RPreeb

Which is still useless if they are the same as the one that came with the product, as in my case. I've been going through this with the camping trailer we bought last year. They try to save money by publishing this generic manual that is so broadly generalized in its information that it has very little that is really helpful. For almost every topic they include the disclaimer "if equipped". Then they change the design of some system (in my case the plumbing for water heater) halfway through the model year, but don't change the manual. If it wasn't for internet RV forums, I'd have really had a hard time trying to winterize this thing.

If I'm going "fishing" then I want it all. Feeling the bite, setting the hook, landing the fish - it's all necessary for most fishermen to get what they want from the sport. Trying different baits and different retrieves and methods is part of the overall experience too. I can see handing the rod with a hooked fish to a kid, because they usually get bored easily if there is none of what they perceive as "action". For most adults, the suspense of the search for a bite is part of the action. For me, just knowing that the fish are there is a spur to try harder to find what they will take, but I want to get them to bite on my own, and it sounds like that vet was mostly in the same mode.

I play a lot of golf, and the ponds at my home course have some decent bass (I see them often when they are cruising near shore), but nobody fishes them because the district won't authorize it. The reason they give is that they are afraid that someone would try to keep them for eating, and because of the use of chemical fertilizers, etc. on the course and subsequent concentration in the ponds, the fish may not be safe to eat. I worked there for the first 5 years after I retired, and even employees were barred from fishing. There are some nice 2-3 pound largemouth for certain, maybe some bigger that I haven't seen from shore, and some 10+ pound carp. There must be some bait fish or some other sort of food supply, but I've never seen any of that. I suspect that there is a good crawdad population, as that's pretty typical in ponds along the Colorado front range.

I like the look of this boat, especially the seat, but I'm not sure how I'd be able to get one. There's no dealer closer than a day's drive away, and the Vibe website lists all of the kayaks I looked at as "out of stock". If they require going through a dealer, then I'm out of luck - it's not worth 2 days driving to me when I have other options locally.

For US measures, my digital kitchen scale is graduated in 1/8 ounce increments. It also does metric.

I grew up in Minnesota, but spent my first 17 summers at Balsam Lake, WI. When we were kids, Mom always oiled us up with 6-12 repellent. I don't know if it really repelled the skeeters, or if it just made our skin so slippery that they just slid right off. Back in the 70's and 80's for backpacking in the Rockies, I used REI Jungle Juice - 98% DEET. Very effective, but it was also effective as a paint remover (as was mentioned above), so you had to use it wisely. Anything with DEET is effective against mosquitoes. Best thing about that stuff was that you didn't need to smear it all over every bit of exposed skin - just a few select spots seemed to work to keep the critters off. I came to associate the smell of Jungle Juice with backpacking. We just bought a bottle of Sawyers Permethrin at Walmart to try when we camp in the mountains this summer, but we will also have our Deep Woods Off for spot applications. When it's hot, I can't stand wearing pants, and Sawyers is only for applying to clothing.

My first 17 summers were spent at a cabin on Balsam Lake, WI. I learned a little about bass fishing, mostly stuff my brother, best friend and I figured out through trial and error. Moved to Montana in 1964 and started chasing trout instead, continued much less frequently after coming to Colorado in ‘73. Spent 2 years in the Bahamas fishing the island tidal channels, most for snapper and jacks with an occasional barracuda. Fast forward to 2017 and the bass bug has found me once again. My favorite bait in ancient days was topwater, most often Hula Popper, some Jitterbug and injured minnow and pre-rigged plastic worms. Last week we were camped at Pine Lake State Park in Eldora, Iowa (pretty lake, seems like it would be good with a boat or kayak). I had my gear with me in case I had time to try my luck, and I had bought a 7 day license. Ended up only fishing for a little over an hour. Tried several crankbaits (Rapala shad and minnow) with not a nibble. Switched to plastic swimbait and got a couple of follows, but no strikes. Then I tied on one of the small BPS poppers that I’d been using in the ocean. Tried several different retrieves, finally a fairly fast crank with jerks to create a commotion and I got a good strike, then landed 2 fish in a matter of minutes. They were small, only 10-12 inches, but they hit that popper hard, and I was as excited as a kid with his first fish. I just wish I’d had more time, and a way to get off the bank. Now I’m ready to get that fishing kayak and go for more. It may not seem like that much for you guys who get to chase bass regularly on well supplied lakes, but for me it was a trip in the Wayback Machine to a great period in my life. Now I want more than I'm afraid Colorado can give me.

One thing to remember, if you can see them, they can see you. Sometimes you need to be covert in your approach to the shore.

I have a rather unique solution. When my father came home from the Korean war, he had somehow hooked on to a Army field surgical instrument kit. It includes scissors, 3 hemostats, probes, tweezers, even a scalpel. All are stainless steel. Makes a good fishing kit. I do have Rapala split ring pliers, which also cut mono just fine.

I had a friend who had a duck lure more than 50 years ago. It was hard plastic with 2 treble hooks side by side and small spinners for duck feet (it looked like a bathtub toy with hooks). It landed with a clank on the water, but the largemouth seemed to like it. Worked best dropping it as closely as possible to the shore, then retrieving it back out to the boat. As far as I know, it was never hit by anything but largemouth bass.

Really, no idea when I actually caught my first bass, but it was probably in the late 1950's while I was still using a cane pole fishing with worms and bobber for sunfish off the dock. My first outfit where I was actually fishing for bass was an ancient steel casting rod and reel that belonged to my great grandmother, using an equally aged redhead Bass-O-Reno (my only lure).

I fished one of those Wisconsin lakes (Balsam Lake) until I was 17 - we moved to Montana in 1964 and I didn't see it again until after the millennium.

I'm both ignorant and cheap. I use a spinning outfit that I bought for fishing tidal flow channels when I lived in the Bahamas (BPS Ocean Master 7' 3-piece travel rod and Shimano Spheros 5000 spinning reel for salt water). I use it with 10# mono and it seems to work just fine in fresh water too. I'm getting ready to by a lighter spincast rig (Diawa Goldcast and probably 6 or 8 lb mono) just because I like them, and did most of my bass fishing back in the early 60's with one. In the interest of simplification, that's about it for me. I first learned to cast with an ancient baitcasting reel, and I really don't want to deal with that learning curve all over again. I like simplicity.

Correction.... Land of 10,000 lakes! (by USGS survey, more than 13,000 lakes of 10 acres or more)

I don't know the ages of the Op and his GF, but that can have something to do with it. I've known younger women who really have spent so much of their time dating and trying to date that they haven't developed any other interests (seems like even when guys are in active dating mode, they still find time to discover other interests too). They don't really have any other hobbies, and haven't seen any need for them because the boys/men they are with supply all of the input. They appear to be needy, when what they actually need is to be introduced to some new activities that they can do with a girlfriend while their guy is out fishing. My wife and I have always had some things we do together and other things we do separately. We met both working part time teaching beginner scuba classes in a local dive shop, so we've always had that in common, even though now that I'm past 70, I don't dive any more. I play golf quite a bit, she plays occasionally. We do play 9 holes together about once a month. She likes to gamble (under control), and I go with her about twice a year. She spends the time in the casino (usually in Blackhawk CO), and I take a drive in the mountains, maybe try some jeep trails which she hates. She gets comped with these beautiful suites and good restaurants in the casino, so we meet for dinner after doing our own thing most of the day. Most of the time when she goes gambling I'll play golf, or now that I've rediscovered it, I might just go fishing. We have a camping trailer and when we go camping, I'll do some fishing if there is any worthwhile fishing in the area. Otherwise we just explore, hang in camp and read or just enjoy being there.

I lived in Montana for 9 years, but never fished bass there. I learned to fly fish (and tie flies) the summer that I lived and worked in the Swan Valley, but I was so spoiled by Montana trout fishing that the letdown when I moved to Colorado made me mostly give up fishing altogether for 40 years. Now I'm in NE Colorado and I have a few lakes and at least one pond with some bass, so I'm just getting back into the game. I grew up in Minnesota and Wisconsin and fished bass all the time back in the late 50's and early 60's. Never really enjoyed trout fishing like I did the multi-species fishing that I did back in the northwoods lake country.

Check Google maps. There are several good sized lakes in central and eastern Kansas that are close to I-70. Don't know anything about the fishing on them, but I'm sure that could be researched. As mentioned, a temporary license will be needed most any place you stop to fish.

I'm a golfer too, as well as a recently refreshed angler (just trying to get back into some bass fishing after a 50 year hiatus), and I don't like killing them either, unless the intent is to fry them. However, it's going to happen from time to time and there really isn't anything you can do about it but accept it if you want to keep on fishing. I once killed a killdeer playing golf (low screaming thinned 3W), and I've hit geese several times, so that's not a guarantee either. Bass fillets, seasoned, battered and deep fried and served with tartar sauce really don't taste much different from any other deep fried fish. Yeah, they aren't as tasty as walleye, but then what freshwater fish is?

I'm sure that about half my tackle box is stuff that I had no need for - that or it's baits that I don't even know how to use, but I couldn't resist buying them anyway. (My excuse is that I'm just relearning how to fish and I wanted to give myself "options" - boy do I have options!)

I grew up fishing from a canoe in the 50's and early 60's, and I still owned an Old Town Pathfinder until just a few years ago (I also paddled a whitewater kayak for several years back in the 80's). My wife and I moved out of the country for 2½ years and the canoe just didn't fit our plans. Now I'm back and I really prefer the performance pluses of the fishing kayaks I see for sale now. I'm going to get the Ascend H12 Hybrid (12 feet long and 76 lbs) from Bass Pro Shop here in the next month or so. I can put a Yakima rack on my F-150 Supercrew, throw on the boat, hook up the camping trailer, and I'm ready for fishing or for the apocalypse - whichever comes first. One consideration for me from my canoeing experience is that they can be quite difficult to keep a full size canoe on track when paddling solo in any sort of a stiff breeze. The kayak will have some of the same problem but it presents a smaller surface area for the wind to grab, so it will be somewhat easier to maneuver. Another benefit - if my wife wants to come along, she has to get her own kayak. That will make it much more relaxing on the water, whether fishing or just exploring.

Balsam Lake, Wisconsin. Like most of the posts here, my best memories are from where I fished when I was growing up. We lived in White Bear Lake, MN, but we had a cabin at Balsam Lake which had been part of a resort that my great grandfather owned and operated in the '20s and '30s. My grandmother, my mother, and my brother and I all grew up there during our summers at the lake, and that is where we taught ourselves what little we knew of fishing. I never caught any monsters, but I caught a lot - largemouth, crappie, walleye, bluegill, punkinseed, rock bass, perch. There were northerns in the lake, but somehow I never tied into one through the 10 or so years that I fished there. I was back to Minnesota for my 50th high school reunion 3 years ago for the first time since 1963, and I made the short side trip to see the old stomping grounds. I was surprised at how much smaller the lake looked than what was in my memories. I didn't get to fish on that trip, but I did talk to a couple of guys putting their boats in, and they said that the fishing was still pretty good.

While not exactly an authority on the subject, my grandmother always told me that her mother never considered going fishing except on rainy days. I don't know with certainty what she might have been fishing for, but my first "grown-up" rod and reel was her hand-me-down rig, and it included an ancient redhead Bass-O-Reno casting plug. That was in west central Wisconsin, and it was purely anecdotal, so take it for what it's worth. I've had good days when it was deeply overcast or with showers or drizzle, but never had any luck when much wind was blowing.

Well, to simply start fishing you need a rod and a reel. I say that because my first casting rig (in about 1959) was a 5 foot steel casting rod with a 1940's era cheap casting reel (prior to that it was a cane pole with worm and bobber). My only lure was a 4" red and white Bass-O-Reno, and that rig would only throw it out about 50 feet max, with a major learning curve on untangling backlashes. I still managed to catch bass on it. When I finally managed to save up my chore money to buy a cheap fiberglass casting rod and spincast reel, I was in fat city. I never knew that you were supposed to have 5 rods with different reels for each type of bait. When you lack money, or a tolerant wife, you just have to make do with what you have. I now use a 7' medium 3 piece Offshore Angler Ocean Master travel spinning rod with a Shimano Spheros 5000 spinning reel. I bought this setup when we moved to the Bahamas a few years ago for fishing the tidal channels around our island, and caught up to 10 pound snappers and jacks on it, along with a few barracuda, grunts, etc. (lost quite a few fish to lemon sharks too - one hazard of fishing saltwater) Since it's a perfectly functional rod and reel, I can't justify replacing it just because it's not a perfect setup for all freshwater fishing. It's a compromise, and at some point I will probably pick up a lighter weight rig too, but for now it's what I have.

What little I know of bass fishing was learned by stumbling around blind with my brother and a friend way back in the late 50's and early 60's in west central Wisconsin. When I "graduated" from a cane pole to a casting rod, what I had to use was a 5 foot steel rod with an ancient casting reel. With a 4" Bass-O-Reno (which my grandmother said was once her mother's) I could maybe throw it 50 feet. I did catch a few (my first bass was on that old plug with that rod and reel). When I managed to save up my chore money and bought my first closed face spinning reel and glass rod, I was in heaven. It was cheap - I had no thoughts about anything but improving on that 30+year old rig. Suddenly I was able to reach out farther from the canoe. I could slide it under overhanging trees, land a foot from shore like a frog or mouse would actually look to hungry bass. Bass fishing became fun, even though it was thoroughly nontechnical - we were still kids with nobody to show us how, so we just fished and had a blast doing so. Loved fishing a Hula Popper - frog imitation or black mouse. Also used Jitterbugs, and prerigged worms, often with a propeller type spinner on the front end. Now I'm trying to relearn it after not fishing bass for 50 years, and I'm in NE Colorado, not known for it's remarkable bass fishing. This site has been a godsend, but nobody much talks about my area in particular, so in the end I guess I'll just have to stumble around until I get something figured out, same as I did when I was a kid.

I am just beginning to re-learn about bass fishing, so I don't have a real bucket list. I'd have to do some research, but since I don't have a boat (and really don't ever expect to have one), I'd be more into smaller lakes that my kayak would be better for. However, the one lake that is guaranteed to be on my list is the one I fished for 14 summers - from the time I was big enough to hold a cane pole until we moved to Montana during my senior year in HS. We were poor folks, but we were lucky enough to have a clapboard cabin sitting on 25 acres of land on Balsam Lake, WI. My grandmother was a teacher in St. Paul (MN) so she was off all summer and we mostly lived at the cabin with her during the summer. I misspent much of my youth fishing from our canoe all over that lake. Loved getting out an hour before sunrise and fishing along shore and in the lily pad covered bays til the bass finished their morning feed. Then crappie or bluegill during the day, and back to the bass after supper. Never caught anything huge there (PB is only 2½ lbs), but I would love to fish it again and replay the memories along the way.