Bluebasser86

@BluegillsTightlines more than likely would be the result of a late spawning fish. The spawn was very spread out here this year. I was still seeing spawning activity on the lake by my house until last month when water temps were creeping into the low 80's.

Doug Stange from In-Fishermen is one of my favorite writers and has always been one of my favorite fishermen. He is as skilled with a fishing rod for a wide variety of fish as he is at writing a magazine article. We have many great story tellers on the forums who I enjoy reading stories and reports from.

I've been taking 2 straight shank flipping hooks and putting them back to back and shrink tubing them together, sometimes with a worm rattle in the shrink tube also. It's not real easy to get the hook eyes lined up perfectly, putting them both on a split ring helps a little bit, but then you have to put them on a split ring and take them off of it after you're done.

I have a Nessie but wasn't a fan. I like the Chop Block though, except the hookup ratio is awful. I mainly use it to bird dog fish and cast back with something else to get them in the boat.

I believe that it's more of a sound/profile/retrieve speed thing with topwater than it is color. Most likely, the fish just see the bait as a dark object on the water's surface and determine if they should try to eat it by if it has the right sound and if it's moving at a speed that is worth chasing or not. My walking baits area almost all white, shad, or translucent colored. The biggest difference between baits is size, sound, and profiles.

I like the resin baits, not as big fan of the injected baits like that bluegill though. It's not a bad bait at all, just nothing really special IMO. Really like my Bull Shads and Bull Wakes, as well as the Trick Shads.

I'd really like one of the Flux Jet kayaks for running the Kansas River by me, but for catfishing. Most of the river is 3' or shallower and often is lots of dragging involved. It's not the fastest moving, but it's fast enough that even with the motor on mine, it often takes me an hour to go a mile upriver.

A lot of the craziest stories are NSFW and wouldn't be appropriate for the forum. The fights, the bodies, the insanity of humanity is all there. It's really crazy how much the last 20 years bleeds together. I think one that stands out the most was early on working in the jail in KCK. A female deputy was patting down a new arrest that KCKPD had just brought in when she was suddenly screaming "gun! gun! gun!", and wrestling with him. There was only a couple of us in booking but we were all on top of him in an instant, but that was one very dangerous situation. We also had Marc Sappington come back to us for court when I worked there. He was known as the KC Vampire for killing, dismembering, eating and drinking the blood of his friend. He came back from prison for a court hearing when I was working the intake window with my buddy who is Hispanic. Sappington looked Ernesto up and down and kind of hissed that he had "Never had Mexican before". A few years ago, I was tasked with taking John Robinson to his clemency hearings. Robinson was a serial killer, convicted of killing 8 women and hiding their bodies in barrels in rural Johnson County, KS. At this point, he's later on in life and it's a long walk to the court room, so I got a wheel chair to push him to court in so he wouldn't have to walk and risk him falling. The only one available wasn't in the best condition and he immediately started complaining about it. I wasn't really thinking as my partner and I got on the elevator with him and I said "Yeah, we're kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel around here". I heard my partner snort, but I was focused on what I was doing and didn't really pay attention to him when he fell behind me while I was walking and I could still hear him making noises. When we got to the courtroom, he texted me "You said scraping the bottom of the barrel to John Robinson", and that's when I realized that he was right, I had said scraping the bottom of the barrel to the guy known for hiding bodies in barrels. It's a story that my partner still likes to tell to anyone that will listen.

This is my big fish bait of choice for fishing around vegetation when it allows for it. Plenty heavy to fish weightless, or add a bullet weight. I usually opt for a 1/4oz tungsten. https://www.bigbitebaits.com/product/craw-tube/

Saturday was stop number 4 for our kayak fishing circuit at El Dorado lake in south central Kansas. The water was higher than it has been there in a long time from the constant rain this year, but it was just 4" above conservation pool and actually 1.5' lower than it had been the week before because they had been releasing so much water. I still can't take any time off because of FIFA being in town, so I got to the lake after work on Friday with 2 hours to prefish before cutoff. I had 2 different game plans, my number 1 option was to fish the creek I normally fish and target largemouth only. The much lesser option was to launch in the marina and try to catch some fish there before going out on the main lake in search of big smallmouth, something I'd never had the option of doing because the wind is always a huge factor on that lake but it wasn't supposed to be terrible on tournament day. I decided to prefish the creek since it would be the fastest option in drive time and way less water to explore. The water was all the way up to 92*, small shad flicked everywhere, and other than the occasional carp rolling on the surface, it just seemed dead. In the 2 hours I had, I caught 5 small bass, the biggest just over 14" and none doing what I wanted to do. I was afraid the dropping water would make the creek bite difficult, and it was pretty obvious it had, so I knew I was probably better going in blind to the main lake/marina bite as much as I wanted to be a river rat. The day actually went pretty decent in terms of catching fish. Eldo has a reputation for being a tough lake to even get a bite on, but I caught 31 bass on tournament day. The problem was, the biggest one was only a 16.50" smallmouth. I had a couple fish eat a tube that felt bigger, but one just shook off and the other wrapped me up on a small stick and came off. My plan really worked perfectly though, I caught a quick limit in the morning off the floating break water docks on a bladed jig and urchin, then went out on the lake and slowly culled up on a tube and whopper plopper, I just never got the real kicker that I needed. About 20 minutes before lines out, I was scanning around outside the marina on an area I knew there was some big concrete blocks that I'd caught several smallmouth off of the last time we were on the lake. They had been above water then, they were submerged completely now. I found one and saw a big fish disappear behind it. Pitched my tube and just a couple hops got it thumped. It was heavy and felt right, but in the end, I was disappointed. I didn't think much of my day, knew I didn't win because I hadn't ever caught up to the guy in first but I did get to second at one point, but there was several zeros on the board that I knew weren't zeros. I was hoping maybe I'd hold onto a top 5 finish. I was really shocked when they said I'd gotten third, and even more shocked when they read my total inches and I was pretty sure I didn't have that much? But maybe I did my math wrong. Well when I got home, I looked at my fish and it didn't take long to realize, there had been a mistake. Anyone who has tried to measure a smallmouth knows how difficult they can be. Well my 16.50" smallie wouldn't cooperate, and I had one picture of it at 16.50 and one at 16.25. The first time I submitted it, I submitted the wrong picture when it was 16.25 but put that it was 16.50. The guy that was checking submissions messaged me and asked if I had a picture of it going 16.50, so I submitted the right picture. The issue was, he never deleted the first submission, so I had the same fish on my score twice, which gave me 2 extra inches on my total, bumping me from the 76" I thought I had, up to 78", jumping the guy ahead of me (who ironically enough, was the brother of the guy scoring fish that made the mistake). So I messaged both of them that there was a mistake in the scoring that I should have been in 4th and Tony should have got 3rd. Still got into the last money spot, no plaque for 4th unfortunately, but I'm not taking something from someone when I didn't earn it.

I've seen several baits that I'm excited about, and not just urchins, although there are some of those in the mix. I know they're goofy looking, but they sure do catch bass and I wouldn't hate them being easier to get or having more options. The Crush City version looks really nice. Strike King has a finesse/BFS glide that shimmys on the fall that looks like it would be fun. Big Bite Baits has a couple new plastics that I like the looks of. It's more exciting than last year when everyone was introducing their scoping minnows.

Just shows that the people who say a bad day fishing is better than a good day at work, haven't ever really had a bad day of fishing. It's super frustrating when you're looking forward to it being a good time and then it's like nothing can go right, at least I expect work to suck. Sorry your day didn't go as planned.

We all have so much invested in this pastime, and unfortunately, there’s people out there who have no problem taking it if giving a chance. The Vosker VKX security cam can help protect your investments. I have one that is watching the back patio where I park the kayaks when I park them outside. It also watches the lower, sliding glass door, part of my back yard, and a person would have to be in the camera to access the back door into my garage. Easy to set up and use, it’s a great little extra insurance to protect your property.

That's where I'm getting mine also and they've been working fine for me. I haven't used any of the "better", ones, so I have nothing to compare them to, but they're catching fish really well for me.

I pretty much exclusively use an Owner Cover Shot 1/0 hook to an 1/8-1/4 teardrop tungsten DS weight.