Kev-mo

You might want to look up old Jeff Little video's etc. I had never heard of a dry suit until I saw some of his stuff. This was around 2013. I believe he made a video or two about his system for wearing, layering etc. He was winter kayak fishing under some extreme conditions.

Here’s a decent pic of a dark eyed smallie

I've caught smallies, mostly bigger fish with dark/black eyes, no red. If I find a really conclusive pic I'll post it. They are the minority tho.

If memory serves I haven't been since like 2012 or sometime around then. I thought the Tinley show changed a few years ago. Meaning it wasn't at the high school any more and wasn't as good. I have heard good things about the Schaumburg show but haven't attended yet.

4 inch hula grub, 20.25” smallie

No experience with that rod but... what size cranks do you plan on tossing? If I looked up the correct rod it says 1/4-1/2 oz. for lure weight. I'm just wondering if it might be slightly under powered for a 1/2 oz. 1.5. Are you able to try it out since it's a buddies? I have a 7 foot (composite?) rod that's labeled as a MH Fast worm rod, 1/4-3/4 lure weight. To me it fishes more like a Medium Moderate and throws 1/4-1/2 oz. squarebills like butter. It'll toss a 3/4 oz. bait but you can tell it's not ideal.

edit-didn't see that someone already posted about this on page two. Is this a clear your cache thing or compact view thing? The home page looks "normal". When I click on/into a topic it seems a bit long vertically but visually okay. However the individual forums look like this before clicking on a topic. Any thoughts?

Crushing on dark mode!!!!!!! Thank you!!

Maybe a lucky craft bevy shad?

So sad and shocked to read about this when it happened. He was really excited about BFS. It sounded like he was reopening some fishing doors with that technique. Condolences to his family. Thankfully both his and Catt's musings and wisdom are immortalized here.

Layering as noted above. No matter, what I need an insulated hood covering my neck and head. Wind whipping across 40 degree water just sucks the warmth out of me without that protection.

I decided to try night fishing for a several reasons including A-Jay and Catt's threads. I caught fish. However the half hour drive home was dangerous to say the least. I was basically slapping myself in the face most of the way home just to stay awake. So mine is a cautionary post.

I haven't bought a reel in awhile. But the last couple were chosen based on reviews and general tackle talk on Bass Resource. Ive also looked at Tackle Tour to see what they had to say.

@Eric 26 I've fished with Scott several times. Hopefully he doesn't mind me chiming in. His pontoon is like a hybrid pontoon/belly boat. It has pontoons and oars but you sit with your legs in the water like a belly boat. It's a little cumbersome on land but really slick once you're in the water. As to the OP's question. Never had the extra funds, space, etc. to be able to own a boat. Also mostly do the smaller, shallow river/smallmouth thing so a kayak makes more sense. Only downside is needing a shuttle. Unless I wade upstream and float back.

I'm a smallie river guy so when my son was in CO for 5 years I caught the trout bug. That was when @redmeansdistortion was using BFS low profile so I got some advice from him. @bulldog1935also gave me some good info. Good thing I'm kinda poor at the moment, the Zillion and those round reels sure are pretty! Better than expected. I could flick cast a small minnow bait like a rocket. Line twist wasn't an issue. Only negative was the one backlash I caused. No picking that one out lol. Biggest fish I caught was a 20 inch brown. Messed up the video tho, I accidentally turned the video off when setting the phone/tripod down. I had an even bigger rainbow chasing down my minnow bait one day. I was looking up river and when I looked down this giant of a fish was hot on my bait in like 6-8 inches of water. Should've stood perfectly still and killed the retrieve. Instead I moved my arms a little... bye bye fishy. Hope to get back out there next year.

I'd go back to the Grand Kankakee Marsh before we trashed it. Maybe even before the first Europeans got here. As far as people go.. back to my 20's when me and the guys I grew up with were taking fishing vacations together. Good times were had and priceless memories were made.

Really sorry to hear. Hoping all goes well with a good outcome. Curious as to how the diagnosis came about. Were you having symptoms of something or was it just random? No worries if you don't want to share. I knew someone for a short time and they found out they had stomach cancer because they went in for basically indigestion that they had dealt with all of their adult life. They had also been to the doctor multiple times over the years for the indigestion. Idk if the two were related but that's how they finally found out. Also really surprised you don't see more bald eagles in SC. It seems to me that SC is more "wild" than IL and I see way more eagles than I ever thought I would. Maybe it's a river thing...

@FrnkNsteen dude that thing is sweet! @Eric 26 so you're resizing the pic when actually loading to the site correct.

What kind of phone do you have? I have an iPhone. What I do is take a screen shot of the picture I want to post. Then I open up that picture/screen shot and crop it. There will be a large black border on the top and bottom of the screen shot/picture. Those get cropped first and then I crop the sides if I can or want to. That's always taken care of any photo size errors/ posting issues for me. After posting you can delete said photo/screen shot. I think there are other ways to reduce on iPhone but I've never figured out how. I imagine you could do something similar if you have an android.

Looks like Bass Pro has them in three sizes. Assume the smallest size would be the little o. If so I'd look at the Lucky Craft 0.7. More money tho so the bait monkey would approve lol

Lucky Craft did that to one of their cranks except it was a crater/not all the way through. You'd have to have a thicker bill to do that tho.

Cold water to me means maybe downsizing my offering and/or the flatsides come out. Slowing down and suspending/slow rise can help get bites. With that said giving the reel a fast little 1/8 turn to make that crank flash has elicited some violent rip the rod out of your hand strikes. This is with 1.2/1.5 size round baits. I also think it's a timing/feeding window thing in cold water. I hadn't caught much if anything one late winter day. Got to my last spot close to sunset. Tossed my bandit 100 up on the ice shelf that was covering 3/4 of the eddy. Pulled it off and a crank or so later I had a well fed 15/16 inch smallie come out of the water a couple times trying to shake loose.

Pretty much everything you said plus CVT's. Bring back manual and automatic transmissions.

I've waded down to the high 30's (air and water) with tolerable wind. Much beyond that it becomes cumbersome and borders on unsafe.

I too use nitrile gloves to keep my hands dry. I can get by with those down to the low forties for air temp. Below that (30's) I need to add a pair of polypro glove liners under the nitrile gloves. Might try @MN Fisher suggestion of fingerless wool over the nitrile once it truly cools off here. I'm going to echo @A-Jay caution about kayaking in cold water. I took a tumble one spring while wading. I got my left arm, shoulder, chest and a touch of my left core wet. The water was probably in the high forties/low fifties. The air was about the same. I fished for another 15 minutes or so and then left. I was shivering and shaking on the half mile walk back to the car...