TOXIC

I lived on the St Johns right across from Doctors Lake. Fished Black Creek and Julington Creek a bunch. Luckily for me there wasn’t any spraying when I was there. Lots of eelgrass and pads.

@TnRiver46 not so fast. The FWC isn’t spraying a thing. It’s all contracted out and I’ve seen the pictures of the contractors trucks/trailers lined up in a row at some ramps. I’ve also seen videos of them dumping gallons of chemical over the side of the airboats they use to spray. Very ugly situation. Nuked is the right definition. They claim only the invasives are killed but from the pictures I’ve been sent of the before and after, there isn’t anything green left.

I am a finesse fisherman first and foremost so a Ned is in my rotation most every trip. That’s not to say it’s the only game in town. Some days it works, some days it’s medocire and some days they just don’t want it. For example 2 years ago on our annual trip to lake St Clair, the smallmouth tore up a Ned. Best numbers and size in 20 years. Last year the smallmouth were lackluster on the Ned and that was after rotating through all the usual plastics rigged on it. Years before the Ned the dropshot was king and still is a player every year. Took me a while but I finally figured out the smallmouth were more interested in a dropshot but not with the usual Yamamoto Shad Shape Worm which for a few years was the bait of choice, but they wanted the old school presentation of a Pro Senko which has been my dropshot preference for years and years. In the finesse world, staying flexible is paramount.

While spraying may not kill fish (I have seen fish with lesions and sores that were attributed to spray chemicals), what it does do is kill habitat for fry and the results of that are not immediate. I’ve been following the spraying campaign in Florida and have heard everything from the sugar companies involvement on Okeechobee to rumors of kickbacks to state officials on a larger scale. Contracts paid by the gallon of product sprayed and on and on. Which is true we may never know but I can tell you from personal experience in a chain of Wisconsin lakes that I fished for 25 years and the last 5 after the lake association enacted a spray campaign, the fishing has been severely impacted to the negative….severely…..numbers are waaay down and the behavior of the fish has changed. The lakes are now mainly a night bite because there is no vegetation for them to shelter in so they go deep and dormant during the day, then move up and feed at night. Are they still there? Yes. But their numbers are definitely down. I would hate to see this same scenario play out on Florida lakes.

We do a fishing week in Florida for the past few years. Been to Okeechobee 3 times, Kissimmee 3 time and Headwaters for the first time in January of this year. Spraying has heavily influenced our decisions on where to go. One of our fishing friends frequents Okeechobee and he has sent us pictures of areas we fished in the past that are now dead zones. I lived in JAX on the St Johns for 2 years and tournament fished it, I also made a few trips to Harris Chain during that time and a few less known lakes. Where are we going in January of next year…..Headwaters……..a lake designed and managed for fishing. No air boats, no pleasure boats and no spraying.

Went this year and going again next year at the end January. There is a proposal to pave the access road but it won’t be done for a couple of years last I heard. I wrote an article for Yamamoto’s Inside Line on my experience. We went cold turkey and just tried to figure out the lake on our own. We did very well. We only used artificials and caught a lot of fish. We rigged electronics at ramp and trailered in with the cover on to help with the dust.

Lucky enough to have access (private lake) to a power plant lake. If we can get there, we can fish. It never freezes. My fishing partner is in Guam and Siapan for a couple of weeks so I’ve been off the water because my boat is half deconstructed redoing the fuel system.

No disrespect to you but the age old saying “you still have to catch them” is kinda misleading. You can’t catch them if you can’t find them. Gary Klein once told me that there’s no less than 5 lures he can catch a fish on once he finds them. 90% of the game is finding them. The gripe about FFS and I’m a Miliken fan, is that you can find them easier and in places you would never look to fish like out in the middle of nowhere, suspended.

Actually my daughter is cleaning fence rows on her farm and has 4 huge brush burn piles but unfortunately her town is in a burn ban. Guys at the landfill gave me a break since they only allow 12 gallons per customer. I would have had to wait because they only accept flammables on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month. It was pretty bad fuel but I’m sure it would have burned. Going forward, I am only going to use non ethanol even if it’s a pain to find.

@A-Jay did you level or lift?

On a serious note, I am in the process of rebuilding my fuel system because I fish with my buddy so much, the fuel phase separated and I need to send the injectors in for a cleaning. Seats pulled, sending units pulled and 20 gallons of bad fuel pulled out and taken to the the landfill recycle area.

Whew, I’m beat. Time for a cocktail before the lines of vehicles come by for pictures and the news stations are knocking on the door for interviews. 😂🤣😎

The smalljaw game is so much more to me than just fishing. It’s the annual trip from Virginia to St Clair that we’ve made for the last 20 years, the friends, the fishing and the fish. We go in May. Next May we get to introduce a couple of our Virginia friends to the Smallie Magic of St Clair due to one of our regulars dropping out. I can’t wait to experience their gobsmacked experience once we put them on their first 4lb+ smallmouth. Here’s some of my best from this May.

@ElGuapo928 I can tell you from the inside that there are some changes I didn’t agree with but in keeping with the theme of this post, GSM came in and did a skew study on which baits/colors were the most popular and selling the most. They based their changes on that data. It’s a trade off with all of the new baits they have introduced. So there’s increasing production profitability and balancing with increasing risk with new offerings. The old management was exactly the opposite. I’m on the fence, but so far the new products have been producing.

Grew up in a bowling family and was on a league by age 10. Best I ever did was a 279 and carried a 190 average. My dad threw the traditional hook, my mom threw a backup ball and I settled on a cross up. Got out of it when the hometown alley went more to the bar and live band scene and had midnight bowling under black lights and neon.😂

I have used the Damiki with good success but I also fished them side by side with some SteelShad and the SteelShad out fished them that day.

That’s a whole different side of the industry that unless you’ve been involved with it you just don’t know. Luckily for me in my 40+ years in the game, I have been involved with a lot of the back room antics including the bait designers, producers, sellers, overseas manufacturers, retailers and industry movers and shakers. As for the tournaments, there’s still a valid point to be made that professional level fishing is the only sport where you are, for the most part, fishing for you and your competitors entry fees. Name another professional sport where that is the case….

Exactly. Before he retired, my Brother In Law was a senior executive with Jack Links. He is a marketing genius. He used to send me cases upon cases of product to hand out at tournaments and other events. He enlisted me to get honest feedback from what he called the “hooks and bullets” consumer. I looked at product placement when I was working shows in different venues. He coined the organic phrase and how important it is to any brand.

To me it’s painfully clear why FFS is such a controversial topic. Look at all of the electronics advancements from paper graphs forward and look at how long it took to introduce new technology. It was a very slow process. Then FFS leapfrogged current technology 10 fold. Left some behind, advanced some who were otherwise unknown. That is a shakeup.

@Captain Phil is the voice of experience. Listen. I have fished Okeechobee and Harris Chain, and the St Johns river in a 20 foot glass boat. All of them will at some time or another overpower what your boat can handle. Driving skill aside, It will just be a little sooner with the tin rigs you are looking at.

We have had major success vertical jigging SteelShad blade baits in deep water. 35ft seems to be the magic depth. I’m just a little north of you and we are still a little warmer so your balde bite ought to be even better.

The YouTube pros are just another segment of the social media component I referred to. If you look closely it’s very few that are focused on product and many more who are focused on themselves and the entertainment value. I’m not talking about the upper level pros here, they all are “required” to be on social media and have already established themselves. Someone like me who was not into the tournament scene but was a guide are what the industry calls “organic”. I’m the guy who is at your local Bass Pro or Cabela’s doing seminars and tank demonstrations and is available to be able to spend time and show you how to rig and fish multiple techniques. I also work for a rep group who flew me all over the country for the grand openings of multiple retail stores and as a result they have product lines a mile long including hunting and I had to know about every single product. Take for example Quantum/Zebco. Do you realize how many products that manufacturer produces? Everything from snoopy rods to deep sea gear. All the actions, gear ratios and history of past models. Look at a Quantum catalog and try to be somewhat knowledgeable in most all of the lines is a big ask. I have backed off to much less due to my desire to fish more and travel less but I have kept a few sponsorships because I can focus in on the products I really enjoy. Even at that just look at the lineup that the new owner of Yamamoto has. I feel obligated to know their product lines and in fishing alone they have Yamamoto, SteelShad, Bill Lewis, Big Bite, Buckeye Lures, and Cuda and that’s just the fishing side. I have a lot of work to do to get familiar, use and report on how these products all work. I’m sure Glenn’s articles cover it in more detail but from a personal perspective, there’s a lot more than meets the eye in “sponsorship”.

@IndianaOutdoors, I use the lighter heads to keep from hanging up in the rocks and shale ledges. Prime target areas are eddies behind big rock croppings and where current flows into a deeper pool. If I’m blind casting, I go straight across the current at say the 3 o’clock and slowly keep it coming to me until it hits the 6 o’clock. Always going to snag some but I’ve found that’s the best for the rivers I fish.

Buckeye lures make a Ned (mushroom head) skirted jig in multiple colors. I got a bunch to try.

I’ve been hesitant to chime in on this beyond giving you support in hopes he sees the error in his ways. Obviously, that is not going to happen. I can relate because we have a tight group of fishing friends and we all get along really well. There was one gent who was what we call a “one upper” no matter what you did, he did it better. Personality flaw? Sure. And we were all willing to overlook it. Problem was, it progressed as time went on. Bragging online about hunting kills when he was pulling strangers pics off the internet, bragging about fishing catches when he was always by himself. Still pretty benign but then it got personal. For some reason he singled me out as the lightening rod for all of his criticisms. He made it very personal and every time I would overlook it and open up to be his friend, he would gut punch me and I could never figure out why. Ultimately, the group as a whole finally had enough and turned on him every time he personally attacked me and he faded away from the group friendless. It’s a shame but there are just some people you are not going to change no matter what you do.