fin

Wow. I thought turning your back was pretty safe. I guess not.

Having the right-of-way doesn't matter when you're dead. Drive like the other guy is trying to kill you.

Yeah, Zoom Super Fluke is hard to beat, but I picked up a pack of Big Bite Bait Jerkbaits that were like a dollar cheaper and just as good. The plastic seems a little softer, which can be good sometimes. Very limited color selection though. https://bigbitebaits.com/product/jerkbait/ Caffeine Shad is okay, but I prefer the Zoom style. Yum Houdini Shad is not bad either. Culprit Skinny Jerk is pretty cool, but very different https://culprit.com/shop/skinny-jerk/

It’s really sad when someone that young dies, especially due to someone else’s carelessness. It’s not likely justice will ever be served because it is labeled as “an accident”. I’m making some assumptions. I don’t know anymore than is in the article, but I would really be surprised if the bass boat ran into the cabin cruiser.

Not for everyone.

A lot of the stuff I find is a real mystery. For that one, I’d guess someone was fishing with what little they had, and maybe they didn’t know how to tie knots. Maybe they were using their dad’s stuff. It reminds me of something I found a few weeks ago - a Bass Pro Shop Graphite Series casting rod with the foot of a spinning reel in the reel seat. The base stem of the reel had apparently broken, so they threw away a rod that sells for about $35. I never found the reel, I guess they threw it in the lake. Other than the cork being a little stained, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the rod. Why they had a spinning reel on a casting rod, I don’t know. Too poor to buy a casting reel, but rich enough to throw away a perfectly good rod.

I can’t afford those kind of regrets, so I don’t have a lot. I guess that’s one benefit of being poor. I bought a $25 rod with medium action instead of MH, and I still regret that, so I have regrets, but they are just much smaller. I've found over the years that many things I regret buying, I find a use for them eventually, or get something out of them.

I think it’s pretty common among new fishermen to think they are being really clever to fish next to someone who looks like they know what they are doing. A couple things about this: They are not a threat (except for maybe scaring away fish). Take it as a compliment that they think you look like you know what you are doing.

Not many lures lately, but I found another knife today. These are all knives I have found while fishing. The big one spent a few years underwater. I found it alongside a rod and reel covered with algae and stuff when the lake was down. I think someone must have capsized their kayak there.

My neighbor’s little dog got killed a couple weeks ago by a copperhead. She was sitting in carport and heard the dog barking at the snake which was curled up under the car tire in the carport. She went to get a shovel and when she got back the snake was dead and the dog was bit. Took several hours for the dog to die. Really sad. Sweet dog too. I wouldn’t expect a snake to come into the carport like that. Copperheads are scary. Almost invisible in leaves, and they just freeze instead of puffing-up or trying to escape.

I doubt there's much difference in casting distance across all poppers besides weight and whether there's a feathered hook. They're all aerodynamic.

That’s a problem here too. There’s an apartment complex with dumpsters that get filled to overflowing for whatever reason, then the trash truck comes and picks it up and it’s overflowing, bags of trash falling off the truck as it drives down the road. Seems like a pretty easy crime to solve, but it’s been happening at the same apartment complex for years. Also the rollaway trucks around here never have tags on them. I don’t know how they get away with that. I fish a creek that has that problem. Old trash dumps and industrial areas up stream, but most of what I see is plastic bottles and every kind of ball imaginable. When people cross a bridge, they toss out their trash, maybe on their way to the park, and when they get there, they wonder why there is trash in the creek.

I ignore a lot of trash, but I almost always pick up big lengths of line when I see it. Recently I spent a few hours fishing, walking the banks, and then I got in my car and drove away. After driving about 25 yards or so, I suddenly felt both my feet being pulled away from the pedals, and then I felt the pop of line breaking. Scared the… out of me. I didn’t know what had happened. A few days later I noticed a few inches of fishing line sticking out from my tire. I pulled on it and found several feet of line wrapped around the hub. I have no idea how it got there. I obviously walked through it and it must have got stuck on my shoe or something, which has happened many times, but I don’t know how it got wrapped around the hub. I guess I’m just lucky it was lightweight line and I was wearing long pants.

That sounds plausible. Based on what most everybody is saying, all bass will float unless something eats holes into the organs that bloat. I’m guessing the period of sitting dead on the bottom must be longer than a couple days for a large bass compared to Google Eyes, maybe like a week, otherwise we would be seeing more floating dead bass. That would give scavengers more time. If that is the answer, it still doesn’t explain why scavengers aren’t getting to the ones that float to the surface. What is it about those bass that is different? Are they just sitting on the bottom in areas where there are no scavengers?

The ones I see floating are usually bloated, but I don't know if they bloat before or after they float. I rarely see any floating, fortunately. I saw a couple nice ones the other day, that's what got me wondering.

I use them until I have to put my glasses on to see how to hook it without hitting a hole or tear. After that, I throw all my old soft plastics into an old plastic coffee can, just in case some day I get really desperate.

I assume because they died with their air bladder full, but it seems like fish that die of natural causes don't float, so why the difference?

I’ve picked up a lot of trash over the years. I still do, but I do it with the understanding that it’s a battle that can’t be won. The amount of incoming is huge, and it’s only getting larger, and I feel like the Lone Ranger. People will hesitate to throw trash if there is no other trash there to begin with. If there is already trash, people feel less guilt about adding their own trash to it. That is why I keep picking up other people’s trash. The Tahoe project is good, but I don’t think there is much to gain by cataloging the trash. It would be interesting to look over the list of junk, but I don’t see how it could be beneficial to preventing future trash. When I was a kid, this commercial played all the time. Are kids exposed to this kind of stuff anymore? https://youtu.be/j7OHG7tHrNM

Actually it says it is a polyester/linen blend. That's pretty much what I had in mind. I'm not sure how well it would perform. Available in 3X large too. Probably not going to find anything cheaper than that.

I’ve never heard about the waffle panels. I just did a search and see something called “waffle pique”, is that it? I guess it’s a style of weave that comes in different fabrics. It does look like it would make a cool shirt. I’ve never seen a shirt like that. I’ve got a lightweight blanket that’s similar. I’m familiar with the vented shirts, but haven’t tried one yet. I’m not so concerned with what the ladies at the lake think as I am concerned with fooling myself. In my mind I’m still 30 years old and weigh 165. It’s only when I pass in front of a mirror that I’m faced with reality. ?

I think you have hit the nail on the head. ?

I've worn shirts like that in short sleeve, like XXL, and they're great for the kind of weather I'm talking about. And I've had one long sleeve shirt like that that was really comfortable too that was like XXLL, and they were all 100% cotton. The material was light, but stiff, so it wasn't clingy and itchy like polyester is to me.

I'm not dead-set on that style, it just looks like the air would flow through something like that a lot better and keep the hot fabric away from your skin better than the angler shirts I normally see. I just thought I would ask if anyone wears anything different from the normal gear.

I’m looking for something for high humidity days in the sun. Something real loose-fitting. The oversize sleeves on the gray shirt is the kind of thing I want, but full length. I don’t care about pockets, w or w/o, doesn’t matter.

If I'm junk fishing with a speed clip, sometimes it's 3 strikes and you're out. I'll go through about 10 lures or whatever is in my small Plano. That rarely produces anything, but it's only something I do when I'm desperate. More often, I've got two proven lures on that I have maximum confidence in and I will stick with them until I'm about ready to give up for the day. At that point, I may try anything on my way out.