Champ188

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!

Now that's using your noodle. Hadn't thought of that.

Lots of good info there. Thanks for sharing that.

Nice report, Dock. Great detail, as always. Thank you from a fellow OAFer for what you contribute here.

One more comment about this ... I spent quite a few days in the boat (and golf carts) back in the 80s and 90s with Ron Shuffield, the now-retired pro fisherman and father of Spencer Shuffield ... and I'd bet my left crown jewel that there's more to this story than he pulled a fast one on his boat official with an illegally hooked bass caught while sight fishing. Spencer just about dominates statewide circuits in Arkansas and is smart enough to know that his livelihood depends in part on his reputation. Besides, his dad (and mom) are stand-up folks who raised their children right, including that cheating isn't an option. I'm not saying nothing happened ... obviously it did because apparently the polygraph tripped Spencer up on questions about fish being legally hooked. But we all know there's always more to every story than the first report. I'd just like to hear the rest of the story.

I have a similar deal that I do in deep bluff-cut pockets in late summer/early fall.

I'm in for that one. Anytime.

Avena is a media darling of that tour, much like Palaniuk is for BASS. Can't have those pristine images meared by a cheating uproar.

But you've got stripers! Don't that just thrill your soul? 😆

Well done, sir!

You're gonna be a long way from Owl Creek if you're close to Cow Creek. They are almost on opposite ends of the White River channel. But you could trailer to Big M and be very close.

If it was Beaver you coulda caught a striper and tossed it up on the bank for them. At least by dying it would serve SOME purpose in life. :)

Good trip for July.

But Bill, it doesn't hurt to keep SPOTTED BASS. I know it can't hurt because I've read it right here on OAF a hundred times. Personally, I don't believe you can put the kind of pressure TR gets on any lake and not hurt the fishing to a degree. But that's just me.

That Senko is a fish-catching piece of plastic. May not be my cup of tea, but Donna sure works on them with it.