raydomz

I’m a canoe/kayak fisherman myself, but if I ever move to a boat, it would have to be something like this. Not too over the top. Great rig!

If you decide to cut, read on… I used a dremel to do something similar with a smaller box. Word of warning about that, be patient - it’s like working with a knife and butter, or maybe a better analogy is cutting pine. The bit will want to wander, heat with make things seem easy, until it slips. But with that said, I spent all of 10 min cutting dividers out and using a sanding bit to smooth the cuts. Super easy. Could I have bought another? Sure. But where’s the fun in that? 😀

Very cool! Where are you fishing for steelhead?

The pike bite has been great everywhere we’re fishing. Incidentally I caught my PB largemouth a couple weeks ago. Going to try to make it into January, ice permitting.

All you folks from SE Michigan - is anyone still fishing? I’ve been out on Walled lake a lot and want to hit other lakes in the area. Per usual, I plan to fish until it’s frozen. Canoe/kayaks - anyone care to get out there before it gets icy?

Man I can relate to that. Curse of the graph. But moving is key on tough days. Excited to hear about your next trip out!

Yo-zuri T7 all the way.

Can’t complain about a 4lb’er! Nice! what will you do differently next time?…or the same?

Good luck out there! if you don’t mind, what guide service did you use?

I appreciate you sharing your concern and I am certainly guilty of lax rule enforcement. We’ve got several “rules of the boat”, life jackets at all times in one of them. I’ve spent a lot of time in canoes growing up and know those exact scenarios like you experienced. I can see now a need to focus deeper on keeping things safe at all times 🙂. Again, appreciate the call out!

My boys were off school yesterday so we took a trip out to one of our favorite lakes. It’s not known for being an amazing bass lake, but with patience we do well. My youngest pulled in the largest two (his pic and the last one - 3lb!) on a goby imitator and 8lb test. Little finesse monster in the making. Caught mine on finesse shadz and 4lb.

Are you typically throwing more natural patterned jerks with water that clear? Great catches!

Our river smallies haven’t fully turned on down here in SE MI yet…but I’m starting to see the transition. I’ve been fully invested in trd’s, trd tubes, and shaky head worms.

I’d say water quality could be directly related to how many fish there are…which could mean fewer bites. Give us some more details. Have you caught fish here before? What type of baits do you throw? What has worked in the past? Is the pond fed by a creek or is it standalone?

I appreciate you sharing this info. I have been anxiously awaiting my replacement rod, and in the meantime have been using my 6’6” M tatula for neds/free rigs. I started with setting the drag properly, smashed the barbs on my hooks, and have been more diligent about line tension…which I thought I already was, but the lack of fish lost on the jump tells me I may have been wrong about that. I did notice that my finer ewg’s I use for free rigs set more reliably so I ordered some Ned’s with ewg’s to see how those fare. At the end of the day, I’ve noticed something: I really was not paying as much attention to the details as I thought I was. Since starting this conversation and approaching SM with the advice given in this thread I’ve noticed a lot more and caught more reliably. You all rock! In hindsight, what I considered “low” was far too low. I now feel like I can feel the drag doing what it is supposed to. Amazing how long you can do something, only to realize it was not helping like it could have been 🙄. And your tip about how to handle the jump…gold! Feels counter intuitive, but it works.