RPreeb

One of the best deals I ever got on a cooler was my Coleman Super Oscar. I bought it in about 1980, and it's still in the garage right now. Just this summer one of the rivets holding the handle broke, and I'm going to figure out a way to repair it. We have been all over the Rocky Mountain West together over the last 37 years. For a relatively cheap small cooler (couldn't have cost more than $20 new), it has been a rock - served as food storage and camp stool on too many overnighters to count. I'd buy a new one if they still existed. Nothing that Coleman offers today even comes close. If you look closely at this photo you can see the red top of the cooler in the bed behind the driver's seat. That is my 1980 Toyota 4x4 which I owned from '82-'89, and the cooler is the same one I'm still using.

What brand of reel? That can make a difference. I'm short on experience too, but long on reading the articles on this forum about baitcasting. I've learned from reading and watching videos here that different models and brands have different ways of setting them up to find a starting point. Casting technique is also important. I have had no significant problems with backlashes, even though I started this year in May without having touched a baitcaster for more than 50 years.

We had a hard freeze 2 weeks ago for just one night, since then it's been high 70's during the days with temps in the 30's and 40's at night - typical fall weather in eastern Colorado. The last 2 times out I've been shut out in the 2 ponds where I go most often for evening outings. It gets into the 70's during the day and unfortunately that keeps the mosquitoes plenty active, but the water must be in the mid 50's at best and the bass aren't biting on anything I offer them lately. Today was 79°, but tomorrow it cools off and mostly stays in the 50's and 60's in the long range forecast. Since this is my first autumn seeking bass, I don't really know what to expect, so I'll just take everything I own that keep plugging along.

I find this topic interesting. As a long time golfer, I've found that graphite shafts in golf clubs actually reduce feel and dampen vibration compared to a steel shaft, yet graphite fishing rods enhance feel according to most of the comments here. I can't confirm or deny that because at this point in my bass fishing, I don't have the experience to know what I'm feeling - I make a lot of false hook sets. I plan to buy a "decent" rod next spring to compare to the Ugly Stik that I'm using at the moment. Maybe then I'll have a better tool to judge what is happening at the business end of my line.

No specific brands or patterns remembered, but in Wisconsin when we were young, my brother and I would sometimes take the canoe out for the primary purpose of lure hunting. We'd cruise along the shore under overhanging trees and through coves of lily pads where it was difficult or impossible for boats to get to. Every now and then we'd find a tree that looked like it was decorated for Christmas. Other times there would be a length of black casting line tangled around a log or weaved through several pads that we would laboriously follow, sometimes finding nothing, but often we were rewarded. Once we even got the lure with a live bass still hooked - we kept the bait and freed the fish. If not for some of those free baits we wouldn't have been able to do half of the bass fishing we did, because money was tight and coming up with $.79 for a lure (I'm talking circa 1960) was hard to justify when worms were free for the digging and nightcrawlers were easy to find on the paths around the lake after dark.

That is hilarious! Great video - lots of fun.

When I grew up in Minnesota (early 60's), guys had their fishing huts out on the ice all winter, with heaters and chairs. They just drove out to the hut to fish, then drove home again when done. Not too rough that way. One hut I visited with a friend was different from the norm. They cut a 3' x 6' hole over about 6 feet of water and spear fished. They just waited for something worthwhile to swim by, then chucked a spear at it.

What can I say? We were kids with cane poles fishing for sunfish, and perch were just considered bait stealers. We dug those worms ourselves, and perch could nibble away the worm and never get hooked. We could tell when a perch was feeding on our worm by how the bobber reacted, just twitching and jerking but never going under. Most of the perch we caught were 8 inches or less. We just did what everyone did. On the rare occasion when we did catch one big enough to eat, we kept it. We were usually fishing for the table. @Vinjints I have never considered myself a "high and mighty bass fisherman". I'm an occasional fisherman whose fishing has ranged from barracuda to brook trout, and while I usually release what I catch, sometimes I like to eat fresh fish too. You aren't going to make me feel guilty about that, or about what I did as a kid.

It will only compress if the material is compressible. Senko plastic is pretty dense, and I don't think that there is much effect from pressure, at least not at the depths that you will be fishing it. At 33 feet you have doubles the pressure from what you have at the surface, but that won't have any significant effect on something like a plastic worm. A balloon full of air will be half the volume at 33 feet that it is at the surface, but air is far more compressible than a Senko. I've been down as far as 150 feet on scuba and that has had no effect on anything that I had with me except for my air supply, which went away very quickly at that depth. Nitrogen absorption limits one's stay down there to just a few minutes anyway without having to go through decompression.

At the risk of looking stupid.... what's a "gill"?

I grew up in a few miles north of St. Paul, Minnesota, and in summers at Balsam Lake, Wisconsin in the 50's and early 60's and we always considered yellow perch as a trash fish - used to just break their necks and toss them up on shore for the scavengers. I know that people here in Colorado do fish for them at times. There is a general daily bag and possession limit in the eastern half of the state of 20 fish. I personally have never seen a perch here. When I joined this forum last spring I read a few posts mentioning "bream" or "brim" and thought it was a species that I'd never seen before. I had to look it up, and found out that it was a colloquial term for many members of the sunfish family, mostly limited to the southeast. Up in the northwoods country, we always called them by their individual names - sunfish, bluegill, pumpkinseed, etc. Bream is, however, an actual species in the UK.

Yep... we had our first snow yesterday - just a couple of inches and it's gone now. Pretty common now for our Indian summer to last for another month. When I was still working, it seemed like the nice days were always on work days, never on weekends. Now it doesn't matter what day of the week it is - in fact, I mostly avoid weekends because that's when the crowds are out. I have my last men's club golf tournament this weekend, but I will still get out to the course a few more times, as well as hitting a couple of local ponds a few more times before I wimp out in the cold weather. Then I just daydream about next spring, prepare the garage for storing the new canoe I'm buying over the winter so I can get off the bank, and generally get myself psyched up for next year. I ice fished in Minnesota once, and in Montana a couple of times... didn't get very enthusiastic about it.

I haven't found that it's significantly more expensive to maintain my F-150 than it is my wife's Edge. Oil changes and the multi-point checks that they do when I take it in for the oil change are about all of the regular maintenance required. Tires may be a bit higher because of size, but I only buy them about every 4 years, so the amortized cost difference is minimal in the long run. I find it very handy to have a truck for a lot more than just towing the camper. I also have access to a couple of utility trailers in which I haul stuff a few times a year. Living a very small town (400 people) in a rural environment makes a recreational level pickup a very logical choice for a daily driver. And for me the creature comforts are a real selling point. Driving my truck is like kicking back in an easy chair. Large, comfortable seats, plenty of room for 5 adults, good sound system, backup camera for easy hitching, manual 4 wheel drive so I control when and where. Plus, I just like driving it. The 600 mile cruising range with a 36 gallon tank means that for a lot of my driving, even for weekend trips, I don't need to find gas while on the road. Even when towing the camper, we drove from SE of Des Moines, IA to home in NE Colorado (600 miles) with just one gas stop along the way, and still arrived with more than 1/4 tank left. Lots of positives that more than balance any loss of mileage and a little more difficulty in some parking lots, which are really the only negatives that affect me.

My 2016 F-150 with 3.5 4x4 Ecoboost gets between 18 and 19 mpg in general driving, 20-21 highway in summer with the cruise usually at 80 on the interstate - mileage is about 1 mpg less on average in winter. When towing my 24 foot camping trailer I get 8-10 mpg depending on wind. I've never towed a boat so I can't say what mileage I'd get with that - it would certainly be more than with the camper, but I very much doubt that it would get 17 mpg. I never tow at more than 65 mph (cheap OEM trailer tires ), but with 365 horses and 420 lb/ft of torque I have power to spare for dragging my camper up any mountain pass in Colorado at whatever the legal speed is, and that's more of concern to me than a mile or two per gallon.

My wife's Edge gets about 21-22 mpg, and it's 7 years old. My understanding is that the newer ones do better than that, and it's a lot more car than an Escape. I'm a big guy, and I fit the Edge comfortably (we originally bought it for my vehicle, then swapped when we had to buy the F-150 to tow the camping trailer). I didn't even bother to look at the Escape any farther than just sitting behind the wheel. I also got to drive an Equinox and a Jeep Cherokee over the last couple of years. The Equinox was small for me, but otherwise okay to drive, but the Cherokee had perhaps the most uncomfortable seat of any vehicle I've ever driven. The Jeep was a high end model, with all the bells and whistles, but nothing could make up for that seat.

When I lived in the Bahamas, I used 30 lb Power Pro braid on a Shimano Spheros 5000 spinning reel, and a MH BPS Ocean Master 3 piece travel rod. I landed up to about 12-15 pound snapper and barracuda with that outfit. My sister was using my wife's rig (same as mine) when she visited, and landed a 10 pound bonefish... that was an exciting battle.

Same here. I drove 6 different Toyotas from 1973 until 2003. They just got too high on themselves. I was able to get a better deal on a Honda - Toyota just wouldn't budge on price so I went another direction. Now we have 2 Fords, a 2010 Edge (bought in 2014 with just 21,000 miles) and a 2016 F-150 3.5L EcoBoost (bought new a year ago). They have been every bit as dependable as any of my Toyotas ever were. I have nothing against Toyota, but I don't see them as significantly better than most others these days. Even when you see those "reliability" ratings (like JD Power, etc.), the actual quantifiable differences are negligible - more of a marketing tool than any real world difference.

The visible spectrum is lost by wavelength as you go deeper, starting with the red end (longest wavelengths), with blue penetrating the farthest, extending as deep as 600 meters in very clear water. Red can be lost in as little as 35 feet even under good conditions in the ocean. This is why I don't feel that color is as important as shade... light and dark shades of colors are probably more telling than the color itself. This photo that I took in 1990 at Little Cayman is in about 35 feet of water. You can see the color brought out by my strobe, but the light of that fairly powerful Nikonos strobe didn't carry much farther than 6 feet, and everything beyond that is just blue and green. The only noticeable colors you see are quite close to the light source. Those objects showed no color before the strobe flashed. Scuba divers often carry a small light with them even on daytime dives to see the real colors on the reef.

Well, this isn't me, but it is my favorite fishing photo. This was a friend of ours (green shirt) when we lived in the Bahamas. He is Canadian, and some of the guys with him are Bahamian, others are winter residents. They did a fishing day southeast of our island at a place called the Diana Banks and came back with this catch - 11 wahoo and 2 dolphin/dorado/mahi-mahi. I got a few wahoo fillets out of the deal. Note the wahoo lying on the dock with it's tail missing. That is a constant threat when fishing down there... sharks are drawn in by the commotion of fighting and landing fish - I lost as many as I landed on many fishing days there.

I don't think that towing a boat that size should be a major issue. You may find it a bit slow on hills, but otherwise it should pull okay. Having just bought a camping trailer last year, I've gone through this discussion a few times now, and I ended up having to buy an F-150 with tow package to pull my 5500 lb max trailer. You are a lot lighter and don't have that drag chute behind to have to overcome.

I found my limit today on my Tatula CT100 - I tried a 4" Berkley Powerbait worm weightless and the first cast made a mess that took 10 minutes and a missed fish to untangle. Two more careful attempts, adjusting the brake each time and couldn't get a decent cast with no backlash. Maybe it's mostly my inexperience with a baitcaster, but even my spinning outfit didn't exactly throw that one over the fence. I couldn't use it at all on the baitcaster, even though I've had no problem with any of the larger weightless plastics I've used. I started out today with a plastic fluke swimbait and it cast perfectly every time. I'll just stick to the spinning rod for the lighter finesse baits.

Temps have been all over the place here. 80's to near 90 to start last week, then down to the 60's, back up to around 80, then only in the 50's the last couple of days. Today was mid 60's and sunny without a breath of wind, and that lack of wind is very unusual here in the fall. Supposed to be high 50's tomorrow, then warming into the 70's by the weekend.

Fishing a pond here in NE Colorado this evening, all I could get bit on was a Berkley Powerbait 4" watermelon red glitter. I tried plastic swimbaits, a couple of crankbaits, a suspending jerkbait, and a 5" Senko. Landed one and lost one to a birds nest the first time I tried to cast the 4" worm. Ended up switching over to my spinning rod an dhad a bunch of bites that didn't take, then a couple that did and only landed the one, about 13". Tell you what though... the skeeters were biting a lot stronger than the fish!

I've only been catfish fishing once in my life, at Lake Powell. We would moor the houseboat for the evening in a cove with a sandy beach, put out our lines off the back, attach a clip-on bell to the tip of the rod, then drink beer until the bell rang. I don't even remember what we used for bait. We did have a good catfish fry the 3rd night out.

Good story, and even when you do get over that 6 pound wall, you will never forget today's adventure!