Captain Phil

If you are hold up in your house in Minnesota in the dead of winter, I can see how you would watch a bass tournament on TV. Watching a TV bass tournament today is like watching paint dry. The participants are the only people who care what happens. Every now and then, Zona will say something amusing. Other than that, it's a real snooze fest. I fished a lot of tournaments back in the day. I enjoyed the competition and comradery with the other participants. Watching a five fish thirty pound plus stringer being weighed in is exciting. Watching some guy haul two pound bass to the boat on 40 pound line isn't. I do watch Harris Chain tournaments to see where the fish were caught. Sometimes I'm surprised. Here's Dean Rojas at the weigh-in I want to watch.

When I was still working, I did a lot of traveling. Mostly to conventions where I lived on restaurant food. At one meeting in Cherry Hill New Jersey I ate a hamburger for lunch in the hotel restaurant. That night, I felt bad and went to the bathroom and passed out on the floor. Luckily, my wife was with me and they rushed me to the hospital. The next three days where the worst days of my life. It took me a week to get strong enough to fly back home. The next time that happened was in Atlantic City. It wasn't as bad as before, but I got the message. Either I was being told not to eat hamburgers in a restaurant or to stay out of New Jersey? In either case, I took the advice.

I understand nostalgia. I have a 1955 Ford sitting in my garage. Whenever I drive it, it brings back memories of my youth. Would I want to drive it all the time? No. I also own a Mitchell 300 spinning reel for the same reason. Would I fish with it? Maybe, for about ten minutes. It's heavy, clunky and slow compared to a modern reel. If you are fishing for memories, it sounds like you have the right reel. Collecting is cool. If you are fishing for fish, there are better options. ☺️

I suspect you've never had food poisoning? Trust me, you don't.

If you want to be in a world of hurt, order your restaurant hamburgers rare. ?

Your wife and I think alike. Although I didn't realize it at the time, my mother burned every piece of meat she ever cooked. Consequently, I thought everyone ate steak like that. When I met my wife, she liked her steak rare. I thought it was disgusting. She has since moved up to medium rare and I have gone to medium. A well done steak tastes like whatever you put on it. ☺️

I've posted this picture before. This fish was caught in Guatemala around 1995. We were among the first anglers to fish this area. In three days of fishing, we caught over 60 sailfish. Most of them were over 100 pounds. On the last day, we grew tired of reeling them up and started messing around with light tackle. After I landed one on fly, I pulled out the 6500C loaded with 8 pound mono. It took me two hours to land that fish. I had to work around hundreds of giant manta rays as I fought the fish. It's a miracle the line didn't break. I have the whole fight on video. It's one of the most boring fishing videos you will ever see. ☺️

When we were kids, we loved Halloween. I remember coming home with a grocery bag full of candy and going back out for a second bag. Nothing today is the same as it was. On Saturday, we would leave to play in the morning and come back before dinner at 6. Our parents never worried about where we were or what we were doing. If we weren't there for family dinner at 6, we knew we were in trouble. No body ever thought about poison candy or child molesters. We haven't had Trick or Treaters in our neighborhood for years. I ask my wife to buy candy just in case, but they don't come. So sad.....

The original 5500C reel was a game changer and still is one of the best bass reels ever made. It came out in the early 70s. Later reels were cheapened it up substantially. Try to find one with the chrome metal spool release button. These reels were labeled high speed and were 4.7/1. Anyone with a screw driver and even a tiny bit of mechanical ability could disassemble one. They were and are as tough as nails. The only drawback to these reels is weight. Back in the nineties, I used a 6500C to land a potential world record Pacific sailfish on 8 pound Ande mono. It was potential because I released the fish. Try this with your modern bass reel. ☺️

Millions if not billions of bass were caught before fluorocarbon fishing line was invented. I'm not against fluorocarbon, I just don't think it makes that much difference in bass fishing. Most bass where I fish live in water with limited visibility where line is less of a factor. Braid is better when it comes to fishing heavy cover. Six months ago, I loaded braid on my flipping outfit and will never go back. With mono, I missed a lot of fish that I didn't know had my bait or would run off and tangle in the cover. With braid, the hook penetrates just from the weight of the fish alone. My bite to fish in the boat ratio has increased 100%.

What will happen if fluorocarbon fishing line costs $100 a spool? Anglers will go back to using mono and no one will notice any difference. ?

Back in the day, I read every B.A.S.S. magazine I could find. I reread them numerous times and still have a few that I read today. B.A.S.S. started to decline when Ray Scott sold out. It was no longer about bass fishing, it was about promoting sponsors. When the Federation split from B.A.S.S. it was the end for me. Our bass club was divided and we lost a lot of members. In the beginning B.A.S.S. was formed by a group of regular guys who wanted to share information and compete on a level playing field. Today, it's just another reality TV show.

Get a coffee can or similar small bowl and place it 10-15 feet ahead of you on the ground. Practice pitching until you can consistently drop your lure into the can or bowl. Just before the lure hits, learn to lift the rod just enough to slow down the entry. Your rod length is fine. Your reel spool should turn freely. A reel with a light weight spool will help you. The timing of the pitch is critical. It could take you a while to get it right. I think twenty pound braid is too light for pitching. I use 30. Many people use even heavier line. When fishing in heavy cover, line size doesn't affect the fish.

It's getting pretty ridiculous. It seems the only time that station gets excited is when there's a hurricane on the map. Their ratings must be pretty low most of the time? I hate it when they keep showing the same downed tree when there's nothing else to show. Warning people of the dangers is a good idea. Panicking them in not.

Meteorologists should be rated for accuracy. I'm fairly sure my dog could get it right 50% of the time and he thinks the "cone of uncertainty" is the thing the vet puts on his head. A 24 hour TV weather channel is ridiculous. The craziest thing is when they started naming winter storms. News flash, "snow storm Bruce is heading toward Chicago!" Seriously? They start naming hurricanes when they are 1,000 miles away. When one hits, they all stand in the wind for the money shot. When it's over, they send their camera crews down to do interviews. So Mrs. Smith, how do you feel since you lost everything you own? Well Jim, to tell you the truth it feels like crap. Cut to a commercial...

Here in Florida we consider pickerel a nuisance. They love spinnerbaits. The more expensive the lure, the more they tear them up. ☺️

I was 20 years old before I sat in a new car. What I remember was carrying a jug of water in your trunk so you could fill your radiator after a boil over. ☺️

I was a regular at Moroso for years. Before Moroso bought it out we had to regularly remove rattle snakes from the bathrooms. We always sent an escort with our wives when they went to the bathroom. The pot holes in that drag strip were huge. It recently closed to make way for another housing project. When we lived in South Florida, we would regularly run many miles offshore to fish, often in sight of Bimini. One summer day we were trolling about 40 miles out when I thought I smelled something burning. I opened the engine hatch and it was full of smoke. I turned off the battery switches and the smoke seemed to stop. Our boat had twin diesels and they were still running, but all my electronics were dead. All I could think about was my wife and I hanging onto a cooler drifting in the Gulf Stream. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. We made it back and found a salt water wash pump had shorted out. I don't want to think about what would have happened if the boat burned to the water line. ?

Growing up and living in Miami, we never hugged anyone in public. A handshake was about as close as it got. When we moved to Lake County, everyone hugs. I never had an issue with a man hug. Hugging someone's wife in front of their husband did make me feel a little uneasy. I eventually got used to it and hugs are now common practice. During Covid, some went with fist pumps and hugs turned into a political thing. Not all hugs are the same. I reserve my good hugs for my wife and son. ☺️

Back in the day the worm hooks we had were terrible at best. This lead to "cross the eyes" hook sets which lead to broken rods and me falling out of the boat twice in one morning. With today's hooks and no-stretch lines, the weight of the fish alone will set most hooks. Snelling your hooks will make lost fish a thing of the past.

These are good conversations to have. They may not seem related to fishing, but they relate to a person's overall health and well being. As men, we tend to hold our feelings inside. This is not healthy. Talking about our feelings is a good thing.

My wife says " I love you" to her girl friends all the time. I have a hard time with it as "love" has many meanings. I doubt I would say this to a man. It seems a little intimate to me. This may be because in my generation men were not suppose to show their emotions. How would I have felt if my father had said this to man in the 50s? It would have been very confusing for sure. Younger people don't feel the same way about words.

I go way back with those places. When I was a kid there was a Fish Camp where Holiday Park is now called Tom's. Between Tom's and Macks camp, it was the only place you could launch a boat. At the end of the canal from Macks, there was a trailer winch where you could winch your Jon boat up and over the levy to fish L67. The Sawgrass area was an old bombing range during WWII. We often fished the range holes at night in the summer. The only thing out there was a bait shop and a bar. Everything changed when they put in Alligator Alley. Now the whole thing is highway overpasses and shopping centers. The bass are still there. Loxahatchee is much farther north. My son and I saw the largest alligator we have ever seen there. They said it was 17' feet long and 100 years old. I didn't get close enough to measure it. Scared the heck out of us.

My wife and I keep separate bank accounts. She has also known me since we were both 16, so there are few surprises. I am one of those people who have 8-10 new ideas a day. Unfortunately, only one or two of them are good. ?

Excellent advice. When the bite gets tough, nothing works better than downsizing. This applies to line size as well as your bait. Try a weightless worm or small Senko fished on light 6-8 pound line. That presentation is more natural and it will slow you down. Fish it like you would live bait and you will exorcise the skunk. ?