Jleebesaw

Catching walleye while bass fishing is always a nice treat. Weigh the bass and eat the eyes. I saw a you tube video by jacob wheeler where he was keeping walleyes during an elite series event on the st lawrence.

So are we talking about tournaments where the guy with the boat has to take someone he doesn't know with him? I looked into my local B.A.S.S club but they only have a team tournament schedule but it's the same guys fishing together all year. I dont think I would fish if I knew I had to bring a stranger out with me. I'm sure the guys fishing the team tournaments in my area know each other and work out the costs before the season starts. It seems to me that knowing ahead of time that you would be bringing someone else into your boat, you would either accept that they dont owe you money or opt to not fish that style of event.

I think it's a gimmick. I've never used it, but I've never heard baitfish make noises either.

One of kvd's books is basically a seasonal guide. I forget which one. There is 1138 results on Amazon if you search seasonal patterns for bass fishing also.

Plus he is a smallmouth guy. Pretty much the only tv guy that focuses on them so much.

18 degrees right now here at new York's north border.

Frogg toggs has rain gear with removable insulated liners. Not very expensive either. Cheaper than the bass pro shops brand I was looking at.

I bought a used tracker boat. Its 10 years old and its smaller than a lot other peoples boats. Its nice and bigger than anything else I've fished out of so I love it. Sure, I could go finance a 21ft glass boat, but i just can't afford that much for my fun fishing right now. Plenty of people do, and I'm happy for them. I know people who have motorcycles that cost 30k. Snowmobiles, atv's, sports cars, hunting land, and even ocean front cottages cost a lot of money. People still buy them. People will always be willing to spend money on what they enjoy doing. Right now I'm saving money toward a bigger boat. In 5 years if everything works out I'll have a 50% or so down payment. I fish some small tournaments but I would like to fish my local B.A.S.S tourneys. However, they run on some big water. Lake ontario, onieda lake, and lake champlain. I can fish them on a nice day, but tournament days aren't always nice.

I have an 08 pro team 170. There are 3 switches that have auto on top, manual at the bottom, and off in the middle. They are livewell recirculation, livewell aeration, and bilge pump. None of them have a dial though. They are toggles. I would guess it's one of those though.

Yup. I had a 5x triple shot that did the same crap. It would lose bottom all the time too. I replaced it with an elite ti model. The hook series are garbage. Someone on another thread commented that the ones with an x in the name are junk and the ones without the x are pretty good.

I'm not sure side imaging would work well on a kayak. I may be wrong, and tweaking the settings could get it to work. On my boat the side imaging gives a distorted picture unless I'm going 2 to 3 mph. Anything slower than that and it has strange lines and almost looks warped. Once I get to idle speed everything gets very crisp and clear. That's with an elite 9 ti. The hook 2 5 I had before was the same way.

I'll second the 3.5" tubes. They nearly always work. Also, I dropshot KVD dream shot worms and have good results. It's hard to beat a smallmouth hitting topwater lures too. I swear by the super spook junior. When smallies hit that thing it actually scares me sometimes.

Green pumpkin and watermelon basically. I'll try different red or blue flakes. But I like the green and brown for base colors. I fish the st lawrence river a lot and Berkeley has a color called gobey magic that kills on the big river. I use 3" tubes a lot and always have luck with hobie majic

Me too.

Both would be good, but I think a red pfd would probably be enough. Like someone else said, when you are close to shore it's very easy to blend in with the background. Hell, I've been in a boat and been surprised at how close I got to a john boat boat before seeing it, no less something a quarter its size. I've never been in a kayak, but if I was using one in a lake used by boats, i would do everything i could to be seen.

Some small boats have a type of foam inside the "bench" seats. I'm pretty sure it's a rather important safety component. If something happens, this built in floatation keeps it from completely sinking. That may not be very important to you depending on the waterways and temps that you will use the boat in, but it is something to consider. Myself and many others have used older boats that didn't have the built in floatation and are still here.

Sweet. Up here where I'm at, a 7 pounder is a monster. I don't know if I'll ever break the 6lb mark no less 7.

Same as everybody. Big breakfast before I go. Then its jerky, granola bars and fruit. Stuff like that. If I plan on going from 6am until dark I'll bring sandwiches and some chips. I like sardines and crackers too. I always bring a gallon jug of water. Maybe a coke or 2. A buddy of mine turned me on to monster energy mango loco. It's kind of become a good luck charm to bring one of those scoundrels. The first time I tried one we went on a hot streak and caught a bunch of bass. That's boat food. Now if we have time to talk about feasting. When i go ice fishing.....

I'm not working with panoptix. I wish I was. I use 2d and watch my arches turn to blobs and my jig turn into a straight line.

That's pretty much how I fish smallmouths. This is how I explain how I generally utilize fish finders. When I first started bass fishing, way before I had electronics on a boat, I would follow the bank. If I saw grass I would cast at it. I would cast at rocks, points, fallen trees, anything that looked like a bass might sit near it. Now I have electronics. I do the same thing except under water. I find rocks, trees, brush piles, ect, and I fish around them. I basically use mapping to find underwater points or humps, that sort of thing. Then I will idle around looking for things that will hold fish. The same stuff I fished on the banks back in the day. If I find a brush pile on side imaging, i mark a waypoint, run over it or near it at an idle with 2d and di on. If it see anything that could be fish I'll cast at it. It's basically just like bank fishing except that the fishfinder shows me the things that might hold fish. I'm no expert fisherman, and maybe some people will find my methods to be over simplified, but it's how I do it and i catch more fish doing this than I did before I had electronics. I think that trying to catch 1 "fish" marked on 2d is a fools errand. It could be a bass. It could be a catfish, carp, clump of leaves, or God knows what else. Use the fishfinder as underwater eyes to find splots likely to hold fish. This year will be my first year having 2 units on the boat. The one at the bow will be set up for vertical fishing just like jfranco said. I just sneak up on top of rock piles and watch the smallies come to the lure. There are some you tube videos showing this process. The settings need to be adjusted and you need to know how to interpret the returns. things look a little different on screen when you aren't moving.

Maybe it's not the best thing you do, but i often loosely hold the line to guide me down to grab the actual lure and pick the fish up by the lure. I do this with jerkbaits and spooks a lot. I don't want to lip it with those trebles in its mouth, and I don't want to lose that lure. Once I have a good grip on that lure, I pick it right out. I have had the fish shake off a few times but I'm fishing for fun so it's not the end of the world. I should use the net more. I usually only go for the net if it's really big. Or it's a pike!

I agree with walleye and perch, but I would take bass over the rest of those. I really don't like pike. Everybody eats it around here, but it tastes pretty strong to me. Bass is a nice mild flavor, just like its little sunfish cousins. Ie: bluegill and .pumpkin seed.

I love the tracker. It's not quite as big as I'd like, but I think we always want a bigger boat. I fished out of it a lot last fall. It's a big improvement over any boat I've ever owned. It seems I can fish all day long and not get tired like I would out of the smaller boats. Being able to walk around a little and sit in comfortable chairs makes all the difference. I looked at one of the classics at bps a week or so ago. It's the same boat as mine. The storage layout is a little different, but it's the same hull and everything I think.

So we wont see the show with all the big dogs on tv until next year? That sucks. I've been watching it on tv and really like it but was hoping to see the new stuff sooner than next year.

The elite series guys can talk about the fishing off the water. Jacob wheeler has videos on you tube where 3 or 4 of them sit around after practice days and even during the tourney talking about where they are catching them and what lures they used. Him and 2 other guys share rooms. If they weren't allowed to talk about it, I'm sure he wouldn't be showing them doing it on you tube. In one of his newer videos during the first mlf event he comments about not being able to talk to each other after midnight. But when he was fishing bass they talked plenty. As someone else mentioned, I have seen the pre fishing before the elite series events too. For 2 weeks before the big derby, you can hardly find a parking spot at a launch on the st lawrence river. They are full of trucks from out of state. A friend of mine even had something on facebook about it where he counted them all at one spot. I don't have the exact numbers but there were several truck from texas and Oklahoma. Only 2 trucks had new york plates. I'm not sure if they are allowed to do it, but they definatly have people scout for them. It can't be a coincidence.