galyonj

I demand more pictures of Luigi.

I That pretty much covers it. Since OP's in Florida and may likely have access to a lot of floating cover, I bet he'll have a ball fishing soft-body frogs. My favorite treble-hook topwaters are walking baits, wakebaits, and ploppers (it looks like @Robert C. Gates already has those covered). I'm having a hard time remembering the last fish I caught on a popper, but that probably says more about me than it does that type of lure. I don't have a Devil's Horse, but I feel like I'm missing out. The only colors I'll throw on a hard plastic topwater are bone/white or black. *The links above are just examples that I like. There are gobs of good options aside from those.

What's your budget?

I've thought about doing exactly what @Robert C. Gates is asking about on a lipless just to see whether it affects the hookup ratio or not, but I always get distracted and forget about it until a thread like this comes around. My sense is that it really won't make a huge difference in the hookup ratio, and I think the lack of aggravation (from avoiding a percentage of snags, from not having to extricate trebles from my clothes, or the carpet in the boat, or my dock lines, or the fish, etc) will make it kind of worth whatever hit I might possibly take to the percentage of fish I get to the boat.

Atta boy.

I love watching that dude fish.

To me they're kind of the same thing. The difference for me is that current breaks are the line between the constant-speed flowing river water and the eddy itself, caused by some kind of structure or hard cover (boulders, laydowns, logjams, and stuff like that), and eddies are the water that's stacking up behind that structure or hard cover. Some days you can make a whole pattern out of just fishing the water that you see swirling backwards, because that's your clue that there's something under the surface there that's big enough for them to hide in and lay in wait for their takeout order.

I don't really know how to fish deep, and I'm really not good at using my electronics yet, so, in a lot of ways, I still fish like a bank angler. The only difference is that now I've got the ability to hunt for better cover. I'm kind of lucky in that the lakes that I fish are really just wide spots in the rivers that feed them where the current slows down, so there's always gonna be water that's got good oxygen, forage, and and a temperature that's comfortable for the fish. So I really kind of just fish the same way all year because I don't know any better. In the summer my pattern is docks, visible cover, and shade lines; and I mostly fish jigs, worms, hard and soft jerkbaits, some topwater, and some lipless...and that's it. Honestly, that's about how I fish year-round. I just sweat more while I'm doing it during the summer.

Maybe he took the handle off his reel and chucked it into a Milwaukee, and used that to reel?

Best trick I know for handling fish like that is to not lip them at all when I boat them. Just hold them with my palm across their back, fingers and thumb wrapping around either side just behind the gill cover. Takes all the fight out of them so I can get them unhooked without me or them getting hurt. That's what's up. You're liable to get all you can handle and more if the big girls are also feeding up like they will during mayfly and cicada hatches. Maybe I ought to go fishing this afternoon.

Nice! Panfish are fun to catch, I don't care what anybody says.

My intent is to take the sun a little more seriously this year. So far, so good. No buffs or gaiters. Figure between sunscreen and this beard I've kinda got that covered. I will say, though, those polyester long sleeves do everything they promise as far as keeping me cool and from getting burnt.

I think so, but I'm probably not a great judge because I'm happy to catch any fish. lol

Seems like they'll handle pretty much any presentation that takes a light(er) wire hook. My "finesse" rod is a 6'9" medium-light with a fast tip, so I reckon that's pretty close to what one would normally consider a ned rod. I use it for ned rigs, small paddletails, wacky rigs, neko rigs, shakyheads, stuff like that.

That's a skipjack herring, and they are dope, aggressive little fish. They're all over the place here, and they're a hoot to catch because they just lose their minds. I think the state record is 4lbs or so, and that fish was caught on Watt's Bar, down the river a ways from where we usually fish. Folks call them Tennessee tarpon. They'll hit...just about anything, I reckon. I've had them knock spooks way up in the air, caught them on lipless, little swimbaits, panfish gear. SWMBO caught one in the same spot on an ultralight, and it gave her everything she could handle. Striped bass just love them. If you're fishing with @TnRiver46 and he catches one, be ready to watch him drag it around behind the boat for the rest of the day. ?

I get it. Honestly. The extra costs and small aggravations that come with the boat we bought a little while back pale in comparison to, if we're not feeling the spot, being able to just motor off somewhere vastly different that I'd never have been able to reach from the bank.

SWMBO and I ran up the river on Saturday evening to see what we could get into. Most of you reading this will probably just nod and say "Yeah, you got learnt," but two things stood out to me as a nascent boater: I should have checked the dam schedule before we left. Douglas Dam, which feeds the river we were on, was apparently wide open to clear water out of that impoundment after the few days of rain we had here last week. Because the water we were trying to fish was moving. I spent more time dancing on the trolling motor in an effort to keep the stern behind us than I did fishing. I should've just motored across to the inside bend and fished the slower water. We would've avoided all that hectic mess, and probably caught more fish. Nonetheless, and no thanks to me, I'm pleased to report that some striper candy was caught, the big motor mostly behaved, and we got the boat back on the trailer without breaking anything this time.

Similar here. The ones I've caught were pretty fierce for their size. Meatballs are fun little fish to hook into.

Yesterday I showed her a meme about not actually being able to get fish into the boat (her hooksets are still kind of...tentative), and she turned around and said "Oh, like that time you were butthurt cause you didn't get a picture of your fish for your internet friends?" This woman, y'all.

Nah, you ain't a sissy for that. Tough is being able to yank a hook out of yourself and keep fishing. Smart is having the presence of mind to plan ahead and avoid the situation entirely. Sissy is having somebody else unhook your fish because they're icky.

SWMBO says that teasing is part of my love language. I ain't mean about it or anything, but it's there. I don't really give anybody a hard time unless we're really tight and trust each other, but I also don't fish with anybody whom I'm not really tight and trust. So anybody in the boat is fair game (even me, and she'll back that up because she has blistered me before, and it was funny and I laughed right along with her), but I like to think we all understand that it comes from a good place.

The BPS website is awful: almost as frustrating an experience as going to the store. The only advantage is that on the website I don't have to see or interact with my fellow customers at all, nor do I have to go to Sevier County. So I just don't buy anything from them.

Which, we should underscore, will have no practical value at this point for @Fisher0517, and he would be best served by spooling his reel with one of the low-cost, lower-memory line options suggested previously. OP, if you spool with fluoro, I want you to be sure to come back here and tell us how much fun it was to cut $20 worth of line off of a $50 baitcaster once you've blown it up and kinked it to ****.

If you're not feeling it, it may be wise not to force the issue. It's awful to find yourself resenting a hobby, or finding yourself pursuing that hobby because you feel like you have to. So it may be in your best interest to own the break you're taking: or at least not beat yourself up over it too much. The fish will be there when you're ready.

That's great to know. I especially like that it's already got a drain cut, and the welds look nice. Honestly the metal itself on my skeg looked like a kind of loose cast for what it is, and that struck me as odd, but maybe I'm missing something. I'm just glad the gearcase is alright. Luckily the motor was already shut off, and my bunks are fairly deep for the hull length, cause it coulda been a whole lot worse.