TOXIC

Supposed to be available as of today on the Yamamoto website. www.baits.com they are also at the Classic I am told.

On Anna I think there is a factor of consistency. The water is consistently warmer year after year. There’s no sudden change. It’s the norm for those bass and when using the daylight stimuli to signal spring, the water temp overrides it to some degree.

None, they watched me like a Hawk.?. I do have some contacts in Japan that will send me baits if I ask. This shape has been very popular there for a number of years.

Before I was pro staff with bass pro, my favorite mono line of all time was Trilene Tournament Strength in photochromic. Came in a gold box and was the best Senko line on the market. Highly visible above water, invisible under water and strong as piano wire while still casting like dream. It got discontinued. Once I went with Bass Pro I starting using the Excel mono. It’s hit or miss. Some good spools, some not so good.

Normally when you get line overrun on a spinning reel it’s because you either spooled too much (general consensus is to have at least 1/16th of the spool lip showing, you put too heavy of test line on, you caught a wind loop reeling in from the last cast, you have cheap fluorocarbon that is stiff, or your line has memory. Dunking it in warm water will remove the filler spool memory but will introduce spinning reel spool memory. I prefer to just walk off my line down the yard and re-spool it pinching it with my fingers. I don’t have a problem with overrun on my reels but I do not use heavy line..

When I toured the plant a number of years ago, the Japanese only section had 100’s of baits we don’t have here. Some of the shapes would amaze you, especially that they catch fish. ?

Funny, my Japanese friend said the translation is Raccoon Dog. ?

I know there’s been a bunch of online hype about Yamamoto coming out with a new bait. Well, it debuted today and lo and behold, it’s not really a new bait but one that has been on the JDM market for a while. I’m not promoting because I haven’t had a chance to fish it yet but it seems to fall somewhere between a fat Ika and a grub. For me, it’s too big for a dropshot or Ned and too small for weightless. Seems some have weighted it and some fish it weightless. There’s plenty of vids out there if you want to go look for them. I’ll just give you a glimpse into what they look like. The ones I got from a friend in Japan are smaller and are packaged in the Japan only bags.

My ribs did great considering it was 39 degrees all day. Did the 3-2-1 method of smoking and used cherrywood. Also smoked some baked potatoes and they were good.

Going to smoke a rack of pork ribs today with the good old 3-2-1 method except for the fact I don’t mop or sauce the ribs on the smoker. I like them dry smoked and then dipped for sauce. Only negative is that the sauce has a totally different flavor profile if it is cooked on the meat.

I’m a little more concerned because I am getting ready to pull the injectors out of my Yamaha and send them to be cleaned, adjusted and flow tested. Replacement of 6 injectors if they get lost in transit is not on my to do list.

Is anyone else having shipping issues recently? I normally don’t order a lot of tackle online but ran into a good sale on Tackle Direct for some Damiki Shad blade baits. Placed an order the end of last month. Promptly received tracking information and waited a week and checked and it showed order shipped and was sitting in a hub in New Jersey. Waited another few days with no updates so I emailed Tackle Direct and they were very apologetic and asked me to give it a couple more days because their shippers were having delays and staffing issues. I didn’t have a problem with it so I waited until yesterday and still no update so I emailed their customer service and they said they could re-ship or refund. I’m in no hurry (obviously) so I said to re-ship. I get an email this morning that they are now out of stock and they can re-ship when the come in or refund. This is in no way a slam on Tackle Direct. They have been more than attentive and willing to do whatever it takes to make me happy. Second issue was with an Amazon order I made before I left for Florida on a fishing trip. I was expecting it to be waiting for me when I got home. Instead, I had 1/2 the order. I go online and same deal Amazon shows order lost in transit and I could re-order or get a refund. I just got a refund on that one. So, is shipping becoming more of an issue? I’m not talking about damaged packages, etc., just the plain fact items aren’t making it.

Let’s not forget the camaraderie because a good fishing friend is different than any other friend. If you spend hours and hours on a boat together you develop a bond that goes beyond friendship. I used to use fishing to decompress from a job that was high stress and mentally exhausting. Alone on the boat running across the lake at first light was like recharging my internal batteries. I’ve fished for 20 years with the same guys on St Clair every year and I have realized that it’s as much about the group as it is about the fishing.

Here in Virginia it’s been crazy windy and cold for us but nowhere near as bad as it’s been both north and south of us. I need a break so I’m loading up the wife and truck and heading to Cresent Beach in Florida next week. I’ll spend a week in the sand and hopefully spring will have sprung more permanently when I get back.

At this point my opinion would feel like dog piling on your answer. However you pay, never buy a boat you really don’t want, it’ll never live up to your expectations. If you want the Ranger, buy the Ranger. If you can’t afford new, either wait and save or buy used.

When I lived in Jax and fished some local tournaments, there was a rash of prop thefts from boats on lifts on the St Johns river. Thief eventually go caught and had something like 30 or 40 stainless props at his house. Come to find out it was a guide who scoped out boats on lifts during the day with clients, then came back at night and stole the props. He was a good stick in the tournament circuit as well.

5” Senko/4” Senko Speed Senko DShad Shad Shape Worm Paddle tail Zako

Ok, let me clarify, I don’t have 100 green pumpkin Senkos in the boat. I’ll bring 50 and leave 50 on the garage wall. ?

There’s a post floating around here on the front page about a baitcaster vs spinning for weightless Senkos and my lengthy response.?. Although I don’t fish wacky style, I fish a lot of weightless Senkos and my rod and line choices are always based on where and how I will be fishing. For example, I don’t use the same setup on lakes vs rivers or on fishing docks, open water or vegetation. If I had to make a general statement, my preferred rod would be a 7 ft medium CastAway Skeleton and 6lb mono on a spinning setup.

PFD’s. Wear them.

My rule of thumb has always been…since I’m not out here to race anybody and my 21 foot boat is more floating tackle box than sports car, I’m packing it to the gunnels with baits. MPG on my old 2 stroke sucks bad anyway so no real benefit to eliminating weight or gear. The one caveat I do have is that it has to be organized. If you really want to eliminate some serious weight switch from AGM or wet cell batteries to lithium.

Those in management don’t understand the saying “Workers don’t quit bad jobs, they quit bad managers”. Likewise, companies change their corporate structure and it changes the entire organization. In the Federal Agency I worked for 34 years, the Chairman was a presidential appointee and as such the corporate climate could change with every new administration. My agency went from valuing employees and it was reflected in pay, opportunities and benefits, to downsizing, right sizing, cutting and finding ways to eliminate positions. If you didn’t pay attention even as a career status employee (government term for hard to eliminate) you could get caught in the crosshairs of policies enacted by a Chairman and be out of a job. I had to change my attitude from “I’ll sacrifice for the agency “ to “I don’t want to get sacrificed by the agency”.

Toxic is the most used one and it was given to me by a roommate 40 years ago. Partially had to do with my profession and partially my dating life at the time. ?

Funny, before I retired, my line of work pretty much guaranteed me of no returning to the workforce due to the specialized nature of what I did for the most part. 34 years and a few moves and a lot of travel cemented my decision to go. I wasn’t retired more than a year when I got a call from a company who was under contract to the Treasury Department to go to 3rd world countries and assist them with their banking systems. Some notable people I had worked with were doing it and someone passed my name on to them. I would travel for 3 months, then be home 3 months, travel with armed protection and stay in very nice high end places. Pay was almost too good to believe but being 100% contract employee there were a lot of hidden costs. I ultimately turned it down and later found out that my assignment was to be Ukraine. This was before the current situation. Likewise, my LinkedIn profile has been getting queried a lot in the last few weeks due to the recent banking events. Maybe I ought to pull a Tom Brady and come out of retirement.??

I am breaking the subject down into parts. First is back deck with a guide, then back deck with a friend, then back deck in tournaments both draw and team. First one is complete and I am waiting to send it in. Remember though the Inside Line normally does fairly short stories so it limits how in depth I can go. There have been a lot of discussions on this site as well.