txchaser

Twice... troop carrier/beach lander (or whatever the marines call it, thanks for the ride yall) near the equator after a 24hr stint with no water. And one time in a small-ish boat in the summer in mexico on the pacific side. Somehow the dehydrated + really hot made it go.

Throw one of these on braid.

Buddy of mine has a few and likes them.

Double SDJ on flouro, it is very very good at solving breakoff problems. In my experience the double SDJ is a little harder to tie but substantially better than the single SDJ. Five turns for 17lb+, more for lighter line. FishinFool on mono, it's a uni knot with an extra pass through the eye. Easy to tie consistently, and at least one brand of mono I like doesn't play well with the SDJ at all. FG on braid to leader 6-turn surgeon for "I need a leader right now and I'm not fiddling with the FG" One note about the double SDJ - if you use the loop created by the tag to dress the knot before you cinch it down, it improves how clean the final knot is. It won't bind at any point in the process until the knot is finished.

How's LS been on the Kayak? I've been dangerously close to pulling the trigger for a while. Do you ever use perspective mode for shallow water? To the original question, I have a helix 7 MSI, and I like it. Mapping is great, imaging is great. Two complaints 1) it isn't 8' or 9' - split screen is a little small even though it is in my face 2) the bigger models have hotkeys for remembering a few views. But it's been a good unit. You can probably get the gen 3 at a really good price now that g4's are out.

I'm looking for a swimbait rod; I was fishing a 4oz (with weighted hook) and snapped off my travel swimbait rod at one of the ferrules. It was at the high end of the rods range, so my fault I guess. And I have a Deps 250 sitting on my desk staring at me with no rod to fish it on. I think it's 6.5oz. The soft bait fishing will be on owner 10/0 or 12/0 hooks, and hover around that 4oz weight +/- 1/4 oz. Is there one rod that will fish both of these really well? Should I care that much about sensitivity anyway? And for what it's worth the difference between the $150-range and the $300 range is really noticable to me on bottom contact. While I'm fishing the soft swimbait mostly dragging on the bottom, it's not a jig, so maybe there's no subtle bite anway. I know 100% the soft swimbait is in the permanent lineup... after BR helped me get dialed in on getting them to the boat it's been a high-results and lots of fun way to fish. I have no idea if the glide bait thing will stick, but I also don't want to half-way commit and have a bad experience that keeps me from fishing it. I'm inclined to fish heavier mono and flouro (vs braid) if that matters. There's an iRod air that's rated 3-10oz, but it seems like in swimbait land the rod ratings are not terribly reliable as slinging these big baits around is serious work. Budget is up to $400. Advice?

When you figure out how deep they are, put the boat shallower and smash a crankbait into the dropoff at that depth. Might need straight on, maybe 45 degrees, maybe parallel. Sometimes casting shallow cranking to deep works too, but I'd start with the opposite. Also if there are weeds or some sort of shoreline cover that would give shade, pitching into that may yield results.

It's been a bit bursty, mostly when dialing in a new presentation. The a-rig exploration has been the worst of it, different lengths, blade counts, jig head types, trailers. Mostly though it feels like I...ran out of stuff to buy. Except for I've started on some JDM stuff that has really worked well, so ....

I'll spend way way too long picking apart a spot instead of moving. It's been about a 50/50 payoff, sometimes I can get on them really good because they are picky but I found the deal for that day. But lots of times when I do move I get on fish fast. I think maybe I should move around a bit more and then pick apart of it's clear I can't find active fish. That, and every month that goes by I carry just a little bit more tackle. It isn't noticeable in the short run, but over the course of a year it has me questioning things. Mostly about buying a full size boat, not carrying less tackle

Good video, has me wondering if I'm fishing them way too far down in the water column.

PB1 and PB2 were an ounce apart. PB1, around lunchtime, on an inline buzz frog, in early june. PB2 was about an hour before sunset in March (water around 58 degrees). Threads like this are how I talk myself out of getting up early.

IMO It's just not that hard to treat the fish like you want to catch it again someday. At a minimum we know their basic little brains can get imprints of what not to bite again, so it stands to reason the more negative stimuli they get, the more likely they are to 'remember'. Who knows if it lasts more than a season, but there's just not much downside to being careful. In Texas (probably elsewhere) the mortality rate is 40%/year for each year class, so the ones that make it to some decent weight are outlier survivors anyway. So I want those big girls spawning next spring, making lots of little bass that have a shot at 120%+ weight. I am guilty of being far less gentle with small fish, but the big ones get treated like they are a limited resource.

Since you already have GP, I'd get the watermelon red flake. It's a lot different than the GP because of the shiny flakes, whereas the watermelon seed is pretty similar on a relative basis.

This is the kind of nugget I come here for.

Nah not really, except at the extreme. On most 30lb braid, 10-15 is pretty viable. On 40, 12-20 seems to match fine. Your knot matters a lot if you are going to do this, and a big source of posts. If you are just going to try it out on a t-rig, grab 15lb (or 10 if it is something huge like big game). Use a six-turn surgeon's knot. It is dead simple to tie correctly, and it is very strong, like 'never failed before the terminal knot' strong. It is however bumpy through the guides and so not a good long-term solution. If you end up liking braid to leader, learn the FG knot. It really does take practice, and it is really worth it. With all that said, I eventually moved most of my setups away from braid/leader to straight flouro. And on bottom contact, 100% are straight flouro now. There are a bunch of bites you may not been feeling, particularly on the initial fall, leader or no. I do still use braid to leader on chatterbaits, and I'm trying it out with crankbaits too. Of the former, it is because of how I fish the chatterbait, and on the second I realized I wanted a way to change the light heavier or lighter without dragging extra reels or spools. And my "general purpose moving single hook" (mostly swimjig) preference is also braid/leader. As you can tell by the back and forth above, there's a good bit of personal preference involved. Try out the different types/styles etc and see if you end up with a favorite. I was a big braid to leader fan, and had tried some flouro on moving baits and hated it. But when I took the time to really give flouro a shot on bottom contact I don't think I'd ever want to go back.

Pretty sure these are right: Slow (6.x retrieve) Normal (7.x) X Fast (8.x)

I like it a lot. In particular because they will go deep on a topic. And they are long enough to fire up for a drive. I mostly listen podcast-style on the way to/from fishing - there's not much to see on the screen in most cases. And most of the podcasts besides "Sitting Dockside" are basically talk shows with very little actual content.

If the leaves look like this, it is Pondweed.

If they can fit in in their mouth, and they are hungry, they'll try. Somewhere there's a video I saw of a bass inhaling a turtle that just barely fit. No way he could swallow it, so spit it right back out. +1

One of the BR forum members Josh Alwine wrote a book, High Percentage Fishing, that has good data on what happens to fishing in various conditions, barometer included. https://www.amazon.com/High-Percentage-Fishing-Statistical-Improving/dp/1517384206/ It costs about two bags of senkos, and will catch you way more fish than two bags of senkos.

Late to the party, but JDM Zillion HD. Or JDM Zillion if you are going to be using lighter baits. By the way Amazon Japan often has good prices on Daiwa, and maybe a little more comfy for your first JDM order. You may have to search for "Gillion" or "Zirrion" to find what you are looking for. Shipping took about the same amount of time as a US order.

congrats!

I think it is my least favorite part of fishing besides not catching fish. And it got to the point where I'd get on the water and often have a much different plan than the original one after I saw what the weather was really like and the water clarity was really like, and where the bait was. The one exception is if I think I'm going to need something specialized or complicated, I know to get out ahead of my "but I really don't feel like fiddling with rigging a carolina rig" urges and do it the night before.

Big fish (texas scale) for 2022: Crush 75x (3x more than any of the others, good last year too) Silent lipless (was big last year too) Jackall Digle 4m+ A-rig 6" and 8" Boom boom swimbaits, thanks to BR for helping me figure out how to get them in the boat Punching with a Jackall Archelon (in 3-4 fow, which was unexpected, but had deep water 10' away Z-man crosseyes chatterbait (have mostly replaced jackhammers with this, does better in the grass and way better in the wood Z-man Giant TRD in "the deal" 6th sense trace swimbait - the profile on these is really nice, and they are light enough to be easy to fish on standard H gear, I've bought replacement packs And the surprise new bait winner for me was this inline swimjig. My read was these fish were over-educated on a chatterbait, but I needed a little more than a swimjig, and it was too weedy to have good spinnerbait results. Bluegill-keyed fish, and I knew they'd run up on a spot during low light to eat; was mid-day so I caught her staged out in the first (relatively) deep water that was about a cast length away. Just barely above the bottom - interestingly the bite was more like a jig bite (thunk) than a swimjig bite (smash).

Humminbird's target lock is so interesting I hit the pause button on switching to Garmin (for livescope) for a bit. z-man Hellraizer - I'll give it a shot Slobberknocker seems interesting, it "feels" like the jackhammer isn't magic anymore. There's a time and place for it, but I bet a bunch of fish have been on a wild ride on one by now. Maybe it is different enough to light them back up. Which reminds me that I have some carbon fiber blade chatterbaits to try out. 3" zako needed to happen, cutting down the 4" ones wasn't good for my line snips frittside with a little knock is worth a try, although I mostly reach for the 75x TG thunder cricket - for the same reason as the slobberknocker, although a little lower on the list. Netbait/baitfuel - I like what I've tried so far from netbait, so I'll probably give some of this a shot in the next order, but I really don't need any soft plastics for, well, probably at least five years. Frabill weight net - waiting for someone else to buy it to see if it is any good. I really like getting fish back the in the water quickly, especially when it is hot, and it's one less thing to fiddle with.