ElGuapo928

Pitching a Texas rigged Gilly into the grass could be deadly - just to add to your expenses.

I bought a KastKing “Brutus” for $20 when I needed a “doesn’t hurt too much if lost/damaged” setup for a trip. Turns out I really like it - it’s by no means a top end reel, but it holds its own. I don’t think it would make it as an every day use reel, but it lives in the boat on a backup rig still.

We don’t really have an off season here. If weather, in-laws or some other disaster keep me at the house, I’ve got several methods of keeping myself ready for the water. After rod/reel maintenance, there’s tackle organization (and getting oddball stuff that I’ll never use out of the lockers/plastics bags), and changing sketchy treble hooks. I’ve started custom painting baits, which has turned into a relatively cheap way to occupy time and is a lot of fun. I also like to look through old books and see if I can’t find some forgotten tricks to try out.

Around here, the majority of the time they want a slow retrieve, sometimes completely deadsticked. Starting out, then at random intervals through the day, I will pick up a moving bait, and burn every third cast. If no activity, then it’s back to the bottom.

That’s a good one!!

Good to learn! I’ve got a few in desperate need of help, and a few that my wife will not allow to come outside of the boat lockers.

Glide baits have one joint, and are designed to move in a really wide lazy “S” pattern. Swimbaits have multiple joints and move in a more or less straight line while the tail wiggles.

Bucca Baby Bill Gill is inexpensive and pretty easy to work with. For a little more ($30), check out the Duo Realis Snappy Crappie.

You raise a good point. Where there were radical differences between brands in the past, a lot of those lines have been blurred. With the PE takeovers, it’s all a battle of the bean counters and everything is chasing the same lowest common denominator.

I like to start with a spinnerbait - it allows me to cover the entire water column, and get an idea of their behavior on a given day. As was said above, fan cast and cover the entire spot, then move on and repeat. When we’re hitting the urban ponds that I know get hammered or when fiddling around on the river, I will forget the spinnerbait and tie on a short (6-8”) dropshot with a #1 EWG hook and a 4” curl tail worm rigged weedless, cast it out and slowly drag it in. If I don’t get a bite on this, I move on.

Bagley DB3 Dredge - quite possibly the GOAT of deep cranks. BPS Tornado spinnerbait - my favorite search bait. Could keep the rod tip up and bulge the surface like a buzzbait, lower the tip and slow roll it. Easy way to determine what kind of bite we were on for the day.

That’s where I see the real issue as being. FedEx, UPS and DHL have proven time and again that they cannot be trusted to get a package from San Diego to Arizona without losing it (according to UPS tracking, I think my worms are now orbiting Pluto), and now we are trusting them to not screw this up?

The problem is going to be with the shippers wanting their cut, like the DHL mentioned above. Most of us in the US are hit with 10% or more in sales taxes on anything we buy locally, so I’m not too upset by the actual 15% of value.

Another thing I should’ve brought up but didn’t, check the condition of the carpet backing really good before gluing it back. If it is failing at all, consider a spray on contact adhesive like 3M 77. It tacks up faster than the brush on and won’t leach through the cracks in the backing as bad. We’ve been working on a buddy’s Tracker restoration project, and it had a lot of sections where bleed through had happened. We have probably used 10 gallons of acetone getting these spots softened up enough to remove without destroying the aluminum underneath.

I’ve been seeing more and more people fishing off jet skis the last couple of years. There’s some really cool setups, and they are even having PWC only tournaments.

Shouldn’t be any problem at all. Not much tongue weight to speak of, and not much weight overall. Power-wise should be no concern, I don’t know what the specs are on your Sentra, but I guarantee it would run circles around the ‘55 Willys Jeep that I towed my first boat around with.

I really like the G Buzz, it works good with a cane toad at most retrieve speeds.

I usually have 1 topwater on the deck, and 1 in the box. A Plopper/Choppo on the deck, with a Rico in the box. As conditions warrant, I will swap in different baits, but I find the Plopper type and a popper to cover 90% of conditions starting the day off.

You never know if they’ll come back or when. It’s part of the fun of BPS.

It really makes no difference.

It’s supposed to get down to 71 here tonight… I’m heading out to start hoarding groceries.

Not always, but sometimes a really subtle difference in color makes all the difference. This is mainly in really clear water, but I‘ve seen days where the same color from a different vendor is enough to not get bit.

Here they generally settle down after 2-3 weeks at the most. Once it moderates, the carp do their job pretty fast.

One of the biggest perks of our lakes is also their biggest downfall - absolutely zero development around them means no full time law enforcement presence. The Sheriffs Office and Game and Fish pick them off from time to time, but the sheer volume of idiots is overwhelming.

Around here I’d like to see one operate 200’ from the ramp!! Most of them seem to just go in circles around the no wake buoys, while helping all of us to experience their poor taste in music (extra points to torpedo the one with “shake it off” on an endless loop). To be fair, a few do have the courtesy to stay out in the main lake and mind their own business - but the other 95% (who live in constant fear that nobody is looking at them) give the rest a bad name.