Champ188

That sure is a humpbacked Walter. Probably would be 2 inches longer if you straightened him out.

Gotta tell this one quickly on a buddy of mine. He was just starting to guide on Broken Bow and was taking an overflow trip for an established guide. His clients consisted of a husband, wife and young son. The veteran guide had told him, whatever you do, don't pull out a topwater. These clients are not experienced enough to even cast a topwater so keep them throwing a grub or shaky head. Well, what would happen but the fish would blow up schooling. So while the clients were busy catching them on grubs, the greenhorn guide couldn't stand it anymore and pulled out a Chug Bug and decided to slip in a couple of casts. Sure enough, he got a blowup on the first cast and jerked too soon. The lure comes flying back, hits Mom square in her very large left boobie and buries up. Two of the three barbs on the front hook gone outta sight. ER time, right? Heck no, they insisted on my young guide buddy extracting the bait himself while she gritted her teeth. The woman ends up half topless on the lake and in surgery in the middle of the boat. Long story short, he got the lure out and the trip continued. By the way, when my buddy balked at the woman taking off her shirt and fully exposing the affected boobie, the hubby said, :"Don't worry. You are far from the first person to see them." I doubt HE got to see them for a good while after that comment. 😆😂

Good grief, that sounds like they're rushing beta software out onto the market and then selling it at premium prices so the consumer can test it for them. R&D should work out the bugs in-house before putting stuff out on the market. Might be way off base but I don't think so.

An option available locally is the Strike King Rage Craw or the Googan Krackin Kraw. Both are bulky 4-inch models and will do the job as a big jig trailer.

Haven't heard that saying but it's a good one! Thanks for sharing.

Bill, I know that when I was covering the old Ray Scott days of BASS and traveling to the BASS Masters Classic every year, the anglers were limited to (I believe it was 6 rods/reels) and 10 pounds of tackle. Harold Sharp was tournament director back then (just before Dewey Kendrick) and each angler's tackle had to fit into a possum belly PLANO tackle box that was provided for them. There were two official practice days and on the second one, each angler had to bring his tackle box up onto the stage to be weighed. If he was over by even a smidge, Harold removed tackle (his choice of lures) until the box was at exactly 10 pounds. It was a fun deal. Mike may or may not remember those days. Can't recall when he fished his first Classic and the dang bassmaster.com website has a "join BASS" pop-up that blocks two-thirds of their screen and seemingly can't be ignored. On another nostalgic note, I see that Lonnie Stanley passed away Monday. Such a classy guy. Never got to fish with him but always enjoyed my time around him. Always had a smile plus one to give whoever he was talking with at the time. His jigs and spinnerbaits were top shelf and accounted for a lot of tournament wins for anglers worldwide.

I refuse to fish with more than about 4 rods on the deck. It just doesn't take that long to unsleeve one and pull it out of the rod box, or to resleeve one and put it up. I wear size 15 shoes. Nuff said. 😆 😂

You can bet that anything Randy keeps is legal ... i.e., he ain't no criminal. 😁 Just a darn good walleye fisherman.

You can order replacement guides online. Remove the old guide and all of its wrapping carefully with a pocket knife, mix a small amount of epoxy and position the new guide properly (you can use a little dab of epoxy to hold it in place). Then wrap the thread around the rod at the foot of the guide as many times as it takes to secure it and make it look like the other guides. You can spin the rod between your fingers while holding the thread spool with the other hand to speed this process. Once you've reached the right amount of wraps, cut the thread and seal it all the way around with epoxy. You're good to go the next day.

Well said, Nick ... like an actual journalist! We print journalists never had any real reason to dislike the TV guys, although we did call them "golden throats." 😆 But increasingly over the years, they cut their own throats by racing each other to be first on the air with a story, and in doing so, they discredited themselves with sensationalism and shoddy journalism. You are also right that the most disturbing part is how many consumers buy into that malarkey.

That entire area usually holds bass, too, and some good ones. Of course, there are several smallish sweet spots where 90 percent of them live.

Not a bit surprised ... the boy can flat catch em. Hope his motor isn't badly broken.

I didn't know exactly where he had built up there but being that close to you, he must have quite the view of the lake. When he was in Bella Vista, we lived only a few houses apart for quite a few years. He's a good neighbor.

I've mentioned here many times that my career was in the newspaper business. If you'll stay with the major newspaper sites ... LA Times, Washington Post, New York Times, Fort Worth Star-Telegram to name a few ,,, you can pretty much rely on what you read. But when you get into the broadcast media or internet-based news sites other than PBS, you can find just about anything spun to fit your ear. That's what those "journalists" do these days ... intentionally lean one direction or the other in order to please a portion of the population and "buy" their loyalty.

I don't have Wrench's knowledge by any means but that's getting back into the first few years of the Opti when they were not known for dependability. Well, yes they were ... you could depend on them to crap out long before they should. Those were the years when they were known as the Poptimax. I'd tell my buddy he better stay with the known quantity ... no telling how many hours that 99 Merc has on it or exactly when it's going to "pop".

Not quite the same deal so hopefully I won't get dinged by the moderator for straying off topic, but was fishing DeGray Lake (in Arkansas) many years ago and there was an old guy spider rigging for crappie with minnows about a hundred yards away. He had a dozen rods out on his modified party barge when a school of hybrids (wipers) came thru and gang-banged his spread. He ended up losing a rod or two and had a couple more broken. He was not a happy camper when all was said and done. Not sure how many he actually landed but it wasn't many. My fishing buddy and I had to leave we were laughing so hard.

Never could make it work in tournament fishing. Finally just started fishing my way and my bags got heavier. Of course, Beck could catch one on a wart (or just about anything else for that matter) in the Harter House parking lot.

Good news, Jeff. Hope he hangs in there.

I will just say that of the three living creatures pictured here, none appear to have missed any meals recently. 😆😂

Oooohhhhhhhhhh, I get it now. I was trying to make that into SK bridge and it just wasn't working. Then you said Randy and I thought, "he didn't get down to the SK bridge in his trolling travels, did he?" Wrong bridge. I'm slow but I usually get there eventually. 😂

High-speed reels aren't very well suited for winding baits other than a buzz bait. Generally speaking, the higher the speed, the less the power. A good ol' 6:3:1 or 6:4:1 will serve the purpose as well as anything.

The old Lucky Craft 1.5 is my go-to. The 2.5 will work, too, especially in stained water. A very close second is the Bandit 100 series (slightly smaller profile). With that said, I own a LOT more squarebills than I need because when the fish are active in that part of the water column, I'm usually throwing one of those jangly contraptions made by War Eagle.

Nice job, arch. Always good to get the W.

My comment about the dust covers design being Trump's fault was what I thought was obvious SARCASM intended as humor. Sorry if anyone was offended. But thanks for calling out me and Cheesemaster in public. Makes me want to just mail in a donation to the Bo James memorial fund and skip another OA tournament.

I assume it's not flush-mounted, so you might try putting a bungee around it. Haven't lost one since I started using the bungee. Those covers had to be designed by Trump ... on a day he wasn't busy screwing up something else. 😂 so