Russ E

Deer season is wrapped up. Time to get serious about bass fishing. Had a decent day. Caught a few whites, a few small bass, and these three. Shakyhead was the ticket Not trophies, but any bass in December is a good catch to me.

wind knot. probably had a loose loop of line on the spool. t happens once in awhile with braid. If you have a lot of twist in the line a loose loop will twist and cause a knot. one thing I do with braid is, manually close the bail and make sure there is no slack in the line before I start reeling

My neighbor has a well manicured lawn, watered daily and zero weeds. I have a mediocre lawn. Maybe water once a week in the summer. I have no moles. He has a mole farm in his yard. Kills at least a dozen a year with traps. I have found the key to mole control is not have the most inviting yard on the block. Round 2 of deer processing. this time made 10 pounds of venison andouille

I usually fish the south end. Everytime I am there in the winter, the north end is full of boats. Like you mentioned there is a lot of dead water on the south end, in winter. there still are a few places that hold fish. unfortunately I could not get them to bite Wednesday.

I was there wednesday. Caught 2 small bass on a shakyhead. Hit the outlet for 15 minutes before I went home. Caught a dozen white bass. It is supposed to be nice tomorrow. A nice Saturday in the winter, means a ton of boats on La Cygne. Be careful. The whites were hitting blade baits wednesday.

Local power plant lake kicked my butt yesterday. caught a couple small largemouth and a dozen small white bass. I should have known better. It was 54 degrees and calm. That lake always give me fits in the winter, when the weather is nice. Decided to take a break and process some of my latest deer. Fired up the Cabelas carnivore and made 5 lbs of jerky and 10 lbs of deer sticks. Turned out great. It will get used up, out on the water, trying to stay warm this winter. Next project is a batch of Andouille.

Your answers are going to be based on everyone's personal preference. Nearly all rods in the $200.00 range are good quality. The best thing you can do is head to a sporting goods store and handle them personally. My preference for that price are Dobyns champions. They balance well in my hands.

Cancer sucks. Lost 2 grandfathers and my mother to lung cancer. all from smoking. I smoked for 25 years. quit 15 years ago. I am hoping my past does not come back t bite me.

The ability to throw light lures and use light line. If a baitcaster could do that, I would never use a spinning rig

that is true. Unless you are fishing very clear water, the fish probably can't see it anyway. This summer I ran out of leader material,while fishing a shakyhead, on a mildly stained lake. started using straight braid and the catch rate did not change.

I believe the fuego has the same magforce brakes as the tatula ct. They are very forgiving. I rarely ever get backlashes or over runs with my diawa reels. with the magforce brake, I set the the cast control very loose. It seems to work best when set so there is a very small amount of side to side play in the spool. the magnetic brake controls backlashes. if you are having backlashes crank the magnet up all the way. cast a few times and slowly back off the magnets as you go. stop when you just start getting backlashes. most of the time my brake is set in the middle. I occasionally get a few over runs when switching from a braid to mono reel. in my own experience, stiffer line is more prone to over runs. You have to educate your thumb. Big game is a good line, but it is relatively stiff when you get in the 15 pound plus range. I prefer copoly line with less memory.

The Chiefs are still hanging in there. In spite of the Kareem hunt debacle they are still looking better than I ever imagined they would for 2018. Thursday night with the chargers will be interesting. Mahomes has really impressed me this year. He makes the games exciting to watch.

I started using a texas rigged culprit 7 inch worm back in the late 70's, June bug and tequila sunrise were the 2 colors I used. These days a shakyhead with a trickworm covers most of my worm fishing. Black, Green pumpkin, or plum. I still use the texas rig in cover. The only difference now is the zoom ol monster or baby brush hog gets most of the action. usually in plum or black emerald.

I was deer hunting along a frozen marsh in eastern Kansas yesterday. it had a round 3/4 inch of ice. just happened to look down and saw crawdads swimming around under the ice. They were bright orange. I have never seen that before.

Congrats. Love the late fall/winter jerkbait bite. My biggest problem is I tend to fish them too fast in cold water. Have to keep forcing myself to slow down.

Thanks. ground is at a premium here. I almost bought a 30 acre patch on the west side of Perry. It sold pretty cheap. I am glad I passed on it. it butts up to public ground. opening day I saw an orange brigade run right through it. I do have around 20 acres in Wyandotte county I can bow hunt. There are some pretty impressive city dwelling bucks, but they are completely nocturnal. Out of around 100 pics on my trail cam, none of them were during hunting hours.

Got a fat doe on public ground today. unfortunately to find deer on public ground, you have to get away from the roads. Need to find some private ground. Hauling a deer a mile back to the truck is a lot of work for this old man. Since i moved to Eastern Kansas 3 years ago, Finding private ground to hunt. has not been easy.

No. I i use a medium action moderate rod, with mono, for treble hook baits. Just keep the hooks super sharp. if you go to a stiffer rod, there is a chance of the fish pulling free, if they are marginally hooked. with the rods you mentioned, it should work fine.

Moving treble hook baits are perfect for mono. Mono is a little more forgiving than braid or flouro. Fish have less tendency to spit the bait. Biggest problem I see with treble hook baits is not the line. You have to keep the hooks sharp.

welcome to the forum and welcome back to fishing.

I was fishing a magnum fluke, when a Heron swooped down and grabbed it. he pulled some line out then spit the bait. Not sure what I would have done if he would have swallowed the bait.

I keep all of them in their original bag. keep all the bags organized in multiple soft sided tackle boxes according to bait type. soft baits seem to last a lot longer in their original containers.

did a big tackle update this last year. Don't really need anything else. All I want is open water and decent weather for christmas

If they don't hit the reaction baits, like a crankbait, you can cover water pretty quickly with a Ned rig. If fish are there, at least a few will hit the Ned. Once you find them you can switch over to a Texas rig or a jig to entice a few larger fish