TOXIC

Nope no seasickness either on the ocean or in freshwater boats. I will say I got queasy one year on St Clair when I was looking at a friends aqua view screen while the boat was rocking pretty good. It’s a whole different thing when you’ve been doing 8-10 hours a day on the boat for about 3 days straight and then you lay down to go to sleep and the bed feels like it is rocking like you’re in the boat. Doesn’t make me sick but it holds on for a couple of days after our week of fishing.

Although stable, I can see a problem with propulsion. Pedals will wrap up grass and no place to mount a trolling motor and battery. You could fab something up but remember to make is so you can get to the tm to clear weeds and a place to mount your battery. That style is not well suited to rowing if you have to.

Beyond science, I always knew I was going to have a tough guiding trip on the days after full moon nights. My personal hypothesis is that they can see better and tend to feed more at night with the full moon.

From what I’ve seen and used, finding them is easier but estimating size is a lot trickier.

Normal wakes are not a problem. It’s the wakeboarding and wake surfing boats that throw tug boat size wakes that if you are in shallow enough water will drop you down on the bottom. I don’t normally have that problem since I only take my boat that shallow to retrieve a lure. But….even if you are deep, they will break over your bow or whatever part of your boat is facing them. Can swamp smaller boats, canoes and kayaks.

Only time is running. Not normally when fishing although I could see it happening if you were really shallow. I managed to break a prop and lockdown pin on Lake Champlain in some nasty weather. Fishing in 12 feet of water in an area called the City Ledge when a wave so big it sucked all the water out from under my boat and sat me down on the rocks smashing my trolling motor. We had no business being out that day.

Actually, going to the Rappahonock River Saturday. The biomass in that river is unbelievable.

I have a 21ft boat so it doesn’t matter.?. But generally to keep the pitching to a minimum, I will turn the nose to face the wake.

One of the reasons I dropped out of tournaments was that I saw how $ changed the personalities of the guys I knew and it wasn’t for the good. There were some exceptions. The tournament trail I fished in Florida was loads of fun and there was a standing agreement that if one of the teams that were in our group of about 5 boats won, they had to buy lunch for the rest. That usually ate up all the winnings?. On our annual trip to Lake St Clair where we rent a cottage on an island, at the end of the day we all compare who caught what and the winner had to eat the hunk of fruit, either apple or peach from the bottom of the genuine, home stilled, delicious, moonshine we brought. We had on jar a night between 7 of us and it got passed around until the winner had to eat the fruit. They were normally the first one in bed.?

Might be. The Japanese market is so different from here that I have a hard time relating. I don’t know the specifics since the sale but when I toured the factory, there were huge racks of Japan only baits and some of them were wild. Looked like little scraps of plastic. Word at that time was that they manufactured 5 shipping containers a month for Japan only baits. The GYCB International page is still up and they are still using the old logo.

To be clear, I have no intention of fishing there. I have in the past when the surface temp was 105. It’s our winter haunt because of the warm temps. Usually stays above 55-60. When I did fish it in the summer we would almost exclusively fish the feeder creeks or the deepest holes in main pools. They can be caught. ?

I also retired from the Federal Government but at age 62 because it upped my pension by 10%. While I would never say your suggestion is wrong, I will say that it’s not a universal thing. I have been retired for 3 years after 34 years with Uncle Sugar. My job was highly stressful, required multiple moves and was at times very dangerous. When I retired it was like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I knew I could support my wife and I very well on my pension, the 401k, Thrift Savings Plan and some other investments I made. The very last thing I want to do is go back to work, even part time. Because of my experience, I have been offered jobs some overseas and some here in the states but I have no desire to re-enter the workforce even as an independent contractor and from home. I commend your volunteer spirit and my wife is somewhat the same, she is the executive director of a local non-profit for that reason. I am totally happy being a couch potato to some degree and spend my time researching topics that interest me, writing articles and reading. I make sure I get enough exercise to remain mobile and be able to launch/retrieve my 21 foot boat myself, withstand a full 12 hour day on the water and still take trips to Florida and Michigan for “combat” fishing weeks but I’m certainly not interested in “working out” (sorry AJ?), I did enough of that in my younger years. I feel like I’ve earned the right to slow my life down and r.e.l.a.x. My life now belongs to me for the first time since I started working at age 17. No money worries, kids raised, nice house, good lifestyle. The world is my oyster.??

So……….how would y’all fish these conditions????

Well, that bait I am very experienced with. I have used it on a Ned, dropshot, ball head. At times the fish prefer it. My biggest complaint is that they bite the tail off.

I have noticed you like to throw that bait a lot. Am I missing a bait in the Yamamoto lineup that I should be using more?

For about 5 years pre Covid we would have a “get together” at a friends house who lives close to the Potomac river. We had friends come from all over, Massachusetts, Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and probably a few other states I’m forgetting. Most would stay at local hotels and pull their boats. I would pack the back of my truck with boxes of sponsor gear. I won’t go into all of the gear at the risk of sounding like a blowhard but if I had to guess I brought in the neighborhood of $7,000 worth of baits from terminal tackle to hard baits and plastics. After the first day of the 2 day event, my buddy would host a bbq and since I stayed with him, I would just open the back of my truck and tell everyone to grab a few of whatever they needed or wanted to try. After all, that’s what sponsorship is all about, getting product into the hands of those who would use it. Every sponsor agreement I had forbid me from selling product so I would refuse any type of offer to pay. Well, one guy brought 4 “friends” who I had never met and I extended the offer to them as well. As the night wore on and the party continued I went out to lock up the truck and it was pretty much cleaned out. Normally I keep a close eye on the comings and goings from the truck but over the years I knew and trusted all of the participants. Come to find out the “new” guys that were there used the opportunity to fill bags with gear. When one of my friends called them out on it, they offered to pay something and I told them I could not do that. They never offered to put anything back and later embarrassed themselves as the party went on into the night. Lesson learned.

I can honestly say I use as many different lures for smallmouth as I do for largemouth. A lot of the same for both and a few more speciality for the small jaws. Tournaments as a whole are going to get more boring as more are keyed in to the front facing sonar. IMHO

Professional bass fishing tournaments are the only sport where you are competing for each other’s $$ (entry fees). To make it truly a sustainable sport to compete in, the sponsors need to quit sponsoring individuals and sponsor the trail. That’s how you get bigger payoffs. Individual sponsorships would still happen but not to the level they are now. Sports like NASCAR, golf, etc., with big payouts are sponsor driven not participant.

Big surprise….Yamamoto Shad Shape Worm. So far I have only fished the original and have not tried the new larger version introduced at ICAST.

Exactly the same except I have a close circle of friends that also includes some who do not fish. My job, when I was working, wasn’t conducive to any long term relationships. I was a career appointed federal employee and one of a small number that managed up to 400 temporary or contract employees depending on the location and both the location and their jobs were never meant to be permanent. It was heartbreaking when we closed those locations and the few of us that were permanent moved on and the remainder lost their jobs. I went through it too many times. So I made all of my close friends outside the workplace.

I can ignore the itch from a mosquito bite but not those little biting gnats and/or blackflys.

We have different styles and I am glad yours works for you. I’m afraid It would be too much of a reeducation or learning curve for me to change up now. I can see you make it work for you. That’s fantastic. I will never be able to see where any baitcasting reel that has drag, casting and frame mounting mechanisms on it can feed line as freely as a spinning reel with the only friction being the line guides. I would like to share a boat with you sometime, I think we could both learn something. ?

While I think there is some validity to fish “conditioning” I don’t think you are going to experience it in low pressure ponds. If your lures are mimicking food, the bass are going to eat it.

Yes. Even a modern finesse baitcaster in freespool won’t feed line the same way as a spinning spool with the same line. My other point still holds true that by hand feeding the line you are missing hits. Once my bait hits the water, I no longer have any attention on my reel. None. I am watching my line at 2 locations. 1 where it enters the water and is closest to my Senko and 2 where the line touches the water closest to my rod. I couldn’t do that hand feeding line. I may be an oddity I’ll admit but I have been a Senko fanatic since they were first offered. I even notice different sink rates in different color/fleck combinations and different colors that skip better than others. My ability to do that is directly related to the gear I throw them on.

I need accurate info prior to hitting the water. My graphs will give weather, tides, storms, lightning etc. I want info accurate for today tomorrow and reasonably for the next few days. I’m about to shitcan my radar app since I am sitting here in rain and storms and it is showing clear. Not a ray of sunshine and it’s showing absolutely no cloud cover. That’s un acceptable.