fishinwrench

The first cold rains of September always brings a bunch up into the creek here. Once the water clears enough you can easily see them and sight fish them, and they definitely move around in schools of 8-15.

I bet that was a blast. Time to break out the flyrod! 👍

The hooks on all of those dipbait worms are junk. So is the line they use (too short and too heavy). I use the loop to pull 2' of good (lighter 14#) line through the worm, and add a much better hook. Leave just enough sag in the line that they can pick it up and move a bit before feeling any resistance. 3/4oz. egg sinker does fine in areas with not much current. I like a 20# hi-vis main line. About half of them get the hook too deep, so I just slide the worm up, cut it off and tie on a new hook. You can reclaim your hooks when you clean the fish.

If you're hunting with a group, or with dogs, then you're unlikely to get many good shots with a rifle/pistol. Success favors the guy with the scattergun.

Everybody is afraid to argue religion and politics. I'm not. I would welcome a change of heart on either topic....but you've gotta be able to make sense to do that. I'll acknowledge a good point, and give proper credit right away.

I've never tried anything that beats a good dip bait, on the bottom, for Channel cat. If you're not getting bites in 10-15 minutes then you just need to move. If they are nearby they'll definitely find and eat it. Dip bait worm color does matter too. I've never done well with the yellow or orange ones. Red, Black, or White.

It's interesting stuff, and after all these years of chasing fish I am just now becoming convinced that probably all species have a way of communicating with each other, either via sounds, pulses, electricity, or telepathy. It's just undeniably obvious and it explains alot. I mean, they didn't evolve ears and lateral line signal receptors just so they could detect motorboats, trolling motors, transducers, and worm rattles. And channel cat don't croak, and drum don't drum, just for our entertainment. But I still don't think the "Hydro-Wave" is a worthwhile investment.

I figured that was what you were gonna say. But if my daughter's birth certificate doesn't have a footprint on it that doesn't mean that she was never born. If the fish cannot successfully reproduce anyway, then what is the reason for altering their chromosomes? Is it just to make them conserve energy and grow faster? I wonder if they started doing that to humans awhile back for population control. Maybe that's why we now have all these people that can't decide if they are male/female. That might explain all the lazy millennials. They should cut a notch in their ear or something so we'll know not to bother hiring them.

Well it's a good thing that we don't all get hungry at the same time like that. The rushes at McDonald's and KFC would start riots.

Sexy Shad half & half 👍

I'm not up to speed on identifying hatchery mutts. How can you tell?

It's not just White bass, all fish seem to do it. I can't count the number of times I've been doing good....and then instantly for no apparent reason the bite just goes dead. And it's never ALL FISH, it's just a certain species, as if they take turns. If you are on a Winter bass bite and start catching drum....you might as well go home, cuz you're not going to do worth a crap bass fishing that day. The bass have quit eating, and the drum start gobbling up everything that moves.....which totally blows the whole Solar/Lunar theory out, because if you're following a solar/lunar time table there's never a mention of which SPECIES. Never are ALL GAMEFISH in a highly active state at once. That just doesn't happen. And that fact right there should indicate that it is NOT related to lake level, current, light penetration, current flow, or other habitat related things. Because if a sudden dam generation turns on the bass....then why doesn't it turn on the crappie, catfish, stripers, and walleye?

Yeah this one here obviously didn't understand who the hell he was supposed to be hanging out with.

Also, to add even more confusion to the pondering......I don't see this type of thing happen on rivers like it does on lakes. Not to the same extent anyway. Yet our lakes are basically rivers. 🤔

It just has to be something like that. I've considered that it was a certain angle of the sun, the sudden generation of water through a dam, and all kinds of other habitat related things.....but I've seen it happen on cloudy dark days, and in the middle of a bright sunny day, with no noticable changes to anything, so that theory just doesn't add up. Pheromones would take awhile to spread across a body of water, wouldn't it? This stuff happens like flipping a switch. It is instant.

Yeah, of all things ....Why was it TP ? Hoarding food, gas, or water would be understandable.....but Toilet Paper? People are crazy!

The whole "fishing pressure" thing never made since to me, because let's face it.....people aren't fishing EVERYWHERE. But when alot of guys are fishing SOMEWHERE it does seem to shut the fish down EVERYWHERE on the lake. I'm telling ya.....fish communicate, or get signals, somehow.

Exactly. And back when I was messing around with carp on the fly.....Spook one and it would spook others a 1/4 mile away.

FTFY The way it happens just defys that theory.

I was out chasing whites yesterday evening, catching a few here and there but it was kinda slow. Sat down, cracked open a cold one and was just going to float around out there and take a break for awhile, and I hear a mild blow up behind me. Within 10 seconds of that first little blitz the water in a 50-70 yard circle started boiling violently and it was fish-on every cast for a solid hour and a half. I've seen that happen 1000 times but I am still clueless about what the trigger is. What are the possibilities that can cause fish, that are not even close to each other, to switch from a blah mood....to suddenly begin eating everything that moves, all at the same exact time? The shad were there the whole time so it wasn't like they just suddenly moved into the area and became available, or suddenly moved near the surface. The whole reason I started fishing there in the first place was because the shad had been there for hours. I'm becoming convinced that fish communicate somehow. Telepathically maybe? That's the only theory I have that adds up/makes any sense. Seriously, what do you think? Oh and here's a bonafide mutt😊

Dude, that's a nice one! Pretty. Your line is twisted all to hell, how'd that happen?

And now do you understand how religion works? 😅

😅 There has been a lot of "talk" about that mishap. If you watch the driver (I refuse to call him Captain) he keeps tapping the port trim tab to level the ride. He taps about 3 times too many....the boat leaves the water, and when it comes back down that trim tab does what trim tabs are supposed to do. Bottom line: Baldy is a SOBER idiot and was lucky he didn't kill everyone onboard. I'd rather ride with a drunk that knew how to drive that boat.

Not much. Definitely not measurable. You can hold your hand under the exhaust water and it feels the same temperature as the water going in. The pee stream on a 2-stroke V6 Mercury will be steaming right before the thermostats open, then it cools right back down. But the exhaust water coming out the prop is always cool as a cucumber. If you catch some of that exhaust water in a glass jar you'd be surprised how clean it is. Everybody (in California) thinks 2-strokes are such terrible polluters.....but they really aren't. Not to the water anyway. Oil and gasoline doesn't mix with water, fuel stays on top and evaporates as if you spilled a few drops on dry concrete. Oil drifts to the shoreline and is absorbed right back into the earth, where it came from. So there's your "renewable energy". 😊