EddieRay

This is an interesting topic. I'm all for doing all I can to protect the waterways that I love and use so I understand the idea of foregoing the use of felt. I am of the opinion that I would rather err on the side of protecting our waterways; however, it does raise the question of how far can this go before it is impractical. How many of us still use lead sinkers or jigs that we break off in our lakes and streams? I know I still use them though I use other types of sinkers as well. How much of this lead does it take to pollute a huge waterway or pollute fish that are in it? I'm not sure. I know it is almost an apples and oranges comparison because a few spores can multiply into billions, trillions, etc. while lead is an inanimate element. I don't have the answers but it's just food for thought.

Missouri is playing solid team football. I don't think anything describes them better than Coach Pinkel's statement that they have no great players but a whole lot of good ones. Every year the defense has been a weak spot for us while we had offensive stars with huge stats. This year Missouri has a decent defense, a decent offensive line, and they play solid football all around. If they keep their cool and play mistake-free in Lincoln I think they can win. But they have let us down before so we'll just have to wait and see.

I tend to always have a rod rigged with a jig and craw on my deck as I'm sure some of you do as well. Over the past year I have been using the Rage Tail Craws in Summer Craw, Bama Craw, and Green Pumpkin colors. These craws have the most wicked action in the pincers. In the lakes I fish, the bass really love them. I usually crawl them along the bottom very slowly with the occasional hop and the pincers wiggle enticingly with any movement whatsoever. They aren't bad as a swimming jig trailer either. For my jigs I buy from a fellow in St Louis whose moniker on most forums is GMAN. GMAN's jigs provide high quality for an excellent price. I like the wide-gaps with the wire ties but he has everything you can imagine in a jig, including custom jigs if you are so inclined. These jigs run the gamut from finesse to one ounce standard jigheads and one and a half ounce football head jigs. If you want to check them out this is the website: http://www.siebertoutdoors.com/. I'd like to hear from others out there regarding your favorite jigs and trailers. It's always good to keep an open mind to something new that may help me catch more and bigger fish.

Seaguar is my favorite at this time. Though it tests in the middle of the pack for stretch it is very soft and manageable compared to others. Bass Pro XPS rates pretty well as well. Tackletour.com did a fluorocarbon shootout among a number of lines back in 2007 which might be interesting to some of you. See the link below. http://www.tackletour.com/reviewfluorocarbon2.html

My home water would be Smithville Lake north of Kansas City but I fish a number of other lakes near my home as well.

Hello. My name is Ed and I'm a new member from Kansas City. Most of the time I fish for largemouth bass, and up here, there aren't any smallmouth bass to speak of. However, I have been doing some reading and I am interested in fishing some of our Missouri streams and rivers for smallmouths, especially the Gasconade. This forum appears to have a lot of information about these Ozark tributaries so I hope to learn a lot from those of you who frequent these streams. I fish for crappie and members of the white bass/striper family as well. My home lake is Smithville Lake, a 7150 acre reservoir just north of Kansas City, but I fish Truman a bit as well. In addition, I fish a number of smaller MDC lakes and occasionally hit Stockton too. Most of my fishing experience has been on lakes using anything from a jon boat to a bassboat.