TOXIC

First decide if you want glass or tin. Then we'll go from there.

I don't fish the same techniques in different times of the year. In other words, some techniques are seasonal. Some are better suited for certain bodies of water. Some are better suited for parts of the country. Without knowing where, when, and what you are fishing for, nothing is off the table. You can fish em, you just might not catch em. Nothing builds confidence better than catching. Being able to feel how exactly a bite feels on different techniques is key.

20 years of unchecked Crappie and Bluegill growth may...just may....have them overpopulating the pond. You will know if you start catching them and they are all stunted and in large numbers. If so, do your friend a favor and aggressively start culling the panfish. Either take them home for a fishfry, use them for fertilizer or whatever purpose to get them out of the pond. You didn't say how big the pond is but the smaller the more likely the panfish have overpopulated it.

To me there's no difference between "pan frying" and "deep frying" just the method in which you submerge your battered fillet in hot oil. Since the majority of my locally caught fish are Crappie, the methods are (ranked in order of my taste). First and best is battered in my turkey fryer with a good quality peanut oil then hushpuppies and home cut fries after the fish in the same oil. Batter is either a simple flour, beer, egg wash, spiced cracker crumb or believe it or not, Uncle Bucks is a good batter. While I love spicy food, I have found you can overpower the taste of Crappie pretty easily, so I go light. I go a little heaver on the spice with Perch or Walleye because they have a more pronounced flavor that you can still taste through the spices. Cleanup and the cost of peanut oil makes my favorite kind of a pain in the rear. Second is just the fillets on a fish rack basted with garlic butter on the grill. Third is broiled in the oven, no batter. I do like to consume fish and will say some of the best I ever ate was Cajun Catfish nuggets. I grew up eating fried Carp sandwiches from Joe Tess' restaurant (don't knock it till you've tried it). I've had my fair share of many species of ocean going fish prepared in many different ways. Many other fresh water as well. I'm not that fond of trout. My wife and daughter ate a lot of Tilapia until I showed them how it was raised. They switched to Salmon and I make sure they purchase wild caught and not farm raised (another bad internet expose'). I like sushi a lot. I do consume my fair share of fish but I am getting more concerned with all of the consumption advisories nowadays.

Just for future reference....a wind knot doesn't require wind. There's a number of reasons you could have gotten the "wind knot" you show. How your line was originally spooled. How much line was spooled. Type of backing on spool. If you made a few casts before it did this, you might have had a small knot that caused a bigger knot when re-cast. Could have had a loop of line catch a rod guide. I've actually had the line catch the rod hook keeper!! With the weight you were throwing you could have had what I call the bullwhip effect from trying to cast too far with the setup you have. I hate picking knots out of braid but there's not much you can do but untangle and reel it back up. Just make sure the process of picking it out did not weaken the line.

Flood watches/warnings all over the state. I'd wager even Anna will be muddy to the 208 bridge if not farthur downlake. We have a friend coming down from Michigan to fish with us the week after Christmas and we are hoping to be able to hit the upper stretches of Aquia Creek on the Potomac for some Crappie but I am wary at this point. We will be going to the hotside of Anna...maybe a lot!!

What type of fishing are you doing? Cast and retrieve or bobber? What are you fishing for? What is your rod and reel setup? What baits are trying to fish? Lots of consideration goes into line choice.

Shhhhh....Don't tell him. He's coming down to Virginia to fish with us the week after Christmas. And you should also know that any spot on that lake is Mini's chit!!

In my personal opinion, yes. But there are some aluminum boats that a KeelShield by Gator Guards will not work on. From the FAQ: KeelShield will not work on some aluminum boats. Some Alumacraft , G3 Angler, Lowes and Lunds. KeelShield will not conform to boats with the knife like reinforced keelbone. Please contact us for more info on these brands of boats.

You found "A" spot. You won't know if it's "The" spot until you fish it.

Bait choice will definitely have an effect. I threw a lot of scrounger heads in Florida and kept my trailer selection to longer, more slender baits to get the most action.

I have 2 factors to consider when choosing what size reel. First, I always use backing to eliminate wasting line. I respool often. So, "normally" for me, I get the larger reels for line capacity on setups where I will be making long casts.

Not in a public setting. I'm not fond of bashing any pro but I will say the incident in question involved him, his wife, his publicist/business partner, attorneys and him trying to get a friend of mine fired from his job as a Deputy Sheriff. I say that to quantify that it wasn't just some minor incident like a bad day on the boat. It was ugly to say the least. Not bragging but I have interacted with a lot of fishermen at that level (even have them stay at my house) and they all have a bad day. It's tough to keep a smile on your face and good attitude 100% of the time. That's not what this was at all.

Educate me, who originally came up with the term "Bait Monkey"?

Sometimes there's a big difference between what is my favorite and what I need to throw to catchem.

I assume you have a 24 volt TM and a cranking battery correct? General rule of thumb is to get the biggest you can fit in there. I also assume your big motor is an EFI or an XR6? Check your owners manual or google up what the cranking amps are required for your motor. Dual purpose for the cranker and regular wet cells for the troller. I'm not a fan of the interstates. It has been my experience that you get good ones or bad ones and many more bad ones than good. I went through 3 sets one year guiding. Swore them off after that. Regular old everstarts and easy replacement anywhere there is a wally world.

Either one is going to tire you out. A baitcaster chucking and winding is a lot more casts compared to spinning but I can tell you my forearms have gotten pretty sore from the weight of the rod holding it parallel while fishing slow plastics even though you don't reel as much. And yes my rods are balanced. It helps but doesn't eliminate it.

How about a positive story? One of the most traumatic experiences of my life was losing my maternal Grandfather to leukemia. He was 52. I was in my teens. I am 1 of 4 grandchildren. Only child of his daughter and oldest of the four grandkids. My maternal Uncle has 2 boys and a girl. I spent every summer growing up with my grandparents on the farm in Iowa. We lived in Omaha, Nebraska. My grandparents went to Canada every year, Lake Lac la Ronge in Saskatchewan. Back then you had to drive 150 miles of gravel road to get to the cabins they stayed at (Lindy's). It was no cushy trip. You had to split your own wood for heat and carry your own water. The standing rule for the grandkids was that you could go as soon as you were old enough to pull your own weight. I was the first and only one to make the trip before he passed. He brought his own twin 35 hp Johnson motors for the deep v wooden boats used. He had the same Indian guide every year. To say it was a trip of a lifetime is an understatement. We had shore lunch every day, we caught walleye, pike and musky by the hundreds. We did a fly in to an even more remote lake by seaplane. It instilled in me my love for fishing. When he passed, I gave up fishing. It was too painful. Fast forward 25 years. A neighbor prodded me back into picking up a fishing rod again. We went every once in a while and I got interested in smallmouth wading on the Shenandoah river here in Virginia. I had access to 3 miles of isolated riverfront and camped there often. It was on a warm summer's morning, I woke up just before sunrise, gathered my spinning rod, put on my waders and headed out to the middle of the river in a heavy fog. I could only see about 4 feet in front of me but I knew this section of the river like the back of my hand. The river was perfect, the air cool, the current smooth, no wind and other than the sound of the river, there was beautiful quiet and calm. Made a few casts, caught a couple smallmouth when all of a sudden I felt someone touch my shoulders as if putting their arm over them. I don't know how I knew, but I knew it was my grandfather. Just as sure as I sit here and type this I knew it was him. No doubt in my mind. I heard his voice and saw his smile all in my mind. It was if he was standing right next to me. I felt his joy. Just at that same time, out of the mist and fog came a herd of about 15 deer wading across the river. They didn't spook, they split and went around me on both sides, close enough I could have touched them. As they disappeared into the fog, I found myself once again alone in the river with total peace and serenity covering me like a blanket. From that day forward I was a fisherman at heart and to this day, every time I pick up a fishing rod, a little bit of that memory resurfaces and I smile. Every time.

Personally, I am interested to see what happens on the sponsorship side. I will have access to "some" inside info but not a lot, most all of those deals are held very close to the vest. With the added tours and the sponsors wanting to be part of all of them if possible, logically means less sponsorships or lower dollar sponsorships to stretch the funds across multiple trails. It might even manifest as the loss of lower level sponsorships to fund the bigger players. Sorry Tom, I hope Martens blows his motor every day of the tournament. He went well out of his way to earn that type of attitude from me. I used to be a fan.

If you are skilled enough, you can get the middle of the road gear ratio and speed up or slow down as required. Some like the adjustment to be made at the reel level vs the hand speed level and keep the retrieve basically the same for every reel.

If we were all honest with ourselves, a good part of the fun in fishing is the simple buying baits. Whether it be different colors, styles or types, there is a certain amount of joy from just owning them. It's like women with shoes or purses!!

Just in case anyone doesn't know what Wide Spool Technology is, I have attached a pic. i use those reels for braid and for long casting requirements on mono. These are a couple of my older reels that I can't seem to wear out.

IMHO a frogging rod and a regular topwater rod are no where near the same.

It's easy for me....For Plastics, if Yamamoto doesn't make it, I don't throw it although with their lineup you would be hard pressed to find a style of plastic they don't make. For every other bait I use the old fishing saying "Everything made today is just a variation of something that has already been made". There are very few, if any, new offerings that are not modifications of existing baits. If I have some variation....I don't buy it. If it's truly something "new", I'll give it a try. That keeps my Bait Monkey buys to a minimum.

Always a terrible loss. I lost my mother to an aneurysm, my father and 2 friends to alcoholism, my grandfather to leukemia, my grandmother to Hodgkin disease. It's never easy. Some things we can delay or prevent other things not so much. At 61 years old, I have come to terms with my mortality. As a matter of fact, I did when I was 20 due to a terrible jeep accident that left me in a coma for over a month. I am a firm believer that when it's your time it's your time and there's not a lot you can do about it.