Kev-mo

Those are some mighty big ponds lol. I'm sure you'll get a bunch of replies about open water tactics. There were a couple really small ponds I fished back in the day. When the crappie came in shallow to spawn and we would catch them from shore with a panfish jig/tube under a small pegged float. If you don't mind waiting until spawn I'm sure you could do the same from a boat casting to shore.

Will your friend get all the backpay they are supposed to get? I think it depends on the situation. My adult kid is starting down that road next week. Unless he's going to try to get a different job he just needs to hope things get sorted sooner than later. He has some savings and lives frugally. He'll be okay for awhile. If things drag on for another month or two I think all of us are going to feel it in some way.

We kept some back in the day on the Canadian drive in trips. Battered and fried it was hard for me to tell a huge taste difference from a similar size walleye. I imagine if you baked a several species of fish from the same body of water with no seasoning/oil etc. you would find differences.

Earth Brite. Get a little on your finger and thumb, a touch of water to help emulsify, rub blade between finger and thumb, rinse. Repeat if necessary.

Water and a rag

Struggle and then wait for more water/rain/cooler temps.

We get filamentous algae and eel grass on some of the rivers here. I do a bit of cursing late spring thru late fall.

^^^ That sounds amazing!!!!!!!

All fair points. I've never owned or worn a pair of hip boats. Based on your wear description I probably never will lol. I can see using wader pants over hip boats for sure.

I don't know that you're really gaining much with waist waders over hip boots. I guess it depends on on the height of the hip boots. For me personally I'd opt for chest waders. I think they offer more flexibility. You can "convert" some brands of chest waders to waist waders. Also if you need to get a little deeper to try to retrieve that snagged Vision 110 (safely of course) you can't do that in waist waders. I agree waist waders are better in the heat but if it's that hot I'm wet wading. I'll take my chances with potentially "dirty" water and antibiotics over some combo of dehydration/heat exhaustion/stroke. Yes I've unfortunately been the cause of experiencing both. Also stocking foot and separate boots are the way to go. Make sure upsize the boots or you'll have squished toes. I wear a 13 street shoe but 14 wading boot. If you bust brush you will get pin hole leaks but aquaseal is your friend. We're about the same size. I wear a pair of older breathable stocking foot Simms in XL feet 12-13. The extra room allows for layering when fishing colder water/weather. Also the longer inseam allows for bending, kneeling etc. without stressing the seams.

Haven't watched it in awhile but ya it's hilarious. Btw the f word is a noun, adjective, adverb, qualifier, conjunction, interjection etc. It's all about the tone, inflection and where it's used in your sentence structure. It works well with several prefixes too.

Love my Crocs but ya things can go south in a heartbeat. Too bad they can't bond a Vibram sole to them.

Yeah, Glenn certainly has his SEO set up nicely. I too get multiple returns of Bass Resource on my interweb searches. To the OP. I know you got your answers but basically your pictures are too big to post. There's as many ways to resize pictures as there are systems and apps. Either do an internet search on how to resize pics with your systems or find a gen z'r.

I got one quite awhile after they came out. Didn't catch squat. Picked up a couple more several years later to give them another chance. Now it's one of my most productive baits.

Idk about the bigger rivers that you need a boat to fish out of but on the wadeable rivers I fish both the smallies and trout will handily hit lures brought upstream.

Absolutely devastating! My flash flood experience. We were at a scout camp like 15 years ago. A small creek runs through the property intersecting with a small river across the street. Canyon like topography. We got like 6 plus inches of rain Friday night and another 6 or 7 inches of rain Saturday night. That small creek that was inches deep in some points swelled to between 10 and 15 feet and did major damage to the camp. Thankfully those in charge made some good decisions Saturday morning. If not Sunday morning would have gone vastly different....

Looks like a Megabass s crank to me but I could be wrong.

PB largemouth was pre-spawn, about a week after the ice was off a forest preserve lake. March 20 if memory serves. I didn't get any measurements but based on other fish it was probably around 21 inches and 5 pounds. Honestly it might be a little bigger. I'll try to find the pic cause curious what you guys would guess. Ya I know it's hard to tell from a pic but still.... Came on a #7 rapala rattlin rap. Longest smallie was post spawn by a couple weeks or so. late May. Over 21" but thin due spawn. Still an amazing fish and fight in high water (river). Heaviest smallie came on a different river in early August. Didn't get any measures due operator error but by far the absolute heaviest smallie I have ever held. Hit a whopper plopper.

Your reel will be fine if you encounter a 20 pound pike. I'm more concerned your rod will be too weak and you'll thoroughly exhaust the fish while landing it.

Combination of picking and pulling.

I'm going to take the opposing view. Mostly fish smallies/rivers and fished exclusively with 20 lb. braid no leader for idk... 8 years or so (bait casting and spinning). I had no problem hooking or keeping fish pinned. Fished stock hooks or replaced with standard or magic eye gamakatsu or daiichi. Rods ranged from ML EF to MF to MHM. The one thing I consistently did was make sure the drag was set right. Right for me was a good amount of slip on the hit/hookset. If I was missing/losing or had barely hooked fish they really didn't want a crank bait. Since then I've moved back to mono on a few set ups but still fish braid on my spinning rod and do use a thicker mono leader mostly for abrasion purposes.

Not deer related... but my son and I were coming back from a hike in the Flat Tops in CO several years ago. Doing about 40 on a forest road, it was dusk. About a dozen elk materialized at the forest edge and started to cross the road. My son slammed on the brakes in his Civic and we stopped about 5-10 feet from them. Elk are big!!!!!

NOAA and Wunderground. iPhone app for shorter term. As mentioned earlier it's pretty accurate with the "rain starting in X and stopping in Y.

Mine usually bend out a bit after a few fish. Seems to make the hook set require less effort. Regular gammies and mono.

Scott and Susky give some really good advice. But I've been fishing rivers a long time so it makes perfect sense to me. In the simplest sense rivers consist of riffles, holes and runs. The riffle water is usually shallow fast water. A hole is the deeper slower water after the riffles. The run is after the hole and is deeper than riffle water but not as deep as a "hole". Usually the fish can be found in the holes. Sometimes they'll be in the riffle water (think heat of the summer). If the run has some boulders or wood they might be there. As the river size goes up these features multiply. So within a given pool you might a few riffles, holes and runs. Fish location is dependent on water temperature and current flow. Below is a link to a previous discussion about smallmouth books. Check it out and checkout out some of the books. They'll help a lot! https://www.bassresource.com/bass-fishing-forums/topic/183993-good-read-about-smallmouth-book/