MGF

My wife is almost always fishing with me and the cell phones are turned off and in a dry box.

I get through the grind ok but there are aspects to my fishing that I can enjoy during the periods I'm not catching fish. On the river or one of our shallow weedy lakes I can have a blast skipping baits up under things even if there aren't any fish...ok maybe that's kind of strange. LOL On water where there's more "structure" I get to play with my electronics that I don't spend enough time with (because of all the shallow waters I fish). In good weather on scenic waters it's nice to just be out in the boat or canoe.

Could be but I've often thought they grabbed it on the initial fall and I was too busy with the backlash to notice. The lesson that I've taken from this is to fish the cast and straighten out the line later...whenever possible.

I've never thrown one either but I would have expected the dt4 and dt6 to be very similar in action. I just bought a couple of dt4 with our shallow river in mind. For most of the year the river is pretty shallow...4 ft is a pretty good hole. LOL

If it isn't "the best" it certainly has to be about the most versatile. With a modest assortment of terminal tackle I guess you could fish a plastic worm (or other soft plastic) at about any depth in about any type of cover/terrain.

To each their own. I can't see without my glasses and my glasses didn't come with windshield wipers. Fish bite in the rain and I've done my share of fishing in the rain but they also bite when it isn't raining. LOL I remember going on fishing vacations to northern Wisconsin when I was a kid. More often then not we'd get two weeks of solid rain...and it wasn't warm rain. We fished because that was vacation and there wasn't going to be another one. If I have a choice I fish in NICE weather.

I think you need to practice casting at a target. Learn to make casts with a low trajectory...keeping the bait near the surface of the water. That helps prevent the wind from dragging your line into the trees. Also learn to control or stop the lone coming off the spool. It all takes practice .

The plans are a little different this year. There are some mostly shallow weedy lakes close by that give up some nice bass. For one reason or another I don't fish them very often. This year I want to spend some early season time on them. Both are weedy. One has lots of docks and the other has lots of pads. Jigs for sure. Swim jigs and the arky heads I like so well. Bladed jigs or maybe a spinner bait if I need some flash in the stained water. The bladed jig gets the nod where there's a dock or something for me to slide it under. Weighted and unweighted Texas rigged plastics. A frog is bound to come into it at some point too.

I guess it should be warm enough for me to go fishing in another three months or so. A month beyond that and the wind might calm down enough that my boat isn't blown off the water. I need to move south. LOL

Well we obviously need rules even though some of the DNR rules are really pretty arbitrary and NOT based on much in the way of data...or at least not the right data. Still I would have to come down in favor of compliance. In our system the theory is that you work to change the rules that you don't like.

Yes a heavy piece of cheap line works.

Now days we know there are fish there when we see a bass boat floating over them. LOL At my age a bass boat is far easier to spot than a small marker float. IMO the down side of floats is the extra work. The upside is that they really do work...unlike my lowrance GPS.

That's interesting and it isn't my intention to present this as anything other than anecdotal but there are a number of baits where I have caught way more fish when I take great pains to achieve a steady retrieve (of the right speed) and a spinner bait is one of them. Sad story and remember information wasn't always so easy to come by. When I first started fishing my river I mostly used a Rapala floating minnow. I caught a lot of fish but realized there were times when you needed to get further below the surface. I started using the count down...carefully because I didn't want the river to take them. Caught a lot of fish! One day my wife came home with some x-raps. We caught a million fish on them (and husky jerks)... until I learned how you're supposed to work a suspending jerk bait. I don't think I've caught a fish on one since. LOL Just my experience in my little corner of the world.

My NED experience is 98% small rivers where the primary target is brown bass. The lakes I've fished the last couple of years were mostly shallow and weedy and "mucky" in some cases. It's been great in the river and ZERO in the lakes. Of course I realize that it's probably great in a different sort of lake. In any case, small baits tend to do well in these small shallow rivers and light weights are usually the ticket. My most used NED jig is 1/20 OZ. I do go heavier when wind and/or current force me. The trick has been to get the jig bouncing down the river just barely bumping the bottom. It's usually better to go too light and not feel bottom than too heavy and get bogged down. 2 years ago my wife and I got into a spot on the river where for 1 1/2 hours I caught a nice brown bass almost every cast. My wife was throwing the same NED rig but didn't catch anything but snags while trying to duplicate the same cast. I have more experience and I may be better at feeling the bottom and working the bait off snags without getting stuck but she got lazy and tied on a mono leader rather than the fc leader I was using. I wonder if my jig wasn't traveling more head down/hook up and therefor getting hung up less? Food for thought. It was an unbelievable day except that I couldn't get my wife to catch a fish. I even tried to get her to just use my rod. I like catching 2# SMB (some were smaller) but I'd have more fun watching her catch them.

I guess I can't spend anywhere near the time fishing as I spend doing the things that I really am good at. My wife and I do try to keep it fun which means avoiding crowds, bad weather and developed waters. I'm pretty sure that I miss out on a lot of fish that way but. I do try to study and hone skills that help me make the most of my time on the water.

I've never spent much time fishing that deep so I don't even know if I have that much line on my markers but I use markers. The GPs on my Lowrance doesn't really seem that accurate and I don't have "spot lock" either. So I not only use markers but a set of good old fashioned anchors. LOL

I guess that's why my wife and I fish the river so much...the shores of most of our lakes are too developed. Not much to look at unless your into peeking in windows. LOL

I have my rods set up with my first round of guesses before I leave home. There are legitimate uses for snaps, swivels and snap swivels. But if one is uncomfortable with the knots they intend to use the best answer would seem to be to practice the knots.

I'm going to avoid buying through Amazon wherever possible.

I stuck to certain familiar methods for many years. I caught fish but I got thinking I could do better. These day I make a conscious effort to look at unfamiliar methods or rigs and possible applications for them in the water I fish. I don't know for certain that I catch more fish but you can't help but learn something here and there and it it gives me options. If nothing else it maybe adds some versatility.

I think you can thread a little ball head jig into the nose of great many plastics and catch a fish. Didn't the "Jig worm" come before the "shaky head"? The shaky head jigs tent to stand...some more than others and are snag resistant but I like to carry an assortment of plain round lead head jigs.

The idea is there but he wasn't correct. A battle ship is much heavier than the 10 pound rock but it floats. The apparent weight (buoyancy) of an object is as previously described in this thread. A course in free diving or scuba diving should include a thorough explanation of buoyancy.

As always "it depends". I think "fall rate" is important but sometimes fast works better and sometimes slow works better. I'd rather concern myself with function over some silly overgeneralization taken out of context. A wise man once said "What works, works."

That's true but buoyancy might be the issue here. When in the water a neutrally buoyant object is perceived as weightless...even though it may have plenty of weight. An object's buoyancy is the weight of the object minus the weight of the water that it displaces...that's why a large steel ship can float just like if it were weightless.

ok