MGF

Interesting. I've lived in driving distance of Lake Michigan (including the Chicago area) all my life and have never fished it...except for some shore fishing and one single ice fishing trip. I did a lot of diving out there but never had a boat that would be any good for fishing it.

Well I rarely carry more than 4 rods because I don't have room for more and, in the canoe, I rarely carry more than 2. Most of my fishing is on a small river and most of my fish come on one flavor or another of soft plastic. I do use some skirted jigs, various jig heads and weighted hooks along with some of those plastics. I've done well on hard baits too but I've been using them less and less the last few years.

Congratulations!

We don't really have any public ponds. There's one small (an acre or so) on a DNR river public access. All the others are private farm ponds and I've never had access to any.

In my pond there's NOTHING on the bank...well I did see one turtle. LOL

I went to a little public pond Sunday. The main goal was to take a look at some new baits I bought but I did some fishing too. the back drop here is that I don't there are many fish left in this pond. I use to catch lots of bass and you could see the millions of pan fish but I think otters got in there r something. But there are a few bass left because I catch one once in a while. I started with a blade but it just dredged leaves up off the bottom. I tried a little hair jig but that grabbed the leaves too. I went to a Zoom finesse on a split shot rig and covered that little pond pretty thoroughly. without a bite. It was getting late and my wife was already sitting in the truck with the motor running but my next try would have been a drop shot.

Looking forward to the next one!

I think that to some extent the type of bites you get on a jig depends on how you fish the jig. I started fishing a jig long before I knew how a jig was supposed to be fished. My dad and I would scout out a weed line, take a guess at what the wind was going to do to us and do our best to set up a drift. Then you get in as many cast as you can before you have to fire up the motor or get on the oars and start again. I think my first jig fishing most resembled what some today call "cracking"? Basically bouncing the jig through the water column. What would you expect a bite to be like? That was back before I ever heard of a "swim jig" but what kind of bit comes with swimming a jig? At some point I started doing more river fishing where it would be a combination of letting the current bounce the jig along and giving it a little bounce myself. The bites come in all flavors and the river sometimes puts a bow in your line that you can't prevent and sometimes you can have a fish for quite a while before you ever know he's there. Lastly, from what I've seen diving and on video I think a fish can suck your bait in and spit it out so fast that you probably won't see it or feel it. I doubt that a mere human could react fast enough to do anything about it. I think this happens with baits other than jigs and aside from the occasional stroke of dumb luck these aren't fish that you can expect to catch.

The little river that my wife and I fish had an absolutely unbelievable number of tubers and kayakers. They were so thick this year that it actually made it hard to fish at times. When things get too crawded I'm happier at home.

Going fishing after work definitely gets harder as you get older. I used to work a hard day and then enthusiastically fish or hunt. Then I started to skip the fishing or hunting and actually feel guilty. No I finish work and don't even want to do anything else. I'm just done for the day. Now if that doesn't give you something to look forward to. LOL

It's all relative. If you were catching 10 pound bass every day you would be fishing for 15 pound bass. Catching fish is nice. Catching big fish is nicer. Everybody has bad days no matter where they fish but I'm not interested in beating the water for weeks or months without catching fish.

It looks like we're about done for the year. I had planned to keep fishing ass long as there was open water but it's just not much fun in the cold. The time and work it takes to get on and off the water just isn't worth the short amount of time and success on the water. And it all seems like it's twice as much work in the cold. I guess I'm just getting too old for it. Give me SUMMER! For the rest of the winter I'll visit my little pond to keep my casting in shape or to play with new stuff. It's only 5 minutes from home and it only takes a moment to throw a rod in the truck or put it away when I'm done. If the cold drives me out after 15 minutes it's no big loss.

nA few years back I fell in love with skipping.. It sounds silly but I get so wrapped up in the skipping that it becomes the main purpose. But, usually I do try hard to catch fish. At work or at home or wherever I'm the problem solver. I always figure "it" out. Fishing is kind of all about "figuring it out". I really am starting to learn to enjoy the days where the fishing is tough. One thing that helps is to just admit to myself that I really don't know how to catch them at the moment. I think that relieves some of the pressure. Another thing that helps is to take a moment to take in the sights of the river. We try to do most of our fishing in places that are nice to look at. Bodies of water that are surrounded by houses or whatever are harder to enjoy without fish.

When I was a kid I caught a goose while carp fishing. I was clowning around teasing the geese with the baited hook and I got a bite. I also caught a dog for my wife. The neighbor had a little puppy that she was leaving home alone outside for days at a time with no food or water. We fed and watered him. He started hanging around. After a day of catfishing with my son I had left a rod standing in the corner of the garage. I guess there was some dried up chicken liver still on the hook. I was working outside and heard something rattling around in the garage. I found that little puppy dragging my rod around with the line disappearing gown his throat. $1500 and a night at the vet school later the neighbor decided that we should keep the dog. She sure didn't offer to help pay the bill. I wish I had kept a picture of the x-ray. You could clearly see the hook. That big old catfish hook looked almost as big as the puppy. My wife named him Marvin...as in "Starving Marvin".

My boat isn't fancy but I've got you there...my wife ties her own knots. LOL

I sit in the back and I drive. No power poles, no spot-lock and foot control. My wife sits in the front and has nothing to do but fish while I fight the wind and current and try to get in a decent cast between the many interruptions to get on the tiller control motor. I remember once while fishing a shallow weedy section on the backwaters of the Mississippi with spinner baits my partner was really pleased with himself because he was out-fishing me (that was rare). It was a windy day. It was almost impossible to retrieve the lure very far without having to take a hand off the rod to drive the boat. Cast, start the retrieve, let go to drive the boat and then haul in a bunch of weeds clean off the bait and try again. One wasted cast after another was the landscape for the day. Many times I tried to get him to take a turn at the tiller and he always declined. How wonderful it would be to do nothing but fish while somebody else does the driving...once in a while. The world just isn't designed for bass fishermen who don't have a bass boat. LOL I don't know how many times I puzzled over the advice to practice this cast or that cast while standing on a bucket. It finally dawned on me that it was assumed one would be casting from a casting deck. When I stand in my boat my feet are below the surface of the water...unless I stand on the seat. LOL

I've probably caught more fish on a jig of some kind than anything else, although, I won't claim to be any good at it. I don't own any "expensive" equipment. Heck, I don't even have an expensive boat. I wouldn't call those things crutches. They're nice to have if you can afford them but, out of necessity I place the emphasis on skills. It would be great to have the nice equipment and the skills. LOL

My black and blue jigs that catch fish are mostly black with just a few strands of blue. I haven't caught much on my black and blue jigs that have a bunch of blue.

It's not fishing but I was hit in the head by an owl one late and very cold night when I was trying to call in a fox or coyote with a hurt rabbit call. I didn't see it coming. It was about 2 am and I was all bundled up because of the extreme cold. I hunkered down next to a raised railroad track...nobody around for miles. All of a sudden I was hit in the head from behind. It was a bright night and I got a glimpse of the bird as he flew away.

12/5 at 8 pm EST? Works for me. Let us know here when you send the invite so I can watch for the invite.

I use an arcy head as a do everything jig...I swim them, skip them under docks or overhanging trees, I crack them, hop them and drag them.

In Canada?

Good one. When we were kids my sister hooked a fish on her cane pole. My dad told her to pull it in...she said she couldn't. She struggled with it for a moment and then a nice musky exploded out of the water with the bluegill in it's mouth. Cool!

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of work do you do?