TOXIC

@TnRiver46, I’ll take a bit of exception to your statement that shore line development doesn’t cause harm. At least in my example, shoreline development is a direct cause of runoff causing the algae blooms from fertilizers and nitrates used on lawns, shoreline development caused the death of a swimmer from stray current off a boat lift. Just sayin….

I dunno…I can cast 6lb mono with a 1/16th jighead (my preferred weight) and a 2in tube or curly tail grub farther than I need to. I’ve never felt the need for braid. Of course the lightest braid I use is 35lb test. 😂

Call me silly, but braid and leader for crappie? Really?

My fishing partner hasn’t retired yet so weather be damned on a fishing Saturday. On our trips to St Clair which I call combat fishing, it has to be pretty bad. If the wind gets up over 20 knots and we can’t find a sheltered bay, we have been known to trailer over to areas we can fish. As far as precipitation, we have fished in down pours, hail, snow, you name it but lightening will send us running for cover.

I’ve never had a problem with them. I noticed now online Walmart carries a wide range of lithium as well as their house brands. Batteries are a price point thing for me. I want the cheapest the will still do the job. I am running 3 lead acid tm batteries and one AGM cranking battery. I can’t justify lithium with the amount of time I spend in my buddies boat. I don’t have 10 graphs pulling 500amps of power either. 😂. I do keep my lead batteries well maintained.

I stopped when the content vs advertising percentage swung heavily to the advertising side. The last print publications I got were the Yamamoto Inside Line and North American Fishing. Inside Line went digital and I still write for them and NAF called me years ago for a renewal after they sent a gift pack of like 3 crankbaits and I told them I was not going to renew. The representative on the phone actually got angry with me and told me I “owed” it to them to renew. My affiliation with Yamamoto requires me to give them product feedback and real world opinions. That keeps me pretty involved with various sites. I also am an administrator on a Ranger Boats Facebook page so I’m pretty much locked into the digital world.

I’m a little biased because I have a personal friend who fishes the LBAA and has done very well. Teri Cindric. She’s fished with us on St Clair. Her brother is the president of Penske Racing and her nephew is Austin a driver for team Penske. She’s a good stick. Locally Christie Bradley fishes the opens.

Funny story, when we go to Wisconsin and I was pulling the boat, I route us waaaay south so as to miss Chicago and other cities on the “fastest” route. Pulling a 21 foot boat through Chicago traffic is zero fun. We take 2 days. The first year I went without the boat I went ahead and went the fastest route. We didn’t make reservations ahead of time because I am an upper level Hilton Honors member and there are Hampton Inns at most every exit. Well, it just so happened we were going through at the same time as the Experimental Aircraft Association event in Oshkosh. There wasn’t a room within 100 miles that wasn’t $400 a night. Wife was on the phone calling non stop ahead of us. We managed to find an EcnoLodge for $150. It was the absolute worst chit hole I have ever stayed in and I went to some pretty sad places in my career traveling for the government closing banks. To give you an idea, there were barbecue grills out in front of the rooms of the “long term” residents. We slept on bare mattresses after pulling off the sheets. We were up and out of there after getting a few hours of shut eye. The wife threatened my life if I ever made her stay in another rat hole like that. 😂

Notable this year watching the pro tour come to St Clair. In years past 90% of them ran to Erie or Huron for bigger bags. This year they all stayed in the lake and had record bags. Ish Monroe even tried to make a run with largemouth.

My uneducated advice would be to take it as easy as possible and take breaks as needed. Water break, lunch break, give you some time to sit and rejuvenate. Get good sleep and like I said, try to get out and fish hard a few days/weeks before your trip. I don’t discount overall physical fitness and in my younger days I was a wrestler and football player but those days are long gone and I have no desire tax my body any more in the gym and heavy training. I now do what is required to keep me mobile and able to do the things I want. Fishing fitness is totally different from overall physical fitness because of the specific muscle groups involved. If overall training works those muscle groups then that’s a plus. I found in my years of guiding that when I had guys that were physical specimens fish a hard 8 hours, more likely than not, they were sitting down long before me and that included some of my clients that were professional football players.😂

Makes me chuckle, we averaged 50 fish a day per person on St Clair this year and 75% were on the trusty dropshot. 😂

We can always relate to “The good ol’ days” like when my grandfather took me to Canada and we didn’t keep a walleye under 8lbs because they were runts. On the other hand, 2 years ago was the best year in 21 years of going to St Clair.

If I want to fish a Ned style bait in heavier grass, I switch to a slider head weedless.

I do 2 trips that are 7 days of what we call “combat fishing”. While all the recommendations for stretching and exercises and the obvious hydration, there’s only 1 thing that prepares me for these trips……..long hard days of fishing before the actual trips. Nothing works the muscles you are going to be using like using the muscles you are going to be using. I’m obviously no fitness guru and I carry a lot of weight but in 21 years of going to St Clair and fishing in some pretty challenging weather and water, I have never missed a day. I’m 67 and this last trip in May, I did something to pull my back and was having terrible back spasms before the trip. Having been a guide for over 15 years, I have never had any back problems. The last trip I actually wore a back brace to help both insure I didn’t injure it more and to give me a little more support. I’m totally fine now and I have no idea what happened.

I’ve posted about the lake I guided on for over 15 years being slammed with development and recently having a waterborne EColi outbreak that put a number of children in the hospital on dialysis, swimming restrictions due to harmful algae bloom (HAB) map attached, drownings due to stray current from boat docks, boating accident deaths, and just an overall overpopulated, dangerous lake. Likewise, I am heading to Wisconsin in a couple of weeks to vacation in a cottage on a chain of 20+ Lakes and I’m leaving my boat at home. Why? Because they sprayed the lakes 5 years ago and killed the fishing. Not worth the extra cost and hassle of pulling my rig 2 days to fish.

Normally I would say a Senko but I find myself downsizing even more to a Ned with a Yamamoto Yamatanuki. That’s a new development for me.

I own a 21 foot Ranger and fish out of a 20 foot Ranger a lot of the time. I fish St Clair and other big water. I have guided up to 4. To me the most versatile boat is a 20 footer. My 21 is nice but the ride isn’t that much better and unless you are totally unskilled, it doesn’t give you that much more big water ability. Deck space is not that much more on my 21 footer and is actually narrower than the 20 footer. The 21 footer is heavier and takes more skill to load and unload especially solo. Storage is also an issue. I have had my boat for so long it’s second nature but I will say if I were to buy a new rig tomorrow, I would look at only 20 footers with a 250hp 4 stroke, hydraulic 8-10” Jackplate and dual axle trailer with brakes on both axles. First pic is my 21, second is my buddies last 20 footer.

@RRocket ha, ha the vid you posted is a Japanese angler and uses the Japanese packaging. It was released in the US in 2023. It was available in Japan for a number of years.

Yes as opposed to the Ned Senko which is 3” and made from a floating formula. Fishing a tidal river means moving water and I found that using a normal 4” Senko gave me a better fall rate and allowed me to use a lighter head which minimized hang ups. I fish my Ned’s with a slow drag or a hop on the bottom like a jig or shakeyhead so I need/want a little more bait mass. The Yamatanuki is shorter but is bulky and with the top and bottom cut outs, allows for excellent hook exposure and is heavy enough to give the same fall rate. Made with the same formula as the Senko is a win-win IMHO.

I’ll add a little insult to the injury and show a pic of it rigged up. 😂. 6lb mono, 7ft fast spinning rod, bounced on bottom.

Yes they were. I had intended to use them on a dropshot but many of the baits I use for a dropshot can be rigged as a Ned also. It’s nice that the bait split is on both sides so it has better hook exposure and if it gets a little torn up, it can be rigged from both sides. I actually used both sides and the solid sides to rig.

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m pretty stubborn and set in my ways when it comes to trying new baits. I follow Yamamoto International and keep tabs on baits used overseas. After all, I am a finesse fisherman and a lot of our finesse techniques started overseas. I was lucky enough to tour the Yamamoto factory in Page, Arizona and watched all of my favorites being manufactured. During that tour we walked down an isle in the warehouse that had different packaging than what I was used to. When I asked, I was told those were baits made specifically for overseas. My ears perked up and I asked if I could “shop” a little. I was told sternly no. So when I saw the Yamatanuki come across my feed from the international division, I was curious and I felt a strange desire to try this bait. So curious in fact, I had a friend ship me some from Japan. I put them up because they were so “special” and kinda forgot them. Then low and behold, Yamamoto sells to GSM and a raft of new products start to appear. On that list of new products is the Yamatanuki. I wasted no time ordering my favorite colors in all 3 sizes. I took them to Michigan and Lake St Clair, gave a few to some of my fishing friends and told them to try them out and report back. Some good fish were caught with them weightless. I could not break from my “Traditional” Yamamoto baits and, as always did very well. Fast forward to this last weekend, mid summer, tidal river, hot water temps and I was struggling. I flipped open my Ned Rig Plano box reaching for my traditional 4” Senko and I see where I put some of the Yamatanuki in the box. I decided to finally give them a try and I’m really glad I did. The bass we’re hitting them so hard, I had to shorten my fuse for setting the hook or risk them totally choking the bait. Is it a new favorite? That’s a pretty high bar but I will say it’s now definitely in the rotation.

Doing a non-fishing trip myself in a couple of weeks to Wisconsin and it’s not by choice. I’m somewhat bummed out by it. We go to a chain of lakes in Waupaca/King. We have been going for 26 years. For a number of years, I towed my 21 foot Ranger up from Virginia and enjoyed great fishing. I also got to link up with a good friend and fish the Wolf river. Times change and it was not for the good. We changed cottages and I can no longer park my boat trailer at our current cottage because it is down a 1 lane road set deep in the forest. So I am forced to park it off site at a lot the marina graciously lets me use. Then my friend unexpectedly passed away and the lakes property owners association decided to chemically treat the lake vegetation which totally ruined the fishing. Covid exposed the lakes that were once kind of a local secret (my wife’s family is from the area) into an extremely busy, party spot. So, towing the boat 2 days up and 2 days home for crappy fishing just isn’t worth it. We still rent a pontoon for riding around the lakes but fishing is no more. 😢

Kind of a tough topic to answer without pages of explanation because “dropshotting” is such an established technique. Personally, because I guided on a heavily pressured lake, I was an early adopter of dropshotting and have written a few articles about it. I’m sure some are still on Yamamoto’s Inside Line. You can cast and retrieve a dropshot, you can vertically fish a dropshot, you can fish it shallow, you can upsize it and it’s then called a “bubba shot”, you can fish it deep, you can suspend it, there are literally hundreds of different setups and baits that all give different actions to the technique. Elaborate a little more on what you are trying to do and what water you fish and well as what species you are targeting. 😉

I’ll go one better and say that my year up to this point has been pretty good. It’s gotten a little tougher here locally due to the heat and drought but our trip to St Clair would rank in the top 5 of the 21 years we’ve been going. Weather was outstanding allowing us to pretty much go anywhere on the lake we wanted and the 1 blow day allowed me to bring home some good walleye fillets. Early season trip to Florida (February) was productive. I will say I have fished somewhat less than normal this year so far due to some trips and schedules as well as working on bringing my boat back into seaworthy service.