Stoneroller

1. try a different knot the uni to uni is easy and very very strong when tied properly 2 lube! too many people put a tiny bit of spit on the line and then... 3. properly tightening the knot. ...They jerk the lines tight as fast and as hard as they can. these 3 things tend to be the keys to knot failure. (besides old, brittle line) so try a different knot, make sure you slowly cinch the knot down while it is immersed in spit in your mouth. when you pull it out, it should be covered in spit, you can remove drippy excess to finish the knot but the line needs to be completely soaked throughout the length of line that passes through or forms the knot. (especially important for braid to mono or braid to fluoro connections with conventional gear) Many times braid will cut mono or fluoro if it's not lubricated enough of drawn tight too quickly. The knot also needs to be formed properly. the loops that form the knot should lie next to another, not over the top of one another. sometimes this can be difficult especially with certain knots. (some knots you won't have this issue)

LOVE IT, ONESHOT!!

yes, if a coyote comes along, anything that can't escape from it, is getting eaten, but isn't grandma's ankle biter, chained helplessly in the yard on a daily/nightly basis the easiest meal of all? yet nobody has to stand out in the yard and fend off the attacking hordes of coyotes. I'm not saying they don't eat an occasional bird, but think about that for a minute. coyote is a dog, in what ecosystem are dogs major predators of birds that can fly? If quails had the habitat they need, there would be so many of them, coyotes could feast on them all day and not hurt the population. Humans are what screw up the natural process of things, usually by destroying something.

length/weight conversions are based on extrapolation of qualitative and quantitative data analysis. What does that mean? They measured a whole bunch of fish, then put those measurements on a graph. the majority of fish at a given length fall around a certain weight. So that is the 'average' weight for that class. (I say average because it could be the 'mean' I don't recall which and it might actually depend on the actual conversion table in use.) There are many, many variables that effect the actual weight of any given fish. an average 23.5 inch bass would be around 7.75lbs based on the table you were looking at. and yeah, he would have gotten shorted had he simply converted. the better tables use length and girth measurements to determine weight. still not as accurate as a certified scale, but certainly better than just length.

there are two classifications for records 1. for pole and line method and 2. for 'alternative' methods including trot lines, jugs, limb lines, snagging, gigging. This fish is a record in catagory 2. note that the fish must still be taken by a LEGAL method for that species of fish. ie gigging or snagging a largemouth will get you a fine, not a record.

yes, notice the previous record 24" 8lbs 2.2oz and the new record 23.5" 9lbs 2oz. half an inch smaller, but a full pound heavier...

not worth is. save your money. I've yet to get any 'test' gear from them that wasn't a package of hooks or something equally worthless. The lifetime members, ie the suckers, are the ones that get the 'good' products to test. Besides the bass technique book they sent me, that I had to pay for, on top of the membership fees, I feel like I wasted my money.

Caught on a trotline (NOT a TROUTLINE, say it correctly!) and it was released back into the lake to grow bigger. GREAT JOB DYLAN!!! (and he has a valid fishing license)

http://mdc.mo.gov/newsroom/little-luck-nabs-new-state-largemouth-bass-record PERRY, Mo – A little luck nabbed a record size largemouth bass for 20-year-old Dylan Gilmore of Perry. Gilmore and his friend, Austin Lake, had set their trotline on April 27 using goldfish as bait, hoping to catch some catfish at Ka-Tonka Lake, located in Ka-Tonka Game Preserve and Sporting Clays Club in Ralls County. When they returned the next day to check their line, Gilmore realized they had caught something. When pulling the line to their boat, what he assumed was a catfish instead turned into something a little more. “We knew something was on there,” Gilmore said. “I reached down and grabbed the fish and thought 'oh my gosh, this thing is huge.' It felt like a dream at first. I have never seen a bass that big in person.” Gilmore was not quite sure what to do with the large fish, so he put it in a cooler with aerated water and headed to the Hobby Hut, a bait and tackle store, on Highway 19 in Perry. “I shop at the Hobby Hut and figured they would know what to do with such a large fish,” Gilmore said. While at the store, Gilmore had the fish weighed. The scale read 9 pounds, 8 ounces. “Once I knew how much it weighed, I looked up the record online,” Gilmore said. “I found the web page on the Missouri Department of Conservation’s (MDC) website. At first, I didn’t think I had broken the record, but that’s when I saw the line for alternative methods.” The owner of the store allowed Gilmore to keep his fish in a tank until he could contact MDC. On May 1, Gilmore phoned Fisheries Management Biologist Ross Dames and told him about his fish. Dames met Gilmore at the Hobby Hut to get an official weight on the stores’ certified scale. At that point, Gilmore’s fish weighed in at 9 pounds, 2 ounces and was 23.5 inches long; big enough to nab him a new state largemouth bass record for alternative methods. “When I saw I officially had the record, I was pretty excited,” Gilmore said. “But it also made me think I should have called the Conservation Department sooner!” Missouri’s previous state record, which stood for 10 years, was an 8-pound, 2.2-ounce, 24-inch fish caught via trotline, using goldfish bait in Country Boy Estate Lake in Boone County on Dec. 16, 2002. The largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) is a species of black bass in the sunfish family native to North America. Largemouth bass are very aggressive fish and will strike at nearly anything they consider alive. Average size is 3 to 10 pounds, though the fish can reach as much as 20 pounds and can live for 10 to 15 years. Largemouth bass thrive in warm, moderately clear waters with little or no current. They can be found all over Missouri in all types of water including lakes, artificial impoundments of all sizes, permanent pools of streams, and quiet backwaters of large rivers. The fish are most active at dawn and dusk. Gilmore was not sure what to do with his trophy fish. The owner of the Ka-Tonka club told Gilmore he could always release the fish and let it get bigger. Gilmore thought that was a good idea. “I took a picture of me holding the fish and really, that satisfied me. So I turned it loose,” Gilmore said. “It made me happy to release it and it made the owner of Ka-Tonka Lake happy too. I hope someday to meet it again, and it will be even bigger. Then, maybe I’ll get a new record.” It is still sinking in for Gilmore that he is now a record holder in Missouri. “It’s pretty exciting, something I know I can always have and be able to tell my son or grandson about,” Gilmore said. “I don’t know how long I will keep the record, but that doesn’t really matter. No matter what, I have the certificate that shows I held the record at one time, something I can always look back on.”

the biggest reason for the decline in quails is the lack of transition areas along wooded tracts near open fields. farmers either plow right to the treeline or mow the grasses that grow along the edge of the fields and this is prime quail habitat. if you want quail. let native grasses grow around and through open fields. they need the tall grasses for saftey, food, and shelter. Habitat destruction is the #1 reason for the lower quail population, make them happy, they'll be back in force. btw coyotes are not a major predator of quails. racoons eat far more quail eggs and babies than coyotes ever will. Think about it, the effort a coyote would spend trying to catch a quail is dispproportionate to the amount of energy it's going to get from a bite sized bird. Much easier for a coyote to find and eat human garbage, a rabbit, or a dead animal. Killing other animals in the thought that you are going to improve habitat for a different animal is a flawed, at best, option. The only way that would be effective is if you were shooting humans.

nice report, great job, sounds like it was a fun day.

paul you need one of these camera mounts now. http://www.greenfishmovement.com/Scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=23 and if you enter the Missouri Smallmouth Challenge Tourney, I can give you a 20% discount code. also I have some videos of coosa mods that I did here: ok maybe it's just the anchor trolley in this video. i'll have to post the others.

I find it interesting how the smaller fish will sometimes be almost black while the larger fish will be 'normal' coloration. but then you'll catch 2 fish the same size, from the same riffle, in the same spot and one is almost black and the other is 'normal'. and it's not a melanism issue either, more of a mood thing I'd guess.

the really glaring thing isn't the lack of homeruns. it's his terrible batting average. The Cards have pitchers with better numbers than pooholes. He was falling apart his last season here and moveing to anaheim, where good players go to end their careers, ask bobby abreu and torii hunter how that move is working out for them (abreu isn't even in baseball anymore) btw pooholes' locker is between hunter and abreu... fitting isn't it? Greed has a way of destroying people. Sad thing is, he's not making more money out there. Higher tax rates along with performance bases pay is making his move look really stupid, and his numbers support that observation.

wrench makes a good point. sometimes scent 'works' not because the scent attracts the fish but because it helps to negate, mask, or remove possible negative stimuli that the bass may sense.

scientific data says that fish attractants work, not only on soft plastics but on hard baits too. don't be afraid to put it on a crankbait or the blades of a spinnerbait. This is why I like the stick style scents, although your lures will start to stick together in the tackle boxes. InFisherman recently had an article on this and pointed out that lure companies don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year researching things like attractants if they didn't work. They also pointed out that you aren't shark fishing with chum, so 'working' is relative to the situation. Sometimes fish will hit anything that moves or looks edible, other times they are picky and can be picky as to scent. InFisherman noted that DEET is the #1 fish repellant. get even a fraction on your lure and it's effectively useless for at least 1 hr. Active ingredients in sunscreen were also tops of the fish repellants. so put that stuff on well before you get to the ramp/launch/etc. and wash your hands for at least 60 seconds, with soap and warm water after applying that bug spray or sunscreen. They also stated that oil and gasoline appeared to have no effect on a fishes' willingness to hit or hold onto a lure.

that is a young sassafras shrub/tree. they usually have 3 different leaves. one that looks like a mitten, one that looks like the mitten with the thumb gone and one that has 3 lobes (think a thumb on each side of the mitten) the 3 different leaves are the tale tell sign of sassafras. yours only has the mitten looking leaves and the single lobe leaves. the 3 lobe ones come out as the shrub/tree matures.

I think the numbers on the MDC's survey of bait shops were telling. I can't recall exactly what the data was, but I do remember that crayfish sales were extremely low for every bait shop surveyed, something like less than 1% of their total sales. So a ban, which is done to maintain or improve the integrity of our wildlife is definately not putting anyone out of business. The introduction of invasive species which could crash the ecosystem on the other hand will. MDC wouldn't know a knee jerk reaction if they were hit with a reflex hammer.

seperating the wheat from the chaff, working as intended. =)

keeleazy will send you a sample of the 2 inch stock. it's about an 8 inch long piece so i used it at the point of most contact on my keel then covered it with the 3 inch stock for extra protection. They say you can use a hair dryer to take it off and reposition it once its on, but it's on pretty good and i'm not sure how well that would work out. I used a laminate roller to roll the keeleazy on. it's flexible unlike the epoxy, easy to work with and store and has an infinite working time. It isn't bullet proof though, but the two layer system makes it easy to see when you might need to replace it. I'm getting more and doing the underside of my coosa.

hammerheads don't eat very much, just a leg or an arm.

yes i've used the keeleazy. I like to put a 2 inch strip in the heavy wear areas and a 3 inch strip over the top of it for the length of the hull or the keel. I don't think you'd need to or it would be very practical to cover the length of your canoe.

Just in luck. KeelEazy makes a product that is much easier to apply and use than epoxy based systems. www.keeleazy.com they also have a facebook page, but it needs some 'likes'...

It's not the internet that is the free-for-all. It's the thinking of some people in society that things that don't belong to them are theirs to take, that's the free-for-all. Horse thieves should be shot, then hung from the neck until dead. I should add that most everyone innocently reposts pictures they find that they like or think are funny or interesting. That in and of it's self doesn't neccessarily fall into copyright infringement. But there are throngs of people who do steal images, claim they are their own, and even make money off of them. Those are the horse thieves, unfortunately it's really difficult to track the millions out there.

shelter dog is the way to go