fishinwrench

Now that you mention it, all but ONE of my biggest Smallies have come on topwater flys as well. A club sandwich hopper or a white Sneaky Pete is a TOAD MAGNET for me. Why I always think I have to be ripping a streamer or tickling a crawdad fly is a mystery. 🤔

We caught more than enough 14 3/4 inchers to make up the difference.....But so did the other guys, I'm sure. 😅 Remember the old Woods & Waters tournament circuit? Chris and I won the very first tournament they ever put on right here in my backyard, but never fished any others because of scheduling conflicts with others.

After 2001 I got all "techy" and started keeping my logs on floppy disks. Complete with pics and links to tournament results. Now those are gone forever 😢 But wait..... Here's one where @Al Agnew's brother whooped our asses 😁 When I boat-flipped that 7.09lber I just knew we had'em beat......But then here comes Donnie with a 8.5 😖 And then Patrick with a WHAT???.... Barely shy of 9# Are you freakin' kidding me !!!!! 😅

Speaking of that.....None of my trees produced fruit this year. No acorns, walnuts, or hickory nuts on the ground at all. And only 3 lonely persimmons were dangling last week. Last year you couldn't take a step without having them underfoot.

Better just stick to kayaks and canoes, big boy 🤷‍♂️ And maybe wear a helmet 😉

It's like launching without a bilge plug.....If you're lucky you will escape excessive damage or injury, and unless you are a total dumba$$, you will ONLY DO IT ONCE !

That's one thing the tornado didn't take from me 😊 Thankfully! I love going back through my notes. It's like reliving every single outing, as soon as I start reading them, the details of each day out start flooding my mind. Priceless 👍

Pretty pics👍 I thought all buzzbaits had to be black during the Fall. That's what they teach us up here in the land of the magic dragon.🤷‍♂️

I'll gladly trade having a camel in my yard for being able to park a boat in it if I want to. 👍 Where do you have to hide yours ?

My daughter and I sat down at the table to eat one evening, and we hear this gawdawefle noise from the front yard that sounded like a Velociraptor with its balls in a vise. I jumped up, shoved 2 loads of #4 buckshot into my shotgun and headed for the porch. Flicked on the lights and there stood a huge creature with a long neck in my yard. I called Jimmy and said, Dude, there's a bleepedy-bleep CAMEL or some $#!t in my yard! He says I don't have a camel, but it's probably Sunshine, she's a Llama..... I'll send Kelly down to get her. I never minded the peacocks because they usually dropped some fly tying material, but the other critters were less welcome. Of course he invited us up to see baby monkeys with diapers on them several times. I always declined but my daughter and her friends thought they were absolutely precious. 🙄 How would you like to change a monkey's diaper?

My old neighbor used to house exotic animals, and was always fussing with the county & state about it. After the tornado hit he came up to me while we were sorting through the wreckage and quietly said "Hey Glen, I probably should let ya know.....I have a bull gorilla that's unaccounted for". I said, No $#!t, how big? He holds his hand about a foot under his chin and says "if not fully standing up". Oh GREAT ! 😳 It came home on its own that evening though, luckily.

Good point. 🥴

Yeah they are becoming frequent visitors to a couple of campgrounds. I don't know how potentially aggressive black bears can be.....but personally I'd rather not have them around. Aside from a short-lived MoMo concern when I was a pre-teen I've quite enjoyed being the apex predator in the Missouri woods all of my life, and I'd kinda prefer to keep it that way. 🫤 No "welcome mats" for cougars and bears.

Funny story😁 The other day Sugarbritches says "Let's go add salt to the water softener", so we go to get under the house. There's a big spider on the door leading under the house and I immediately freak out.....She calls me a "big puss" and rips me to pieces over it. I look down and see a garter snake, reach down to pick it up AND SHE ABSOLUTELY COMES UNGLUED!!!! You have no idea how hard it was for me to not throw that snake at her. 😅

Oh I am definitely afflicted with that. Every time I see a spider bigger than a dime. 🙄

I think this is different🤔 One of my daughters friends mom had Munchausen when the kid was growing up, and that was a really sad deal. Perfectly healthy kid.....yet her mother had everyone convinced that the girl always had some kind of ailment, and would just keep switching doctors until FINALLY one would diagnose the kid with something and begin treatments for it. Always some weird disease that nobody had ever heard of. Of all the legal & acceptable ways to ruin a kids life.....THAT is the sickest. 😖 The girl has a child now. Sure hope Granny doesn't get a hold of it. 🙄 Or that it isn't hereditary.

There's a clinical term for people with reduced mobility who constantly do things to get themselves hurt, or in a predicament, and they do it because they don't feel like they are getting enough attention. Anybody here know what that term is ?

My daughter and her friends hit the Buffalo 3-4 times per year. I'm always on her about the fishing, and while they love to float & camp on it she says it seems to be "void of life" compared to the other rivers she is used to fishing. She's no slouch either.....if the fish are there she'll catch some. 👍 Personally I haven't been on it in probably 30 years, but the fishing was less than spectacular then as well. 🤷‍♂️

From what I hear the fishing on the Buffalo isn't worth the gas anyway. Why is that, I wonder?

If I could change anything in society today, one of the first would be for hunters to stop calling guns "weapons". 😒

Hey man, these bass pro wannabee's don't care, they will pay it! I believe they'd pull their mom's out of the nursing homes, and pimp their kids on the Lolita Express before they'd risk not qualifying for the BPT at Rayburn. This $#!t is a sickness, and some of us might as well benefit from it. I mean the thought that somebody, somewhere might be able to outfish them is something that they absolutely can not tolerate. Doesn't matter that they are already 64k in the hole this year, and the season is coming to a close. There's always Next Year !

I didn't understand that the question to be....."What is a floor plan". I believe the question was.... "What is a floor plan boat"? And THAT is the fancy decked out display rig you see on the showroom floor of a foo-foo boat dealership. Usually within spitting distance of the sales/finance office doorway. We have some darn fine businessmen here. Y'all wanna start a boat/motor dealership & finance company? I'll locate a piece of land, supply a coffee pot, and have donuts delivered daily. 👍

Bro, all of us have things we wish we could do.....but can't, for one reason or another. Try focusing on things that you CAN SAFELY DO, and concentrate on doing them better than anyone else around you. 👍 Continuing to do things that you aren't quite up to is putting yourself and others into very undesirable situations. Don't be that person that makes your wife, kids, and friends here constantly worry about what you might do. A strong Christian man like yourself should have no problem at all living that way. Create smiles 😊 instead of constant concern.

The Bassboat & Pontoon world is pretty twisted. Some boat companies are in bed with certain engine companies, and others are not. It is impossible to buy a new Nitro (and now Ranger) with a Suzuki, or a new Skeeter with a Honda. But you can buy a Basscat, Gambler, Charger with any motor you choose on it. This is why Evinrude went away. They couldn't afford to just give a large percentage of their products away for pennies on the dollar in order to "corner the market" like Brunswick division did. It was that marketing strategy that caused Bombardier to throw their cards on the table and fold. Everytime that Evinrude tried to pair with a boat manufacturer....here would come Mercury with incentives that nobody in their right mind could ignore, so that every new boat that got sold had some black POS bolted to it.

I gotcha 👍 Car and boat dealerships are night/day different. Cars & trucks come from the factory ready to throw license plates on and drive. They even have batteries and a bit of fuel in them. Bassboats don't come from the factory with motors, batteries, trolling motors, sonar, shallow water anchors, and all the things that make a bassboat a bassboat. They come as a boat on a trailer.....Period. They may not even have a steering system or key switch, gauges, engine harness, or controls. The making/building of the finished craft is called "rigging"......and is done at a qualified dealership by guys like ME. 😉