impressive. Just about every ground critter you can imagine including a bear. She avoided her fair share as well but my shop wanted to make small outline decals of the animals and put them on the hood like the old fighter jets.

Sorry I’m a little late to the party but as has been said, the bait is a Yamamoto Yamatanuki. It comes in 3 sizes and can be fished on everything from a Ned to weightless depending on size. This bait was only available to the overseas market before GSM decided to release it here. It is a worthwhile addition to your plastic selection. While it may be hard to find at some outlets, tackle warehouse I’m sure offers them or you can go directly to baits.com and see the sizes and colors.

Funny vid but you do realize that is Florida and running in that grass is bass boat territory. 😝 Running trails through the Kissimmee grass is standard operating procedure and if you zig when you should zag you end up on solid ground. I can’t imagine meeting a canoe or kayak back on those trails. Ps…we weren’t stuck in this pic.😉

I am the type who, like you, maintain my vehicles well, put a lot of miles on them and expect them to last. You say you are on a fixed income and that indicates you are watching your $$$. In my world, the price of a repair is directly related to the value of the vehicle. When the repairs are getting near the value, it’s time to go. BUT….there is something to be said about the “devil you know” vs starting over with a new vehicle. With your issues so early on in ownership, I would be at the dealer asking some serious questions. If I couldn’t get any good answers or possibly a “Goodwill” discount, I’d be pressing them for top dollar trade in on a different model. I have a 2016 Silverado High Country with the 5.3 and 8 speed transmission. It currently has 105,000. I bought it brand new. There are some known problems with the lifters and the transmission in my truck. Things that are beyond my control through proper maintenance. All you can do is keep your maintenance up to date and your fingers crossed. My truck has paid for itself with the mileage (almost all towing boats) so I may shoulder one of the major failures but not both.

Couple of things to remember, first a good spot will always repopulate and possibly with a bruiser that wasn’t there before. We fish the same areas on the Rappahonock river for example, because there’s a reason why the fish set up in those areas due to tide, current, structure, etc. that never means the same fish will be there. In the guide business, I had what we guides call a “milk run” of spots most likely to put clients on fish. I also put some travel lakes in my yearly rotation, to make it fun. We go to Florida in February and Michigan in May to spice up our year. We’ve fished multiple lakes in Florida and always St Clair in Michigan and you know what?…….We fish many of the same spots every trip. 😉

If you launch at the marina, just have them raise it for you, test drive and if it isn’t right, have them drop it back down. Heck, they more than likely have a setup guy there anyway and he could give you the skinny on whether it would help. It would only take them 5 minutes to drop it or raise it.

I’ve been putting off doing a recap of that trip but I guess I should since I normally scream it from the rooftops. If the way I am dressed in this pic says anything, it’s how the entire week went. We did eventually find some fish but conditions were terrible.

I have found that other than to nudge you in the right direction, or more specifically help you make your own decision, specific answers should be left up to you. I’ve seen many, many ads that look good, give all the right numbers and when you go looking at it, it’s a pile of do-do. You are going to get the fans of the maker they own as the only option you should consider and the haters of other brands telling you to steer away from other makers. I would never tell you a motor is good then have it grenade your first trip out but I will tell you that you should have any motor on any boat looked at by a good marine mechanic. Glen has plenty of videos on how to evaluate a used boat. Take some time and watch them and come back with any questions you may have. I took my buddy who was a crew chief of a helicopter squadron and who does all the mechanical stuff on my motor and who has owned many, many boats, go with me when I was looking at buying. He steered me away from a disaster boat I would have bought and pushed me to my current boat that I would have walked from. That was after me thinking I knew my way around boats pretty well.

We got sucker punched on our annual trip to St Clair. Cold front after a warm front pushed them out and then 30mph winds. It was brutal. A week later would have been epic.

When I was looking for a new to me used boat, one of the ways I considered what I was looking for was to pay attention to what the locals run on the bodies of water I planned on fishing, keeping in mind that specific manufacturers weren’t as important as size and type. I will say that if you require safety on big water, that eliminates a lot of choices. And unless you are buying new, there are a lot of things to look at on used rigs.

In that situation I try to throw something that is the opposite of what the natural forage is. Sometimes it’s better to be different.

I seriously don’t like catching cats and around here there is an over population of blue cats. 6lb test and a Ned rig. We had to chase it down a couple of times. They roll and slime your line and the net and the boat carpet. I will say, prepared properly, catfish are a fine eating fish. As for the gators, we heard them growling in February when we were on Headwaters.

I’ll give a little example of how information sharing can get out of hand. My fishing partner whom I have gone to St Clair and Florida with every year and we fish most weekends together and have fished together for over 25 years, recently had a heated “disagreement” on spot sharing. On our trip to St Clair this year was extreeeeemly tough fishing. We are there 7 days at the same time every year. Wind was howling and the temperature dropped to near freezing. We actually trailered over to the other side of the lake due to the wind direction. We were having a tough time and he looked at some satellite pics of the lake for water clarity and he noticed a spot on a spot in a very popular area that we always fish every year. We went there on our last day (trailered across again) and had the best day of the week. He posted on a lake specific site we are both on and included some pics. I had some pics as well and put one up on his post. He texted me and told me to take the geo location off the image and I asked him why? He was distant and it was clear he was protecting the spot. I told him not to be a spot snob and that it will be fished 10,000 times this season even if by dumb luck. Added to the fact that those fish have probably already moved and we won’t be back until next year. We rarely disagree but this one got heated.

Exactly why my optometrist who is a fisherman strongly recommended my sunglasses be poly and not glass. You may lose a bit of clarity but per him it’s better than picking glass out of your eye because there’s no such thing as shatterproof glass lenses.

I don’t know if it’s still true because I don’t reuse or repair plastics but superglue and mend it never used to work on Yamamoto baits due to their formula.

I have a 2005 Yamaha HPDI and the hours on it can be read with Yamaha software. As for average hours it really depends on how much you fish. A good rule of thumb for the average weekend warrior is 100 hours a year I’ve read. My motor has like 490 hours. As for lifespan, 2 stroke outboards don’t like to sit so low hours doesn’t always mean more reliability.