BayouSlide

Pulled pork from wild pig (today's lunch), proscuitto wrapped chukar breasts, grilled strips of sharptail & sage grouse breast, venison tenderloin or backstrap.

Caught a number of gar (including yesterday) and many bowfin as well. Definitely not slimy, but both rock a mouth full of sharp teeth.

What he said ?

Since you asked, Falcon Lowrider Weightless Worm baitcast, HM-Mod Fast, 6 ft. 7 in., $129 list ??

I have the Bass Pro Shops Johnny Morris Platinum Signature and CarbonLite 2.0, both in ML for finesse. Nice rods both, with the edge to the more expensive Platinum Signature, no great surprise.

If alligator gar were a threat to human life, nobody would dare fish in South Louisiana ?

TIA...transient ischaemic attack

Exact same rod arriving tomorrowing from TW. Decided to go with a 7.4:1 this time on the Curado (lost one was a 6.2:1), already got it $20 off from a sale at Academy. Will be spooling it up with 14# Sunline Sniper today. Actually have one more of that custom crankbait my buddy painted for me ??

Thanks, buddy, love my Curados too. After two tries looking above water and below water at the lake, even chronically obsessive me had to give up. Would have killed me had I left it hanging by the tip from a cypress tree. Hope someone gets to dredge it up someday and enjoy it rather than it stay covered up forever in the silt.

Sounds like the worst place for losing rods would be a run on rough water in a lake full of cypress trees. ? Seriously, even when you do everything right, like TOXIC, sheet can still go sideways on you in a split second. There are only two kinds of serious fisherman: those who have lost rods, and those who will someday. Best we can do is try to manage the risks. ?

Right on! And I'll add one more: Don't expect Hummingbird Mega 360 and Side Scan and GPS tracks to find a deep-sixed combo in a 800-acre lake if you're not exactly sure where you lost it. Tried twice before I could admit the futility of the quest. Already have a new Curado from Academy and the Falcon is arriving tomorrow from Tackle Warehouse. Another expensive life-lesson learned. ☹️ Can't say it's the only rod I've lost. Will make a long story short by saying I drifted taking while weighing and taking pictures of a 6.5 pounder I caught on a buzzbait at a different lake. After gently releasing it, supporting it by hand while it recovered enough to swim away, I looked for my buzzbait rod, a Lew's Mach Crush (my first baitcaster), only to see it missing. The buzzbait I removed from the bass had hooked itself to a nearby cypress tree (see a trend here?) and the rod got pulled off the boat and into the water as I drifted. Retrieved the buzzbait but the line had broken. Didn't have the sonar capability I have now. Combo still there. A new PB bass was my only consolation. Screw karma, it ain't the problem, I finally realize it's the danged CYPRESS TREES!

Great story of a good deed ??

The Shimano Sedona will fall right in between those amounts. Suffix 832 is a good choice IMO. I use #15 and #20 on braid to leader setups but for Neds, maybe #10?? Someone who seriously fishes Neds would provide better guidance on that.

True, just kinda poking at the karma bear in fun to lessen the sting of a mishap. Despite be an unusually careful person, I USUALLY learn my lessons the hard way. But the best alternative is learning from the mistakes of others...that's why I've volunteered to be the poster child for the results of failing to secure rods adequately. ? Hopefully someone will think twice and learn from my mistake ??

I use an Alumaducer (http://www.radarsonics.com/AlumaDucer.htm) in my G3 for better depth readouts at speed.

Very glad you stayed safe and saved your rods. I was telling my wife how sometimes people lose several rods at a time running in rough water. Obviously, you didn't tempt karma enough to drop her million-pound hammer on you. Wise man. ??

Makes me wonder about my sanity: what could possibly go wrong in a place like that. ?

To stifle the pain I would have gone searching for it today, but, go figure, had to get my wife's car to the body shop, along with a big check, post-accident (wife's fine, car no so much). Heavy thunderstorms about to roll in this afternoon, and more of the same for the next three days. Yup, karma's a beotch and I just can't catch a break ☹️

Last week at my favorite heavily utilized public lake, I hooked and retrieved a sunken Shimano Sedona and BPS rod that must have fallen off a boat at some point. Felt sorry about that angler's bad luck, but perhaps a little too glibly thought that someone's bad luck is sometimes results in good luck for someone else. Easy to say when you're not the bad-luck-angler. Went back to the same lake yesterday. Spent most of the day weaving in and out of cypress trees with low hanging limbs and moss...well you can probably guess the rest. At the end of the day I was pulling rods and reels from the boat and putting on reel covers and rod sleeves for transport home when, with a sinking feeling, noticed I had one casting rod sleeve and a Shimano reel cover left over ? Yup. A fairly new Falcon Mansfield with its Shimano Curado MGL and an out of stock crankbait painstakingly painted by a buddy were missing. Despite the being worn out from heat I relaunched, foolishly hoping to find the proverbial needle in a haystack...you can imagine my thought process...among the hundreds of cypress trees in the portion of the 800-acre lake I traversed, which one might have reached out and grabbed this rod from the outside of my unsecured rod holder bracket. Hundreds of overlapping nav chart breadcrumbs from this trip and every other one in the recent past could not be disentangled. Motoring around with side scan set to 15 - 20 feet either side shed no light on where it disappeared. Just goes to show what happens you get tangled up in karma. As my mom used to say to us kids when we got too boisterous, "First you laugh, then you cry." So true, so true. Karma is a beotch, and I'll still wiping away tears for my lost cranking outfit ? To rub salt in the wound, I have to look at the picture (below) I sent to my buddy yesterday saying his lure handiwork was about to get wet...cruel words, get wet, in hindsight. That's what you get for tempting fate by messing around with karma ☹️?

Earlier this year I cast a shakey head with a sapphire blue Trick worm into a huge hollow at the base of a big cypress tree. Something BIG grabbed it in about 4 feet of water and I was unable to move it to the surface with my medium fast spinning rod and it kept pulling drag. I never gained control or caught a glimpse of it and soon it had me wrapped up around some sunken limbs and got unhooked. But I NEVER considered going in that muddy water. Sure it might have been an 8-pound bass, but it was as likely a big flathead catfish or a large snapping turtle. I probably would have sunk past my knees in the muck and who knows what was lurking down there. ? And I learned that you never take a knife (medium spinning rod) to a gun fight.

Yes, to the point that on my fairly small local lake, I skip fishing weekends or Mondays. On the weekend every single bit of structure gets pounded by boat after boat. No need to compete with that.

2014 Toyota 4Runner Trail V6, bought used in 2016 with 23K miles, now has 130K. A great ride that has carried me from the Great Plains to the Tetons, from sagebrush desert to bayou boat ramps and far beyond...still going strong and I'd buy another in a heartbeat. Adventure vehicle par excellence ??

Shimano Chronarch here for the win! My best two rods carry Chronarch MGLs in 7.5:1. There may be better reels but I ain't spending the money for 'em. ?

Weather.com for the towns nearest to the lake I want to fish. Hourly forecasts in particular are helpful in avoiding this month's numerous thunderstorms. I have been able to skirt them or get in a half-day fishing that otherwise I'd miss.

Yup. Around here they're also called barfish. Academy even offers the shad colored crankbait I used to catch him in barfish coloration. Actually have a few of 'em myself. KVD apparently likes the SK version of barfish for some lakes like Toledo Bend. This little guy lived to fight another day. His larger brethren get filleted for fish tacos. They do have a small section of darker meet along the rib area that some people say they don't like but fried fish is fried fish to me ??