MGF

I've been buying a few things here and there but I have bags of tackle laying all over the living room. LOL We're buried in snow and ice so fishing seems a very long way off.

Sometimes a bait disappears in a soft silty bottom.

I mostly fish the Tippecanoe river and I have a half dozen boat ramps within 15 minutes of my house. I have a pretty decent bass lake about 15 minutes out, several more at 30 to 40 minutes. If I want to drive an hour or more there are more choices than I know what to do with. The problem is that all the close stuff is too easy and rewards me for being too lazy to travel further. There's a lot of good fishing within a two or three house drive.

That's all stuff he should have been exposed to in his training. I rambled about it here because non divers are often unaware but still might jump in the water and get into conditions where it's relevant. Pressure related injuries could occur in a swimming pool. You don't have to go "deep" or be breathing compressed air. When I was a kid I swam in a 10 ft deep pool about every day. I remember the pain in the ears when diving to the bottom I never never had a clue.

Sure but what's your preferred method to cut through the ice? LOL But I'm always trying to change things up just enough to keep the local brown bass interested. I often change to something old rather than something new. I just bought a few bags of grubs to freshen up my supply. I'm not completely happy with the hooks on some of the ball head jigs so I might need to order a few. I also have a bag of, very old, single tail hula grubs that I threw into my plastics bag.

I don't think I've ever caught a fish on a walking bait like a spook. I confess to not fishing it much because I'm not very good at walking it. It's sort of hard to imagine somebody not fishing a soft stick of some brand but you can do an awful lot with other plastics and you could probably get by ok. I've never wacky rigged a plain straight tailed worm like a zoom trick worm or finesse worm. The senko style baits don't seem to be working for me around here like they were a few years ago. This coming season I'm going to try some minor twists and just hook up a different worm.

Actually in deeper water we used the anchor to measure depth. As a kid I spent a lot of time leaning over the bow calling out whether or not there were weeds, how close to the surface and what type as my father idled back and forth planning our drifts to fish the area...we didn't have an electric trolling motor either. "We" always had more than one rod but nothing like today. I still multi-purpose my rods more then many because I still fish from a small boat and I'm still not wealthy.

I don't know whether or not your kidding but, in truth, if you don't go to a doc that is familiar with "diving medicine" they will likely be completely clueless. Apparently it's possible to skip basic science and math and still become a physician. Pain on descent means that you failed to equalize those air spaces. A cold or other condition may make equalization difficult or impossible...don't dive when sick. Pain on ascent is a "reverse squeeze" and can be a real problem. Here's the big one that your doctor is likely to screw up. When you think you have water stuck in your ear after a dive...it's NOT water. It's also not an ear infection. Water can't get into your middle ear and there isn't anything to trap it in your outer ear. When your middle ear is squeezed blood or other body fluids are sucked into the middle ear to equalize the pressure. That's what you hear and feel sloshing around. Honest, not all doctors are familiar with diving related conditions or contraindications.

P1V1 = P2V2 As you descend and water pressure increases the air spaces in your body (and equipment) are compressed. In this case your sinuses and middle ear. Divers must blow air into those air spaces to avoid injury...it's not hard to bust an ear drum. some people have mentioned the use of swim goggles. NO GOGGLES! A diving mask also encloses the divers nose so air can be blown into the mask...goggles do not. Just as with the middle ear, as you descend the air inside the goggles or mask is compressed and the mask/goggles are pressed against your face...and your face (including your eye balls are pressed into the mask. So blow air into the mask to prevent your eye balls from being sucked out of your head. LOL I never saw an eye ball actually sucked out of the head but I have seen some really nasty blood shot/bruised eyes.

The ameba is present at the beach also. LOL The solution is to not snort water up your nose. Most of us don't do that anyway so it isn't much of an issue. I've gone in for lures and other tackle quite a few times. I don't undress though. Just last year I got a new hair jig hung up about 4 ft down. I could see it but I couldn't hold the boat position in the current well enough to get the lure. I cut the line, parked the boat and went for a swim...not a big deal.

Sorry, I didn't mean to nit pick. I just can't help myself sometimes. LOL

distance = speed X time

We've done really well on it in for river brown bass but...it really got me to do is explore other methods that catch as many fish. I did so well on it that it started feeling like a crutch. I barely fished it last year but managed to keep up with my wife who fished almost nothing else.

I just noticed that my old jitterbug was gone from my old box and came across one on a store shelf and snatched it up. I'm going to give it a shot on the river this year...if warm weather ever gets here.

If I'm in the boat I'm usually pretty well stocked. If I'm wading the river or bank fishing I usually leave the truck with what I can carry in my pockets...back up supplies in the truck of course.

If I only list 6 it doesn't describe how I really fish but lets see. x-rap count down rapala KVD square bill...but what about the floating Rapala, popper or plopper? Tubes (rigged all sorts of ways) NED (could be a tiny child version) Soft stick (rigged one way or the other) See but I left out several things that I catch a ton of fish on...Like a fluke, a finesse worm or a skirted jig.

A small mouth can eat a 4" tube. It's just that they don't always want to. I've done pretty good on 3 1/2", 3.75" and 4" but I really cleaned up when I tried a 2 1/2". I wouldn't say to downsize for smallmouth. I'd say downsize when the smallmouth want something smaller...and it happens.

Had a busy day due to the snow...and fell asleep. Catch you next time.

More related to observations than measurement but any turbidity or particulate in the water reduces light penetration. That is probably a no brainer but the effect can be really severe in the case of an algae bloom or a sulfide layer. A sulfide layer a few feet thick can block all visible light. Algae (for example) can tint everything the color of the algae...I guess by way of reflection? We might not be fishing in or below a sulfide layer (at least not on purpose) but algae, tannins and minerals come into play. But it makes me wonder how often we're pond fishing and throwing our lure into a nasty pool of sulfide where nothing is living.

It's not that complicated with appropriate measurement equipment. If I wanted to do such a study I would start by sending color samples to a lab to find out what the real colors are. The technology goes way back and I don't think it would be terribly expensive.

I used to design light and color measurement systems so I can speak to the science of color some. The sun gives off a well know spectrum...range of wave lengths. Anything that light passes through acts as a filter and blocks some wave lengths more than other...changing the "color". Our x, y, z color definitions are literally based on the performance of the human eye in experiments done long ago. Additionally different animals see differently...I think deer see blues the best, some animals are mostly color blind etc. I don't know about fish. As a former avid scuba diver I can tell you that by the time you get 30 or 40 ft down a beautiful coral reef is colorless unless you bring a light to shine on it. I used to bring a bunch of colored discs under water to demonstrate to students. Of course not all people perceive color the same the same. Of course it doesn't look the same to the fish as it does to you. The very term "color" implies some subjectivity. A completely objective description would be raw energy numbers obtained with a radiospectrometer. The conversion to color coordinates is an attempt to predict how a human would perceive it.

Count me in.

I used an internal jig head. I didn't have many tube jigs that were small enough so I was using regular lead ball head jigs...1/8 or 3/16. I have a thread on here I started to find some tube jigs that are small enough but I haven't ordered any yet.

Last year I had some ISG mini intimidator drop shot tubes. I don't know why they call it a drop shot tube, it's just a regular 2 1/2" tube. I need to order more because I can't find those short tubes around here...they're short but not skinny. They worked really well in the river...much better than my normal 3 1/2" I got them from Tackle Warehouse.

It sounds like the river gets pretty shallow in places at times? I do almost all my fishing on a shallow river. I'm looking to get a boat a little larger and more comfortable but here's what I use now and why. It's a 14 ft flat bottom. A little too small and the flat bottom stinks on a lake with any chop at all. The motor is a 9.9 hp with a rock hopper. According to the gps it does 18 1/2 mph now and a little over 20 without the rock hopper. The rock hopper is a gizmo that protects the prop, skag and anti-ventilation plate. I have a trolling motor but I keep oars on the boat when on the river. It gets too shallow in places to use any motor but I still need to control the boat. Some folks might prefer a push pole. The trolling motor is on the transom. Much of the time I don't drop it all the way down. I keep it tipped up with the prop just barely in the water. It's not efficient but it helps keep it out of the rocks. The trolling motor gets beat up the most. You'll be fishing along and all of a sudden it's stuck in the rocks like a talon and getting bent like a pretzel by the current. Here's a big thing. When the water is low the ramps are to shallow to get the trailer very far in the water. The boat is fairly light and I put those plastic slides on the bunks so I can push the boat off and drop it in the water. The boat is light enough that I can lift the bow onto the back of the trailer and get the winch started. Jets are nice but not on muddy weedy lakes and I do fish some of those. In the spring when the water is high there are a few jets (with no oars or push poles) out there showing off but when the water drops a bit it's my river. That's what I call it..."my river". LOL A jet can certainly plane in far less water than I need but there are always rocks and planning is the least of my worries. During much of the year I make it a one way trip and don't even try to motor up river. I'll go up and down deeper areas that I'm fishing but I don't try to motor back to the ramp. We put in at one and take out at another down river. Anyway that's my set-up on skinny water. Oh and sometimes I just take the canoe.