TOXIC

Here’s the deal. You are trying to compensate for an injury. You are going to have to find what works for you. “Proper” mechanics are out the window. Only you know what hurts and what doesn’t. In a lot of situations where people are nursing a shoulder injury like a rotator cuff, I see them switch to spinning rods for the majority of their fishing. The reason being, you can load the rod and make long accurate casts with spinning because you use more of your wrist than arm.

I always have at least a couple hundie on me for emergencies. Living in the DC area during the height of the pandemic, nobody wanted to accept cash. I’ve been to multiple restaurants around me that take cash only. Small business get hit hard with credit card fees and in todays economy, it can make or break them. I always tip in cash even if I pay with a card.

Early on, I was banned from the tournaments on my home waters because I was a guide and all of the Tournament Directors thought a guide in the mix would hurt participation. They ultimately reversed themselves but I got tired of the grumbling and side eyes at weigh in. It made me feel guilty as well so I made the decision that guiding was guaranteed money and made me much more than the tournaments ever did. The tourney guys hired me as well for prefishing before events. After that, I resigned myself to just charity tournaments like Wounded Warriors and a few others that were “give back” style. I also guided for Woo Daves in an annual event he has had for years benefiting a local halfway house for developmentally challenged adults. He brought together all of his sponsors and the Hendricks NASCAR team for a tournament on the James River. He had a huge BBQ for the community afterwards. With guiding, sponsor commitments and my employment that took me all over the US, tournaments were just not in the realm of possibility requiring more time and attention than I could muster.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane remembering when my parents let me have a high school party in the basement and me decorating everything with fluorescent paint and black lights everywhere. Turntable in the corner blaring out LPs of Various artists including Deep Purple.

It’s a selling point until you have to rework your setup (motor height/jackplate/prop, etc.) because the weight difference has messed it up. I’ve seen some that lost speed when they went all lithium. Correctable but still a process.

I don’t like the warping of the Plano boxes but it is what it is. As for storing the bulk, this is what I came up with. I used to just leave them in the boxes they were shipped in. I am going to rig up a wall peg system when I redo my garage but that is a ways off.

A true star when country was still country.

One year on St Clair during our annual trip was a certain color Staycee jerkbait. Others caught some but that single bait was the ticket.

I don’t know for I ever posted about this but I was bellyaching on a Silverado website I belong to about my trucks weak remote garage door opener. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t or took multiple times to work. Range was terrible. One of the members asked if I had LED lights in my garage ceiling unit. I do. He said LEDs can interfere with the signal from the remote built into the truck. After some experimenting with the opener in the truck and manually turning on and off the opener light and sure enough it had a very strong impact. I assume it is different between newer openers and different models. I also assume that might be the reason I had such a problem programming my wall mounted remote opener on the outside of the garage as well. I changed mine back to the old fashioned light bulbs today.

I forgot one on my list…Gator……but not Gator tail, I’ve had my share of Gator tail but when I lived in Florida, I had a friend harvest a 13ft Gator and in addition to gifting me a 5gal bucket of Gator meat, he smoked Gator ribs on the grill and they were delish. Local Jacksonville residents know about Clark’s Fish Camp where you can get a lot of exotic dishes from snake to emu.

I also spray a little on my SPRO frog legs and the rare occasion I use a jig. Keeps the skirts from sticking together.

I store all of my plastics in Plano boxes but I only have Yamamoto so there is no cross reaction. As has been said, no hooks and I remove the plastics used as trailers from any lures before storage. The only exception is that I store Ned heads and plastics together but I keep the heads in plastic bags. I also spray my terminal tackle with some WD40 and I use chunks of sidewalk chalk as a desiccant.

I guess you’re right, you could use anything as a benchmark to differentiate between fish, width of tail, size of dorsal, etc.,? but the only other way to identify a “trophy” fish I’ve seen is with musky and that is also length. The most universal, even in salt, is weight. I have a hard time getting past that. ?

I thought this might be enough of a deal to push for length vs weight as a way for scoring but then I remembered there have been instances of kayak cheaters in that format as well. I also don’t think length is a fair measure since I’ve seen a lot of long skinny fish and short heavy fish. I just think length is more arbitrary.

I’ll tell you one I will never eat again…..Canadian Goose. I have tried it every way imaginable and the best I ever got it to taste was equivalent to an old shoe after walking through a pig pen.

I know some locals and heard they have a long list of wins over the past few years.. turns my stomach.

I’ve had my fair share. When I lived in Iowa, we had a game feed every year and had frog legs, venison, squirrel, turtle, bear, elk, coon, pheasant, quail and probably a few I am forgetting. Personally, I like commercial meats but I hafta say I really enjoyed antelope.

If money were no object and keeping it somewhat realistic, I would have 2 places. 1 somewhere up North because I am addicted to smallmouth and 1 somewhere down South for monster largies. Alternating between the two as the seasons and climate dictate. I’ve actually been researching this very thing.

You have options. Normally you never want to hook graphs up to your troller battery(s). You are asking for interference. Since you are in a Jon, I would suggest separate batteries and as big as you can afford. Wet cell/AGM/Gel/Lithium are all options depending on your budget.

It’s kinda weird. Catfish slime is different from snakehead slime. When catfish slime dries it’s like Elmer’s glue mixed with cement. Although snakeheads produce much more slime and it’s much more stinky, it is easy to clean and it dissolves on carpet when it dries.

Yeah I do.

I didn’t “thread crap” as you like to call it. The person in the vid is Ike and although I agreed he was in the right, it’s relevant to point out he has had his moments. I’ve seen a lot of blind pro defense no matter what they do and it’s called leg humping. I assume your his neighbor so give your love and kisses to him. I prefer women.

We put our 2nd Weimaraner down about 4 months ago. Still deciding on what we want next. He was a big boy weighing in at 110lbs and did a fine job of protecting the house. We have 3 cats (not by choice) and he was fine with them although Weimaraners are known cat killers. Daughter raises working GSDs but I’m not keen on the breed for us. We’ve had back to back Weimaraners and they were both great so I’m leaning towards that breed again.

Well, doing a show afterwards isn’t the same as being on the water fishing the heat of the tournament. I take it you watched the interaction on the water as well? Put up that link. Because if you did there’s no questioning that VanDam was heated. I’m not an Ike hater like some but if you act the fool, you’ll get called out on it. Like I said, he was right in the situation with the dock owner.

While I agree with Ike in this instance, he has had his share of etiquette incidents as well. One on the Potomac where he was prefishing for a tournament and he idled down a grass line graphing it towards a local and effectively blew out the entire spot. The other was a tournament where he encroached on Kevin VanDam and when confronted, Ike said to him “C’mon man, you know this is a community hole” and Kevin replied, “Yeah, but you ain’t part of the community”. ??