Sphynx

I keep a spreadsheet for all my fishing stuff, it's helpful for maintaining stock of the baits I have, and of any spare parts (rings/hooks especially) and it can also serve as a reference guide for depths, and which hooks/rings are best on which baits while your out fishing and break a point or whatever. I do a tab for each category, and even my stuff for trout, panfish etc are kept in there. As others have mentioned it's also very helpful for not buying stuff you already have.

There's no imprisonment at all, anybody is free to leave at any time If she can kick you out of your mutually negotiated bed to an unheated garage...your not really negotiating, your hoping she agrees with you, now if she faced the same consequences for making a decision you were even partially against, your back to the negotiation table lol.

My other half does not economically participate, so no, I do not help with the domestic work, my time at home is never spent idling, I am afforded the opportunity to put in extra time working and benefitting our alliance economically (which she also benefits from.) That said I do have "man's work" at the home too, garbage, all forms of handy man and automotive work, landscaping and other out of the house work is also my responsibility, managing the household finances and so on, this is not a competitive sport in our home, we have a list of responsibilities that MUST be accomplished for us to live the lifestyle we have both agreed to work for, there is no particular assigned value to one form of work or the other, it's a team effort and none of it would work if either of us did not fully contribute, ESPECIALLY when it is hard, or inconvenient, but that's the price for making a relationship work in the real world...honestly my attempts at cleaning, laundry etc would simply serve to make even more work, it's honestly best that I just stay out of her way and appreciate the sacrifices she makes for us, she very much does the same.

I catch a lot of smallies on smaller jigs, sure, but I definitely catch enough of them on 3/8+ sized jigs that I don't buy any of the talk about these jigs being too big for them to eat, you'd be astonished at the number of half pound smallies that will obliterate a half oz football head or arkie jig.

My thoughts are to spend more time finding the cover within 20 yards of the bank, you will have a population of fish that will prefer deeper water, but no longer cast is going to get you to those fish, which means your looking for the fish up shallow anyway until you buy a boat/kayak, there absolutely are fish up shallow nearly all year long, and the drop shot is one of many techniques that will catch them, but it's not a magic bullet, there's days they won't bite a drop shot, same as any other technique, you could try picking up some jigs, finesse and arkie heads are where I'd start, flukes work well too and are much less of an investment than the hard jerkbait world, so I'd start there and see what you come up with

I think a great deal of the problem is relative to the overall population of this country, we probably have similar percentage of unaccountable people, and likely lots of other categories, but when your talking about 10% of a hundred it's one thing, 10% of 10,000 is a much greater problem overall, and since we've more than doubled our population since the first world War, it's becoming harder to find places not rife with it.

It's giving you an opportunity to learn how to fish unfamiliar conditions, giving you another arrow in your quiver of fishing tricks

In the OP you listed Mono to FC, is this a typo or are you looking for a mono to FC knot? Mono to Mono knots aren't the same as Mono to FC...

I really like any mouse variety from War Eagle on shad water, those things absolutely slay, I still have and fish a bunch of different Revenge Spinnerbaits too, no idea if/where those can be found anymore, I also use a few River2Sea spinnerbaits, Strike King makes some good stuff, and last but certainly not least are the $1 Walmart spinnerbaits, they do the job and you don't feel bad for losing them, I hear this lure get called old fashioned and all kinds of nonsense about fish "not falling for them anymore" and it's all bunk, the spinnerbait isn't leaving my arsenal anytime soon, because it gets bit a lot in the spring and fall.

Well, it changes seasonally and depending on what I'm fishing near, I generally don't like treble/open hook options in heavy vegetation situations, and I find squarebills work best when dragged over the top of hard structure they can bounce off of, I don't have any electronics to help me with any of this stuff, so I'm pretty much stuck doing it the hard way, for exploring a new to me area I find that Walmart brand spinnerbaits (yes, the $1 variety) to be an invaluable tool, I have always kind of thought about a spinnerbait as the 4x4 of the bass fishing world, they come through almost any kind of cover, quit spinning when you are dragging them through unseen vegetation, give differing tactile responses when banged against wood, rocks and metal, and can still tell you if your fishing in a muddy/soft bottom area, plus fish eat them sometimes and aren't especially easy to get hung up and broken off...I don't really attribute huge percentages of my yearly catch to one, but it does for me what a graph does for guys in boats and it tells me what I'm fishing around, once I get that part sorted out it's pretty easy most of the time to pick an area apart and find the pattern that will get me bit that day.

They seemed to have no problems with this one.

I cook shore lunches all the time, but I definitely don't have a guide or anyone else do it for me, there are about a million pack stoves burning everything from denatured alcohol to natural wood and mess kits that can be used for pan frying, bush pot and a wire rack can make a convection type oven in a fireplace, and your imagination is the limit to how creative you want to get, if your in a boat you can afford much more luxurious cooking appointments, ziplock type bags are great for premixed seasonings and breading materials, I could probably pack everything needed in a bank bag fir 2-3 pounds, and very likely less, canned vegetables get around a freezer nicely too if you want those.

You can use the same idea that pipe smokers in WW1 used as well, known as a "military mount" there is plenty of information available on it if you choose to look it up that can show it more completely and efficiently than I can.

Being realistic in my assessment I feel pretty good about 2021 from an angling perspective, I haven't really got a ton of access to water, mostly just a handful of spots and I'm bank bound to top it all off, I feel like I got great numbers, several days of 30+ fish and I caught a fair amount of 3-4lb smallmouth, which is fantastic for this area in my experience. I am willing to bet that if I had a boat/kayak and I could be more mobile and cover more water I'd probably start getting into some bigger fish and probably more fish, but that wasn't in the cards last year, maybe next year though.

Only real way to get a cup out in the bush, Walmart sells a stainless steel mess kit for like $6, the stainless steel cup is only a few dollars more, you can hump in as far as you trust the meat/eggs to not spoil and get a fine breakfast

Well, true to my word I went, didn't catch a thing, but I got a nice fire going in the firebox and managed a cup of coffee and some eggs potatoes and bacon, and I enjoyed a very pleasant few hours by the river this morning, even when you don't catch anything you can absolutely still win

I know that I will be going tomorrow, only reason I haven't been going through the last couple of days is because my spots require the sure-footed abilities of a mountain goat to get to, and it's dark by the time I get off work, sleeping in the teens-low twenties with a broken leg/ankle until someone comes along sounds like an experience a much younger man than I would find humorous eventually but I'm too old for that mess these days, if you go and figure out how to get bit in a cold front you'll have paid for your time well, if you go and find out what doesn't work, you'll have also been well compensated for the trip.

Yes, I fish 11 out of every 14 days in the spring/summer/fall as long as I'm on my landfill contract, and you can absolutely burn out, the solution is very straightforward thankfully, take a break, go do something else for a few days or weeks, usually I spend 90-120 days over the road a year while work is slow at the landfill and I don't get to fish very often at all, maybe a handful of times in that entire time, by the time I go back to the job I'm frothing at the mouth to go catch fish again.

I keep a few different philosophies in how I store my tackle, I have a bunch of boxes organized primarily by type, jerkbaits in a box, cranks etc, but my bank bag is done by a system of water column position, I carry a terminal tackle box, a box with jigs of various sorts, a box with middle water column baits (spinnerbaits, squarebills, lipless, jerkbaits, and swim jigs/chatterbaits) and a topwater box, with buzzbaits frogs poppers walking baits and whopper ploppers, I also have room for another box which I switch out as needed between a night fishing box and whatever else might be applicable, I have found it to work pretty well coast to coast, year round for a couple of years now.

You would be astonished at the number of immoral and worse, illegal, activities that get published on social media, sometimes I think that people's brains are often wired in reverse with facetweetgram, they turn the social media on, brain goes off.

Subject to correction upon review of my journal from last year, I think the specific baits are going to be buzzbaits, frogs, and chatterbaits, had very, very low numbers produced in the aggregate totals last year and I get the feeling that it's me doing something wrong...not the fish...might try to mix in a few new plastics too just for grins, we'll see.

You have a future as a comedian, keep working on the routine! Lol

After the first couple thousand fish the game changes a bit, the excitement of catching fish never really goes away, but it's less of a "kid on Christmas morning" feeling and more of a thing where if you've ever worked hard on something and gotten that vindication of doing it right type of thing, make no mistake, virtually every angler goes through what your feeling, and this too shall pass, just remember that even when the fish win, you aren't wasting a day, your paying for your education in sweat equity that simply can't be avoided, even the pro's had to put in the time to get as good as they are.

I dunno man, but at some point the fear of getting skunked just goes away, I learn way more on days I don't catch many (or any) fish because I am forced to pay more attention to what I am doing and what ISN'T working, which is at least as important as what IS working, sounds to me like your struggle is the fact that you measure a successful day of fishing by the number or size or fish caught, rather than by the fact that fish or no fish your engaging in a hobby and getting an opportunity to hone your craft.

These threads are better than a live comedy show and a movie all rolled into one, only remotely constructive thing I have to add is that nothing is ever as cheap as it is right now, prices always go up, I can't remember the last time anything really decreased in price in any hobby of mine, fishing is no exception, and there is precisely diddly squat I can do to change it, just gotta roll with the punches.