Champ188

Amen and amen. Not happening in my boat either. I'm officially old. I'd rather zero my way than catch em your way. LOL

I spent 10 years trying to fall in love with my Humminbird 998s and it just never happened. I put a pair of new Lowrance Elite 9's on my 2013 Ranger and haven't regretted it for a single minute. The Lowrance 2D is just leaps and bounds above Humminbird --- they have owned this market for a very long time. Side imaging and down imaging work fine, too. The reason I don't have livescope is twofold ... 1. Not gonna sink thousands upon thousands of dollars into a tactic I don't even care for; 2. I enjoy finding my fish the old-fashioned way ... by using my noodle rather than my electronics. Again, wouldn't think of making a purchase before checking out the Lowrance offerings.

Bill, I have to borrow one of your lines about all that "deer farming" work ... I just ain't that mad at em. 🤣

You guys need to face the fact that you're draggers, plain and simple. Put the winding stuff down and fish only with worms or jigs. 😂

You said a mouthful there. But I sure wish they'd had those fancy sublimated jerseys back before I quit tournament fishing. Maybe I'll ask Santa for one. It's not like I really have to be a pro to dress like one, right? Shoot, as Wrench said, it's a sickness. Just look at all the $100K rigs out there screaming up and down the lake with nothing but water in the livewells. 😂😆

My Ranger that I bought new in 2013 came factory rigged except for batteries and electronics. Another cutback by JohnnyCraft?

Anyone who has to be fishing a derby or practicing for one to enjoy fishing is not a fisherman. They are just lake lice in bass boats.

Nice bags. Wonder how many did the ol' Table Rock "Autumn Stroll" and drug football jigs behind the boat using the trolling motor. Don't care who you are, if you are using the electric motor to move your bait along, you are trolling. And trolling is illegal in any tournament I've ever fished. Popcorn time? 🍿

Frankie, think on this for just a minute ... why would Bill give up specific locations that he has spent a lifetime locating? You can study maps until you're old and gray, but you don't know if a spot is worth a hoot until you fish it a few times. That's a lot of work when you consider the hundreds of spots that Bill has on this lake. And I promise you that in 25 years of living here, I've never heard a single complaint from anyone of poaching spots by Bill Babler or his late brother-from-another-mother Bill Beck. Those guys did it right ... they've both spent eons of time on the water doing the inglorious and never-ending job of finding new stuff to fish. Frankie, take what Bill has told ya for gospel and go see if you can apply it to the areas you like to fish. You won't find info like he just gave anywhere else on the internet. I promise. And best wishes in your tournament.

You would've been right there in the check line.

Now Bill, you know we don't let our river fish sink into bad habits like biting a glide bait. Like Kelly Power told me once when he caught me drop-shotting up near Cape Fair --- don't be teaching these fish that crap!!. 🤣 😆

Just in time for an OA Christmas Swim Extravaganza! Party at Bill's house! 😆🤣

Great of you to post this, Andy. This is what makes Ozark Anglers such an awesome group. Standing ovation.

Frankly, I'm accustomed to someone at least acting like they give half a hoot when I come in to buy batteries or anything else. Instead, these guys acted like I was there to complicate their day. And there are no grasshopper legs on my boat or anything else to complicate the simple matter of disconnecting the old batteries, lifting them out, dropping in the new ones and reconnecting the wires. Nothing too complicated for anyone regardless of the depth of their gene pool. Too bad Duke is gone from that Rogers store ... he was always cheerful and when his doofus stained my carpet the first time years ago, he came out, looked at the it and just shook his head and started apologizing. Within 5 minutes, he had me headed for a nearby auto detail place, where they got the stain out (on Battery Outfitters' bill, of course). Back to last week: The online-purchasing function was supposed to simplify things, but that was not the case for me. As far as whoever was running the store that day, he seemed to have the "people skills" of a pit bull who hasn't eaten in a week. There's no place for that in retail ... or in life, for that matter.

I watched my dad go from being able to fix just about anything that went wrong with a car/truck to having to take his own in for service. Pretty ridiculous the way they build everything disposable these days.

Well said, Dock-in-it. Appreciate the input, especially the part about the dock repairs. Didn't realize that. I'm sure the battery place is trying to recoup some of their costs by charging an install fee rather than increasing the price of their batteries.

They bite better in the rain anyway. 😂

Point taken. We all fish for our own reasons.

Bought close to $500 worth of trolling motor batteries Friday from Battery Outfitters in Rogers and was charged $45 to install them in my boat. Easy-peasy job ... open the back deck lid, disconnect the old ones and lift them out, then sit the new ones in and reconnect. Fifteen minutes max. If I wasn't getting over surgery with staples still in (10-pound weight limit on picking things up), I'd have taken the dang things home and put them in myself. Still hard to get over spending $500 on three batteries and then paying to have them installed. Couple of the fellows at the Rogers store are new to me and not very good with people. Duke, who ran that store for a lot of years, is gone. Never thought I'd see customer service become a problem there but I'm also in need of a cranking battery and may well look elsewhere for the first time in 20 years. And after all that, when I got home I found a grease spot on my back-deck carpet the exact shape and size of a battery ... obviously they sat one of the old batteries on my carpet rather than a towel or SOMETHING to protect it from inevitable grease on the bottom of the old battery. Gonna give it a go this morning with some of that new Dawn Platinum and water mixed in a spray bottle ... that will most likely get the stain out. If not, I'm taking it back down there and letting them pay to get it out.

I had a couple of pretty good numbers days on the LedgeRock finesse jig and plastic trailer on Beaver about 2 years ago in the spring.

Those are the Tom Brady of spinning rods ... timeless. Not just for drop-shotting but also a very good stick for shaky head/Ned rigging, even throwing a crappie crank in the fall. Enjoy the next 20 years with those beauties!

Don't put too much faith in those Bella Vista club fishermen. They aren't exactly sticks by any stretch of the imagination. LOL

Yeah, I feel sorry for you guys in Branson area ... Johnny Moneybags really jacked up the greens fees when he bought up practically every course up there and "improved" them.

No, but my tackle box was way too heavy after I stopped by Hook Line & Sinker and bought them out of whatever was at the top of your gotta-have-it list. 😆😂

Don't take this wrong guys, but fishermen as a group have gotten soft. Myself included. When I was in my 20s, it was nothing to drag a two-man "bass buster" boat with TM and battery, ice chest and fishing gear a good 100 yards from where we'd have to park off the muddy side of a dirt road to whatever "promised land" we were fishing that day. Those places were usually rice reservoirs in southeast Arkansas, where it was nearly always a certainty they'd be loaded with bass, and often crappie, too. With farmer/landowner permission, of course, we'd drag bass out of those places by the dozens and often come back a week or two later only to have the farmer/landowner tell us that no one had been there since our last trip. Why? Too much mud, blood, sweat and tears involved in launching the boat. Oh, to be 25 again. Bet those same places are still full of fish waiting for some energetic soul to drag a boat thru the mud and go get em!