CrankFate

I use the 3/8 small ones either on a BFS set up, or with a shallow spool reel. Without wind it casts decent. Skips off rocks without hanging up, but so far, nothing will touch them.

Just keep fishing.

I know ??? Still a great story teller though. what is that?

It’s hard to say 4 years while I was in school and working full time, because since I was 2 years old there was never a period of 365 days that I did no fishing. In my worst years, I had to have gone at least 3 or 4 times. Maybe as many as 6. I’m sure I’ve referred to time off, somewhere, but that’s time off for me. Last year was what I’d call terrible. I probably only got out 15 times (Edit: I originally said maybe 20, but it was more like 15). But it’s hard to tell, because I fish a lot for several species between April and November. I also fish for 8+ hours at a time quite a bit, but I don’t keep a log. It’s hard to say how long I go between outings, could be a week could be three. @Junk Fisherman I never concern myself with how hot it is out. I usually start fishing at the point everyone else leaves saying it’s “too hot out now.”

They eat bluegills with spikes and crawfish with shells and pinchers. They chew them in their gill rakes when they don’t swallow them whole. They are designed to be stabbed in the mouth by sharp things.

I consider “cover” to be lily pads, hydrilla, mats, etc. I only have rip rap that has slime algae in the spring for the most part. There isn’t really any cover around here. It’s either that or submerged roots. But there’s nothing I would think counts as “cover.” Not by choice.

I don’t really fish “cover” but I like the Berkeley pit boss and chigger craw.

Bass already long after the spawn in April. Also, fresh foam in all of the rocks on the side of the lake the wind is blowing to, indicating fish are spawning now. Here’s a pic of just about to go out on their own fry and the male loosely protecting them. The water is about 4-5’ deep. The fry are on the surface, the male was hanging around a foot or two off the bottom. There were also hundreds of fry that were just free size all over, so there was a lot of spawning going on in March, maybe even February. This is like 3 months early.

6th sense makes a lot of nice bluegill/sunny pattern crank baits. This one has movement that is excellent, the only downside is the rattle. It would be better if it was silent. Just the hooks and split rings make enough noise by themselves, IMO.

Amen. Now if we could get the manufacturers to make a one or two synchronized levelwind reels every few years....

I was using a Tatula XT rod today. The label says “Medium Light” if I compare it to most rods in general, the label it should say “Medium Heavy.” It’s a nice medium heavy rod, but isn’t even close to medium light. So my answer to the question is, take these ratings with a grain of salt.

I’ve had that happen when a loose coil of line cris crosses in the spool, like if you cross your fingers, and then catches on itself. Most likely happens to me with new gear and light baits, I think, because we get used to a certain motion on the gear we were using before. It has happened to me the most after adding much faster bearings to a reel. Doesn’t happen to me as much, now, because I constantly look at my spool after a cast to see the loose coil. If you catch it before reeling over it, it helps. Just a little pull after closing freespool gets it out or a pull with your thumb on the spool in freespool. Eventually, I got used to making sure the line is laying properly on the spool, so it doesn’t happen as much for me anymore. But every now and then, it happens. Usually the line breaks right behind me and the lure lands near my feet. Otherwise it might be sacrificed to the fish gods.

I don’t know. I do all kinds of things. It seems like whatever I’m doing works best when people say it’s too hot for the fish. I would say I fish between fast and medium.

Last one for a while. Now to wait for the rod & reel to arrive from preorder/backorder.

Ok, I’ll give you that. I am close to anti very expensive rod. So, yes, I’m not the person to take advice from on that. But whenever I’m out fishing, I don’t care. It’s whatever makes you happy.

Interesting way of contradicting what I just said. I’m my experience they’d hang up on me. And then everyone else would laugh at me.

Or you can go along with it like 99.9% of people do in real life. That girl in the story above later married him with parental consent so he didn’t get indicted. He then got her a job in a junior high school, where a kid in her care was killed because she didn’t stop the fight. It’s all good because the infrastructure cover for her, too. Then he cheated on her a dozen times and they got divorced. After shaking their families down for tens of thousands of dollars. So I guess you can say they all lived happily ever after.

Having been assaulted by a teacher in junior high school because I complained about a guy that worked there who got a student pregnant and later forced her to get an abortion, I learned that for every one victim there are at least a dozen people helping the guilty party.

Yeah, I’d never to a Palomar knot, either.

An old timer once told me that he knew a guy that caught a “wallagen” which is a walleye muskellunge hybrid.

Bass fry that had to be from way too early spawn this year. Male is still nearby, he is much deeper down than the fry on the surface, 3-4’ down. Picture is from yesterday. Fry are less than an inch and a half. The picture is blurry from zoom in making them look bigger than they are.

Hard to tell, could be a blenny or something like that, but they looked like they had 4 fins like a pleco. They were on the same kind of rocks in your picture. I actually took this picture to show the bass fry that are already swimming around from the spawn this spring, but they don’t show up in the picture.

My budget for fishing rods and reels has no limits. A $1,000 rod is not going to make one difference in my life one way or another. I spend a lot more than that at the grocery store every month. As far as money goes, I consider it to be an extremely important factor. I don’t use them because they are not worth the price. And the quality is usually below that of the higher end of the mid market priced rods. These rods have a knack for showing up in the buy, sell, trade boards. I notice in the BST’s you get two types of rod sellers, guys getting rid of stuff they’re never going to use and guys selling high end rods that aren’t worth using. If there is one thing that fishermen are most oven duped into buying that is not going to live up to expectations, it is an expensive fishing rod. It’s unfortunate that there are a lot of people out there that might feel like the most expensive rods are the best because they are just unattainable. It pains me every time I see someone thinking that just because whatever they have isn’t the most expensive, they will never be able to enjoy fishing. Or people making posts to prove that a rod is good because it’s outside of someone else’s budget. There are a lot of people like that out there if you read through what people are saying carefully. It’s very sad, really.

I looked through pictures of every fish I could find. Nothing. It has to be a pleco population that changed a little in the wild. Now I’m wondering if plecos can cross breed. It’s a place where people are known to toss fish tank fish. They were a little more like this shape than a regular zebra pleco. But the four fins were separate. I had amber glasses on an the water is greenish, so they might’ve been yellowish or brownish and yellow.

I saw these fish today wiggling themselves around grapefruit sized riprap. They were about 4 inches long, pretty wide and looked something like a cross between a pleco and goby, very pretty looking black and white striping. They were clinging to the rocks almost like a pleco, moving around by wiggling their body side to side near the center. I’ve never seen anything like it, I’m wondering if they came from someone’s fish tank. Sorry about my drawing. Those are not legs at the sides, there were 4 distinctive fins at the sides. This is about what they looked like, but more butterfly looking in real life. They did not have a tall dorsal fin.