Captain Phil

I would buy a decent open faced spinning reel combo from Bass Pro Shop. The last time I was there, they had some around $100 or less. Don't buy anything too expensive until you are sure what you want. You don't want a wimpy action rod for bass fishing. Find one that feels comfortable with some backbone and a flexible tip. Load it with clear 8-10 pound mono. Make sure you load the line in the right direction or you will have tangles. The easiest bass baits for a beginner are soft plastics. A 6" black or purple Texas rigged plastic worm will catch bass when nothing else will. Start with 1/8 oz. bullet weight and fish the worm on the bottom. Use a thin wire wide gap hook like a Gamakatu 58413. Don't use snaps or leaders, tie the line directly to the hook. Cast the worm in the water and hop it slowly along the bottom. Your plugs will catch fish, but no where near as easy as the worm. Once you catch a few bass and you will, you will gain enough confidence to try other methods. That should get you started in the right direction.

THIS ^^^^

I would leave it as it is. If you change the hooks you may change the action and/or vibration of the bait. Norman has been around for a long time and they know how to build a bass bait. There are few lures that I modify and those are ones that come with crappy hooks to begin with. For example, for years Rattle Traps had the worst hooks in the industry. If the bass you expect to catch are extra large, you can try one size larger as Dwight stated. Personally, I am not a fan of inward or sideways tilting treble hooks. I like my trebles with wide straight round bends and super sharp points.

Hard to diagnose from a distance. However, here are a few tips that may help. First, what line are you using? It may be too heavy. Are you using a snap or a leader? If so, tie the line directly to your lure. If the lake you are fishing is highly pressured, you may need to drop down to finesse tactics. The smaller the bait, the harder it is for bass to reject. Make your lure look as natural as possible. Try 6-8 pound mono and a 4" Zoom finesse worm. Tiny cranks, jigs and spinnerbaits may work also. One of the deadliest small bass baits is a 3"-4" Rapala minnow. This will build confidence which is the key to catching more fish.

Depends. I believe it's a good idea to go for a limit before you hunt large fish. This doesn't always work, but it's a good plan nevertheless. Obviously your tactics will be different on your backyard waters than on water that is new to you. The secret (if there is one) to tournament success is prefishing. I once won a tournament with three small fish. I prefished 40 hours to find those fish. Learning how to prefish is just as important as learning to win. The fact is they go together hand in hand. With all the fishing pressure these days, it pays to find fish where others aren't fishing. This may mean a long run or it may be right at the boat ramp. Most anglers keep fishing the same spots everyone else is fishing. Find your own fish and you will be on the right road to success.

You are getting some great advice in these posts. I fished my first bass tournament nearly 50 years ago. Before I fished that tournament, I thought I was a great bass angler. I discovered I wasn't even close to the winners of that tournament. Tournament fishing provides a great opportunity to learn from others who have already learned what you want to know. When you first start out fishing tournaments, you should approach them as a learning experience. Fishing as a co-angler is great advice. Put your ego on the shelf, don't talk about yourself and don't beat yourself up when you don't do well. You are there to learn new things, not do what you think you should do. There will be plenty of time for winning.

When fishing is tough, I fall back to the basics. Texas rigged worms, spinnerbaits and flipping heavy cover. Don't be in a hurry. Sometimes they bite and sometimes they don't. Fishing pressure drives bass deep into cover and shrinks their strike zone. Get in there with the fish and slow down.

Over the years, I have thought many times about why the Devil's Horse works so well? What is it about this bait that bass love so much? First, it seems there are lures with a certain shape that bass prefer. That shape is long and thin. You can see this shape in plastic worms when the 6" worm is by far the most effective. Second, the splash of the spinners when fished in short jerks is a "Gold Record" to a bass. It not only signals food, it draws strikes so aggressive that it can't be just the look alone. Big bass knock the heck out of this lure just because they can. I don't believe color or pattern makes that much difference. This lure is not that natural looking, so it must be something else. It also seems to work everywhere. I took these lures to the Canadian side of lake Erie, and smallmouth ate it too. One thing I will say is these lures work best when fished in shallow cover and the closer to the cover the better. If you want to see how well they work, leave everything else at home one day and fish them all day long. I think you will be surprised. The Devil's Horse below has been modified for big fish. The front and middle hooks are #6 Gamakatsu trebles. The rear is a #4. The pattern shown is a long out of production pattern called a Spotted Ape.

The best appearance of a top water lure is no appearance. A successful top water lure mimics a struggling creature. The vibrations this sends throughout the water column draws in fish like a magnet. If a bass can't tell what it is, they have no choice but to check it out the only way they can. If the size or shape of the lure doesn't match up, it doesn't draw as many strikes. Under the right circumstances, anything with hooks can catch bass. I don't always get to fish under the right circumstances, so I need to get it right the majority of the time. I have probably fished with every type of top water lure ever made. Ploppers, poppers, splashers, jerks and prop baits. I have seen them come and go. They all work sometimes. I have never seen anyone one of them work better than the Devil's Horse. A close second is the Heddon Tiny Torpedo. The sound they put out draws surface strikes even in deep water. If you can't catch fish on one of those, you should take up golf. ?

Back in the 60s, Jason Lucas wrote an article stating that orange was the best top water color for bass. If you look, practically all of the more successful top water lures have some orange on the the bottom. I prefer chrome or translucent top water baits most of the time. If it's a dark day or at night, black or dark green.

Carpenter ants took out the supports on our deck and we had to have the entire structure rebuilt. Call an exterminator. Don't wait like we did.

Here in Florida, our wind is fairly predictable. When a cold front approaches, wind switches from the east to the south. As the front moves closer, our wind moves more westerly and the wind picks up. Our best fishing occurs when the wind is out of the west. I have seen some incredible fishing days with a west wind at 20 mph or more. After the front passes, the wind moves toward the northwest and the temperature drops. When a calm sets in, fishing can be very tough. In March, April and May, we can have days or weeks of hard wind out of the east. This is caused by high pressure over Bermuda. Summer thunderstorms start in late June and can continue until early October. I prefer fishing with a slight ripple on the water. Luckily, the lakes where I fish always have some shoreline where I can pick and choose the conditions. My best windy day bait by far is a spinnerbait.

Top water frog fishing can be a hit and miss proposition. You can improve your chances by being more observant. Look for signs that you have a bass following your bait or directly behind it. The signs may be subtle or obvious. Learn to drop back on the strike. This is not an easy thing to do, but it is effective. The strike from a big fish often happens when you are just off the edge of the cover. I fish frogs faster than most anglers, that's why I prefer plastic toads. Small fish are hard to hook, big fish engulf the bait if you give them enough time to do so.

A bass will strike a lure even when it's not feeding. What happens during and after a cold front is the bass's strike zone expands and contracts. Before a front, a bass may chase a bait from 10 or more feet away. After a cold front passes, the strike zone shrinks to inches. The first day after a cold front passes is normally not the worst. The worst fishing is on the calm high sky days that come soon after. If the temperature drops significantly, it can seem like all the fish left the lake. Some go to deep water. Some hunker down in the thickest cover they can find. This is what Dee Thomas discovered that changed our idea of how bass behave. I like fishing before a cold front as well as anyone. I don't worry about what happens after because I know what to do.

I sold my bass boat a few years before my back operation and bought a pontoon boat. The pain of launching and operating a big bass boat was too much for me. It took some getting used to, but I caught some nice fish from the Pontoon. A year after my operation, I bought my Ranger RT178. Two and a half years later, I can fish alone comfortably. I am a lot slower than I used to be. I also fish smaller lakes, where I don't have to deal with crowded boat ramps. Don't rush. You can do what you put your mind to, but you don't want to reverse your progress. It takes time to heal. You won't do things like you did before. Things will definitely be different. You will always have some pain, but it won't be anything like you had before your operation. Before my operation, I was heading downhill fast. Now I feel like I can accomplish anything. We'll see.

Most boomers like me started smoking in their youth. Back in the 50s and 60s, practically everyone smoked. TV and movies of the day made smoking seem sophisticated. All the cool guys smoked, so I started when I was about 13. I paid 25 cents for my first pack. I didn't like smoking all that much, but I did like the tough guy image. My father smoked Lucky Strikes, so I switched. Lucky Strikes were non filtered and short, which added to their sex appeal. You could get in trouble if you had cigarettes in your top pocket back then. That made me want to smoke even more. Every fall and winter when colds started going around, I got the flu. Then it turned into pneumonia. One day when I was in my early twenties, I got sick of being sick and threw my cigarettes out the window and never smoked again. My mother smoked all her life. She took her last breath as they wheeled her away crying out because she couldn't breathe. She was 71 years old. Smoking may not kill you right away. What it does is shorten your life. A month or so before she died, it was my job to tell my mother she was going to die soon. I told her the doctors said she destroyed her lungs with cigarette smoke. She said she knew, but she loved smoking so much she couldn't quit. She chose how she wanted to die and she got her wish.

Fishing tackle marketing is not fishing. Fishing tackle manufacturers make money when anglers buy their products. To move more product, they pay high profile anglers to promote them. Back in Miami, I had a friend who was paid six figures a year to promote a certain brand of fishing reels. She sold a lot of reels. Did the fish care what brand of reel she used? Sometimes this gets a little silly, like in the case of the Helicopter lure. Often less expensive stuff works just as well or better than highly promoted stuff. This is true of everything from fishing lines to fishing boats. There is a certain pride in owning what is perceived as the best. If this were not true, there would be no $100K plus bass boats and no $600 bass fishing reels.

Kudos for getting your wife to go night fishing with you. Most women wouldn't. I did a ton of summer night fishing when I lived in South Florida. The days are so hot you can't fish except for a few hours at dawn and in the evening. At night, I had the water mostly to myself. Night bass fishing is not for everyone. First, there is the limited visibility. Little things that wouldn't be much of a crisis during the day can become major disasters. The Everglades is really dark without the moon, but it's surprising what you can see. Then there's the mosquitoes. We tried everything, most of it didn't work. Our most effective bug repellent was dousing ourselves with orange label Cutter and burning PIC bug coils. At one time we had nylon screen nets made to go over of heads. All that did was make them mad. Make sure your family knows where you plan to fish in case you don't come back on time. Never fish alone unless you have a death wish. I have had to walk by more than one dead body laying on the ramp. Summer night fishing can be fantastic fishing. The bite can be good right up until dark, then it slows for a few hours. I never launched my boat until midnight. The best night bass fishing for me was around 2 AM. I fished Okeechobee at night too. It's scary being on that huge lake at night. That is until an eight or nine pounder eats your lure. ?

Be careful with these drugs. I took Advil and Advil PM for years. Ended up with an ulcer. These drugs are especially bad if taken on an empty stomach before going to bed. I use Tylenol Arthritis and it helps some. Getting old is not for wimps. ?

Nerve damage. Comes from years of using your hands for everything from fishing, typing, hammering and most all manual activity you have ever done. Many of those were stressful on your muscles and nervous system. I have had the same aliment for over 20 years. Using lighter fishing tackle helps some. Flipping is a lot easier on your hands and arms. I can fish for 3-4 hours, then I have to rest my hands. I wear a brace when sleeping or my hand goes numb. You most likely also have arthritis in your hands as well. Ibuprofen helps, buy it's rough on your stomach. Gout is also a possibility. I take Allopurinol and it keeps my attacks minimal. See a hand specialist.

Definitely Super Bowl. I don't watch baseball. It's so slow and boring. The only game I know of where it's good if nothing happens.

Depends on what you were expecting. I believe Chick-fil-a is the best fast food chain restaurant on the planet. The only problem is the lines going in the place are outrageously long. It's so popular where we live the customers block traffic. The employees all seem happy, The food is decent and the service is efficient. Chicken is chicken, but at least Chick-fil-a tastes like something other than a piece of cardboard. A month ago, I ordered a chicken sandwich at Burger King. What I got was a pressed piece of something that I'm not sure what it was. McDonald's chicken sandwich is edible, but it's not nearly as good as Chick-fil-a. McDonald's does have the best fries.

At least for a little while... ?

My great grand father smoked and chewed tobacco his entire life. He was a farmer and I don't ever remember seeing him without a plug of chewing tobacco in his mouth. His handlebar mustache was permanently stained. He lived to be 93, which was downright amazing. I grew up with a bunch of country boys. They all chewed and dipped. Mostly Beech-nut. One day out fishing, I asked my buddy if I could try it. He handed me a fist full and I stuck it in my mouth. I swallowed the tobacco and got deathly sick. This cured me forever. All my friends that dipped when we were kids lost their teeth. One got bone cancer. I am not an anti tobacco crusader. I'm just reporting what happened. The biggest problem I could see is no girl or woman is going to get close to a man that chews tobacco. That was a problem I couldn't deal with.

Olive Garden is mostly for retirees and families looking for a cheap meal. It's OK, but not that good. I would put Red Lobster in the same category. When the Outback Steakhouse first started, it was great. My last few visits were my last. The best restaurants are local. To compete with the big Chains, they have to try harder. Breakfast is about the same where ever you go. There are only so many things you can do with eggs, bacon and toast. Restaurant prices are crazy these days. As retirees, we eat out often. We have cut back substantially in the past year. It's not the money so much, we think they are taking advantage of the situation.