Mrs. Matstone

That is a beautiful fish! Congrats to you. ;D ;D

I agree with shad_master on this one. I too use the parasite weights they are great. They also save me wear and tear on my plastics too. They have clips as well that work awesome for weightless fishing.

Awesome fish!!! Congrats to you ;D ;D

I had this same thing happen to me last year and I think you did great. ;D This one local pond that I take my kids fishing at had these 2 women that I would see there every week. Now this is not a big pond either. They are there every week with their buckets. > This used to make me so mad. I was speaking to another gentleman who comes to the pond about them one day and he said well they don't speak english very well so perhaps they are not familiar with the rules and regulations. That made me even madder >. I understand having compassion for people but I don't think that ignorance is an excuse. My husband and I were there together one day and they showed up again. I had reached my boiling point. I was going to head over and have a talk with these ladies and try to keep my cool. My husband intercepted and went over and made me stay where I was. He had a talk with them about catch and release. The fact that you needed to have a License, (something they did not have) They were not too willing to listen. Finally husband looked in their bucket to find a bucket full of bass, none of them were of legal size and it was not even bass season yet. So at that point he gave them a choice. Dump the bucket or he would call the fish commission. Well they dumped the bucket. ;D I was practically cheering from the other side of the pond. ;D It would seem all ended well but a few days later I headed out to the local pond again. Started fishing and got a nice fat bass. Then from around the corner came 2 guy with a TOTE full of fish. I was so mad. They asked if I was gonna keep my bass and I said no. They asked if they could have it. I tossed it back in and said no. They were none too happy with me but I did not care. I do know that now when I go to the pond there does not seem to be anywhere near the same amount of panfish and things that there used to be there. I do know that in small ponds and such that you do need to have a selective harvest but I think that this needs to be regulated some how. I have also spoken to the fish commisson about it but they really do not seem interested all all in checking into the situation. What do you do? Bottom line is I think you did very well given the situation you were faced with. Two thumbs up from me.. ;D ;D

I am glad to hear that your both ok. ;D

Welcome to the site. It is a GREAT place with lots of nice people.. ;D

Good luck LBH!

That is awesome! Congrats to you and your wife. :)

My fishing buddy and I

Tell your friend Congrats! It doesn't matter what it's weight it is a nice fish and a catch to be proud of. ;D ;D

That is pretty scary! Glad to hear that your ok though. I come across snakes alot when I am fishing and most of the time they really don't bother with me and believe me I don't bother with them either... ;D I don't really know one species of snake from the next but this one is the one that I seem to come across most often. This little guy swam up next to me when I was fishing one day. He did not bother me he just laid there soaking up the sun. Glad to hear that your ok though and sorry to hear about your fishing equipment.

Welcome! ;D

Nice!

Awesome smallie! ;D

That is awesome! Congrats to her...

Well being that I am a girl I wish that I could offer up some great advice for you... however I am comming up empty handed. I am guilty of just the opposite. I am always trying to convince my husband to skip work and go fishing with me. I cannot get enough of fishing myself. Best advice I could offer up would be to pray that she becomes more understanding of the "other" true love in your life. ;D

Congratulations! Awesome fish ;D

Hey Dave, nice to see you found some time to hit the water and landed some fish too. Congrats.

Thanks for the tip. I will try it. The bite has been real picky at the river. I am not sure what is up with the fish. My husband says the smallmouth are going through alot of transition right now so it could be it. I am not used to fishing such deep water. The other place that I have recently found is deeper yet around 30 plus feet. I am really kind of lost when fishing water this deep but I do enjoy learning and trying new things. It does get frustrating the lack of catching when fishing sometimes. After 2 days of catching nothing I am almost ready to throw in the towel. ;D ;D I must be a glutton for punishment though because I keep going back for more. :-[ ;D

The snakes are 10 inches. Like I said, not something that would usually even think about using for smallies. The color that I used was green pumpkin pearl. I think. Can't exactly remember what the color is. :-[ . I have had good luck with these baits for largemouth though. Dragging them through the lilly pads. We fished the Jersey side. I do not remember the name of the launch that we went out of but I will ask my hubby tonight for you. It is on the road with the 3 minute light, If your familiar with that place. The fish were not really out in the currant it was much slower water off the main channel. There are also alot of carp and muskie that I have seen in this area as well. I usually use senko's but much smaller ones Magic stiks in 3 or 4 inches, in green pumpkin gold. I have found this to be a great color for the Deleware river. *** Trik sticks are also awesome for smallies. I tried these for the first time a few weeks ago at the river. I went on a guide trip and we caught 117 fish. Mostly smallmouth and caught almost all of them on the *** ***. His prices are awesome too. I usually rig my senko's on an 1/8 ounce jig head. I found this weight to be a great weight for the river. The only time I change that and up the size of the jig is if the water is very high. Good luck to you next time. Perhaps I will pass you on the river someday! ;D

Yesterday Matt and I hit the river from about 10:00 to 2:00. Air temps were in the 60's and the water temps were about the same (I think). It was raining pretty good for quite a while in the morning but finally cleared up around noon. It made for some very tough fishing. We tried numerous things and were concentrating on the drop-offs. They ranged from 8 to 20 feet. Very sharp drop-offs. We threw everything had a few misses all day long. Fish were just really not committed. I had one on, it was a smallmouth I think, I got it all the way to the surface and it came unbuttoned. This one was on a magic stik. Fish were so fussy I downsized my baits to something more like a finesse approach. This did not work either. Finally at the end of the day I noticed that I could see some fish near the top of the drop-off swimming back and forth. So what I decided to do is to toss a few different things out to see how they were reacting to them. I noticed that they would check it out and a few would follow but they just would not bite. I decided to try a completely different approach. I thought I needed something of substantial size a real " I will not be ignored" bait, as I call it. But something that would move slow. What I decided on using was a Case snake. This larger bait is not something that I would usually use for smallmouth but I figured that it had a larger size to it and if I rigged it on an 1/8 ounce jig head the head would sink to the bottom and the rest would be left "flapping in the breeze" so to speak. Well to my great surprise it worked first cast out. BAM! I had one it was a nice smallie and boy did it put up a fight. It was great to see that my idea paid off an so quickly at that. Well I sent that fish back and casted out again. Once again I was rewarded. This one was really fighting. It turned out this fish was a female and she was pretty fat. I was very happy now but quickly sent her back. Both fish were caught on the drop-offs. It was very cool, but also time for us to go and pick up the kids. Wish that I had tried this earlier when I had more time. Perhaps next time when the fish are not biting so well I will use this approach again. I was so surprised to catch smallmouth on such a large bait. I normally would not ever chose something like that for smallmouth. I usually use the small 3 or 4 inch magic stiks or helgrammite's or something along those lines. I will have to remember in the future to think outside the box or at least my comfort zone. Sometimes it just works. ;D

I have been using them for a little over a year. I use the 1/4 ounce size the most. I have not used them for fishing smallmouth as someone on here questioned but my husband has and they do work for smallmouth. I usually put a jacks worm on mine. My husband uses a variety of things on his. I think the bottom line to this product is that you can use a variety of soft plastics on them. They are really designed to give a soft plastic action and they do this very well. Here is a link that gives a bit of information on the history of the scrounger: http://aaronmartenslures.com/history.php Here is a link to the video of the scrounger: 1 more link too http://thescrounger.com/blog/

Great fish. Congrats to you and good luck at your upcomming tourney.

Great fish and Congrats to you! You are a very lucky man.

That is awesome! Congrats on the fish too. I hope I have a grandson like you that will take me fishing when I get older. ;D