Stoneroller

I don't like to worm fish frankly. i'm not a huge fan of soft plastics for river smallmouths. one, I have a hard time slowing down that much and dragging around stuff. secondly, I really do not like to take the chance on deep hooking a fish, which has a higher chance with plastic, especially texas or carolina rigged. If I do drop plastics its on a stand up/shakey head jig, that way i'm alway in contact with the bait and have a better feel of when it picks up the plastic. the jig head also tends to make them not want to swallow it as much. I wonder if a circle hook would work? i don't see why not as smallmouth tend to pick up the prey item and slowly swim off with it. I might have to give that a try this year...

http://ilovemurphy.com/2012/04/02/nc-state-record-striped-bass-fish-caught-on-lake-hiwassee-in-murphy-nc/ It’s official! The North Carolina state record has just been broken! Tyler Shields of Murphy NC just caught a 66.1 pound striped bass! It’s a HUGE fish at 47.5 inches long and a 35 inch girth. It was caught using 10 lb. test line with a Zoom worm! It’s quite an amazing story of a record caught right here on Lake Hiwassee. What’s even neater is the previous state record was set in 1991 with a 54.2 lb. fish also on Lake Hiwassee. the picture of the fish is with the link, what a MONSTER!!!!

you can get a watertite fitting that you can put on the vertical surface near the sonar, then just run your cables inside the hull and have the transducer cable come back out. I'll see If I can scrounge up a picture of how mine is set up.

there are always 'stories' from unverifiable sources that claim 'catfish big enough to eat a person'. I'm not saying their aren't 'large' catfish in lakes, but it's extremely unlikely that they are large enough to consume a human. Look at the 130lb blue cat that was caught in the Missouri river last summer. no way that thing could have eaten even a small child. (a newborn, maybe) let alone a full grown adult. the 'catfish' that eat people tend to end up being a mixture of alcohol and poor judgement.

http://www.wired2fish.com/State-Record-Smallmouth-Bass-Caught-in-Oklahoma-WhatsUp6583 Last week it was the largemouth record, this week it's the smallmouth....

check out the ugly stick 'lite' models. they are a bit more sensitive and lighter than the normal ugly sticks and they have the metal guide inserts instead of the big fat oxide ones.

hello, my name is mike, and i'm a gear whore. on the lake I have close to 70lbs of tackle, rods, sonar, etc on my kayak. on the river I trim that down to around 50lbs. don't really need any norman dd-20's on the meramec...d I don't like wishing I had brought something to try and not having it. been there, done that. when I run out of room, I stop loading plano boxes on the yak. I always throw a crawfish imitation crankbait, a surface minnow bait, some kind of soft plastic on a stand up jig head and a beetle spin. NEVER under estimate the power of the beetle spin.

http://www.wired2fish.com/Delaware-Record-Largemouth-Bass-Caught-WhatsUp6559 You don't have to kill a fish to verify a record. I also saw that Oklahoma has a new record largemouth too. http://www.wired2fish.com/WhatsUp.aspx?ArticleID=6558

it will destroy that fishery for a few years.

Kelty makes good gear for the price. and considering most (MOST) people with a north face or patagonia jacket think 'outdoors' is when they walk to their SUV... I don't really see the point in overpaying for the top priced gear. going to everest or just independtly wealthy? sure. otherwise get the best you can afford, but always look for deals first. campmor.com might have some too. Sierra trading post is my other 'go to' place. Just pay attention if it's OVERSTOCK or FACTORY 2ND'S.. you may not want the later in a tent. also NEVER trust 'factory sealed seams'. Take the time to seal them yourself with the proper sealant for the type of tent material your tent is fabricated from. There IS a specific sealant for each of the main types of material.

there are tandem kayaks too. we call them divorce boats. I really appreciated having SiuSaluki floating with me today with his canoe on our Castor River Stream Team cleanup. I needed his big barge to haul the bike frame, 100lbs of aluminum (including 3 pristine pull tab busch cans, should have sold those on ebay), and a little tykes slide.

gonna be a kayak/canoe tournament this season!! MSA, Alpine Shop, RL Johnson Custom Rods, Creature Catcher Lures and Huzzah Valley are all sponsors. Look for a post in the proper forum early this week!!! anyone wishing to be a sponsor, feel free to contact me and we can set something up!!

I prefer lower priced rods for river fishing. I'm not going to bat an eye if a $30 lighting rod or ugly stick gets broken. i'd be pretty upset and out some $ if one of my $100+ rods broke. if you are independtly wealthy like the st croix, fenwick, and G.Loomis fanboys, then dropping $500 on a rod makes sense (I guess) but for those of us not in the 1%, 'budget' rods are more practical. I don't buy rods that cost more than $100. break a $500 rod and you'll know why. my ugly sticks catch more fish than any of my $100 rods, because I'm not afraid to use them, they are more durable , they flat catch fish without question and never break. they aren't the most sensitive, but you don't need that kind of thing with a crankbait/topwater rod. i'd cringe to catch a muskie or hybrid bass on my carbonlite rods, but the ugly stick is the first rod I pick up when I'm going after tackle busting fish. berkley makes a couple of really nice, low priced rods. the Amped series makes great grub/tube/shakeyhead rods. they have a nice parabolic bend, but are really sensative and are around $30. The Lightning Rod series (not the shock series which are great crankbait/jerkbait rods) make for great, inexpensive and suprisingly sensative rods. I have the 5'6" ML 2 pc model and I've caught everything from 20 inch channel cats to rockbass on it and it's never failed me. I think BPS dropped the price on the redesigned model this year to under $25, that's one hell of a deal for a great rod. if you are only targeting smallmouth, you won't need a rod more than medium wt. the action depends on the type of lures. i use my ugly sticks for cranks and topwater and my Amped rod for plastics. The lightning rod I usually throw a beetle spin or small crankbait with. I don't fish with UL for a couple of reasons the foremost of which is the health of the fish. sure it's a fun fight, but it's not cool to break off fish with hooks stuck in them or to play a fish to exhaustion so it ends up dying after you release it. There's nothing sporting or macho in killing a fish to pump up your ego. length is going to depend if you are fishing from a watercraft or not. with a kayak, you want your rod long enough so that you can easily reach the tip around the front of your yak if the fish swims under your boat to the other side. good luck with that in a canoe. for me 6 foot is the minimum. my 5'6" rod requires me to lean forward to clear the bow. also a longer rod casts farther, but isn't as accurate. 6' to 6'6" would be the lengths I would look at but you might find a longer or shorter rod to be more practical for your situation.

the fun of using proper line is twofold, 1. you don't risk breaking off line on a trophy fish and dooming it to death with a face full or gut full of hooks 2. you don't exhaust the fish fighting it on light line so that it cannot recover and eventually suffocates. hook it, land it, return it to the water as quickly as possible. it's a race against death and the more time the fish spends on the hook and/or out of the water the more of a chance of it dying.

OUTSTANDING!!!!

gonna be there next week. I'll confirm the presence of reptiles and the species of said creatures.

yep, I will decide who is fit to reproduce from now on, as clearly, and I'll use the above posts as evidence, too many have been allowed to needlessly produce offspring. If you don't see a problem with 6 billion humans, you aren't seeing the big picture. There would be plenty of room for all kinds of wildlife if there wasn't a wal marx or McHawgtroughs on every corner to serve the throngs of mindless drones who insist on having 3 or more children. congress passes it and MDC will bend right over and execute it. If MDC were against this, it wouldn't even make it to comittee. and ness, nice way to be completely calloused and mock the holocaust. cool bro. clearly you don't bother to excercise your own signature. that's either the definition of irony or hipocrasy, maybe both in this case.

Shame on MDC!!! SHAME!!! "Conservation" Dept. Laughable mt lions might eat their precious elk that they insist on reintroducing, even though elk aren't making any attempt to do so on their own, but mt lions are. We need to be thinning the 6 billion humans infesting this planet.

there are a few. starting with limpness, which can be an issue at times, especially with something like a jerkbait where the lure can foul on the line because the line is so limp. Most braid floats, suffix 832 and spiderwire's fluorobraid both sink due to gore fiber being woven into them. Braids allows hooks to penetrate them. this is a real mess as the lure and line have to be cut off and retied. in windy conditions that can really suck. Braid vibrates and resonates when being retrieved. this scares off some fish. bass don't seem to care so much, but I frequently see bluegill and other sunfish picking at the line. Which brings up braid visibility, braid isn't the least bit stealthy in the visibility arena Braid breaks at around twice it's listed test strength. if you float, this can be a real issue if a lure or line gets hung up in a swift area. a fluoro leader will allow you to break off if you get hung without being tethered into a bad situation. cost, braid typically runs $20 or more for 150 yards, similar to fluorocarbon. both about 4 times what mono costs. but lets talk benefits: longevity braid will easily last 2 seasons, and up to 4 if you reverse your line on your reels after the first 2 and use the other end. braid has smaller diameter than comparable mono or fluorocarbon braid is STRONG!! it can also be used to saw off an appendage in an emergency situation, don't grab it and pull on it like you would mono or you'll have a nasty cut braid usually floats, similar to mono, which in certain situations is good braid is limp, which is great on stuff like jerkbaits (as long as you use a fluorocarbon leader) as it lets the bait react more on the slack retrieve (it's one of those catch 22 situations with the limpness and jerkbaits, but the leader solves the issue due to the stiffness of the fluoro) The line you should probably be looking at for trout fishing is Fluorocarbon. it's abrasion resistant. casts about the same as mono. it sinks. it's virtually invisible underwater. it's about the same cost as braid and will usually last a couple of seasons as long as you don't leave it in the sun or a hot car. (mono is garbage after one season, it becomes brittle and shatters. fluoro will too if left exposed to high temps, as inside a car in the summer) and fluoro has a smaller diameter than mono of the same test. Because it's invisible you can use higher pound test and the fish still can't see it. For the past year i've been using Berkely Nanofil, which is a gel spun "braid", not a weave like most braids. It's amazing line on a spinning reel as it completely ignores line twist. The one fault I see with Nanofil is that it's not as abrasion resistant as other braids, but a short fluorocarbon leader would solve that issue quickly.

i'm gonna roll one up and enjoy the show...

I used to swear by fluorocarbon no bigger than 8lb test for clear ozark streams/rivers. for the past few years i've taken my setups with 20lb braid and I don't see any noticable difference in the number or quality of smallmouth I catch. I do however see a difference in the number and quality of google eye and longear sunfish that I catch. Far fewer with braid, but the ones (google eye/longear) I do catch tend to be larger. Last year I tried the new Berkely Nanofil, I only use spinning reels, and I am very impressed with it. The one downside is that it doesn't seem to be super abrasion resistant, but it's not terrible. It is very slick, which means a double wrap on the palomar knot, but hooks rarely get stuck in it like they do with a woven braid. This year i'm playing around with fluoro leader some of my rods to see if that really makes any difference. I can tell you that a fluoro leader on braid definately helps with abrasion resistance and with lure action especially jerkbaits when limp braid tends to get caught on the lure hooks where as a fluoro (or mono) leader is stiff enough to avoid that typically. back in the day I only used 8lbXL, then Trilene sensation, then Vanish, now it's BPS XPS signature (the vast majority of pros use this) or Seaguar AbrazX.

thought you were talking abou this... best caption, go.

fml, I lose! WOW Marty and Sixstring both with some freaking MONSTERS!!! did you guys weigh those fish? Missouri state records are 5lbs on black crapppie and 4lbs 9oz on white crappie. Esox, I like the artistic value of your picture, minus judging for shear size. I think yours is the best photograph.

me, st peters, abandoned farm pond in southern illinois, circa 1997?