TOXIC

I can’t comment on the employees but I know Nick Barr was let go at the same time we all were. We had a dedicated website for pro staff and we asked the questions but got no response from Scott Smith, the old owner. Well, technically his wife owned the company. What really frosted my flakes was that TH Marine advertised for Pro Staff right after the sale. I got a response from Nick September 13, 2021 that the pro staff would be given the option to roll over to TH Marines program. Never materialized. I worked countless shows for GatorGuards and installed a lot of KeelShields. I also went to a lot of boat dealerships to install, teach techs to install or take care of problems. Left a bad taste in my mouth for sure. I started when they were just a small company and before they had a more formal prostaff program. Treated us like family and even paid for all the prostaff to go to the classic one year. Such is life though and I never looked back.

All I buy are stainless and I’ll admit I’ve never seen one with brass burners. The shell is fine but the guts dissolve. I can replace grates, burners, diffusers, etc. but when the bottom pan dissolves along with the mounting brackets (even when I cover it with foil) it’s toast.

There are finesse technique and finesse baits.

No problem. I’ve installed a bunch of KeelShields that was also a product of GatorGuards. I was on their prostaff for 15 years before the sale to TH Marine. They let everyone go. No word, no email, no nothing…..It’s a good product line but I’m a little bitter. ??

I replied in your other thread, TH Marine now owns GatorGuard and they make a Gator Patch that will work.

Cheese Frenchies. Lol. I also went to Arbor Heights Jr High. Haha. I had a lot of friends in Class of 76 so we probably know some of the same people.

Treat your clothes and wear tall socks with your pants legs taped around them. As for patching the yak, Gator Guard makes a product called Gator Patch that will work. TH Marine owns them now.

Made me smile. I’m also a Westside High grad, class of 75. Don’t forget OJ’s, Big Fred’s, Joe Tess’, Little Kings, Kings restaurant next to Hinky Dinky on 84th & Center, Stella’s in Bellevue, Roses Lodge (probably closed years ago), Johnnys, Mr C’s, Anthony’s, Ross’, Gorat’s, Farmer Browns in Waterloo, many of these are now closed but we never had a shortage of fantastic restaurants.

Well, it’s been raining hard for 3 days straight and is right now so while I don’t mind fishing in it, the rivers we fish are going to be blown out with muddy water and more than likely a lot of floating debris. Forecast is for the pattern to continue so fishing may be postponed for a while.

Back in my single, bar running, drinking all my take home pay days, frozen pizzas were a staple. If I remember correctly they were like a buck and a quarter apiece and you could get about 20 of them in a regular freezer. I also remember the nickname we had for Domino’s before they stepped up their game. We called them “Domino’s Death Discs”. ?

Honestly, I have tried some and all it accomplished was allowing me to see my boat. I don’t load after dark so no help on the ramp. My led backups are bright enough to get the job done and to put out enough light for my backup camera.

I lived in Kansas City for 7 years and got spoiled with their sauces. Gates, Haywards, Jack Stack, Oklahoma Joes and a bunch more. I’ve tried everything with my grills, cover on, cover off, constant cleaning, nothing works. My deck is even with this view out of our great room. It is 78 feet off the forest floor and you can see we are still a long ways under the canopy. I lived in Kansas City for 7 years and got spoiled with their sauces. Gates, Haywards, Jack Stack, Oklahoma Joes and a bunch more. I’ve tried everything with my grills, cover on, cover off, constant cleaning, nothing works. My deck is even with this view out of our great room. It is 78 feet off the forest floor and you can see we are still a long ways under the canopy.

I’m originally from Omaha Nebraska and I grew up on beef and went to school with the now CEO of Omaha Steaks. My father owned some restaurants and we aged our own beef. As a result, I developed a very, very, refined pallet for beef. I want to taste the meat and nothing else. Drives my wife crazy. No salt, no pepper, absolutely no spices. For a hamburger, I will eat it with lettuce and tomato and I have to have a quality bun. For what I know is cheap meat, onion and mushrooms are my additional toppings. If you ever see me putting ketchup on a burger, you can bet IMHO it’s one step up from roadkill.?

My home grilling setup is a propane for everyday and a Masterbuilt Smoker for special days. My house is on a cliff in the forest with a small pond and 2 streams behind it. We are under a canopy of 100 foot trees and have a very severe problem with high humidity, moss, lichens and mold. Every grill I have bought totally disintegrates the guts in 2 years. Some I can rebuild, some I can’t. I brought a cast iron offset firebox, double barrel smoker/grill that was pristine after me using it for 2 years in Florida back home and within 1 year it rusted to the ground. Went to my daughters the other night and planned on doing some old fashioned charcoal grilled chicken and discovered she hadn’t unloaded the 20 year old Weber Kettle charcoal grill we had given her, so I dug around and found an old grill in the barn. After some creative repair and evicting the 10 hornet nests and burning a 1,000 degree fire to sanitize the grates and scrape all of the old grease off, we did some of my favorite old school barbecue chicken. My daughter had some friends over that we also fed and after we left, they told my daughter that was the best bbq chicken they had ever eaten. Made me feel good.

If I’m not mistaken, when we lived in Plainville, Massachusetts on 5 acres on the side of a mountain, our house had a Vermont Castings wood stove in the lower level. That thing would heat the entire house if you wanted it to.

It’s been raining hard and temp dropped into the 60’s. Coldest first day of summer on record. It’s my daughter’s birthday so we went to the Oyster House in Middleburg, Virginia.

The rule is that the same angler cannot catch the same fish more than once a day. What they were doing was stopping way short of a bed, blind casting to it, catching the fish, releasing it, then going to the bed and sight fishing the same fish. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

In one of the last times I pulled my boat the 2 days to get to iWisconsin, the vegetation had been sprayed, the fishing was very tough but I decided to go out and fish in a light rain. I donned my rain suit and went to one of the deepest lakes on the chain. Started down a bank that dropped into 60 feet of water and proceeded to catch a bunch of smallmouth and largemouth that contained the biggest of both species I had caught up to that point in the 19 years I had been fishing it. I like the rain.

Over the years, I’ve had a couple of good fishing friends. Started when we moved into our house 30 years ago and a neighbor who loved to fish got me back into it because I had given it up after my grandfather passed. It was too painful. He eventually moved to Florida and I started guiding. I had a tournament partner that was also a guide and we fished a lot. When work moved me to Florida, I hooked up with a guy and we fished tournaments together but by all accounts, my best friend and fishing partner over the years has been Carlos Hathcock (son of the famous sniper White Feather of the same name and an accomplished shooter himself). We travel together and fish most every weekend when he is not out of the country. He will be retired in a few years and I’m sure that will increase. There’s no way to tell exactly how many fish we have caught together.

2 colors were my mainstay, a Berkeley Powerbait in a brown color (pumpkinseed) and a Kalins in smoke salt pepper.

Every one of these fish and a bunch more were all caught on a dropshot in Michigan about 3 weeks ago now. Could I have caught them on something more “power” based? Maybe but why would I if dropshotting was kicking out this quality and size of fish?

It was a number of years ago I was watching a Sunday morning tournament show (probably the Elite Series) and Mike Iconelli was struggling. He noticed and made the comment that he got bites every time a boat came past him. He eventually put his rod down fired up the big motor and ran a couple of circles in the cove he was fishing. When he stopped, he would catch a couple fish. When the bite died, he would repeat. Worked a number of times. Personally, I’ve never done it.

When I wade fished, 90% of the time I was throwing a 3 inch curl tail grub on a light jig head, hook exposed. Caught literally thousands of fish over the years.

When guiding, I usually tell my new clients that although I am pretty well versed in all things finesse, there will be a technique that will feel the most comfortable to you. Find it and then sprinkle in the other techniques to find when and where they work best.

I forgot to add that I made my very, very, rare reel buy the other day. I was with Bass Pro for so many years, I used mostly all their gear, I repped for Quantum and got a heavy discount and have a lot of their gear but I saw the close out deal on Duckett reels and the 3 for the price of 1 and had to get a piece of that deal. I’m impressed with the spinning reels I got but I can guarantee you they are rebranded from another maker.