JHoss

I'll come back and update this thread next year once the season gets under way. Option 1 has Active Target on his boat. Not sure it matters much as we'll be fishing off my boat that does have Livescope. My dad has "used" mine a couple times on crappie and just gets a kick out of watching me use it. I think Option 1 got jealous a few times that I had it on the front and he didn't have it in the back. I plan to keep him as a fishing buddy, but suspect our tournament days are largely over. I could see us fishing the occasional event together, but doubt he'll ever be a regular tournament partner again.

Now that is a very healthy post spawn bass. I'd expect those fish to be 120-130% relative weight. The "skinny" bass in @Swamp Girl's original post looks like it's head is large enough to swallow the rest of its body- a tell tale sign of being under relative weight.

Looking forward to the Albemarle Sound event and hoping they don't set any boundary restrictions. Would be cool to see how some of the pros would attack Back Bay or North Landing River. And if they're spotted in the Northwest River, just take their pro card away immediately.

This is a common misconception which has been disproved since the late 70's when Wege and Anderson came up with the idea of relative weight. Fish from a healthy population will still be at or close to 100% relative weight after the spawn.

Current research says the discoloration is caused by a virus, either Blotchy Bass Syndrome (an Adomavirus) or Largemouth Bass Virus. Like flu season in humans, each body of water tends to have a certain time of year where the virus runs rampant and blotches appear on fish. I'm sure that poor handling practices play a role in weakening immune systems which would allow a virus to infect a fish more easily. They say that LMBV is in almost half of the states nowadays and can be spread from one waterbody to another the same way invasives get moved. In some cases, LMBV can kill fish.

No contest, short and fat. Long and skinny means underweight and not healthy. Even immediately after a spawn, bass should still be 95% of their relative weight. Too many people see a skinny bass and chalk that up to spawning stress, when in reality, the fish is not getting enough to eat.

Broke 3 this year alone and 2 more in the last few years. Slammed the butt end of a Lews in the truck door. Wrapped it with braid and epoxy and kept using it for a couple years until I stepped on it mid-rod this year. Had a ML Penn Spinning rod hanging out of the front of my kayak and hit it with the line from a much heavier setup on the cast. Had a fish get hung up in a blowdown. When I stuck the 13 Fishing flipping stick in to get a better angle, he took off at a weird angle and broke it about a foot below the tip. Accidentally dropped the lid of a rod locker on an Abu frog rod this summer. I take full blame for all but the 13 Fishing. I think that one may have been more of defect than anything.

Very seldom. Only if I'm missing a bunch of bites- I usually add a trailer before a trailer hook.

Yes

Have you had much luck on them? It does look like it would be killed on a free rig.

I plan to do braid split rings on all my cranks this winter. I'll clean them up and purge a few while I'm at it. That should be enough to keep me entertained between the end of hunting season and the start of tournament season.

Anyone have experience with this bait and willing to share how they use it? Yamamoto just announced they're doing a limited run, and as a big Yamamoto fan, I'm intrigued. Looks like it would be a slick C Rig or Texas Rig bait perhaps?

Came here to say just this. Unexpectedly delicious for something that roosts in alkali ponds. Kudu is a very close second for me.

I made the jump from kayak tournaments to jon boats a couple years ago and think some of the experiences associated with that could help here. I ran a NuCanoe Pursuit with a spot-lock equipped XI3 that ran betwen 4.5-5 mph wide open. My current TM on the Jon boat is a Fortrex, so no Spot Lock. I can say for me, that I value the speed over the spot lock and it sounds like OP does too. I am a power fisherman that likes to cover water, and once I embraced that, my performances improved. I used Course Lock far more frequently than I ever used Spot Lock as I was more effective hitting visible shoreline targets than trying to effectively fish offshore with a cheap graph. With foot steering, you could still steer and fish hands-free only needing to use one hand to adjust throttle occasionally. There are times where I 100% miss Spot Lock, but not nearly as much as I though I would. I imagine you could hold position fairly well with manual adjustments of your stern mount motor the same way I hold with the Fortrex. Eventually I will upgrade to a TM with spot lock, but that's not a huge priority at the moment. Like OP alluded to, most of the top anglers on the national level kayak trails seem to favor a stern mount over a bow mount for the ability to cover water. I still follow those trails to some degree and I routinely see folks talk about covering 10-20 miles a day in an event. That's just not really feasible with most bow mount rigs. The biggest disadvantage I see with the stern mounts is that you have to spend most of your time seated in order to control speed and direction. I stood 95% of the time I was actively fishing in the kayak and think I would struggle to be as accurate and efficient sitting down. Maybe that's less of a concern to you. Perhaps you should look at a faster hull design and more powerful bow mount. If I was getting 4.5-5 with a 55lb thrust in the Pursuit, I bet I could've rivaled stern mount speeds with an 80lb thrust and still kept the ability to spot lock.

Appreciate everyone's feedback. I feel like I should've mentioned that I'm fortunate enough to spend a lot of quality time with my dad already. We fish saltwater and hunt together regularly on top of the normal family stuff. That being said, he'll likely get the nod this year. My wife reminded me how many times I came home from derbies and complained about option #1 this past year. Between that and doing OK without a partner, I'm probably best off to take the easy-going, coachable option and keep my expectations low from a production standpoint. If he contributes a fish or two to the stringer, that's a plus. Couple other things came to mind that go in the "Pros" column for the old man: It would be nice having a second rod to "scratch the itch" when I think of something I should try, but don't want to put down what's currently in my hand. It's a lot easier to tell the novice which bait to throw and where than a guy who's been doing it a while and is set in his ways. He'll predominantly be sharing my gear which means less overall weight in the boat and less likely to duplicate techniques. One of my peeves with option 1 has been that he'll see me do well on a certain confidence technique, so he'll tie the exact same thing on and start fishing with that. I don't use FFS a ton, but when I had to use it last year, option 1 would get kind of whiny about him not being able to fish effectively. Dad is usually tickled to just watch this new fangled technology whether he has a rod in his hands or not. Guess it's time to start sending him some articles and YouTube videos to learn some of the basics of seasonal patterns and what not.