AlabamaSpothunter

If he pulls down a top 5, let alone win, I'd say this is his most impressive performance. He came close to winning the MLF event this summer on SLR. He moved up there for awhile to learn that body of water he loved it so much. We grew up an hour away from SM, yet that's where his success has come up until now. Eufaula is vastly different than Pickwick and SLR. Wonder what clicked in his fishing game, I know he's fantastic on the scope. He's always been a hammer, and highly praised guide, but if you look at his lifetime of fishing tourneys, it was a flat line curve and then a huge upswing the last two years or so. Amazing to see a kid you grew up with having such success, if he gets into a Classic it will be mind blowing.

Way up on my want list. That's an awesome looking bait, flashboost makes a ton of sense on glides and jerks.

Eufaula showing out, lots of really quality fish. I watched the whole weigh in, lots of 5+ fish, and a 7.7lb big fish, several other 7lb fish as well.

Fantastic, and get to feeling better! I'm the literal Goat, A-Jay is the G.O.A.T., what more proof do you need, do I need to start eating your New Balances ? Man those fish are pretty, and so is that MegaBass 110 ?

The lake has amazing bathrooms ?

I don't doubt it, sucks for their families.

On rainy days I always run out of emotes lol. That picture is really cool, love to hang that besides an antique lure I got this year as Xmas gift. @PhishLI is like my big Swimbait crackdealer/mentor ?, and sent me a pic of it. I hope he posts it here as it's something to be admired and proud of. You, him and KP Duty have some epic collections. The stuff you dreamed about as a kid especially, peg board walls full of baits. My mentor had his entire garage lined with peg board, and it was maxed out with baits. He'd occasionally tell me to go in there and pick out any lure I wanted. Some of my fondest memories.

The Dams giveth and taketh away. Closest I've ever been to being potentially seriously injured or killed fishing was below Wheeler. They were running like 2-3, and we were all the way in the corner quite some ways from the open ones. They rang the alarm and my mentor's essentially new Skeeter outboard wouldn't crank, I was doing everything I could on the 70lb TM to keep us in place as a 14/15 yr old, and not drifting back 25yds into an L shaped concrete abutment of the Dam construction. I don't how much time went by, but it seemed quick.....and before we knew it a generator near us was released and it overwhelmed the TM and carried that new Skeeter right into the concrete abutment. We hit center mass, and I was holding on to the front lean post for my life. Amazingly no structural damage to the boat, just some spiderweb cracks in the gelcoat. I was almost in a worse place this last summer below Smith Dam on the Sipsey River for stupid stocked Trout. They generated power off schedule, and some flyfishing guide came running down to me and put a fire into me. It had been years since I was there when they generated power, the speed and enormity of the water is mind blowing. I'm surprised more people aren't killed below dams, maybe they are and I'm unaware of the figures. Jet boat FTW ?

Thanks Gary! Glad I caught a few yesterday because our wet, warm, and windy Spring has me off the water today with t-storms all day, and then tom. a wind advisory with gusts up to 50mph.

It's his, it's glorious and magnificent ?

This is one of my great childhood friends.....Jon Canada at 15th. Won a MLF event on Pickwick and took second in another last year. Been a pro for awhile, something must have clicked for him these last few years, he's mainly a SM guy ironically enough. 15 Jon Canada 5 / 13-10 / 9-0 5 / 13-10 11:57 AM Brandon is in 62nd, he's having a tough start to the season 62 Brandon Palaniuk 4 / 8-12 / 13-14 4 / 8-12 09:59 AM

No, but I'll go watch some of her stuff. Talk about extremes, be nice to fish the winters in the south, and summers in the north.

I wish I lived a bit closer so I could be a "SM guy", but fishing below those dams, especially Wheeler in the Fall with threadfins feels like cheating at times. Sure hope you get the opportunity to fish the river system one day. I want to see the pics ? Even on the days when we were catching one toad after the next, we still caught so many of those darn Drum.

I'll pick one up within a week or so......I meant to buy the Rocco 5 instead of the Tiny 4 which are both highly recommended and from Ott's "OG" line. Tiny 4 produces, not pretty though like a MegaBass or Jackall, excessive glue around the lip, and the finishes just don't have enough flash for me.

Right out of some novel or something, that's beautiful! You got to at least give me credit enough to know not to come and get embarrassed by those Maine Bass ? You put Maine on the map in my brain, before seeing your tremendous success I never once thought....Bass + Maine = epic days.

They could call that reel a Lemonzilla, and I'd still buy it ?

Mother of God, we must see that swimbait collection in the background! You win! ?

You observation is 100% correct based on the demands of Adsense, Google, and Youtube. For example a channel like Tactical Bassin pretty much has to upload a video every 48hrs to stay relevant in the algorithms, suggested videos, etc., not to mention once you get several hundred thousand subs, every video you put out will at least get 10-20k views. Youtube now has all these metrics like how long does the viewer watch, and they put your videos in an algorithm that spits them out for suggestions to people that will watch them, and ultimately get you paid. Once you notice this, you can't unsee it from your favorite subs. It's all about content creation. Non monetized channels obviously don't have this problem.

straight mono like Sunline's Natural......14lb co-poly like CX........12lb I feel like I can get away with lighter co poly than mono, but I fish both the same generally speaking.

Wow how cool is that Bob!!! Busy year at the Billy Goat factory ? It's a perfect name for such a stubborn animal ? Thanks friend, and also thanks for the data point. Man this weather is wild. As a kid we had our biggest snow storm/blizzard in March of 93.....2.5ft of snow. Ever since then it seems March has gotten warmer and warmer, and then these last two years are just crazy. Thanks Katie! You know desperation is creeping in when I'm chunking a spinner widget ? I need you start back fishing so I can realize the lures I don't have, but clearly need ? I still can't wait to catch a fish on the Whopper Plopper, love how it fishes, much easier to chunk and wind than a buzzer.

Dang there was three on the 25th

Man that's terrible, I can feel a small slice of that sickness. Being in a river makes it basically unrecoverable I'd imagine. Get that GoPro friend.

Bob was right, 12-16hrs seems to be just enough for the frustration to reside and the stubbornness to kick back in. Burned the crap out of my three finger tips stupidly touching a battery terminal that the TM lead wasn't fully tighten down on. Spent about two hours with my hand in the lake on and off fishing. Today I just embraced Spring, and broke out a 8" Mag Zoom Lizard, and Rapala OG Tiny 4 in Gizzard Shad, and most importantly a 15-20yr old Terminator 3/8th Spinnerbait in a chartreuse shad kind of pattern, Gold and Silver blades and went very shallow. Put a Crappie curly tail type grub on the back to just have a little kick behind the standard-length skirt. Needed to keep it really compact due to bait size. A-Rig gave me a whole new level of confidence to throw these stupid things ? Caught a solid 3lb fish on a piece of cover on the Lizard, caught a few smaller fish on the Tiny 4, but was able to pick up a quality 5lb class fish on the spinnerbait along with a few other quality fish. A few fish came on the Flashback Mini as well, it's the only constant day in, day off lure that always catches a fish. First day in some time that I might have hit that 5/15lb benchmark. About the same amount of fish (15). 77 outside temps/ 65-67 water temps.

Two Berkerly digital scales over 30 yrs, never had a problem, and only recently bought the new one. I check it quite often with a 10lb weight. Both have always been dead on the money.

My money has always been on those three lakes in N Alabama, however the Erie monster made me less sure. A 5-6lb class fish below those dams fishing threadfins is like the easy button to getting your SM PB ?