Ham

I think I remember hearing the lower unit wasn't real durable. You planning on a lake boat or a river boat.? Prop eats a rock and lower unit may go to pieces. IFI am remembering correctly a forum member had ozone and a single rock turned his lower unit gears into confetti. He does his own work and the parts were more expensive than finding another used motor.

I was. They bit. It was COLD. I survived.

Oh my goodness where to begin? Look at the largemouth bass photo ; see that jighead above the fish"s eye? that crappy little jighead with a non descript chunk of worm on it has changed my fishing if not my life. Basically a Finesse plastic on 1/16 oz head with a #2 hook. I thow mine with light action spinning on 6-8 pound nano with a 6-8 pounder leader. My basic retrieve is to throw it to a liking looking spot. deadstick for a little bit. If no bite, I might shake it in place or lift - swing - deadstick again. It's only slow until you catch fish on 5 casts in a row. This past spring it was stupid good. It looks dumb, but fish freaking eat it early and often. A weeks worth of reading on the Ned can be found using the search function.

. Keeper but released

. Pretty Spot

That's a fantastic photo! The trip was worth it for that alone.

I hemmed and hawed, but finally decided the White River Zig Jig deal was not doable in the wind we had.I needed to be back in town for 1730 and would rather have fished the White. So, I got a little bit of a late start, but I finally manned up and made it on the water about 0915. Wind was awful and the wind chill was nasty cold. I had a fair amount of clothing on, but more would have been better. I launched at Pontiac knowing the ramp was protected from a north wind. Water temps were int he 59-60' Range. Water was beautiful in most areas. It picked up a little stain in some of the shallower wind blown areas as I ran up towards Theodosia. Wind was really bad to start and gradually got to just painfully annoying. I broke out the drift sock on multiple occassions. Handy, but the drift sock requires some effort as well. I tried slinging a blade on a proven main lake point. No hits, no looks, and no follows. I did get frozen hands out of the deal. I headed to a more protected area to get feeling back into my hands. Ned to the rescue. I quickly caught a largie, a smallie, and a chunky short LMB. My first fish was a pretty decent LMB that would have scared 3 lbs. The smallie was a chunk,, but not a "keeper". Feeling much better about things, I eased around and got a keeper spot on the Ned in my next little area. I tried the blade in another wind blown area with big chunk rock and again. No looks, no strikes, and no follows. Not good. I ran up Spring Creek into a little finger. And finally got some action on the blade. I caught three bass and lost another one I had hooked. I also got absolutely lit up and missed that fish clean. But I also missed a hard hit on the Ned and lost a real nice Spot that I had on the Ned. So with the sun starting to break out and having more Ned areas than Blade areas. I starting running my Ned pattern and I would pick up the blade and sling it when it looked right. I got a lot more fish on the Ned and never another look on the blade. Maybe, I just have commitment issues, but I want to catch fish and not freeze to death. If I had gotten more bites on the blade, I would have been willing to suffer the elements. As it was , I was pretty cold all day long. I ended up with 21 bass and one Green Sunfish. I had a pile of keeper spots, several keeper LMB, and a handful of chunky smallies. No keeper size SMB. I used various colors on the Ned. I'm not married to any color. I pick based on water color and available light. I've caught fish on all 13 colors I tote. Yesterday, I used four colors. Fish were in general much shallower than I expected and all the fish felt warm to the touch Lol. I love my BassCat. She ate those White caps like a fat kid eating doughnuts. No problems at all. Despite the wind, I stayed dry. I might be getting used to running this boat.

More than any Brown trout I've ever caught. A bunch! 8-10 sounds right

Kept or released?. That's a fat pig either way.

Wind > 10 MPH bums me out with the Zig Jig. It's doable, but it bums me out. >15 mph and I don't jig fish.

Bring it LRF. I'll be fishing Tuesday.

That's a nice fish to be sure.

Gar do feed heavily on crappie. I've seen big gar swimming with keeper crappie sideways in their mouth. I don't worry about gar and bass very much, but I do worry about throwing a Megabass when there are lots of gar around. Crappie populations are very cyclic and are somewhat like rabbits. As many as 50% of the total crappie population leave the system every year. And to that wildly flucuating success with the spawn and you can see how numbers go up and down.

I've got a couple of broken Megabass that I might try to covert into spy baits

Glad to hear that you've been getting after them. My schedule has not been favorable with hte weather of late. I'm due to get screwed with by the weather my next day off as well, but I'm planning on going anyway. Thank You for the information.

Hey Super Dave is back! Actually used it on a stream in a COLD water situation recently. I had not really expected it to work nearly as well as it did. It outperformed a skirted jig and trailer that would have been the traditional choice. I alternated between the Ned and the Zig Jig. I felt like we did really well. I've been using the Ned in tandem with a tube the LITTLE bit I have been on the lake. Both got bit well.

I need to fish more.

Jackson!

Hey Pete, I'm 6'5" and I don't do SIK. I use sit on top yaks. and FWIW, the TM would make almost no difference in my opinion of using Pond Barge on the White River.

I'd really suggest renting a yak. It would be managable IF you really paid attention AND you had a managable water level like 1000-2000 CFS, but I wouldn't do it.

Y2k's with a zebra midge or prince nymph behnd it. Or a Zig Jig on spinning rod.

How much did the Crooked Creek and the Buffalo come up? The lower river might be dingy if those streams got a significant rise. I wish I was off, but I'll be working Friday thru Monday. PM me if I can help y'all

I rerally enjoy the natural sights and sounds that signal the seasonal changes. I enjoyed hearing the geese flying overhead last night also. I really look forward to hearing the frog songs of spring though.

No interest at all.

NIce fish man.