TOXIC

Without knowing how serious you are about your fishing, it would be a guess as to what gear to recommend. If you have aspirations about getting serious, I would recommend looking on the swap and sell forums for some higher quality used gear. If you are a weekend warrior or want to work your way up to better gear, I would recommend some middle of the road gear that won't break the bank and will perform well.

Great topic!! I'll let you know in June!! That's when I retire and will begin the search for my lake house. My wife wants to continue to work for a few years so I plan to hook up the boat and go to all of the lakes on my possible retirement list. Likewise, I am lucky enough to be in a "group" of fishing friends who enjoy traveling to lakes all over the country to fish. I will say, after my first trip to St Clair in Michigan, that place is special. I've been going back for 16 years. We are looking at possibly having a couple of retirement places since I do not want to deal with winter ever again!! I just love the Northern lakes with their clear water and multiple species......especially Smallmouth. I can do without the winters though. So, my retirement lake may be North but I foresee a condo or something down South for the winters. The fun is going to be in the search!! That's why I am retiring with, hopefully a good chunk of time left to pursue my fishing goals. I can't wait!!

@Catt Here is my float setup although I don't think you need any help..... Line through float to a pinch weight to a Crappie jig. I adjust the float to the depth I want with a piece of fishing line tied on above the float. My buddy uses a clip on float and just sets it to the depth he wants. I like to cast so my setup puts the float right down at the bait for casting. As for my trip this last weekend, we had a tough go. Raining, cold barometric pressure and tide was wild and although we marked HUGE schools of them, we couldn't get them to bite well. We tried everything. We caught a few nice ones but not the 40-50 fish days we are used to. Got reports from friends who were also out and they had it tough as well. I'll be back out there again soon. You can bet on that. I've been holding off filling the freezer until the water gets colder. It was in the high 40's which is perfect. We just had a bad day conditions wise.

Per BassMaster: If you read a lot of fishing magazines or watch a lot of fishing television shows, you've doubtlessly read or heard someone use the terms "structure" and "cover" interchangeably. Well, structure and cover are not the same thing. They are very different, and using the terms correctly is important because it avoids unnecessary confusion and leads to a greater understanding of the sport and bass. Let's start with some definitions. "Structure" consists of contour changes on the lake or stream substrate. Examples of structure include channels, dropoffs, flats and points. "Cover" is an object or objects like vegetation, a stump, rock, boat dock or bridge piling that creates an ambush point for a predator (in our case, the bass ... but it could just as easily be a pike, muskie or other ambush feeder). Cover offers a hiding place from prey or predators. Structure is part of a bigger picture; it may offer access to deep water or serve as a bass' navigational reference point of some permanence. They are not the same thing and do not overlap.

I've seen all sorts of Pro Staff deals including some where you "buy in" as a requirement and then get a discount but Profound has their pro staff design the baits and in some cases even produce them. It's an interesting concept.

Good use for them. Here's another little tidbit about the Senko......Hold one up by the nose (the front wider part) and you will see, they are not straight. There is a curve in every one of them, it's by design.

You know it's a bad winter depression when your St Clair buddy plans a trip to Virginia from Michigan the day after Christmas so he can fish the Potomac for Crappie (as long as we aren't iced up) and a Nuke plant cooling lake system for some largies.

It's a different set up for sure. You buy your way in and get discounts on baits. I have 2 friends who are Profound members and they actually have come up with colors for the crankbait line. One is the "Cherry Bomb" color and the other is "Uzzle Blue". Both have been very successful. I had dinner with Mr. Horton and a few others after an event and was offered "the deal" but was already sponsored by SPRO and at the time Yamamoto had a hard bait line so, I politely declined. Tim is a great guy and his company is doing quite well.

And remember....Mono absorbs water after some time being used. Personally, distance is not a consideration for me and mono has more of the characteristics I am looking for in a lot of my spinning situations. If I am using braid on spinning, it's usually a wide spool designed for braid and 35lb test for dragging 1/4oz football head jigs drifting or casting on St Clair.

"Isolated" is a key word here. In a lake filled with stumps, laydowns, rockpiles, grass, weeds, etc., you have to find out why some are productive and some are not. There are a lot of other considerations that then come into play, time of year, water conditions (clarity, temp, etc) and the rest of the fishing puzzle. BUT.....all things being considered, you can drill down beyond cover to structure to help identify why they are where they are. That's what separates the bank beaters from the fishermen many times. But if either cover or structure is isolated it has a better chance of holding fish as a general rule.

I know right? I am truly guilty. With as many Senkos as I've thrown, all sizes, I can count on 1 hand the number of times I have wacky rigged. The only time I have ever really done it is when I am in a school of fish and my Senko has been destroyed by catching T-rigged enough that I want to get a few more fish with it, so I wacky rig it. My beefs are that when wacky rigged and the Senko get damaged (even with the bands), you are SOL because the bait is either gone or unusable. I have stood shoulder to shoulder with someone wacky rigging and I catch just as many if not more T-Rigged. Another reason is that I work the Senko all the way back to the boat and with it T-rigged, it climbs up the water column faster and better than wacky rigged so I get more time with the bait in the water and not casting. I am normally in pretty thick grass and wacky just fouls up quick. Or it just might be a confidence thing for me.

I'll be going out this weekend again myself. The pure joy of catching numbers is what keeps crappie fishing so much fun for me. The fact that they are fantastic table fare is a bonus......as long as you want to clean fish. With multiple spawns during the year, they are plentiful and no one gripes or is offended by taking a limit home for release into Lake Crisco.

I have a 21 foot heavy glass boat with a 250. I launch alone most of the time. I never hook a rope to my bow eye because unless I planned on leaving it there all day I would have to lay on my deck to unhook it and there's not a lot of room up there with graphs, TM, rod tips, etc. I just use a long rope tied to my front cleat. I can either walk the rope over to the dock and tie it off, then back the boat in the water until it floats off or I can stop as soon as the rear of the boat floats and I walk over to the dock and pull the boat off the trailer and to the dock. I do not have to launch where there are no docks but if I did, I would just tie to my cleat and to the winch stand and gently float the boat off the trailer and pull up until it grounded on the ramp behind the trailer.

As I have always said....There is no wrong way to rig a Senko. My concern with nose hooking would be that the bass would tail bite and you would just end up losing a lot of baits. While I don't wacky rig, it would at least give you a better hook position for bites. I use the smaller Senko's for trailers and for NED rigs.

I agree. The different rod manufacturers all have different actions related to the "standard". What they do is get you in the ball park and from there the differences are more manufacturer specific. If you read up on a specific rod you will eventually find it compared to something you have experience with. Or....you just get in the ball park and go from there. Keep in mind that what may be one action to you may not be the same action for me due to the way I fish so what I say may not relate to you.

If it were me..........1st choice would be a T-Rigged 5 inch Senko. I can't imagine on spinning gear needing to throw a bait any further. On the Potomac in heavy grass and current, I will use a screw in nose weight on a Senko as well. If I were to dropshot, I would most certainly not nose hook the bait, I would T-rig it as well. Point of note, I can throw a 5 inch T-rigged Senko a lot farther than my dropshot. You also lose the vertical presentation of a dropshot bait the farther you cast it out, so you will still be pulling your bait through the weeds. A Yamamoto DShad (fluke style bait) will outcast most other fluke baits because of it's weight but it will not track deep (unless you pause it) and will ride up on any weeds it encounters on a long cast. You might want to try the old ball and chain.....a c-rig.

Better stock up on those Yamamoto cranks whenever you find them. Yamamoto discontinued their hard bait line.

Chances are they are schooled up around the dock but the question is where and how deep. I would give the setup I use a try and how I determine depth (other than my sonar) is to not put a bobber stop on the small tube jig and let it go to the bottom. Then I reel up from 6 inches to a foot and set the bobber stop there (the bobber stop for me is just a piece of fishing line tied on. When you move and the depth changes, you have to re-set the rig. If the depth is pretty consistent along the dock, you can just cast parallel to the dock and retrieve it with slow pulls and then pause, or you can literally walk along the dock letting out line and then pulling your rig back to you. I would also cast out from the dock every so often just to see if they are hanging off a little bit. Like I said, they school by size but usually there are multiple schools in an area. You just have to find them. I fished for many years off a long fishing dock on a public lake here in VA and usually did pretty well.

Depends on the cover. One thing I have changed is that I no longer fish "around" what I consider the prime spot in cover. I throw to the best spot first and work my way out.

Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity. But there is this thing called "natural talent". My Grandfather had it. I remember in my youth going with him to Canada and watching him pull fish after fish as we trolled the same lures. I commented that it must be his pole. We switched. He kept right on catching fish with my pole.

Blue Plains is a warm water discharge that gets a lot of winter pressure on the Potomac.

I understand your logic but I have 4 batteries and charging them after a trip and then tending them in between trips would be pretty time consuming. With my 4 bank on board, I plug it in and forget it. I just top off the AGM before a trip. My biggest complaint is that my 2005 vintage on board is heavy and now it is trapped in by power pole pumps and one of my batteries. It has been a great charger though, no problems.

It would be nice to know but I'm afraid most of us take rods set up for the body of water that we will be fishing. For example, I have a set of 8 I take for the river and another set of 12 I take to the lake. Technique specific rods are set up for the baits I am going to throw on any particular body of water. A better question IMHO is how to set up what rods for what technique because it doesn't matter where I go, my dropshot rod, spinnerbait rod, cranking stick, etc...are all set up the same no matter where I take them. One caveat may be things like deep cranks vs squarebills, etc.

I fish all year because I have access to a power plant lake. If I can get the boat out, I can fish. I also store outside. You didn't give the year and maker of your boat/motor and some things are different. I just pull the drain plug, make sure the motor is tilted down and unscrew and dump the water pressure hose from the side of my motor. If I do use my livewell, I just make sure they are drained. I have the newer style water pressure gauge that works off a signal rather than water pressure to the gauge so I don't have to worry about that. The hose on the side of the motor could be the speedo. It has a garden hose style screw on and a small water line. I dump it out every time I go out. Also store the motor straight up and down and do not tilt it up until you are ready to hook up.

Right now our water is 48-53 on the River.