MGF

I'm late to the party but here goes...Some of the best info that I've seen on sharpening can be found here...https://www.youtube.com/@OUTDOORS55 In short...a knife can seem sharp when it has a bur but the bur folds over easily and the knife is dull almost instantly. Proper bur reduction/elimination results in a blade that will hold it's edge. How to do that? That's the $64 question. Successively finer abrasives to refine the scratch pattern and eliminate the bur is great but good stones are expansive. The other way is to apex the edge with whatever stone you have, minimize the bur with really light strokes and then strop to remove the "last" of the bur. I use an eye loop to see what's going on with the blade edge. Once you see it some of this stuff will make more sense. As for the Repala...I won't try to tell you that it's the best knife but I got my first one when I was a child and filleted fish with it for probably 20 years before thinking that it might need to be sharpened. LOL

I was an avid scuba diver for a number of years...opened a shop/school and became an instructor of just about all things scuba. Always preferred diving fresh water because I grew up fishing fresh water but I did very little fishing during the diving years. Part of it was because of time limits but fishing came seemed a little silly to me for a while. I knew exactly where I could swim up and be nose to nose with trophy fish of multiple species any time I wanted. I just lost interest in fishing. Once I stopped diving I got the bug again. Now I go back and forth between focusing on fishing and focusing on bow hunting. Fortunately my favorite time of year to fish doesn't really interfere with hunting. I retire this June so I won't be spread so thin. LOL

While I've done other fishing what I do today is fish close to home from my 14 ft. flat bottom or a canoe. I spend most of my time on a local river for smallmouth. I fish some local lakes too but I prefer the river. I catch a lot of nice fish on the river and can generally get bit on most of the lakes around here but...I lost interest in being an anytime/anywhere angler. These days I fish when it's pleasant to be outside fishing. That means nice warm and mostly dry weather. So, no crowds, bad weather or big boats pushing me around. Any of that and I'd rather just stay home. I have some spots in easy wading distance from public access where I can catch nice brown bass by just walking into the river with one rod and a pocket full of hooks and plastics. Lots of fun and almost no work. In regard to techniques, give me a jig or some flavor of soft plastic that I can use to probe the rocks and wood...even more fun if I can find an excuse to skip it. Crank baits work in my river but their expensive, everybody throws them and the pike steal them so I don't use them much anymore. I know there's other places and techniques but I don't really care. LOL

Bought a sr. life time license last year for something like $23. Our sr. license is 64 years old and up. An annual sr. license is $3.

Northern Indiana and my river fishing is much the same. My favorite fishing is mid summer, hot, sunny and straight up noon (ish)...fast water in the middle of the river and the three pounders tear up my left (rod holding) arm. Nobody in this thread is "wrong" regarding current breaks and what not but there is lots of structure that you can't see. I fish a certain section that's really more of a run with kind of a sandy bottom. The depth is a shade deeper that surrounding water. I passed this spot up for years. It just doesn't look good and when I drift through in the boat I have time for a cast or two and didn't usually get much. Now it's one of my favorite wading areas because I catch lots of big bass in there. when I said fast water in the middle of the river above it refers to rocky areas with maybe a couple feet of water. There are current breaks (rocks) everyplace and there could be a bass hanging on any one of them. It's also mid summer. There's O2 in that fast riffled water. Don't overlook the upstream side of obvious current breaks. Active fish often hunt there. Regarding baits I've posed tons on my favorites but I think you have to be flexible here. My favorites kill them year in and year out for me here but I talk to other guys in other areas that have a completely different line up. I don't know if my stuff would work there but I sometimes try some real classics that just don't produce as well as my favorites. I also disagree with those who say that it doesn't matter what you throw at active smallmouth. It matters.

I haven't fished anything except a worm of some flavor for small mouth this year. The zoom finesse worm with a split shot crimped on the line has been a killer. My other number one has been my used dingers and stickos. I tear them up fishing them wacky or texas weightless in the pond for green bass. In the river I fish pieces of the used worms rigged texas with a small nail weight in the other end for the brown bass. I've done well on 5" dinger in the river too but I haven't been doing it lately...the other stuff is working too good. Yesterday I caught a mess of smallmouth including a few really nice ones using nothing but worn out dingers. LOL...and I used to throw them away.

From my scuba diving days...Lots of bream beds at about 12 - 15. It seems to have more to do with bottom composition than anything. I used to dive a lake that had bluegills on beds just about all summer. The beds were in three main areas and they seemed to be active at different times. Looking back I wish I kept more detailed records but I wasn't doing much fishing through the diving years. One area was active early (springish?) shallower, like 6-10 ft. It was small gravel mixed with some sand and this weeds that grew several ft off the bottom. My wife and I used to just hang out and watch a three ring circus. The bluegill would chase bass fry while the male bass chased them off. All the while the catfish would be trying to sneak up on the bluegill beds. The deeper beds were on an old road bed down to about 15 ft or so. Those were some of the largest gills. Those are the deepest beds that I remember.

I mostly use dingers and the zoom zlinky but I definately use soft stick baits. I generally release all the bass I catch so I smash down the barbs when fishing weightless plastics. Especially in the river current they sometimes have it for a bit before you realize it and they can get hooked deep. They come out much easier without a barb. I do lose a few before getting them in the boat but aside from missing a photo opportunity it doesn't really matter. The baits that I don't use much on the river here are crank baits and spinner baits. That's what everybody is throwing and I do a lot better on some flavor of soft plastic...sometimes a skirted jig. The other problem with the crank baits is that it seems that a pike will cut off just about every one I tie on and I can't afford much more of that. They occasionally take a plastic too but it costs a LOT less than a crank bait. I only have two ponds I can fish but one of those gets a lot of pressure and I find that quiet is what works. The presentation changes based on the weed situation but it often involves a soft stick bait. I love the action of a weightless trick worm or finesse worm. They just don't cast as well. I always like to have one rod rigged with something I can skip and the stick bait is one option.

There could have been crayfish or pan fish in the weeds that would interest bass. I've seen bass in shallow heavy weeds and when they moved it looked like they were chasing bluegills or something...the kind of situation where you might throw a floating frog. Are you sure they weren't carp?

"Winter" doesn't mean the same thing down south as it does up here. I'm going to fish in the winter once I retire...but I'm going to drive 8 hours south before I take the rods out of the truck.

I haven't used any sort of live bait in a very long time other than for panfish with the grandkids but I used to. When I was a kid my father had the book "Lunkers Love Nightcrawlers". We used to go out and catch them and kept them in foam chests. I still have a worm blower somewhere around here...little plastic bottle with a needle used to blow some air into the worm to give it some "float". We rigged it like a carolina rig or "Lindy rig". Back then we sometimes used the walking type weights. Sometimes just a split shot and weightless in some places. Yep just nose hook the crawler a few ridges back. We caught everything on them. I used to fish one lake where we'd get mixed bags of largemouth, walleyes and catfish. I even caught a few northern pike. The big drawback is the little fish eating your crawler.

I don't run in to very many anglers at the ramp on the river. When I do I enjoy seeing their boat/tackle and hearing whatever they have to say about the fishing. My wife and I have some really good days on the river and we don't mind talking about it to those who are interested.

Right now is my favorite. The river is low, clear, warm and I catch lots of bass. Fishing is as easy as putting a few extra plastics in my pocket and walking into the river. Late summer and early fall can good here. The good fishing I have now usually improves a bit up to the end of September. Once it gets cold I'm done.

Maybe it just depends on your style of fishing. I grew up fishing N. Illinois and some in southern Wisconsin and a jig became a staple for me when I was a child. I still fish them a lot but most of my fishing these days is in the Tippecanoe river and for much of the season I opt for something more snag resistant...because I hate losing them. The jig still catches virtually all of my spring time "big" fish. I really couldn't say why some of us catch on them and others don't.

Don't feel too bad. I only have permission to fish one private spot. It's almost impossible to climb down into without climbing gear and the fish are all dinks. Had a spot for a short time many years ago that was fantastic. I could catch big bass in large numbers. The problem is that the owner let everybody in. He left the gate to the access road open and there was even a little parking area that he left open (no crops). So then one day somebody shot up a bunch of glass bottles and went 4-wheeling through his corn...that's when the chain and no "Do not Enter" signs went up. Can't even find a place to hunt these days.