Tennessee Boy

There were times in years gone by that I might drop and pick up a bouy marker 50 times in a single fishing trip. It got old but it allowed me to fish water that most people didn't bother fishing. I do it all with electronics now.

I’ve had one for a while. My fingers are getting old and this thing help a lot. It’s worth the money $23 or $40 IMHO.

I’ve learned over the years that it’s a sign when threads on this forum turn to topics like science fiction, aliens and big foot. We’ve reached the dead of winter and spring is just around the corner.

Yes, it’s nice not having to choose between spot lock and using Mega Live any longer.

I have 360 and Mega Live. They provide different information and complement each other well. If I had to choose one it would definitely be Live. It truly is a game changer. The Garmin and Lowrance FFS offerings are better than Mega Live but having 360 and Mega Live and now Target Lock, I would not give up my Hummingbirds.

If they suspended fishing for a year, I would still go out and look for them. Catching them is the goal but finding them is a lot of fun.

Glasses in 5th grade. Wore contacts for 30 years then my eyes got to dry for them. Bifocals for about 10 years now. The only time I hate wearing glasses is when I’m fishing in the rain.

As I’ve gotten older, getting skunked doesn’t bother me as much. I enjoy exploring new water more and trying new things which isn’t always productive. What kills me is loosing a good fish. I might need therapy if I loose one over 7lbs.

Pattern?? One of my biggest tournament wins came after I caught four fish on four different lures in four completely different locations. Then five minutes before the end of the tournament I caught the big fish of the tournament while dead sticking a trickworm. Dead sticking wasn’t intentional, I just stop fishing to talk to a buddy in another boat. It helps to be lucky sometimes. ?

I hope you’ll keep us updated on what you hear from him. I agree that the bass fishing body of knowledge is important and should be preserved. Do you need to know it to catch fish? That’s a very hard question. I don’t think anyone lives long enough to literally start from scratch and figure it all out on their own. Discovering the value of a Texas rig all by yourself could take a long time. There’s a difference between fishing knowledge and knowledge of bass behavior. Buck Perry got where to fish right. His explanation of why the fish are there was mostly wrong. I think bass behavior is very closely related to the fishery. What resources does the lake provide. What other species are competing for those resources. Every body of water is different in so many complex and unknown ways. The bass adapt to their environment and individual fish may adapt differently. Many lessons are learned locally and taught globally. They don’t always apply globally and that throws a lot of people off track when reading about bass behavior. Local knowledge always seems to trump book knowledge when it comes to understanding bass behavior.

Here is the full quote concerning FFS from the article on the MLF website that I linked to above. Wheeler is listed as the author of the article. Forward-facing sonar reset With the Bass Pro Tour going to a five-fish format, I’ve already heard some people say that a five-fish game will diminish the role of forward-facing sonar. Their reason being, guys who fish the bank for fewer (but bigger) loners will now dominate, especially since there are only 40 guys fishing per day and the bank will be wide open. It’s an interesting prediction, but as I’m turning it over in my head right now, I’m not buying into it. I’ll dig into this a little more in a few weeks in a blog, but if there’s one thing that forward-facing sonar has taught me, it’s that everything we assumed about bass behavior that came from books, magazines and videos from years past is mostly false. Other than actually spawning – which we could already see – bass simply do not behave in all these certain ways at certain times like we have “learned” over the years. Literally, every single day that I study fish on a forward-facing sonar, I learn something new about them that I never knew. What’s truly mindboggling is how much we actually don’t know about bass. That’s why so many young anglers are coming in and crushing in the sport these days. Their heads are not full of a bunch of bass behavior myths. Their minds are clean slates learning what bass really do. But we’ll dive into more of that later this season as well.

How deep are you fishing them? One lure you may want to add to your arsenal is a countdown Rapala. It will slowly sink down to where you need it when the fish are deeper. It’s a good bait for bluff walls on the rivers this time of year.

Current shouldn’t be a problem for the next few days. ?

Wheeler’s original comment came from this article https://majorleaguefishing.com/angler-columns/jacob-wheeler-time-for-a-reset-as-2023-season-approaches/ The idea is that the next generation of anglers will learn from what they observe instead of learning from the myths they read. It’s an interesting idea and a few may succeed and have a real advantage. For most I think the allure of the myths is just too much to resist. Most real world anglers spend much more time consuming bass fishing mythology than they spend on the water observing actual bass behavior. Josh Jones has been in the news a lot lately. To me he’s an example of someone who has found their own way by spending a tremendous amount of time on the water observing actual bass behavior on live sonar. It seems to have given him an advantage. At the same time the bass fishing community has turned him into a mythological figure believing that he has found the secret to catching big fish. They have formed a narrative around what this secret is. In the end it’s just more mythology.

Absolutely couldn’t agree more. I think bass are opportunistic feeders that do what works on a given lake on a given day. All of the rules out there come from anglers not bass. My eyes have also been opened by using Live Sonar. I’ve enjoyed watching bait fish behavior as much as bass.

Another vote for the Owner Block Head and for Superglue.

I think it would be considered a forward pass if he was behind the line of scrimmage and if the guy caught it. That possible targeting call was tough. I wish I was recording so I could look at it again.

When I saw this I thought about Payton’s last game as a Vol which was the Orange Bowl. It was unthinkable that he would have skipped that game to get ready for the NFL draft. The game has changed a lot since then.

I’d start with what @TnRiver46 is throwing or maybe a trick worm. Go smaller if the fish want you to. Good option but 1/0 EWG is to small for a 3 inch Senko IMHO.

You work hard to buy bigger houses so you’ll have more room to store your ever increasing stash of tackle you’ll never use. It a normal part of life. ?

That’s kind of like asking which side of town has the best restaurants. It depends a lot on the town.

Bassmaster Radio

The key to saving money on licensing in Tennessee is to buy a lifetime Sportsman license before your 3rd birthday. It’s only $320.

It’s complicated in Tennessee. I buy a basic annual $33 hunting and fishing license. I typically don’t hunt. Trout cost extra. You can get a license to fish in your home county with natural bait (no minnows or lures) for $10. Sportsman license cost $165 which covers just about everything for hunting and fishing.