jbmaine

Do I understand correctly that it sounds like we are letting the fish get the tube too far in before setting the hook? By setting the hook sooner would we have a better chance of getting the fish to the boat and not hooking it so deep? would a different hook help? Thanks JB

Thanks for the replys. If he had been waiting where we could have seen him or infact been in the process of backing down we would have waited. On this launch you can't see the main parking area from the water. The launch site is a big loop. from the main parking area you drive around to the launch, back your boat in and pull strait up to park. If he had been waiting at the bottom of the loop ( where everyone usually waits) we would have seen him and waited to let him pull in. But he wasn't and we didn't see him. Anyway this episode bothered us enough to put this in and see what other people thought. My wife and I like to be good neighbors where ever we go and wanted to see if we should have acted differently. Thanks JB

Hello, I know this subject comes up from time to time but I thought I'd put this in and see what you think. The lake my wife and I like to fish has a really nice public launch that is used by both fisherman and recreational boaters. Generally if there is a boat already at the dock we assume they are either putting in or getting ready to leave and wait until there is an opening for us to either put in or take out. The launch can be busy at times, but usually with a little bit of common sense and courtsey things go pretty smooth. The other day we were out on the lake fishing when a thunderstorm was starting to form and we thought it best to get off the lake, everyone else had the same idea and when we got to the launch we were in que with about a half a dozen boats. When our turn came, we put up at the dock. My wife stayed with the boat while I went up to get the trailer. When I drove down to the launch, (about two minutes later) there was a "gentleman" trying to put his boat in and was in a lively dicussion with my wife. He was insisting she had to pull our boat back to the end of the dock so he could put in. She was basically telling him she wasn't going to move and he could wait his turn. He instead went ahead and partially backed his trailer in, almost hitting our boat, and then pushed his boat at a 45 degree angle off his trailer, climbed over his trailer and got in his boat then drove it around ours and tied it off at the end of the dock. Meanwhile, I am sitting there waiting to back my trailer in and half a dozen boats were circling waiting to get out before the storm hit. The "gentleman" mentioned he was waiting for a while to put his boat in and figured it was his turn, even though nobody else there had seen him waiting. Normally, we are pretty easy going and will wait a bit longer rather than cause hard feelings, however in this instance, I would think commonsense would dictate giving the right of way to people trying to get their boats out to avoid a thunderstorm. My wife and I have been talking about this and feel we were right, but was wondering what you all thought. I'm sure some of you have been through something similar and we would really like your thoughts on if we were correct in our actions. Thanks. JB

Hello, My wife and I are just learning to fish tubes. We have read all the info we can find on them and believe we are rigging them correctly. the bass certainly love them but two out of three bass we hook we lose before getting them to the boat and the ones we get in the boat are hooked deep. So far I have been able to get all the hooks out but worry about damaging the fish. I can only assume we are doing something wrong, resulting in deep hooksets and lost fish. Any suggestions you can give us to correct this would be greatly appreciated. We are using Yum 4" mega tubes with 3/0 Owner Phantom tube hooks, rigged with the hook exposed. Thanks JB

Hello, My wife and I really enjoy bass fishing and up to now have only fished for L.M.B., however we would like to expand to smallie's. There is a pond we are going to in the next few days that is known as good smallie water. The only things I know about the pond is it is about 400 acres, has a rocky bottom, max depth is 30+ ft, and there is perch and some trout in it beside bass. I have read posts on good lures for smallie's and we have most of what is reccomended. My question is how do you aproach a new body of water? Is there a method you use to short cut the time it takes to find where the fish are holding? For example, fish the shore line first, then work out into deeper water, drift down the middle or some of both. Sorry if this is a vague guestion but all of our experience to date has been for L.M. on muddy bottoms in shallower water. Fishing rocky bottoms in colder deeper water is new to us. We will be fishing out of a boat and the pond is in southern Maine. As always, thanks for your help J.B.

Thanks for the replys. this is the most fish we have ever caught at one time. they were stacked up like cord wood tight under the bushes. I don't think we fished more than a couple hundred yards of shore line. the lake we were fishing is in sourthern Maine. JB

Hello, the last few days the weather has been less than ideal but my wife and I managed to get some time in on our faverite lake. We found the bass tight in to the shore under over hanging trees and shore line bushes. We were tossing senko's and although we got hung up a lot it was worth it cause the bass were hitting better than I've ever seen. On Fri. we were fishing the shore line in a big cove picking up some one to one and one half LB bass when my wife tossed a senko over a tree limb and into a bush. We couldn't shake it free so we ran the boat in to untangle it. As we came in to shore we both saw a big bass scooting out from the shore line and thought " O man, there's a big one we missed". As we got closer we saw the end of her line running back out into the water. Her senko had dropped down out of the bush, hit the water and was inhaled by this bass. While she was getting the line untangled I managed to grab the other end and haul in the fish. It weighed a good 3 1/2 LB. My wife just got a new P.B. and one of the biggest LM I've seen come out of the lake. The fishing was so good that despite the threat of Tstorms we headed back out on Sat. Talk about another great day. Same shore line, same senko's and a lot of fish. Towards the end she managed to skip her senko under some tight bushes and darned if she didn't hook another big one. We got it into the boat and it weighed a good 4 LB. She broke her record set just the day before! In one of the pictures I am holding it up as she was worried she would drop it. all told we spent about 7 hrs on the water and picked up around 30 fish ( all released alive) Sorry for all the pic's but this was about the best fishing we've ever had and we wanted to share. Thanks for looking

Hi, thanks for the responces. It's eyes were fine as I remember. And yes, it put up a better fight than most L.M. Does anyone have any idea why it was so thin? Maybe normal for this time of year? When I supported it on it's belly I could feel how shrunk in it was. Again, thanks JB

Hi, thanks for the reply. I did some checking, I have constant power on the right light coming out of the box. It was factory installed and runs from a plug on the wiring harness. I'm going to call the dealership tomorrow and see if there is a seperate fuse or ground, other wise i'll need a new box. thanks again JB

Hello, Last Thur. my wife and I got out for the day on a local lake. It was hot and the fishing was slow but I picked up a new P.B. smallie. I was lobbing a senko in about four ft. of water when it hit. It weighed around 3 1/2 lb on an old scale. I didn't think to measure the length. It would have weighed more but it was so thin, it looked like it hadn't eaten in weeks. It's odd because the lake is full of minnows, frogs, etc. It was a nice surprise as I was fishing for L.M. at the time. Thanks for looking JB

Hello, My boat trailer lights are suddenly not working correctly. When I plug them into the car the right light is on all the time. I hooked up my utility trailer and the same thing happens. The only thing I can think of is yesterday we put in at a shallow launch and I had to back in further than normal. I always unplug the lights before backing into the water but as I backed in further this time the plug on the car was hanging in the water when I hit the brakes. I'm guessing I might have shorted out something in the conversion box ( not sure of proper name). The box it self is in the trunk and stayed dry. The odd thing is the lights were working when we left the launch but when we got home the right light was staying on. the lights on the car work fine. has this happened to anyone else? Can you think of any thing I could check before buying another box? Any advise you could give me would be greatly appreciated. Thanks JB

the higher end rods sound good, except for the "brittle" part. Any rod I use will be serving multible uses at this point. I can't afford to buy too many setups right now. Most of the lakes we fish have multible species in them so we may fish for bass in the AM then spend some time trolling for lake trout. Also, our gear bounces around in an aluminum boat ( not a bass boat). I didn't realize high end rods were easier to break, having found this out it seems better to stick with something like the clarus for now. Thanks JB

Thanks everyone for the responce. At this point It seems that the less expensive rod would do me, especially for general purpose use. Thanks again JB

Hi, I'm looking to pick up a new spinning rod and have been thinking about the shimano Crucial, compre, or clarus. It seems the only big differance between them is the grade of graphite used. The more $$ you want to spend the higher the "IM" is. I don't have any place around here to go and feel hands on what the differance is so I was wondering if any of you could give me your opinion on the advantage of higher grade graphite. Like many, I'm on a budget and don't want to spend more than I have to, but will if it's worth it. I'm looking to use this rod as a general purpose rod, to throw a little bit of everything. Thanks for your input. JB

Hello, not sure which part of the forum this belongs so I thought I'd try here. I read a post a few days ago about how rod socks worked so well to keep all your poles separated. It sounded good so I thought I'd pick some up. When you use them how do you keep the hooks from your lures from getting "hooked" on them? And do you use anything to protect the reels? I assume they can be used on rods already rigged and ready to go, correct? Thanks

Anyone that has read my posts in the last week or so has seen I have many more questions than answers. thanks for your patience in responding to them. As i get up to speed on Bass fishing I hope to be able to offer more and ask less. My question is, on a spinning reel is there any performance differance with rear drag VS front drag or is it just personal choise? I see some reels are offered both ways and wondered which was the best way to go. Thanks

Thanks for the replys and sharing your knowledge. Can't wait to give them a try. Again, thanks

hello, the local sporting good store is having a big sale. One of the items was Rapala products. buy three, get the forth for a penny, so I picked up a few husky jerk and x-rap. I've used the orginal rapala minnow but not these. Any tips on good ways to fish them? I'm still kinda behind the times on a lot of the newer lures. thanks

Thanks for the replys everyone. Sounds like I'll stick to something like triline XL. Kinda makes ya wonder why they keep selling something nobody likes.

Anyone try or use this? Local store has it on sale. Wondered if it was worth trying. Thanks

Hello, I don't have any place locally to purchase boat stuff ( paddles, fenders, trailer acc, etc )with out it costing an arm and a leg. I know BPS, Cabelas, carry a lot of stuff but can you recommend other online sources? We have a local West Marine but there prices are thru the roof. thanks

so he ( or she ) can tell me what color line they prefer to get caught on. I know different line colors are made for different water conditions, but is there one overall favorite general purpose color? I'm looking to pick up a spool of trilene XL to spool up and fish a varity of water and the choices are Low-Vis Green, Clear, and Clear/Blue Flo. If you could only pick one, which would you pick? On a side note, if I ever did come across a talking Bass, i think i'd ask him ( or her ) why they were so obsessed with line color that they never noticed all the hooks hanging off of the thing they were about to eat. LOL thanks for sharing your knowledge JB

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome. It's much appreciated! JB

Hello, I am looking to pick up a reel for my wife and due to wrist and hand issues a spincast is about all she can use. she currently uses a " cheap" reel that is less than ideal ( lousy drag and lots of line twist ) and I was looking for a better one for her. So far the zebco omega seems like a good choice and I was wondering if anyone had any experience with it. I was thinking trilene xl would be a good line for it. Your thoughts on this too please. As always, thanks for sharing your knowledge

Hello, After brousing this forum for a couple of weeks and seeing all the knowledge, advice, and fellowship everyone shares, I thought it was time to join. I have enjoyed fishing pretty much my entire life ( some fifty odd yrs.) in both salt and fresh water and while I would not begin to call myself a great fisherman, it is one of the few things I have always seemed to be lucky at. Around 4 yrs. ago I was fortunate to meet the LOML and discover she loved fishing as much as I do. We get out every chance we get and have pretty much decided to concentrate on bass fishing. We are especially looking forward to fishing this year because after saving our pennies for some time we were able to graduate from a canoe to a 14 ft Lund. ( we pick it up next month). thanks everyone for putting up with this some what long winded intro. and letting me be a part of the forum.