Captain Phil

Choosing a trolling motor has much to do with how you fish and local conditions. Here in Florida, most of my bass fishing is done tight to cover. This requires different boat control than someone fishing offshore. Spot lock is a great feature, but it wouldn't do me much good in the middle of a pad field. I don't need power poles for the same reason. Controlling the boat with a handset hanging from your belt sounds good until you try flipping with it. There is a reason most bass pros use cable operated foot controlled trolling motors and it's not because of their sponsor's money. It's because they are simple, reliable and offer precise boat control.

My Ranger RT178 came with a 24 volt Minn Kota Edge. In my opinion, the Edge is an entry level trolling motor. It works on this boat and I am generally pleased with it's performance. If my boat was much larger, I would step up a level. I don't much care for electronically controlled motors. I find the control slow and somewhat clunky, not to mention the cost. If you do, stay away from the power stow and deploy feature. The belts break which will leave you stranded. As a tournament angler, reliability was always my biggest issue. I was a Motor Guide person for many years. They were great motors when they were simple. That was some time ago. I finally got tired of the breakdowns and repair cost and went to Minn Kota. A Minn Kota has never disappointed me.

Words can not express the feeling of losing someone you love. When I was a young man I never thought about death, it was something that happened to other people. Now that I am old, it happens all around me. I lost my parents many years ago. One day they were here and then they were gone. When you lose a parent, you lose part of yourself. Your parents were the foundation of your life. They were "home" and now you can't go back there. In time, your heart will heal. You won't forget. You will think about them often. There are things you would like to say to them, but you can't. It's up to you to carry on. It's what they would want.

I bought my first foot controlled electric trolling motor in the early seventies. That one thing probably changed bass fishing more than anything else before or since. Boat control is one of the most important factors in this type of fishing. It's not that noticeable in open water fishing. In close quarters, it's one of the most significant. I have probably used most every trolling motor made. I may not have owned them all. Fishing draw tournaments gave me this opportunity. For years I used bow mounted cable driven foot controlled motors. Nothing gives you more precise control. I owned a Terrova with spot lock and remote when I fished out of my pontoon boat. Those motors are perfect for Pontoon boats where drifting in the wind and current are a factor. My son, who fishes coastal waters, loves spot lock because it holds the boat against the tide. When I purchased my current bass boat, I wanted more control. I found the electronic remote cumbersome and sloppy, so I went back to a cable driven foot control. Unless you have a really small boat, you want a 24 volt motor. For bass fishing where there is heavy grass, you want the most powerful motor you can fit on your boat. Hydrilla is tough, my current Minn Kota cuts through it like butter. Personally, I would not put another electronically controlled remote trolling motor on my bass boat. Give me a cable foot control and I'm happy.

For me, it's all about water clarity. Florida has every type of water conditions imaginable. If the water is clear, my first choice is top water. Alternatively, I will use natural looking baits, downsize my line and use finesse tactics. If the water is turbid or murky, I use paddle tail worms, spinnerbaits, Rattle Traps and Crankbaits. Flipping and pitching is my "fall Back" option when nothing else works or I'm hunting larger fish. Secondly, I want to know what the bottom composition is. I use a Carolina or Mojo Rig to seek out hard bottom, rocks and anything that may hold bass. Ultimately, it's past experience and confidence that you will use to make your decisions. The more you fish, the better your results.

Great video! Like Glen, I learned to cast on the front lawn of my home. For some reason, casting accuracy is something that seems to have lost significance with today's bass anglers. Today we talk about lines, leaders, lures, reels, boats and electronics when the difference between catching bass and going home fish-less is often a few inches or less. The best anglers fish their bait close to the fish. Lesser anglers shotgun their casts hoping a bass will happen by or become attracted to whatever signals their lure puts out. If you take one of the oldest bass lures in the world, throw it on a 1960s reel with cheap line and put it in the right place, it will out fish all the modern baits put together fished out of the strike zone. This is true even with computerized reels, anti backlash gadgets, graphite rods and modern lines. If you want to be a better bass fishermen, learn to fish closer to the bass.

THIS^^^

The largest gators I have ever seen are in the St. John's river. Lake Jesup is full of them. The last time I fished Lake Apopka, they were so thick it looked like you could walk across the lake on their backs. Years ago, there was a huge gator that lived in Loxahatchee that reportedly was 100 years old and over 15 feet. My son and I saw that gator once laying on the bank in low water. It was all white and it was so huge it dwarfed by bass boat. Laying in the mud, the hind quarters looked to be 4 feet tall. We got the heck out of there!

My mother was a 16 year old single Mom. When I was born, we lived with my grandparents. I was lucky. This gave me a father and two Moms. My mother eventually remarried and my wonderful step father adopted me into a loving family. Without both a father and a mother, I would not have had the life I had. Kids need to see both sides of life. You can't always run to your Mom when you have a problem. A Mom will always love you. A father will too, but he wants you to survive in this world and he knows it's not easy.

Alligators are generally not aggressive, but will eat small dogs and people. Most serious injuries happen because people don't recognize the threat they present. Our local handyman was attacked when he was fixing an irrigation pipe and put his hand in the water. He survived, but he almost lost his hand. A few people are killed in Florida every year by gators. The State will remove them when they become a problem. As more people move into their habitat, this becomes more common. As long as you stay away from them, they will stay away from you.

I was not aware BR had road trips. Must have been before I became a member? I assume members would gather for a meet and greet fishing trip? Sounds like a good idea, but given how busy people are these days, I can see why they were hard to pull off.

Not every kid or adult is into fishing. I started fishing with my grandfather when he retired. We never caught much, but I loved being with him and I caught the fishing bug. If you see a kid walking or riding a bike carrying a fishing pole, that was me. Luckily, growing up in South Florida, there were plenty of opportunities. The neighborhood I grew up in was not the best. I could have easily got into crime, drugs and worse. Fishing kept me out of trouble. My parents did not fish, but they recognized my passion for it and found me an older man to fish with. He was a bass fisherman and I followed his lead, which lead me into a lifetime of fishing adventures. Back in Miami, I volunteered with a program working with troubled youth. These kids were taken away from their parents and lived under State supervision. For most of them, it was one step before going to prison. They earned points for good performance. They could use their points to buy special things. One of these items was going fishing with me on a day long trip. I was offshore fishing at the time and these kids had never been in a boat, much less offshore. A State official always came with us. All these kids needed was a chance to see a side of life that they had never seen before. When all you know is broken families, crime, heartbreak, poverty and violence, you have no hope. I would like to think I helped some of them. The big thing we are missing today is family. So many broken homes and kids with no Mom or Dad. Many young men don't know what a real man is because they never had a father. Same thing with girls. If you can be a parent to a kid, even if it's just for day, you might change their life.

My wife and I enjoyed many road trips. We have driven all over the country numerous times. Road trips are the best way to see America. We loved small towns, big cities not so much. With today's air travel being so annoying, we are surprised more people don't do road trips. On a road rip, no one can tell you what to do and when to do it. We prefer better hotels over RVs and camping. Now that we are older, we limit our driving to 4 hours a day. There was a time when we drove all day for days at a time.

Over the years I have broken a few Rapalas myself, but not enough to be concerned. Were they new lures or old? I have some Rapalas in my box that are more than 25 years old. Other than changing the hooks, they still work like new. Rapalas are made of balsa wood and plastic. You can break the bills easily if you hit them on rocks or boat docks. I doubt your drag being too tight could cause this. I throw Rapala Minnows on 8 pound mono and set my drag. If you are using heavy line to fish Rapala Minnows, you won't get as many bites. Believe me on this. If breaking lures becomes a consistent problem, it may be a bad batch in manufacture.

There are so many great old time bass lures that have been forgotten. All of them still catch bass today. I wonder if anyone will collect Whopper Ploppers 50 years from now? ?

Single blade spinnerbaits have a long history. The first one I remember was the Paul Bunyan 66 in-line spinnerbait. The Hildebrandt Snagless Sally was also a good one. I believe the first safety pin style single blade bait I ever used was a Lindy. Walleye fishermen have been putting spinner blades in front of their baits for a hundred years. The first commercial fishing lures every made were spoons and spinners. I have a J.T. Buel Arrowhead spinner in my collection that is well over 120 years old. The first dual blade bass spinner was probably a Shannon. It mounted a pair of blades on two separate wires held away from the bait. The earliest safety spin style spinner I remember was the Zorro Aggregator and Don Butler's S.O.B Small Okiebug. We spent years modifying spinnerbaits experimenting with wire size, blade size, placement and skirt material. Try as we might, we never could make one that didn't catch bass. ?

This is funny. Reminds me of when we used to tie strange lures on our lines before going to a tournament weigh-in. Some anglers would check our baits to see what we caught fish on. We sold more Mepps spinners that way. ?

Absolutely. A used Calcutta reel in good condition is better than most cheap new reels today. For years, I bought used Shimano Chronarch Bantam 100s on EBay for $100 or less. They are fantastic reels for bass fishing. Good ones are getting hard to find. The Calcutta is a workhorse. If you see someone fishing with one, they know what they are doing or got the reel from someone who did.

Back in the day, this was a common modification. A short arm spinnerbait with a single Colorado puts out a completely different vibration than a tandem. So much so that you can feel the vibrations in your rod. Feels similar to the vibration created by a blade bait today. They work great when fishing steep banks and drops. Back when I did a lot of canal fishing, we would cast them right to edge and let them helicopter down. When they stopped we would slow crawl them off the edge. Caught a lot of big fish that way. I don't know why they fell out of favor. Today's anglers are lazy, they want to cast crank and repeat.

Great hearing your story. Florida bass fishing is still good, but it's getting harder to fish away from the crowds. I am an old drag racer and a fishermen. I remember Bo Laws very well. I also remember street racing in Miami, Master's Field, Miami Dragway and Moroso. Sadly, they're all gone now. Things are so different now. At least the bass are the same.

The life of a fishing guide is not easy. Dealing with fish is not the biggest challenge, it's dealing with people. Other than the poor financial reward, that is the main reason I gave it up. I had some great clients. I also had some that I wished I never had. I have had customers throw my rods overboard. I have had customers who were never satisfied. I had two guys that I guided to Toho for three days in a row. We caught hundreds of keeper bass on that trip up to five pounds. At the end of the trip, one told me he was disappointed because he didn't catch a ten pounder. At the end of the trip was not the time to tell me that tidbit of information. If I had known, we could have sat around for three days waiting for a trophy. Communication is the key. Before you hire a fishing guide, tell him or her what you expect. If you don't, the guide will make that decision for you and it may not be what you want. One of my most pleasant memories was fishing with a man who was dying of cancer. He hired me on a cold winter day in February. His wife told me he didn't have long to live and that fishing was his lifelong passion. When I took him out he could hardly cast. A nasty cold front had shut down the bass and I tried everything I could. In desperation, I took him to the Gator Hole so we could get out of the wind. He wanted me to fish, so I cast out a deep running crankbait. As it bumped along the bottom a big fish grabbed it. I asked him if he wanted to crank it in and he told me to. We got the fish to the boat and put it in the livewell. When we got back to the ramp, we didn't tell his wife I had caught the fish. She took a photo of us with the fish and he was beaming from ear to ear. You never know what to expect.

Unless you fish big or rough water, 17'-18' is the perfect size for a bass boat. Back when high performance bass boats were developed, they were all that size or smaller. It was the introduction of large HP motors that required bigger boats. I fished out of a 22' Storm for two years. It was like fishing from an aircraft carrier. I couldn't turn it around in a canal and I needed a 4x4 truck to tow it. I sold it and bought an 18' Skeeter that I kept for ten years. Early on, Tracker and Nitro boat quality wasn't the best. Before 2000, many boats had partial wood construction. This has since been replaced with composites. Wood rot is the worst thing you can have in a bass boat. I wouldn't buy any boat built with wood anyplace. My 2000 Skeeter was all composite. I would buy it or one just like it again. I wouldn't have a problem buying a well kept used Nitro less than ten years old. The bigger issue is the motor. I hate used outboards. Probably because they caused me so much heartbreak in the past. If I had to buy a used outboard, it would probably be a four stroke Mercury. Service is everywhere and these motors are bullet proof. I wouldn't buy a used 2 stroke outboard as the difference so substantial.

There is nothing substandard or mediocre about a Devil's Horse. I worried when they went to paint as opposed to plating that they wouldn't be as good. Thankfully, that was not the case. The fish catching ability of a Devil's Horse is not in the finish. I believe we could fish one with no finish whatsoever and it would work just as well. This is the reason chrome works. It reflects what's around it, a bass only sees the disturbance and that disturbance draws bass to it. The finish is there to catch anglers, not bass.

Twenty or so years ago, Chrome Devil's Horse lures had a shiny coating that looked a lot like chrome plating. It was much more reflective than the paint process they use today, but it came off in chunks. They paint them now probably due to customer complaints or the cost of manufacture. Devil's Horse lure finishes have always had cracks. This doesn't seem to affect the action. These lures are small in diameter, which may make the coating harder to apply. As you can see below, the hooks can remove the paint as well. None of this bothers me one bit. The best colors are not easy to find these days, so I buy all I can find. When I used to fish with Top Water Charlie, the bottom of his boat was littered with dead Devil's Horse lures. He changed baits often.

Catching a catfish while bass fishing with artificials is not common, but it does happen. I have caught a number of large catfish while flipping heavy cover. My largest so far was 12 pounds. I was pretty sure I had hooked the world record bass. It felt like I was in a Harry and Charlie cartoon.