RPreeb

Also, if you can see them, they can see you. My brother-in-law tells about fishing a stretch of trophy brown trout river where you have belly up over a rock so that no more than your head is visible. If they see you, you don't have a chance. I don't know if bass are as spooky as those browns, but it can't hurt to be a bit sneaky.

My prescription sunglasses were $300. Don't really need glasses for anything but close work, but my eyes have aged so that they don't focus well in lower light levels (like what is filtered through sunglasses), so I had to get prescription ones with just mild correction for driving. They'll be good for fishing too.

Need to update your PB in your profile now, to match the avatar.

Since I'm more likely to have my wallet with me than my phone, I always have the hard copy they sent me. Despite having a smart phone for years now, I still have a tendency to forget it at times. When you lived for 60 years with phones that were tied to your house, it just isn't automatic to grab it and take it with you when you leave. Not to mention that I like being incommunicado. I don't feel that I have to always be available to anyone who wants to call me. I do like the idea of snapping a photo of the license and at least having that for backup, although I don't know if Colorado fish and game would recognize it if I needed to use it. At least it's easy to be sure that I have a license... Colorado senior fishing license is only $1.00, and I can order it online. They still send out the paper copy, no printing it myself.

Enlisted Army Reserve 1965 in Great Falls, Montana - Basic at Ft. Leonard Wood and AIT at Ft. Polk (clerk, not infantry - half of my basic outfit was at North Fort for jungle infantry training). Needed a change of scenery and got myself activated for 19 months 1970-71, sent to Ft. Carson CO. Honorable Discharge in '71.

I've been checked twice, and the first time I was truly fishing without a license. I was 18, living in Montana, and I'd always bought my license as soon as fishing opened up in the spring, ever since I was old enough to need one. That year I had gone into the Army Reserve and been sent for basic training in March. I didn't get home again until the first week of August, and that first weekend went camping with my family. It never dawned on me that I had never bought my license that year, and naturally I was checked for the first time in my life. I think it was about a $25 fine back in 1965. The second time I was checked I was a bit surprised. I had moved to Colorado in 1973, and in the 80's I was spending most weekends hiking in the mountains. In early spring I did a lot of rambling in the lower hills west and southwest of Denver. This day in April I was up on a ridge about 1000 feet above the South Platte river, a popular stretch of catch and release only water below Cheesman Dam and Lake known for it's finicky big brown trout. The warden was working as a team with a couple of other officers, and my guy was the spotter, hanging out on the ridge with binoculars watching the fishermen below for violations - it wasn't uncommon for fishermen to slip a fish into their waders and walk out with it, so they had been using this method to control that abuse. He approached me and asked if I had a license. I said "No." He asked if I was fishing. I said "No." He was looking at my day pack to see if it could hold a backpacking rod. Apparently he was satisfied, we chatted a bit. He said they had caught two violators that day - one trying to sneak a big brown out, and another using live bait in the artificial flies and lures area.

When I fished in Wisconsin back in the early 60's I caught quite a few bass with small sunfish in their stomachs.

Hey all... first post from an old "beginner" bass fisherman. I can't say just what the intelligence level of a bass is, but I do know that they have an ego as big as the lake they live in. Back when I was a kid in Wisconsin, I fished regularly for largemouth at our cabin on Balsam Lake where I spent my first 17 summers. My brother and I spent many early mornings and late evenings out in the canoe casting for bass. In 1960 or 1961 I was fishing a frog pattern Jitterbug (large casting size lure because all I had was an ancient steel casting rod and reel that couldn't even throw a heavy lure 100 feet), and it seemed to bump something and the action on it changed. I finished reeling it in thinking it had caught a floating weed, but the weed turned out to be a 3" long bass. The fish was about the same length as the lure, as probably 1/4 as heavy. It could barely get it's mouth around one bend of the treble hook, but it had managed that much and was well hooked. That fish had delusions of grandeur if it thought it was going to eat anything 1/4 as large as that Jitterbug. I figured it could only be ego or anger that made it attack something that it could never have eaten even if it had been edible. That told me that some bass just go into attack mode and would nail anything that came in range.