MGF

I've seen plenty of hooks through fingers and even ears. I always carry wire cutters. LOL Flipped a canoe in December. Fortunately I had a dry bag stocked with dry clothes and fire making supplies. A fair number of boating near misses...have to stay alert on a river or it'll get you. That's about all. Fishing hasn't been very dangerous compared to some of the other activities I've taken part in.

Poppers and frogs. Let them sit or move them a little. Give them a twitch here and there or walk them. When you find out what the fish like, do it again. The frog is especially fun on top of matted vegetation. Shake it in place or drag it and hang on for when all heck breaks lose. Through the square bill out and reel it back. Best if it's bumping into stuff. Through in a pause or very the speed to see if it makes something happen. Tubes are one of my favorites. Lately I've been catching river small mouth on a t-rigged tube mostly just dragged or drifting in the current. But sometimes I put some real vigor into bouncing it using a tube jig head. I've been keeping some of the jig heads with the wide gap hook around (for weedless rigging) and that's fun...like a "stupid tube" kind of thing. No rules just experiment to find what the fish like. Screw lock jigs...are we talking about a shaky head kind of thing?

I like an old jig. Put the intended trailer on and everything. Casts just like the real thing, LOL. The practice plugs don't and I found out that I can't see the practice plug in the air very well...or at all. Ok if the hook is still on you can't real the jig back through the lawn very well but I don't care...especially for the type of cast I'm likely to be practicing.

Welcome. I'm in Indiana too. I don't have access to any good ponds but I have a boat. I might offer a seat in my boat to somebody who invited me to fish a nice pond. I'm in the northwest portion of the state and I mostly fish the Tippecanoe. I love it but I had some of the best fishing of my life in a private quarry about 35 years back.

I love to catch and eat fish...all kinds of fish. I just don't keep many anymore because it doesn't seem like our local fisheries are all that healthy and the pressure on them is just incredible.

I haven't quite got on board with the "long rod" trend. They don't fit in my truck or in my boat. LOL

So you would just go out of your way to make trouble for a person who's minding their own business trying to do some fishing? Why?

Last Sunday I hunted a swollen river for several hours to find fish. I finally found one little protected spot with a few active fish. I had one follow and caught two nice bass. I never found another spot like it. If somebody would have motored into the middle of it to talk they would have blown my whole weekend. I'm sorry, that's a very big deal. What do tournaments have to do with it? I'm out there to fish. I NEVER approach anybody while they are fishing. A wave or long distance inquiry maybe but I never approach. I guess that means that I don't want to be approached.

Earlier in the thread I said that I haven't seen many cig butts for a long time. Well, Monday I took a walk around "the pond" and they were everywhere. Sunday when we were headed home from the riever we were met by a bunch of drunk kayakers hogging the ramp.

I've been a jig guy since I was a child but part of the reason that I lean to plastics and jigs must be the cost. Outfitting yourself with several styles of crank baits in several sizes that rub several depths could cost more than my house...well maybe my truck. By contrast, a modest assortment of jigs, plastics and lead and you can fish almost anything. For a long time I did real well on Repalas from floating to neutral to sinking but the pike were taking too many. Maybe the fish got educated too? For a few years a wacky rigged yum dinger out fished everything. Then I killed them on the ned. Somewhere in there I rediscovered the tube and "swim jigs". Now I'm thinking that I can live with an arky head for most of what I do. So far this season it's the jig with a tube (Texas or jig) in close second. What I can't say is whether any of this has more to do with the fish or just my own tastes.

One day last fall when our local river was low and clear I was fishing a double fluke rig. I hooked two nice smallies an there were another half dozen or so chasing them. My wife was so excited I thought she was going to jump in after them. LOL It happens but we don't always have good enough vis to see it.

Not to speak for him but I think he said that his lake us "up" 32 feet.

The ramps I use most haven't been all that busy. Of course, the weather hasn't been all nice on the weekends so far either...I'm still working.

Non-boaters who park in the way of the boat ramp are aggravating but they may just be ignorant. When a boater blocks the ramp it's way beyond the pale. We have a few people around here who park their rig directly in front of and in line with the ramp. Then everybody else needs to snake in at an angle to reach the ramp. This is at ramps where there is plenty of parking. I saw a guy do it last night and his was the only rig there. He had 40 acres he could have parked in. I need to put a note pad in the truck so I can leave notes for folks like that.

A jig of some sort has been my "go-to" almost since I started fishing more than 50 years ago. Don't limit yourself to the "popular" retrieves. What they now call snapping or cracking is how I remember first working a jig. Dragging or hopping on the bottom was something I came to later. I've caught about every kind of fish that swims in my waters by bouncing a 1/4 oz yellow marabou ball head jig mid water...even catfish and carp. LOL In fact I just started looking for a supply of jigs like that because I haven't seen them in years and I'm all out. I used to get them cheap in the local department store (that's probably why I started using them). Now they're expensive and I haven't found any yellow ones.

I think bass are about the best eating fish there is. Still I rarely keep any these days. There just aren't that many nice bass around here. Last year I did keep a meals worth of sub 12 inch fish per the 12-15 slot limit on our rivers. I just couldn't resist the temptation to treat myself. Assuming the DNR knows what they're doing taking some of those fish should be a good thing...I wouldn't bet on it though. I think they push some of these things through based on popular demand rather than science? Anyway I was recently at a local pond where the fish seem to have all but disappeared. It's a really small pond and I think otters got to them. Anyway I saw a guy fishing catch a small bass on a a live night-crawler. Bass need to be 14 " to keep. I'm not so sure this one was. I never saw the guy measure the fish. He just we straight to his truck and threw the fish in. As you can tell I have mixed thoughts on it. I LOVE to eat the fish I catch but I also want to have plenty to catch. I guess that puts me in the "selective harvest" camp. There are too many people these days who know how to catch fish. Without some restraint we could clean out a body of water in a hurry.

I like the FG but it's not the most convenient to tie. So, I use it sometimes but I often use a blood knot. I really don't have any complaints about the blood knot but I've tied a few "practice" alberto's and I'll probably give that a try also.

I've thought a lot about that. I used to smoke and I stuffed the butts back into the pack or in my hip pocket which drove those doing the laundry nuts. I drink beer and you can usually find a bunch of cans in the bed of my truck. So why leave any of it at the lake. I'm convinced that it's a lack of intellectual capacity combined with the individual's belief that they are more important than you. Why do people leave their shopping cart where it will roll into your car? They aren't smart enough to do it to intentionally to damage your car. First of all they don't care. More importantly, they can't think that far ahead. We may really be in the "zombie apocalypse" and they are the zombies. LOL.

I think bass taste better but I don't keep them anymore either. I agree with all the complaints here but Io guess your post reminded me of another. There are so many crappie fishermen who eat everything. Good luck finding a decent sized crappie around here...nothing but dinks. They don't care, they just keep eating them. I don't see many cigarette butts anymore...mostly bait containers, McDonald's wrappers, cans and so on. Cigarette butts always bothered me even way back when I smoked. I just don't see many butts or people smoking these days.

I don't fish that much wood but it's usually more of a vertical presentation for me. I had trouble finding fish on the river yesterday so I moved in real close to wood out of the current and stuck a jig just as close in there as I could...but I was in a boat. The good news is that, though I did get hung a couple of times, I didn't lose my jig. The bad news is that I didn't find any fish in there.

LOL I must really stink at this...I've done a few long hard days on the river and I've got 4 smallmouth (not all made it into the boat) and one N. pike. Went out to a small local lake yesterday. Water was 56 F and the shallows look dead...no life at all that I can see. I had a couple of nips on my swim jig that felt like a bluegill tugging on the trailer on the deep side of the weeds. I don't see any sign that anything has moved up yet. I'm going back today with a different strategy. I added a rod rigged with a shaky head and one with a drop shot. I'm going to use the electronics and probe the deeper water outside the weed edge.

The weather here has been crazy...one front after the other. I went last night after work to a small natural lake. Partly sunny, fairly clear water, 56 F and the shallows looked dead. No minnows, no bluegills, no birds and I sure didn't find any bass. I flipped the pads and drug a swim jig through the holes and on the edges and I couldn't buy a bite. I had a couple of gills (or something) nip my jig trailer on the deep side of the weeds and that was about it. I don't think these fish have moved in yet.

I wouldn't want to be without a tube...I have several different brands in my bag.

I ALWAYS prefer to walk in, see what I'm buying and then have it immediately. I wish we had a "local shop". The brick/mortar that I've used the most for the past several years isn't a "tackle" store at all but a Big-R. Their fishing department was fair but now they have a new name and the fishing department is going down hill. There's one decent little tackle store 25 - 30 miles away. Still the stock on some things is pretty limited and I often drive all the way there and can't get what I was looking for. That eats up almost half the day. I recently heard of another in that same area that I intend to check out...maybe when the virus eases up. I have a good one that's about an hour away. I've only been there once. Sadly, most of my stubborn efforts to buy fishing tackle in brick/mortar result in a large very frustrating and fairly expensive (travel) waste of time...then I go home and buy on-line.

I had never bought from them but I just placed an order because of all the good things I've heard. The confirmation e-mail said it'll ship on 5/18. I understand this virus thing has caused problems for everybody and I can wait a bit. There was a couple items that were out of stock so I placed a little order with BPS also. Oh well...the weather and the fishing has been lousy here anyway. I pulled the boat to a local lake yesterday only to decide the wind was way to strong for me. I just turned around and drove home.