Bubba 460

Awe shucks...

Thanks Mike ~ It took a long time to paint over all those numbers!

This was one of the larger paintings I did, it was 3 foot X 4 foot and took FOREVER. I had shown some of my other paintings under a post titled, "What does everyone do for a living" I like to do a lot of detail so that's why this one took so long... yeah, I wish I could just toss a couple of buckets of paint onto a canvas and call it done. It depicts a sow brown bear with cub at a river. There is a chum salmon jumping in front of the bear. In the photo a good bit on the foreground water has been cut off (I didn't take the photo). Also a cougar painting that was 18X24. I was fortunate enough to have all my paintings sell in a short amount of time and pay the bills but unfortunately I didn't get the prices that Hunter Biden gets.

Well guess I'll have to post it again. This is like 16 years ago... I had taken my 4 daughters down to a (muddy) pond to fish I had just bought Katie a Barbie rod. She caught a small bass* then decide it was more fun to throw sticks in the water. Well heck if she's not gonna us it... *Photos are different trips to the pond.

I just now ordered this spinning reel from BPS. It's a new (2021) Shimano Ultegra Spinning Reel. Price is $149 ~ $159 depending on what size you get. Other than GREAT (YouTube) reviews and the fact that I like the looks of it... I know nothing about it but it's is "supposed" to rank right up there with the top of the line Shimanos.

Hit a lake yesterday that I have not fished much in the summer months. It's been an excellent winter fishery when shad school up in HUGE balls and bass are on them deep. I could find no bass on shallow cover. Cast to some great looking "spots" where bass should have been with only one dink bass for it . I figured the bass are deeper but left all my deep running cranks home. All I had was spinner baits, Texas rigged worms and Ned rig. Only thing these produced was this little warmouth so laying the net out was wishful thinking. Something caught my eye way in a back cove... Wilson?... WILSON!

Yeah... REAL limited I hope!

Thanks ~ Yes, BP has them but they are black, I need the red white and blue, an older model I believe.

Thanks but I saw those days ago, they' are in Australia and want twice what they're worth.

That's probably it ~ thanks

Thanks ~ Well it looks more black than blue. I'm trying to find a reel that has a red, white and blue color theme (like the first photo I posted) to match a patriotic rod in the red, white and blue colors. I found the reel you have at BPS on line for $47.99 and it's in stock but the body looks black on their site too. Black is not going to cut it on this rod.

Is the body of the reel you have black or sparkle blue?

I beg to differ ~ I have not used all of BioSpawn offerings but this one dang sure works...

Anyone here ever had or used one of these reels or know where you can buy them? ~ Only thing I'm seeing is they are selling them on eBay from Australia. Have not been able to find them in the US. I went to a couple good sized sporting good stores yesterday and they are picked clean of a lot of items ~ Covid I guess Pflueger President Limited Edition Spinning Reel

Well it's obvious they can't agree on anything. Ask what the best color is you'll get the same response. The correct answer is... The right spot THEN selecting the right bait(s) for that spot.

Sure is ... I want to hang out with Spike too.

You bet ~ fried spider, Mmmmm... Come get ya some!

There are things worse than spiders. In Vietnam there are hot humid jungles that grow things to crazy proportions. Giant centipedes as seen in the photo. I walked into a spider web one day and there was a spider on it that covered my entire face! I about knocked myself out slapping that thing off ~I still get the wholly-buggers just thinking about it. There was a "saying" in Nam that Vietnam has over 100 species of snake that will poison you and the one snake that's not poisonous will crush you to death. Bees big enough to throw a saddle on. Scorpions out of a horror movie. Lizards as big as a juvenile alligator that would chase you and 18 foot long salt waters crocs, to name a few.

Very well might be exquisite but I'll never find out. I do know however that I don't need a rod so sensitive that I can feel a gnat fart on the rod tip to catch a fish.

I can catch a bass on a cane pole but have upgraded a little. I'll spend around a $100 on a rod and up to $200 on a reel. if I can't get it done with that, I don't know what to tell you. Plenty of good equipment in that range. No way I'm spending $750 for a rod and reel to catch a fish unless I'm laying on a shrinks couch talking about my Lamborghini and other short comings...

Well for at least one of the reasons you mentioned, ("hard to remove") I can go along with what you said. Other than that I see no advantage of barbless treble hooks, at least on a top water bait. The hook-set on a trebled top water bait is done almost immediately. The hooks are rarely any deeper in the fishes mouth than the cartilage area of the front. A hook in the eye, although rare, is the same whether barbed, barbless or single. 98% of the time the chances of doing any serious damage is slim and bass heal like everything else where blood flow is present. I do kind of like the idea of single hooks though on the whopper plopper. I use the whopper plopper in the 130 size a lot. I can see the hookup ratio only falling off slightly due to single hooks. I may try that and see what happens. But over all I rarely see a seriously damaged bass due to hooks ~ yes it happens, so do car wrecks. But maybe 2 or 3 killed bass due to hooks out of 50 and I give them to someone who will eat them. Having a bass out of the water too long for photos, weighing, dropping, and live wells have probably done in more bass than hooks ever will. I don't even think about weighing a bass unless he's 10# or over. I really don't need to know that the bass I just caught is a mere 2 pounds 4 oz and take two minutes to do it ~ get it back in the water! Here let me give a little story... Okay, let's reverse the tables. Two bass are hanging out one day and decided to go "peopling". They spot a boat and miraculously float a Snickers candy bar through the air in front of the 'fishermen". The fisherman grabs it and takes a bite. The fish sets the hook and pulls the fisherman under the water into a mysterious world where he can't breathe. He tries to swim back to the surface but the fish keep pulling him down. Exhausted, he gives up and the fish pull him in. They grab him by his mouth and yank the hook out ~ the fisherman is running out of air. "Hey, let's get a measurement on him," one of the fish say. So they get a tape measure. "He's 5' 6," says the other fish. "Let's get some photos," the fish says ~ the fisherman is running out of air. So they the take photos, hold him several different ways, hanging by his lip is the most painful ~ the fisherman is almost out of air. "Oh, let's weigh him!" says one fish. So they dig through their gear and finally find the scale. They stick a hook in his nose and suspend him from his nostril, they look and bounce him a couple of times and look some more ~ the fisherman is running on fumes. "He weighs 133.6 pounds," says one fish. "Yeah, kind of puny," says one bass. They take the hook out of his nose and roughly toss him to the surface. The fisherman gulps a huge breath of air and weakly swims to his boat. He climbs in and lays there exhausted, gasping breaths of fresh air. He does not know what just happened to him... did he just have a weird nightmare? The fish give each other fin bumps and look for the next person. "That's a nice cove, there should be a people over there," say's the fish...

Florida ~ 6 or 8" floating or wake Bull Shad.

Whatever it is... He's smarter than than the average bear. Had a pickerel bite off a wacky 4 times in a row, I left. Yesterday I caught a four pound bass on a brand new spinner bait. He mangled the bait, the trailer was gone and the line was frayed. I straightened the wire, attached a new trailer and cut and retied the lure on. Cut the tag line (I thought) and tossed the bait overboard where it quickly sank to the bottom and the line ran backward through all the guides and laid in a neat little pile on the deck ~ GRRR.

I'm old enough to remember when Johnny Carson had black air. One of the best shows on TV, always funny but absolutely hilarious at times such as that clip. Carson was must watch TV. If you made it on the Carson your career took off. I swear I can not understand what Robin Williams is saying 3/4 of the time but I laugh anyway. Imagine what he'd be like if he had three cups of espresso before doing a show... or maybe he did. Can a guy like that even unwind? There's not much on TV today that can even come close the the humor and characters of the past. Saturday Night Live ~ once a fairly funny show (a long time ago) is now mostly a waste of time. Late Night nowadays, woke junk ~ sad. Look up the clip, naw, I'll do it for you...