Russ E

While line watching cuts down on gut hooked fish, occasionally it just happens. There are several youtube videos on safely removing the hook. Leaving the hook in does not give the fish much of a chance for survival. You can also carry one of these. They work good at removing hooks from the gullet.

My outboard broke down a week ago. With the flooded reservoirs ,all of the boat repair shops are booked. Cabelas can finally get it in tomorrow, hopefully it is a simple repair. Instead of sitting around waiting for my boat, I decided to walk the bank of the local lake. caught a mixed bag of Largemomouth and Smallmouth. All on a Neko rig. this was by far the largest. It weighed 4lb. 4oz. One of the largest I have caught from the bank of this lake.

I don't see a lot of difference between the two. Bass might hold onto the salty trick worms longer, but that is even debatable.

I use them all in the same areas. Let the fish dictate which one to use. I do have 3 basic rules to start out. Then adjust from there. 1: relatively clear water and rocky bottom gets a Shakyhead. 2: weeds get a Texas rigged soft plastic. 3: woody cover usually gets a jig.

Those guys caught a lot of fish without our electronics. No graphs, gps, side or down imaging. All they had was the humble flasher. More than likely they would spank us.

that should work.

assuming you are using a baitcaster, 45 pound braid is not overly heavy. I have used up to 65 pound punching in heavy cover. You want a fairly stout rod for superline hooks.

over the years I have had a love hate relationship with paddle tails. In lakes with few or no weeds I do well with a jighead and a 3.8 keitech. on weedy lakes I have done well Texas rigging them on ewg hooks. In shallow water. When the fish are in deep weeds is where I have struggled. always had problems finding the correct weighted hook size for my 3.8s. This year I started using my standard ewg hooks and using crimp on hook weights from Bass Pro Shops. Problem solved.

I am not a fan of the nedlockz. don't like the heavier wire hook or the bait holder collar. I prefer the original shroomz heads. They did had an issue with hooks breaking a while back, but that seems to be fixed. Generally I don't use the ned rig a lot. I prefer larger baits most of the time. It is a good bait when fishing is tough. It also is a great bait to introduce somebody new to bass fishing. it flat out catches fish.

Since my boat is currently in the shop, I spent the day fishing from bank at a local lake with a bag of TRD's and 3 1/15 ounce shroomz heads. it is a rocky weedy lake with a few fallen trees in the water. Fished all day on one Shroomz head and one TRD. caught a mixed bag of smallmouth and largemouth. also caught 1 catfish and 2 drum. I snagged a couple times but with steady pressure they usually pull free. if the hook bends , I just straighten it and keep fishing. I did retie and sharpen the hook a couple times, but when I quit, the bait I started with was still on my rod.

Kansas and missouri.

it depends on the line. I personally don't cinch it down tight, but braid would be the most forgiving. If you cinch down mono or fluorocarbon before passing the hook through the line it will usually burn the line, when you finish cinching the knot. You can usually tell when this happens, because the line will be wavy looking where it passed through the knot. when tying treble hooked baits I will lightly cinch the knot on one of my fingers before passing the bait through the loop. then just remove my finger, wet the line and finish cinching the knot This makes it more manageable and helps prevent burning the knot.

they are also very good at scooping up a big glob of that mud and muck to get all over your boat carpet.

the Super Fluke has been my favorite bait for 30 years. I use a lot of different baits. There are always six rigged and ready on the deck. nearly every trip the fluke sees some action. It has produced more quality Bass for me than all other baits combined. I fish it weightless shallow. Mojo rigged in mid depths. Carolina rigged in deeper water. Last year I caught my PB largemouth on a mojo rig with a Super fluke in the middle of summer.

A little update on using a navionics card with a hummingbird. been a while since I used the Navionics card. I went to a local 2500 acre power plant lake today. had my navionics cards in. First thing you have to do every time you power up the hummingbird is go to the navigation menu and turn on Fish n chips. this turns the Navionics sonar contours on. if you don't do this it will be in navigation mode and only show navigation contours, which are not well defined. I was catching Bass on a ledge that dropped off from 2 foot into 10 foot. I tried to duplicate the same spot 3 different times Every time I went to an area on Navionics that looked similar, there would be no ledge or the depth would be way off. Maybe it is different in other places, but on every lake I use Navionics it is extremely inaccurate. I will stick with Lakemaster on all lakes they cover.

Either will probably work on a small lake. In my experience if Lakemaster covers a lake it is well defined. The drawback of navionics in my area is it tends to miss a lot of raodbeds on the reservoirs. On lakemaster they standout.

I have navionics and lakemaster. They both work. Like @slonezp mentioned lakemaster has better options for hummingbird. I have had navionics running at the helm while lakemaster was running at the bow. Navionics missed a lot of structure compared to lakemaster. The only reason I have Navionics is one of the lakes I fish is not covered by lakemaster.

You can view it on a computer if you buy lakemaster contour elite. Never tried it on my graph, if I wasn't on the lake.

Lakemaster tends to be more accurate on structure. Navionics covers a lot more lakes. Before you purchase make sure your lake is covered.

It went 3 miles south of my house. Did not see the tornado but we heard a strange howling/whistling sound and saw an opening in the clouds at about the same time the news said it was south of us. Pretty nerve racking.

As mentioned a baitcaster will cut down on wind knots. In my opinion braid is too limp for jerkbaits. I use copoly.

Things were pretty tense here for a while. We were riding it out in the basement. Quite a bit of devastation southwest of us.

Most rods in the $70.00 range will be similar to your vendetta in quality and materials. Kast king has the royal legend and speed demon rods for around that price. They are ok for a budget rod. If you want to spend a little more, the kastking speed demon pro is a big step up from their other rods. I own 4 of them. They are usually $109.00, but there is a 20 percent discount currently going on at amazon. The casting jig/worm rod has a nice soft tip, but still has a lot of backbone. It is rated as medium action, but leans more towards medium/heavy.

these type of discussions come up on a lot of different forums. It all comes down to what a person is comfortable using. personally I use spinning gear for most baits under 1/4 ounce. Anything above that gets a casting setup. Been doing this for 40 years. I have never heard a valid argument to change my mind. this reminds me of a local hunting forum that constantly has the AR15/ 223 argument for harvesting deer. Will it work? Yes, but why when there are better tools for the job.