Tennessee Boy

I’m thinking about offering a service to correct this problem for the anglers. You give me $45K at the beginning of the season and I’ll give some back to you throughout the year based on how you perform. Of course they don’t need me for this they could create an Angler’s association to manage their own side pot of prize money. BASS increased the money they contribute to the angler payouts for 2025. That’s a good thing for the anglers. If my math is correct, the average Elite angler will still only make about $41,00 in 2025 including potential classic winnings. Subtract expenses and that’s probably less than $5 an hour. The real impact that I see here is how it will now be obvious how little money is made in these tournaments. When anglers walk across the Classic stage they always announce how many millions they’ve won in their career. They never mention how much they paid in entry fees. It’s like saying you walked out of a casino with a $1000 without mentioning that you walked in with $2000 dollars. People see these anglers that have career earnings in the millions and dream that they too might be able to get rich fishing. I’ve know a few guys that spent an enormous amount of money that they didn’t have chasing this dream. If I was in the business of selling $100K boats on credit to these dreamer, I would not be happy with this change.

I switched my electronics to lithium a couple of years ago and I did not see any difference in my electronics. I run Hummingbirds. I know some people are saying that going to 16 volts improves clarity on electronics. I would love to hear from someone who has made the switch to 16 volts who is not being paid to talk about it.

Diawa may be the smoothest but if you want to impress the ladies you better go with Shimano. 😆

Very sorry to hear this news. RIP Russ.

I’ve never seen a fishing tournament that was unwatchable. It’s fishing! What’s not to like? Any problems they might have are their problem not mine. Same goes for the other trails.

@Team9nine I always appreciate your data-driven, logical approach to these matters. If I did a similar chart for my tournament fishing in the '90s, it would be 70% worms and 30% jigs. I can't think of a single fish I caught on another bait in a tournament I cashed a check in, although I'm sure there were a few. I fished lots of other lures, but when I was at the top of my game, it was with a worm or jig because that's what I did best. I had some epic days with a rat (now known as a hollow-body frog), but there were several guys in the club that were big-time rat fishermen, so I never out-fished them when the rat bite was on. Those experiences taught me that you will have more success being very good at a few techniques than being mediocre at many techniques.

It very common around here in the fall. For those that have never seen it, the bass school up and surrounded a bunch of shad and then attack from all directions. The shad have no escape so they start erupting out of the water. It last from two to five seconds most of the time and at most tens seconds. Your bait needs to hit the water as the shad are jumping out of the water. That means you have a few seconds to get the bait where it needs to be. When I see this happening I tie a spoon on a spinning rod. The heavy spoon allows me to cast far. The spinning gear allows me to cast fast. I put the rod over my shoulder and wait. When I see or hear the bait busting up on the water I fling the spoon hard and fast into the carnage. If you did this with a casting reel you would have the mother of all backlashes. When the spoon hits the water I reel in the slack and set the hook. There is usually a fish on it. The hard part is getting the lure there before the attack ends. 95% of the time I fail to get the spoon where it needs to be before the carnage ends. It goes something like this. You see a eruption a good distance out in from of you. You try to make the cast but it it doesn’t quite get there. As you’re reeling back in an eruption happens right by the boat but by the time you’re ready to cast it’s way to late. All this time there are eruptions happening all around that are clearly out of range. There seems to be a lot of them over there so you move. Then they seem to be happening more where you were before. You make a perfect cast but while the lure is in flight the carnage ends. It’s exciting but mostly frustrating.

These October year end reports always trouble me. Just when I’m starting to have a good time, people start leaving the party.

I may offend some people by saying this but I think you have the best looking dog on BR.

We anglers often seek answers to unanswerable questions. Things change from day to day and year to year. Did the bass learn to avoid my lures? Was it the weather? Was it the result of FFS? Am I losing my touch? Was it just bad luck? Without a lot of data gathered in a controlled manner, it is impossible to know with any certainty. Bass fishing is full of myths that started when people convinced themselves that something was true without the facts to prove it. I try very hard not to speculate and to keep an open mind to the possibilities.

For all you bomb caster out there, how do you follow the fishing regulations? Do you follow the laws where the lure lands or the laws where you launch the cast from? 😆

I remember in the early 90s after a club tournament several of us younger guys were standing around one of the older richer guy’s boat admiring his tackle. He had 7 or 8 combos on the deck of the boat that were exactly the same. Exact same reels on the exact same rods with the same Stren mono. We were all very envious of this. The thinking at the time was that he could put one rod down and pick up another without having to adjust to any differences between the rods. His reels were all heavy duty Ambassadors which were thought to be superior because they would last forever. He had no idea that he was loosing fish because his line had to much stretch or that he would have all kinds of health issues from casting with heavy combos. No one knew that a spinnerbait rod needed to be an inch longer than a worm rod. 😲 I don’t know that fishing has changed much in the last 35 years but the way people think about fishing is constantly changing. 😆

Let’s say you’re 100 yards from a fish and you’ve got what it takes to make a 100 yard cast. Your chances of hooking the fish will be slim but your chances of hooking it with a 90 yard cast will be zero. 😆 I don’t have what it takes so I just move a closer before I cast.

I wouldn’t call anything you’ve described as normal but it sounds like it’s working now. Hopefully it keeps working for you.

How good is your voltage meter?

Every time I find bass schooling up on bait I catch 3 or 4 and feel like I should have caught 50. It’s exciting and frustrating at the same time.

All of the above. 😆

Where I fish there are no secret spots. I feel like I do have a few secrets that combine spots with other details like timing and techniques. I can’t imagine a public lake where I would worry about overfishing a spot or educating the fish. There could be lakes in remote areas where this might be a legitimate concern but those place do not exist in my world.

This battery is now showing up at the top of listings as a sponsored listing and with a $50 off coupon brings the price down to $144. None of us know anything about this battery or the company selling it. It looks to me like they are trying to build a reputation on Amazon and are doing so by selling at a loss.

Absolutely not! Just about all of my fishing tackle came with a warning that says it causes cancer in California. I’ll never fish there. 😆

The battery sells for $194. That’s in-line with similar batteries. They offered a discount making it $88 for a short time which is clearly below cost. The question is why.

Buy a Lowrance Xi3.

This is the difference between a credit card and a debit card as I understand it. I could be wrong. If you wake up one day and you have a fraudulent charge on you credit card, you call the issuer and dispute the charge. They look into it and eventually remove the charge. If you wake up one day and someone had drained your bank account using your debit card, you call your bank and dispute the charges. They look into it and eventually put the money back into the account. Until that happens you're broke.

I can give you some free advice but I can’t guarantee it will be worth what your paying.😀 Depending on your income, the amount of any IRA contributions that you can deduct on your taxes may be limited. Taking full advantage of tax deductions and employer matching at work should be your top priority. Once that is maxed out it might make more sense to contribute to a Roth IRA instead of a traditional IRA. Roth contributions are not deductible but future gains are. Considering that tax rates will probably be much higher in the future, Roth IRA are a sweet deal.

I’ve tried to answer the question. I’ve honestly tried to choose. I just can’t. I can go up into the hills and fish highland reservoirs like Dale Hollow or go down to large reservoirs like Guntersville or Kentucky Lake. We have plenty of rivers and creeks also. I love the variety. I can’t choose. Sorry. 😞