TOXIC

It’s all about surface area. Fingerless gloves cover 80% of your hands. There are fishing shirts that have thumb holes in the sleeves to keep your wrists covered. I used to never wear any sun protection, no sunscreen, short sleeved shirts, shorts and open topped visors on my head. That’s all changed now. I’ve watched my fishing partner get spot burned off his hands face and head once every 3 months and I had a scare with a spot on my head. Turned out to be nothing but I’ve got the quarter sized scar to remember it by. Scared me straight. I take more precautions now. I don’t like sunscreen so the next best thing is to cover up.

I just throw mine in the regular wash about once a month. More often if I am cornered into handling catfish or snakeheads. I have a spare pair just in case.

My second Weimaraner. He was more of a protector than a sporting dog. Did his job well.

All of those rigs are a form of finesse fishing to me. I have used them all at one time or another. There are suttle differences in all of them. The biggest consideration is which one you feel the most comfortable using and have the most confidence in. I don’t like a wacky rig so I don’t throw it. Others swear by it. Doesn’t make it better or worse, it just means it works better for them than me. Try them all and you will naturally gravitate to what works best for you.

My first Weimaraner was a retrieving fool. Since my house is on a cliff, 78 feet off the forest floor, I used to heave a frisbee as hard as I could from the top and you can imagine how far it would glide. I would put him in a sit stay until it landed and then send him. He would do that until he fell over from exhaustion if you kept it up. Sometimes I would make him face me so he couldn’t see where it landed and I would use voice and hand commands to guide him to it. When I would take him to the vet for his annual shots, she would comment that she had never in her 25 years of practice, seen a Weimaraner as muscled up as he was. I also took him wade fishing with me a lot and he would swim the fastest current in the river. Man o man I miss that dog. He had a basket of all sorts of toys both soft and hard that he never destroyed. No squeakers were safe though. He also had a deer antler he found and he chewed on that a lot.

Ever caught a bass with a small turtle in its mouth? I have. 😉

It’s not unusual for me to have three dropshot rigs on my deck. One setup for vertical presentations, one for casting and one for dragging or drift fishing. All with different baits, weights, and tag lengths. Some will double with other presentations, like my vertical setup on bed fishing. Dropshotting was one of the first finesse techniques I picked up 30 some odd years ago and it has been very successful. 😉

As for colors, I have found these DShad colors work in most every situation I encounter. My only frustration is that GSM discontinued the bubblegum color, which is one of my go to colors for smallmouth on St Clair.

Good deal. I primarily use the small Scope Shad as a Ned bait. My go to on the dropshot is the Shad Shape Worm, Pro Senko, or Kut Tail. Glad to see it worked for you.

Far be it from me to tell anyone how to spend their $$ and I sure as heck don’t begrudge anyone who may be better off than me. This attitude nowadays of “Lets eat the rich” is confusing to me. BUT…. Here’s a little perspective on those offshore boats sporting triples and quad, big horsepower outboards. Many have transitioned to outboards and away from the big diesel single or twin screw inboards. The reason…..safety and cost along with (believe it or not) fuel savings. You loose your motor 100 miles or more offshore and you are radioing the USCG. You loose one or two outboards and you can still limp back to port. As for cost on current bass boats and trucks, you are always going to pay dearly for the “Latest and greatest” in both. Not to be outdone, I was amazed at the amount of $$ in some of the newest kayak setups. Dang near rivaled fiberglass bass boats. Even the smaller tin bass rigs are not “economy” rigs anymore. As I have said, you put the tag “marine” or “equestrian” on anything and it doubles the price.😂

Other than the 1 time fixes, that list repeated itself every day. 😂

Told my fishing partner I was out of commission for fishing today because I have had to stay out on my daughters farm and babysit while she jetted off to Mexico City for a mini vacation with a friend. My fishing partner claimed we need to get in shape for our upcoming trip in 2 weeks to St Clair. I said I’ll get plenty of workout the next few days. Getting ready to head home today and here is what I accomplished. Fed, filled water troughs and groomed 15 of the 26 horses on her property. Played rodeo clown to avoiding getting trampled by her Bull who likes to tip over his trough and move his feed bucket so you have to come in his pen to get it. Hung her Edison lights. Weed eated around the main barn. Fixed fencing. Re attached boards holding cross ties in the barn. Fed and exercised her 3 German Shepards. Fixed 2 doors, toilet seat and the Rhoumba back in working order in the house. And my least favorite thing….clean litter boxes and feed 4 indoor cats and 1 barn cat. So yeah, I’d like to join the CCCC club because at 67 I’ve paid my dues, but sometimes life just gets in the way. 😂😝

You need to step up your DShad game.😉 Rigging differences accomplish different things and it’s not “bad action” if it’s what you want. You are fishing them 1 dimensional. For simplicity sake look at the nose of your DShad like it has a + on it. If you bring it out the center where all of the lines intersect, you will get a straight level retrieve. If you bring the hook point out at the top of the +, when you retrieve, it will dive. That works when fishing open deeper water. Bring the hook out the bottom point of the + and it will dart upwards which works well fishing it over vegetation and you want it to stay on top. Likewise the two side points of the + will create sideways motions which I use to get around things like dock posts. I won’t get into the more subtle actions you can get by rigging in between the points of the +. Just goes to show you can take what seems like a simple bait and make it something completely different. I don’t ever weight my DShads so fall rate is a relative statement. The DShad actually falls faster than any of the other fluke style baits I’ve tried. I have actually drug it drift fishing on the bottom in 10-12 feet. 😱 As you can tell, I really like my DShad fishing.😂

I never leave,on a fishing trip without a very good selection of “flukes”. My choice is the Yamamoto DShad due to its heavier plastic which is the same formula as a Senko. I fish mine weightless on a 4.0 gamakatsu ewg hook. I’ve done an extensive write up here on different small rigging differences and how it affects the action. But the DShad has proven itself time and time again. One year in Michigan on Lake St Clair I dead sticked a weightless Senko in 10-13 foot of water and saved the trip as that bite was all that worked. Likewise on St Clair another year, we fished a shallow lake connected to the middle channel and bass plus pike were killing the DShad. In Florida on Headwaters, the go to bait in the morning was a DShad worked out from the bank. Largemouth would hammer it.

I have a couple of considerations. First, I am a line watcher who fishes a lot of finesse plastics, I am more concerned about me seeing the line than the fish. As a result, I use a clear blue fluorescent mono for 90% of my applications. I do not do braid to leader on anything. That’s just personal preference. I do not like braids personality for finesse and I don’t like adding another failure point to my baits. I do use braid but it’s always direct tied and fished punching, dragging, or tossed to bedding fish which don’t give a hoot about seeing the line.

Just throwing it out there…..is there such a thing as “too much” information? For me there is. By the time I input all of the information, I already have my answer. At a certain point, more information just dilutes the situation and gives my peanut brain too much to consider. Much of my fishing is instinct. I have a mental checklist of things I consider when getting on the water. I call it the “fishing puzzle”, the more pieces I get to fit, the better my odds are.

You haven’t “Lost” your mojo, you’ve just “Misplaced” it. Everybody goes through slumps. Don’t lose confidence, that’s the big killer of success. Keep your head up and your line in the water. It will come.

If you don’t come to an amicable relationship with the wind, you are destined to many, many, frustrating days on the water. The old saying “You can’t fight Mother Nature” is especially true in fishing. Come to terms with wind and use it to your advantage. Also know when to bow to wind and stay off the water.

Setting the hook wacky rigged shouldn’t be a problem since the hook is exposed. Texas rigged I moved up to a medium heavy 7ft bass pro carbonlite. It’s what I use for longer casts and/or for weighted Senkos. The extra weight or distance makes the hookset harder. I don’t wacky rig. I’ve never encountered a situation where a Texas rig wouldn’t catch the same fish or skip as well. I also use a 4.0 ewg hook to reduce gut hooks.

Manufacturer Recommendations for a Mercury 2 stroke 50hp and below is 245 CCA, 323 MCA, 52 RC@ 25amps, 40AH@ 20AH Rate. That is for the motor alone. You start adding graphs and other things to it, you are going to want more Reserve Capicity. Also, never hook a trolling motor up to your cranking battery. Wire them to their own batteries.

If you are talking about a truly “managed” fishery, you have considerations beyond just trophy fish. If it’s a community lake or pond the emphasis is probably more on numbers than size. That’s a management strategy as well. Our local electric only lakes that have boat and kayak rentals are more concerned with the high probability of catching numbers more than the size of the catch. Keeping in mind overpopulation May also affect the overall health of the fishery as a management consideration.

I have a 21ft barge of a glass boat and I’ve loaded it on everything from dirt and gravel to broken concrete. Steep enough to loose sight of the trailer and shallow enough to require me putting my truck in the water up to the front tires. I guess it’s just my bunk setup that doesn’t care if the trailer is level or not. If one side is lower than the other, I just back in until the lowest bunk is at the right level to load. No matter the opposite bunk is higher unless it is really extreme higher and I’ve never had that, I just glide the boat up as far as it will go, hook the bow strap and then back down a bit before I wench it up. The further up the bunks you can get the boat initially helps but is not necessary. If it does load crooked on one bunk once I pull out, I just back down to where it floats a little and it will correct itself.

My fishing partner has 5 batteries in his 20ft Ranger with a 250 4 stroke merc. 3 lithiums for the PowerPole Move trolling motor, 1 lithium “house” battery for all of his graphs and accessories and 1 AGM for solely cranking the big motor. He has an onboard 4 bank charger for the 3 lithiums and the cranking battery and he carries a small portable lithium charger for the house battery. It won’t be long before he swaps out the AGM for a lithium now that they have refined them to be used as cranking batteries as well.

Just tell her they tie pieces of bark to their feet with vines for shoes too. Don’t make me go look in the closet….😂😱