TOXIC

Considering there have been major problems with the "Contestants" answering 6th grade level questions in the past, I think their PC move to eliminate the swimsuit portion just eliminated some of the contestants greatest "assets". Let's see if they stand by their claim and have some plus sized competitors or someone who doesn't eerily look like Barbie.

I have a past Elite Series Angler as a good friend. He and his family have stayed with me both in Virginia and when I was in Florida. I have been able to pick his brain on a lot of things "fishing". I asked him your exact question and his response was that for anglers, color is over rated. He advised to keep colors related to water clarity and pay more attention to hues rather than specific colors. He said to group your colors for clear water, stained water and muddy water. That being said I do believe there are colors that are more "universal" and work in combinations of water clarity. Yamamoto's #1 selling color in plastics is 297 (green pumpkin, black fleck). I have caught fish on that color from Wisconsin to Florida.

I will add that after all of my trips to St Clair (Yes, my old NITRO even made the trip one year) I did see a lot of Rangers on the lake. The rigs we had up there this year (my boat doesn't go, my fishing partners does towed by my truck). 2016 Ranger Z520 2017 Ranger Z521 2000 Champion 1984 Champion 2004 Tracker Deep V Tin We also fished with some other "Local" guys who had: 2004 Ranger 520 2016 Ranger 522 2004 Ranger Fisherman Series 2004 NITRO 19 footer 2014 Skeeter Bottom line, I have fished in a lot of different brands and my choice was based on my personal needs/wants. My leaning to a Ranger (and I got lucky to find one) was for durability and most of all fishability when the Trolling Motor was down. I wasn't interested in speed or ride. So you need to decide what is important to you. I'm sure if I fished different waters or had different requirements, a different brand may have been my preference. The guy that I go up there every year with also works on a lot of boats for friends and he has crawled in a lot of them. He runs the 2016 Ranger Z520 he bought from David Walker Elite Series angler. Good luck, for me the "hunt" was 1/2 the fun.

When I bought my last boat, I was looking for the best deal and not brand specific so I looked at them all. Just so happens I got into a Ranger Z21. The deal was right and so was the timing. You will find that most everyone will push the boat they bought...otherwise, why buy it? I searched for 2 years before buying the Ranger. Price/Build Quality/Ride/Layout/Trailer/Resale/Factory Support/Parts Availability/Dealer Network are all considerations when buying. Plus what is a good deal to me might not be a good deal to you. What feels like a smooth ride to me may feel like a buckboard to you. A better question to ask in order to stay away from the brand warriors is to ask: If you had to buy a boat other than the brand you currently own, what would you buy and why? ?

There's a HUUUUUGGGGGE difference between model painters (which kinda look like your fish) and true artists that do reproduction mounts. There's a HUUUUUUGGGGGE difference in price as well. ? I've seen reproduction mounts that were customized to the pics of the fish including scale patterns, gill plates and fins. That takes doing modifications to the "replica". I know of some that "paint" each and every scale 4 or 5 times to get the proper depth and color. That's why I don't have any replica's on my wall because in order to take the harassament from my wife for the amount of $$ I spent, it better be a truly memorable fish. ?

This year on Lake St Clair we tore up the Walleye on SPRO Little John crankbaits both original and medium divers, Dropshot rigs, Senkos, and Ned rig. We couldn't keep them off our baits and we were fishing for smallmouth. ?

As a general rule for ALL of my finesse applications I use spinning rods/reels. The stigma about them is long gone. Every pro angler throws them. You can use a baitcaster for dropshotting because it is a bottom contact bait presentation. As a rule spinning gear has an advantage when fishing baits like Senko's where the bait get's bit on the fall 90% of the time. A spinning reel will feed your line out without the pendulum effect whereas you would have to manually feed out a baitcaster to replicate the natural fall. Spinning reels also allow you to better line watch in my opinion. My normal boat setup is 4 baitcasters and 4 spinning rods. I find myself with a spinning rod in my hands most of the time unless I am throwing cranks/spinnerbaits/chatterbaits, etc.

And don't forget to put a heavy duty float on them. With what they cost, you don't want them falling in the lake!! On edit, Junger beat me to it!! BTW, Bass Pro sells a float designed for them for about $8.

There has always been and will always be 2 schools of thought on Senko's. 1. I only use the original. Nothing else compares. 2. I use (insert name) because they are just as good, last longer, are cheaper, etc. Being Pro Staff for Yamamoto for 20 years, I only use them and used them in my guide service forever. I have developed colors for Yamamoto and as one of my buddies likes to say....Toxic has forgotten more things about Senko fishing than most will ever know.? It's not an idiot bait as many like to think. I will say that I have written articles for Yamamoto for most of my time with them (more when they had a monthly magazine called Inside Line) and one article was 78 ways to rig a 5" Senko.? Why all this "Chest Pumping"?? ......Because I just want to make sure you know I'm not just your casual user. Yamamoto actually wants me to use other Senko style baits in my never ending quest to find one that performs as well. I had a buddy who owned a tackle shop in Michigan and in all the years going there he would offer up the latest and greatest Senko knockoff as a competitor. By his own admission after we tested them side by side, none did. Will knockoffs catch fish? Sure they will. Senko has become more of a "style" than a manufacturer over the years due to all of the knockoffs. What most of the tournament fishermen I guided did was to use a knockoff for practice, but when tournament day comes around they ALL had the original tied on.? I can tell you that in Yamamoto's Senko, there are subtle differences in them that the common user would just never pick up on. Some sink at different rates, some skip better, some change colors in the water or after use, some have different action and some are more fragile than others. A lot of the time the differences can be attributed to the amount of, or lack of fleck/type of fleck, the amount of pigment needed to make a color or combination of colors and the style of the Senko like a Laminate vs a single pour. I know, I know, waaaay too much information ?but the bottom line is this....It's your $$ buy and throw what you have confidence in. I gave up trying to convince fishermen that the original is often imitated, never duplicated years ago. Those 2 schools of thought will always be present.

No worries. Just don't mix colors or other manufacturers plastics in with them.

"Normally" all of the advancements in reels today vs older stock has been in weight reduction. There is one manufacturer that has come out with a reel with no bearings (***). The "guts" have remained pretty much the same and there's a lot of visual changes to catch anglers. ?

Big difference from going as a co angler in a tournament vs a day out with a buddy. If I am going out with a buddy then I'll bring on average 8 rods and a Plano soft sided bag with 6 or 7 3700 boxes. If I ever was to be a tournament co angler, I would cut that in half.

For me, when they go deep I rely on 2 things. 1. They will come shallow to feed at different times and 2. Find the bait they are feeding on and fish that depth. Remember they use flats, points, channels, etc., as highways to get to where they are going either for seasonal movement or feeding. That being said, I have never caught a bass any deeper than the 30 foot range although I do know they pull smallmouth out of lakes like Erie at 60 feet +.

Forgot to mention that during our 1st night rigging party (at one of my Michigan buddies houses) before we leave for the island the next day, Kim Stricker of the show Hook 'n Look stopped in and I finally got to meet him off the water and not just passing through. I tried to slip him some new Yamamoto baits but he's a Strike King guy through and through. ?

When I used to fish the North Fork of the Doah all the time the instances of lesions/sores on fish steadily increased through the years. No one could pin it down. No one could explain it. Multiple "studies" done. Then one day as I was wading, I ran into some old timers who made it perfectly clear to me. There are a lot of poultry operations along the river and when the price of fertilizer went down (which was what all of the chicken litter was sold for) it was a common occurrence to see big trucks from the poultry farms dumping directly into the river. The influx of phosphates from the litter IMHO was ravaging the fish population. Too much money and clout with big firms like Tyson to get a straight answer.

Great point. When bed fishing that time of year, the breeding fish are naturally bigger. The "peanuts" are plentiful in certain areas which we avoid at all costs!! ?

My 2005 Ranger has 2 manual switches on opposite sides of the bilge in the rear compartments. 1 shuts down juice to the boat and 1 shuts down juice to the Trolling Motor. I leave my charger plugged in 24-7 when my boat is not on the water. My OEM charger is not set up for AGM batteries and I have a Sears PM-1 monster for my cranking battery so the day before I hit the water, I hook up my portable charger that does have an AGM setting and I top off my cranking battery. Normally when I hook up my portable to the AGM it shows 90% charged. My 3 trolling motor batteries are wet cell and my charger handles them just fine. You might also want to consider installing a "jump switch" for your batteries.

You gotta remember, this is St Clair and 5's are not uncommon. 6's are getting into the better fish weight range. Estimates on what we caught: 2lbs and under 1% Over 2lbs to 3lbs 20% 3lbs to 4lbs 40% 4lbs to 5lbs 30% Over 5lbs 9% It's those kind of numbers that keep us coming back every year along with the number of fish we catch and the different species. We caught more big Largemouths (that we didn't even target) than we have any other year and it's not unusual to catch Walleye, we got into them big time this year. That was a bonus!! And while St Clair may be a bucket list lake for many, we have a standing deal with a cottage owner for the same time every year and we're not about to let it go!! ? I retire in 2019 and since I have longtime friends up there, I plan on making more than 1 trip a year!! ?

That's from last week on St Clair. And everybody knows what a big smalljaw does when she sees the boat!! ?

Exactly....It's easy to forget to match your gear settings to the fish. No different that adjusting your hookset to your gear. I use a #1 Gamakatsu EWG hook and Texas rig my Dropshot baits. If I did my normal hookset, I would tear the hook right out of their mouth!! Here's a 4+ off my dropshot setup and 6lb line.

Grub. Choose the color to match the hatch.

I can guarantee you that you need both. I have seen tickets issued for only having inflatables and a throw cushion. Stipulation is that the inflatables must be worn to be counted.

Also remember that you need to have a vest style PFD in your boat if you ever take the inflatable off. In order to be legal the inflatable has to be worn at all times. If you have a vest style in the boat as well as the inflatable, you are legal if you take the inflatable off for any reason.

We are back. I just put up a post about the trip in the Smallmouth forum. Was a great trip.

A little recap of my 15th year of going to Lake St Clair for our annual Smallmouth beatdown. First and foremost, everyone that attended (7 of us total) came home safe and sound with no major mishaps on the water or travel up and back (last year we took out a boat axle on those lovely Michigan roads). We had epic weather with only 1 day being windy and we were able to fish through it, although it beat us 1/2 to death. Average number of fish per day for my partner and I, 40-50. The slowest day was the day before we left with probably 20 each. Average size 3-5lbs. Although no giants, the numbers were well worth it. We got into an unbelievable Walleye bite in the Selfridge area on SPRO Original Little John crankbaits in Cell Mate and Little John Medium Divers in Olive Shad. These cranks also got us a lot of other species but the Walleye ate them up. We got the steady stink eye from the Walleye fishermen dragging crawler harnesses and cranks around us because we were releasing all of our fish (after we had enough for a meal ?) plus we were catching them 3 to every 1 of theirs. Water temps were generally in the 62-67 degree range depending where we were. 1st wave of spawners were done and although we caught good numbers on the Mile Roads we didn't fish there all that much. We found that the fish that were there were guarding fry and in order to get them to bite you had to put a bait right on their nose. We preferred to move off shore a little more and go after the pre spawn fresh wave setting up to come in and find other bedding areas that were unfished for the most part. Even though we rent a cottage on Harsens Island and are literally 1/2 mile from both the big and little Moot we didn't fish there. Lots of our buddies did and caught the biggest fish of the trip. I did fish there for about 2 hours at the end of the day when I rode with someone else for a day. I have a problem going into the Moot and yaking big smallies that have been caught 3 or 4 times before me. Yes, we did catch them off the beds in other places and we could have gotten bigger fish in the Moot but the bedding fish we caught were fresh and their mouths did not look like pin cushions. Species caught......Just about everything. We caught Smallmouth, a lot of Largemouth (they were running with the Smallmouth in some of our areas), Musky, Pike, Rock Bass, Bull Gills, White bass, Walleye and my first (in 15 years!!) Sheephead. We caught them on a number of baits depending on the location. The cranks I mentioned above, Jerkbaits, Tubes, Dropshot, Underspin, Yamamoto DShads, Senkos and as I have always said there are a couple of baits that take me by surprise every year. This year it was the Yamamoto Shad Shape Worm in Natural Shad on a dropshot. I finally had to change to another dropshot bait (Pro Senko) because the Smallmouth were inhaling the Shad Shape Worm and I got tired of having to remove deep hooks (no fish were killed). The second surprise bait and the one I caught a large number of fish on was a Yamamoto California Roll on a Ned rig. Absolutely wore them out. Most memorable catch of the trip was me hooking up on a dropshot and breaking off on the hookset. I re-rigged and we continued fishing moving about 100 yards from our original spot. After a few fish I get bit on the dropshot again and set the hook. Get the Smallmouth to the net and when I reach in to lip it, I get a hook into the topside of my thumb and made the comment to my partner that I must have hooked this one on the outside of the mouth (after a few explatives and removing the hook from my flesh)....but then I look and there in it's upper lip is the dropshot I broke off, bait, weight, line and hook!! I was able to get both rigs back. We ate like Kings as usual with a fresh Walleye fish fry, 7 racks of ribs, bacon wrapped deer backstrap, 20lbs of King Crab legs, Bison burgers and crab stuffed Portabello mushrooms just to name a few meals. I am already planning for next year!! I won't bore you with the 500 or so pics we took but will post a couple of our average size fish. What a trip.