Ham

I have a daughter named Chloe and we had a BIG St Bernard named Ruby. She was a 165 lb sweetheart.

That would be great to see. I hope they fished some after shooting the film.

The hunting dogs are fantastic , but I love Sammy and Sadie. Ness who's the little guy in the flower pot?

Thanks Man

WOW DC, I haven't had those issues. I'm fishing 6lb, 8lb, and 10 lb Nanofil depending on my application. I only fish it on spinning. I can't remember ever breaking it, but I'm still in my first year of use. I'd be curious about what lb Nanofil you were using and how similar our knots were. the Alberto isn't much different from an Albright if different at all.

I lost a lot of big bass because they would bury in the slop and you couldn't move them. the braid cuts through the slop and you can maintain a tight line.

Nothing works well in the weather conditions you described. That weaher just sucks. I do tie direct with braid on my frogs and a rigs. I won't fish a frog without braid.

i WANT a leader for a varity of reasons 1) I want a weak spot that will break WHEN I need it to break. My uni to uni or Alberto knots are not failing on me, but if I need to make a dead pull to break off a lure I can not reach, I can do so. 2) It is a lot more economical to use a leader to re-tie or change lures than it is to use braid or nanofil for these knots. Once a day maybe twice at worse, I'll use a foot of Nanofil or so putting on a new section of leader. 3) I'm more comfortable tying with mono than I am braid. I want a loop knot for all my jigs. I've got a good quick to tie and all day strong loop knot that works with mono. 4) Some fish are line shy and some are not. This runs more by species than by individual fish, but one less thing to worry about. Braid and Nanofil are a lot more expensive out the gate, but you can make them a lot more cost effective if you use them wisely. I've had good ideas shared with me from several different sources and I've kinda of mixed and matched those ideas. You need to get multiple reel fills from the 150 yard spool. There is minimal benefit from having your entire reel full with braid or nanofil IF you're fishing freshwater. I know there might be a couple exceptions to this, but for the HUGE majority of us, 50 yards or of the braid or nanofil is all you'll need. This should last you quite a while. I've been fishing one of my setups with Nanofil from last August and it's still in great shape. Here's what I do with Nanofil, fill your reel to whereever you normally consider full with mono. This is going to be your backing. set your rod in place with the bail open and hand walk the line 50-75 yards out. Put the line down and walk back to your rod. cut the mono at the rod tip. discard of this extra line properly. Then tie on your Nanoil with an alberto or a unit to uni to the mono at te rod tip. walk the spool of nano back out to the 50-75 yard spot you were at earlier. Cut the Nanofil at the spool. walk back to your reel and wind the Nanofil up on your reel. You're good to go witht he nanofil being at a proper level and a sufficient and efficent amount used. I do the same procedure with braid, but I usually don't have the finished level be as full of line on a braid reel vs a nanofil reel.

I think that you're better off putting a little less line than normal on your spinning reel when you are using braid. This helps reduce the number of times loose line would go flying off the reel and knotting itself. That is what happened to me. I don't remember wind knots per se. I also had to learn to NOT continue to reel after I set the hook. When I would be trying to wind up slack when the loose line flew back at me on a missed hookset, the line would often tie a knot on the rod tip or around another guide which sucked with my old eyes. The decreased amount of lne on the reel is likely part of what had me throwing a lot harder and coming up a lot shorter than I wanted on many casts. To be fair, if you take your time, you can usually get a braid floobey out. Work it down to just a little bit and slowly pull the remaining twist knot out. Sometimes this failed and the braid would break at which point you can tie a uni to uni and join it back together. I also eventually realised IF the braid ever wound on the skirted base of the spool rather than the proper area of the spool, you're going to throw a floobey almost every time. When you see the line in the wrong place, pull the line off by hand and wind it back on the spool correctly BEFORE you make you next cast. Much better outcomes. Nanofil throws almost no floobeys or at least in my experience it almost never does BUT when it does, be very careful to work it loose. It is not slick enough to just pull thru. it will break, but then just join the two lines with an alberto or uni to uni and keep on fishing.

I was in the process of switching to mostly braid with whatever leader (fluro , co-poly, mono) when Larry Richards introduced me to Nanofil. Nanofil has the braid advantages of increased sensitivity and abrasion resistance, but throws a ton better. Nanofil seems to out throw mono. I freaking love Nanofil. I'm not sure what I'll do with the braid I have now. The Nanofil will have a much smaller diameter than mono per break strength. The 6 lb is about 2 lb mono diameter. Nanofil isn't perfect, but it's the best I've found. Braid is thinner per pound test than Nanofil. I want my leader to be just as long as it can be without being on the spinning reel. I'll tie a new piece on with an alberto knoT when I get down to about 18 inches of leader. I'm still playing around with different leader materials. I have not convinced myself that fluro offers any real advantages as the leader. I know the advantages of fluro as a main line over mono, but there really isn't enough difference between the two to matter in the 6 foot or so of leader material. I have a little of both InVizx and Berkley 100% Fluro in 10 pound that I will use up, but unless something changes, I wouldn't ever buy fluro to be my leader material. I'm using P Line or Mono in 6 lb and 8 lb for leader of that pound test. BPS Excel is a pretty acceptable mono. Catch it at a good price during the Spring Classic. I've only used 4,6,8, and 10 lb BUT they all worked just fine. I do think mono still has a place or two (topwater baits, crank baits, grubs, etc). I use either P-Line CX Premium or Silver Thread AN-40.

I really did try my best to stay focused on the crappie and tried a lot of my different crappie stuff fishing higher in the water column. I think I could have caught more trout if I was trout fishing, The crappie we caught were right down on bottom and biting very light. IF we were trout fishing, I would have switched over to a micro jig under a float later in the day when the current died down.

Great thread. I'm loving the dog photos.

I met CajunAngler today at the ramp just above Scotty's Doxk. We fished banker's hours. I had hopes we'd be able to find those crappie we've all been reading about. The weather was as forecast. The wind was persistently annoying. It affected boat control, made strike detection more difficult, and made a warmish day seem chilly. We had generation when we first got there. We got trout bites almost immediately and fairly often. They ate Zig Jigs, but it's a different deal in 15 foot of water. Lol. I have a lot to learn about trout jig fishing on Taney. We caught fish on a little bit of everything. Zig Jigs, Bobby Garland Baby Shads. Swimming Minnows, finesse crankbaits, and a little Shad Rap. We caught them down to Roark and then motored down around the corner somewhere around some small islands. We only caught a few trout down there but they were nice. We found a little pocket of largemouth bass on the break from 12-18 foot. Our trout bite died when the water that had been generated drained out. It went from a persistent bite to a almost non existent bitte. However, after trying all day to catch a crappie, we started picking up a few small crappie. Our crappie bite got much better late in the day when the current stopped. They were very small, but they were crappie and I was glad to catch them. We caught 60 fish between us. We had 6 bass, 10 crappie, 8 or so Brown trout, and the rest were Rainbows. Some of the Rainbows seemed to be very small, but a lot of them were pretty decent. All the Brown trout were between 12-15 inches. They just flat pull better than Rainbows. All in all I was very Happy with the day. I was concerned that the wind would really get in our way worst than it did. I was happy we got bites and certainly Happy with us catching 60. I really was focused on catching crappie and went thru a lot of lures trying to do that rather than focusing on catching trout. I expected to catch a few trout, but we stayed below the 65 bridge all day and I did not expect to catch that many. I expected that we might catch a bass or two. I was happy we caught 6 in a pretty defined area. Finally catching a few crappie was a nice end to the day. Gosh they were small though. We didn't have one that was even 8 inches long. I'm not discouraged by that though. We'll catch em better next time.

I made a trip today. I wrapped the worriisome reel seats with Teflon tape and it helped, but I 'm going to strip it off and try to do a little better job with it. I may still put a glob of silicone sealant behind the locking nut or some form of tape over and behind it to try to put it to bed forever.

she's not disciplined at all , but she's my dog

How far are you from Springfield Jeff?

Thanks Andy! Thanks Brett! I'll post more photos for the doubters. Lolz

this is a washed out photo of River Redhorse from White River

. If this works, it's a mess of crappie from BSL

http://i846.photobucket.com/albums/ab27/hamnerdstofish/Mobile%20Uploads/2012-11/A2D4910C-0789-4440-985D-C863156F3108_zpss8g5qtkm.jpg. We'll see Iif this works for me. Decent Largie on a 110 on BSL

It sucked. It sucked real hard. We went without power for 12 days I think. No power also means no water for us. I got really tired of hauling water. I don't know how Granny Henderson managed. So many of our trees were damaged. So much clean up work. I really, really hated it. MY wife was DONE with the idea of camoping for a long time. My wife has just recently started going camping with me again.

I'm uploading all my I phone photos to PhotoBucket now. I'll see how well I manage from there. I'm not a Luddite, but sometimes the techie stuff just annoys the crap out of me. I want it to be as easy as learning how to paddle a yak. Hang in there with me and I'll post some fishy photos.

yeah, that's what I was thinking. It can be done, but it's going to take a lot of the fun out of it.

A friend on Facebook is having a get together where a bunch of club tourney guys and general fishing fanatics fill up a local Warehouse. The idea is that you bring in your excess tackle to swap or sell. That way you can see stuff in person and make an informed decision about the product and there is NO shipping and handling to worry with. I love the idea, but I'm not driving to Indiana to participate. Maybe we could have an event like that somewhere "local". I'm sure I have extras that I could trade off or sell. I for darn sure have some fishing rods that I'd love to sell for a low price to get them out from under my feet and have someone get use out of them. It MAY be too late for this idea this year, but I wanted to see if anyone else had any interest in the idea. Heck, this may already happen around here and I just haven't heard about it yet. What do y''all think about this idea?

OK Andy I should be able to manage that from my PC. Is there an easy way to upload photos from my I phone? Being cheap, I really prefer the free apps, but IF the Tap to Talk app would let me upload photos from my I phone to the forum it might be worth it.