MGF

My first was an old Pflueger Supreme that my grandfather gave me. It was one of his old musky outfits. I don't know what ever happened to the rod but I still have the reel. I don't know how old I was...maybe 8 or 10. This would have been late 60's I guess. To put things in perspective, there is no free spool on this reel. The handle spins when line comes off. There is no drag. You back reel to give line. It does have a bait clicker and a spool tension adjustment. I actually fished with this reel and caught an awful lot of northern pike up in northern Wisconsin where my father and grandfather used to musky fish. There were more advanced reels but this is the baitcaster I used at the time. My other reels were spinning...Mitchel 300's and the like.

I got on the river last week. Lost a small one and never landed a fish. Didn't make it out yesterday and we have rain today. I don't usually do this but I'm going to put on some rain gear and go fishing. The weather looks like it's going to be lousy all next week. If I just wait, I'm going to be waiting a long time. LOL

I'm still working. Try to fish or something on the weekends but the weather hasn't been cooperating.

The only time we get numbers of people around a local boat ramps are later in the summer when the "tubers" come out. I'm talking about the river. The lakes where the summer people are water skiing and jet skiing might have more of a crowd...which is why I usually fish the river. I don't like to be in a crowd even if I'm fishing. We solitary river rats should have our own set of rules. LOL

I launch my canoe at the exact same ramps where I launch my boat.

Sure I could see how the 9.9 on my 14 ft flat bottom boat could spread the virus.

My wife fishes for fun. I'm more into the challenge. It's fun for me too but she doesn't work too hard at catching fish. Between boat handling and trying to fish I can have some rough days. She never has a hard day fishing. This is my tough time of year. The river is high, fast and, often, on the dirty side...and it's almost always windy. I NEVER do well this time of year. I read about all the "pre-spawn action" but I don't catch anything until the weather and water warm up and settle down. On one hand it's nice because I can motor up river. I just can't seem to catch much. I don't even know what to do differently...other than waiting for June. LOL Still, I'm going to try again today.

What I want to know is if anybody else is as addicted to skipping as I am? I have a little pond that I fish and don't even think there's many fish in it anymore...I think otters cleaned it out. I go there after work and just skip baits...hundreds, thousands of casts. I skip it out and reel back as fast as I can. I skip unweighted worms and light tube jigs on spinning and jigs on BC. I almost get annoyed on the rare occasion a fish grabs it. LOL Out on the river, I catch myself going out of my way to skip under trees even when the fish are someplace else. On another weedy lake...I just end up skipping the docks. I even skip when there isn't anything to skip under. I'm really disappointed when I can't talk myself into using a bait that I can skip. We were on the river Sunday and I just couldn't get into fishing the jerk bait...I couldn't get it to skip very well. I think a nice skip/slide is just about the coolest thing in fishing.

The sv spool looks great but I don't have that much money in any of my reels...and I still skip. If the bait his the water right it'll slide smoothly along the surface and there's no problem. An educated thumb will do a decent job of keeping you out of trouble when the cast doesn't go perfectly. The answer for the tight-wads among us is practice...and the practice is fun anyway.

Going out today for the first time. It's not so much the virus that's stopped me but the weather. I'm still working so I can only fish the weekend and that's when we get the lousy weather. Rain came through yesterday so it's "cold front" conditions and the river probably isn't in the best shape but the weather report for next weekend looks even worse...so I'm going fishing.

I only fished with a guide twice. Many years ago my dad and I hired a guide for half a day on Lake Norefork to catch some stripers...summer fishing deep with down riggers. We caught a bunch of big fish too. The other time was a few years ago my wife and I went out with a local musky guide. We boated 3 legal muskies with the largest being 45". Both we good experiences.

Weather, work and Chinese virus have kept me off the water. There's a cold front coming through now but the plan is to get the boat ready and get out on the river tomorrow. conditions won't be the best but sometimes you just take what you get. LOL

What?

I don't know if I could pick a "best". Most of my smallmouth fishing is in a river. I use tubes, flukes, yum dingers, rage structure bugs, sweet beavers, grubs, hula grubs and zman/ned rig. Most of them I use in more than one application and I've had good results with all.

I've read what equipment guys use to kayak very cold conditions and I can't afford the proper equipment. Once my wife and I managed to flip a canoe in December. It was a nice day but the water was cold and the sun was going down. It's a shallow river so we were able to stand. That made putting everything back together easier. I did lose one rod/reel but everything else was tethered. No fancy cold weather gear but I had extra clothes and blankets in a dry bag. I also had an effective fire kit. Minutes after the swim we were in dry clothes in front of a fire. Still, I wouldn't go out of my way to do it again. LOL

I didn't even have to look outside to know it was way too windy for me to fish. I could hear the wind howling.

One of those tournaments on the Mississippi...I smoked in those days and my fishing partner gave be a bag if cigars he had saved up at work from folks having babies. I didn't buy any smokes. When I unwrapped the first cigar it was so dry that it crumbled and blew away in the wind...and the second and the third and so on. Nothing to smoke and in the middle of a tournament. I also had a transducer bracket made from a 2 X 4. Water would ride up the bracket and over the transom. As I ran down the river I pulled the plug to let some of it out. So we're on our way back to the ramp and I see that we're going pas Savanah Il and I can see a gas station down the street. I beach the boat and run down the street to get a pack of smokes. I felt much better as I walked back with a smoke in my mouth. But wait...I see my buddy down there jumping and waving his arms and he's screaming something. As I get closer I hear "The boat is siiinnnkkiiinngg!" damned! I didn't put the plug back in. I yelled for him to put the plug in but he just asked "what plug". The boat was pretty full of water by the time I got to it.

I never fished around gators. My only gator stories are from my Florida cave diving days. It wasn't unusual to have them hanging out around the springs and sinks. Never seen any real big ones and it never got dangerous...though I have friends who had more interesting stories.

I fish from a small boat with a transom mount trolling motor. Most of my bad days are centered around fighting to control the boat in the wind. I've also had some tough times in the river when I got caught off guard by super shallow water with my trolling motor stuck in the rocks with the current doing it's best to bend the shaft. I remember fishing with a buddy on some Mississippi river backwaters. The fishing was great but the water was shallow and weedy. We were catching bass on spinner baits. It seemed that I'd no sooner cast and I'd have to get one hand on the trolling motor and my bait would be hung up in the weeds. Almost every cast was ruined in such a way but I still managed to catch a few. Still, at one point he accused me of positioning the boat so I would catch all the fish. I told him to get out of my boat and walk home.

It's been more than 20 years since I fished Shabbona. I won't say that it was easy fishing but I had enough good days there that I miss fishing it. You guys should have seen those DuPage county lakes 50+ years ago when I started fishing them. The East and West braches still looked like stone quaries. The FP owned them but they weren't developed...no parking, no lawns etc. I used to ride my bicycle to the East Branch on an overcast summer morning. I'd catch a couple of LM for my mother...that's what she liked and we used to eat fish back then, LOL. Then I'd catch a few bluegils andlight a fire to cook a meal before my ride home.

I love to eat bass. My mother always claimed that it waa the only fish she liked. Anyway, years ago there were fewer people who knew how to catch them and I used to eat a bunch. These days there are lots of people on the water and many of them know how to catch them. If we all eat them, there won't be any. It took some getting used to. A few years ago (maybe it was longer) I decided to turn the bass lose. I lost interest in catching them and started crapie and bluegil fishing. I did get a few meals but it was all very unsatisfying. First of all there's too many crapie fishermen around here and all the crapies are dinks! Second pan fishing just isn't as exciting as hunting bass. So...I turn about everything back these days.

I pick the reel type mostly based on the bait and cover. I throw a weightless worm or ned rig type thing on spinning but a 3/8 oz jig, bladded jig or 5" paddletail is on bc. A frog around heavy weeds is on BC. I might want to skip any of them.

I fish from the back of a jon boat...it's what I have and I drive. Most often we're fishing our river. There's not so many docs but plenty of low hanging trees along the bank to cast under. Also, I've done plenty of fishing from the bank. There again you have to get under the trees and might have to do it back hand. These days, I'm not loaded with cash so my reels aren't real expensive either. My two most used bc reels are Garcia Black Max. I can skip. I caught a bunch of fish last fall skipping a double fluke rig. Sometimes I was skipping it when I didn't need too but it was just so much fun. LOL There's lots of ways to do it and there's no majic bullet...aside from maybe practice. I've got a local pond that I don't think even has fish anymore (either otters or poachers got to it). Sometimes after work I just go there and cast. I've probably been doing this long enough that I might not need that much proctice but it's fun and it can't hurt. You can practice on the street (or some flat surface) but I don't get as much out of it as being on water.

As others have alluded to it isn't just about the bait or color. The real question is "Where are the fish?". The first order of business is getting a bait in front of them...what depth, type of cover etc. Something that has paid off for me is time spent developing physical skills like casting. One might not be able to buy the best boat or travel to the best fishing holes but knoledge and skill enable you to make the most of where you are.

Isn't that the truth. I've fished in all sorts of weather. You take a fishing vacation and end up with lousy weather, you fish anyway. Ia have caught fish in lousy weather but some of my best days have been sunny, calm and maybe hot. To each their own but I think catching fish is a lot more fun on a nice day.