Bankc

I think in water below around 55°, you can still sometimes find a topwater bite, but you have to slow it down. Think popper, slowly worked, instead of buzzbait. Once the water warms up past 85°, I find the topwater bite trails off again. But you can still sometimes get a bite with a slowly worked lure. But every day is different. I've discovered I'm more likely to be wrong following conventional wisdom than to be right. Typically, I just start off doing what worked last time, and if it doesn't work as well anymore, experiment around to see how things have changed.

I prefer to solder and then coat the wire in liquid electrical tape. It's the strongest connection and is completely waterproof. But we're talking 12VDC here and the wires shouldn't be under much stress, other than bouncing around under their own weight, so you can get by with less.

I have a Weize 50ah for my kayak. It's been nothing but a joy to use! Check out Will Prowse Solar's YouTube channel. He buys lots of these lithium batteries and tears them down, so you can see what you're getting before you get it. https://www.youtube.com/c/WillProwse/videos

I like to think the bass worship us as gods. They're just living their lives, eating lunch, when a demon worm or minnow bites them back from inside their mouth. Then it drags them across the lake, and out into the heavens. Luckily for them, this giant monkey-god grabs them out of the air and removes that mean demon worm/minnow and releases them to go back to their lives.

I'm not loyal to any brand. However, for the right price, I could be.

That's what I use as well. It'll be the next rod I replace, as it's not as sensitive as I'd like, but that's not a big deal for topwaters and crankbaits. It's great for poppers, spooks, and crankbaits that dive down to about 6 feet. I'd probably look at a MH/F for frogs, chatterbaits, and deep diving crankbaits. It wouldn't be the best rod for any of those techniques, but it would work well enough to get you by. Plus you could do T-rig worms and other techniques. It would be a good two rod setup that would cover a ton of ground for you.

I just use a toothpick. I load the toothpick with a small amount of grease, then work it around and wipe off the excess with another toothpick. A brush might make things a bit easier and quicker, but then that's one more thing to clean when I'm done. And I usually just do one reel at a time, so half my time is spent getting out the supplies and then putting them back up.

The way I see it, if you get one scratch, the odds of a second scratch hitting that exact same spot are nil. So scratches themselves don't matter. What matters is wearing wide holes by dragging the boat regularly on land. Besides, a deep scratch is easy to repair. A wide hole is quite a bit tougher. But it's plastic. It's all repairable. So long as you don't leave it out to bake in the sun and make the plastic brittle, it'll be fine.

You're not supposed to reuse lens wipes. The microfiber clothes are great, but you need to wash them often, and not reuse the same spot between washings. They're a one-time use cloth that can be refurbished in the wash. Also, don't use fabric softener with them. I hand wash mine and air dry them so they don't pick up lint and stuff. It's pretty easy to do in a cup with a drop of detergent. My tap water is pretty hard, so there's no way I could let my glasses air dry. There would be nothing but spots on them if I did that. What I will do from time to time, if they're really oily, is wash them under the sink in soapy water, and then dry them with a microfiber cloth. Use the water pressure at first to knock off any particulates, so you don't grind them into the lens while washing them. And you'll have to wash the microfiber cloth often, as it will pick up the oils from your fingers and calcium from the water, even if it never contacts the particulates. Glass lenses are heavier, but they're about 100x's more scratch resistant than plastic lenses, and clearer. I don't like polycarbonate. Those scratch WAY too easily, even with anti-scratch coatings. Sure they're bullet proof, but who gets shot in the eye? Acrylic is a better, and often cheaper, middle ground between lightweight and scratch resistance. And while they're not bullet proof like polycarbonate, they're still tough enough to be used in windshields on jet airplanes. So they'll stand up to a tungsten weight.

If you watch most professional sports, you'll notice a lot of these guys don't do thing "correctly". It's not uncommon at all to see NBA players with ugly shots, PGA golfers with ugly swings, baseball players with weird pitching deliveries or batting stances, etc. What makes a pro a pro isn't their wealth of conventional knowledge. It's their application of that knowledge.

Whatever I feel like at the time. The good thing about a home lake is, you don't feel pressure to perform. If you get skunked doing something new and different, you know you could have caught something falling back to tried and true. If you do the tried and true and still get skunked, you know the fish just weren't biting. Most trips, I'll mix it up a little. On a typical day I'll work on something I'm not that familiar with and spend some time doing something I feel pretty confident in. How long I spend on each depends on my sucess with each. I'll do whatever seems like the most fun to me at the time. I don't fish to catch fish. I fish to fish. As long as I don't spend most of my time fighting technical issues or the weather, I'm happy.

I'm sure they can, at least somewhat. If not by looking at them, then either by the smell or the erratic way they move due to their injuries. I know there has been several times where I've done better fishing a soft plastic craw by tearing off one or both of the pinchers. And then there are baits like the Rapala floating minnow with the broken back.

The problem with a guide is you don't have long-term access to them. The problem with online content is it's not tailored to you. The fast track to getting good is to regularly fish with people who are better than you. That's the same whether we're talking about fishing, sports, music, cooking, whatever. Find someone local to push you to be better, and who can help you when you need it, and you'll make years' worth of improvements in months. Just be sure to pay it forward one day. Time on the water is how you get good. Time on the water fishing with someone better than you is how you get good quickly.

And then a hacker pulls up next to you on the road, and your boat drives off with them.

I think it will drain your battery. I don't believe it will automatically turn off in time to save a battery. Probably a bad transducer. It might have gotten damaged in the switch. These transducers have crystal piezo elements in them that are prone to cracking when hit too hard. They're not as robust as the more expensive models, in my experience.

September is closer to October. I'll give it that. But the bass still think it's August all month long.

I go when I can. Between a job, family, and the weather, I don't get the luxury of worrying about whether the fish are biting or not. Besides, I don't fish to catch fish. I fish to fish. Being out in nature, listening to what the environment is trying to tell you, putting the puzzle together... just being able to quiet and focus your mind on one task is such a luxury in today's world. Two weeks ago I didn't catch a thing, but a muskrat swam right up to me and ate some leaves for a while. I didn't move a muscle and just watched him do his thing. I had never seen one in the wild before, and this one got really close. Made my day.

It's been up around 100 for almost a full month here. The air temperature doesn't matter. It's the water temperature that counts. As the water reaches 85°, I tend to go deep. Find the thermocline and fish structure and cover around that depth. I tend to slow it down and downsize. Think drop shot, Carolina rig, jigging spoon, etc. Once the water hits 90°, you're best off fishing at night, I assume. I never fish at night, and rarely get more than two or three bites once the water has hit 90° in the daytime. But I've been told night the time to fish. Still, the same rules apply, it's just you have to expect less, downsize, and slow down. Basically, the same rules as winter fishing. Also, we don't have much vegetation here, as most all of our lakes are man-made water reservoirs. So when I visit the few that do, I'm not really experienced to know how to take full advantage of that. Typically, they're so dense by this time of year that I tend to fish along the weed lines and in pockets. I've never had much luck punching the thick stuff or even going over top of it when it's this thick. And that makes sense. It would drain a fish of energy to move through that stuff, and since the heat has them slowed down, they probably don't want to waste energy. Plus the heat seems to be damaging the grass, so I believe don't produce as much oxygen as they take. Even dragging a kayak across with a paddle is a slog. Forget about trolling motors. But every lake is different, so you just have to experiment. You can still catch some beating a bank in the shallows. But your accuracy will have to be spot on, as they don't seem to travel more than a foot or two to chase a lure. So I tend to really pick apart any lone pieces of cover near deep water. I save this for the heat of the day. My typical plan is to go topwater for two hours after sunrise, then go deep until noon, then beat the bank.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned toads or Torpedoes. I've done fairly well on both. They're both very effective and easy to use topwaters. The good thing about a toad is it's easy to retrieve like a buzzbait, but weedless like a frog. I prefer the paddletail frogs. And unlike a frog, the hookset isn't nearly as difficult. The good thing about Heddon Torpedoes is they can be retrieved any way you want and still catch fish. Fast and steady, or in slow spurts. Still, a Zara Spook and Rebel Pop-R are my most productive topwaters. Both require a bit more skill to use, but nothing that can't be learned in an hour or so. However, they seem to excel when the wind and water is calm, which isn't that often for me. So they're more of a treat than a meat and potatoes lure for me.

I hate spinning gear. I have no accuracy with them. But they sure do cast light lures well. So I tend to keep one or two with me. But I'm never excited to use them.

I've never tried a kayak, but I've fished from piers and the shore, plus I've done some deep-sea fishing on charter boats. I have to say, I've mostly been disappointed with my catch. I'll go out there thinking I'm going to catch a marlin or hammerhead or something cool, but I always wind up catching sea bass, drums, and catfish. Basically saltwater version of what I've got at home. Still, it's something different. I always rent or buy some cheap rigs there. I don't live near the ocean, so it's not usually worth having to travel with my normal gear, nor spend vacation time cleaning out the salt and gunk from my freshwater gear.

Whopper plopper would be easiest, followed by the buzz bait. But I'd get myself a popper and focus on that if you're wanting to learn a new technique. Learn how to work a popper, and you'll open up a bunch of other baits like walking baits and frogs that also work really well. It's just that the popper has better feedback, in my opinion, so it tells you when you're doing it right easier than a walking bait.

30 year old camera? That's probably the issue. Most modern cameras will have image stabilization to reduce camera shake. That's probably what you're experiencing now, as that wasn't a common option when digital cameras first came out. There are a ton of waterproof digital cameras you can buy now for around $100 that will do just fine for what you need.

That's what I do. I hate losing a favorite lure, because it always seems like when you replace it with a brand new, supposedly identical one, they never produce as well as the one you lost.

It all has to do with the thickness of the plates. A normal deep cycle battery has very thick plates. They're meant to be drained pretty heavily, as doing so can wear out the plates on a battery. The process is a bit complex, but basically lead ions jump from one plate to the other during use. So thicker plates allow for this process to go on for a longer time before the lead plate is destroyed beyond repair. Then, when you charge the battery, you basically reverse this chemical reaction, and the lead ions go back the other direction. The downside to deep cycle batteries is because the plates are so thick, they don't have much surface area. So starting batteries have much thinner plates, and they're usually wrapped around each other inside the cell. This makes the plates much longer and creates more surface area, which allows more electrons to form on the plates, which gives you the possibility to draw more amps at once. The downside to this is, if you drain the batteries too far, you'll damage the thin plates beyond repair. So a deep cycle marine starting battery is kind of in between the two, with medium thickness plates. It can be drained further than a regular starting battery without permanent damage, but not as far as a regular deep cycle battery. And it can provide more total amps at once than a deep cycle battery, but not as much as a true starting battery. So they're often used as a starting battery that also powers your fish finder, bilge pump, and other accessories, assuming you can find one with enough cold cranking amps to easily start your motor. But you'll probably want a true deep cycle battery for the trolling motor, as it's likely to put a pretty serious drain on your battery's overall capacity. And if your motor is too big and requires too much current to start, you'll need a true starting battery to turn it over.