Champ188

I'd go for that too except Donna has far more discriminating taste?

+1 on the touch of purple. The blue-ish purple back found on some of the Megabass and RC STX baits is something I am confident sometimes helps on the White River lakes. Beyond that, I like a touch of chartreuse on dark days or in stained water, but mjk86 is dead-on right -- it's a minnow/shad bait, keep your colors close to that and you'll catch 'em.

Darn well said, mjk86. You can bet Ashley grew up throwing that thing with all the blueback herring lakes they have out there. His dad obviously taught him well.

Johnny (or his heirs) will own the entire fishing industry in 30 years, along with the truck (tow vehicle) divisions of General Motors, Ford, Dodge and Toyota. Emphasis will be on volume, product quality/customer service will go to the dogs and a key indicator on Wall Street will be the daily movement of stocks related to anything pre-Johnny ... rods, reels, boats, trucks, marine engines, electronics, etc.

Alex, I challenge you to pick up a Luck-E-Strike RC STX and throw it a few minutes, then follow with a Megabass Vision 110. If you can detect an actual difference in the way they throw, dive, suspend, wiggle, etc., then by all means buy the one that you are most comfortable with. Heck, do that anyway. But at around $8 each, as compared to $25 for the Megabass, I suggest to you it's worth a try. Color choices are decent, but you can always do as you mentioned with the McSticks and send them off to be painted however you want them.

To my knowledge, all Arkansas-issued licenses expire a year from date of purchase.

Secret Grape, Elegy Bone

I hope everyone who owns one of any make/model is happy with it and has a good experience. They all cost way too much, but we love what we do enough to pay the price. I like to say, if a guy is only happy when he's catching them, he needs to sell out and take up a cheaper pastime.

I have some but the water temp has been a bit cool to throw them. Gave one of the green-blue crawfish colors to a guide buddy over at Broken Bow and he said they love it over there. Colors are by OA forum member Hughesy, aka Tim Hughes Custom Lures. Been fishing Table Rock for many years and is a heckuva lure painter.

The customer service/warranty reports out there on Nitro would scare Jason and Freddy Krueger out of the horror film business. Sure as heck scared me off from buying one when I was considering it a couple of years ago. Thank goodness a couple of friends opened my eyes to something beyond price, There are many personal accounts available online and elsewhere with the common theme that if you are going to make a hull warranty claim with Tracker/Nitro, you might as well just bring an attorney with you because it's gonna be a fight. Sure, you can read/hear anything about any boat, but when the bad outweighs the good by a large margin, it tends to scare folks off. The J.D. Power awards are pretty telling ... BassCat and Ranger are consistently at the top for customer satisfaction. Says a lot in my book.

Willy, we wouldn't have except I kept seeing occasional schools of them on my graph glued to the bottom at 32-38 feet. I finally caved to the temptation, put my jerkbait down and dropped the varmint down to them and immediately got bit.

We were using 1/8 oz on 6-pound line.

Donna and I actually fished the Ned at 35 feet Saturday. Caught several fish doing it. This weather has to warm up soon. This deep-sea fishing is killing my reputation as a bank beater.

Happy birthday, Ducky.

What's really funny is that all of the 1/8-oz size are sold out. Those guys are gonna have lots of fun getting a 1/8-oz head/Fluke down to 35-40 feet, providing their intent is to re-create Ashley's pattern.

Like Donna's brother Red, as I'm sure you recall from our white bass trip a few years back.

I'm with both of you guys on Swindle having grown up a lot. He lost a brother to cancer quite a few years back, so when this cancer-stricken firefighter/bass fan from up north wanted to come down to the Classic a few years back, Swindle jumped in with both feet and served as his unofficial host for the week. Really showed him a big time. If I recall correctly, the guy was gone within a year. I've thought a lot higher of Swindle ever since and as far as his mouth-running goes, McClelland has spent quite a bit of time around him and told me it's not fake in any sense of the word. He's going nonstop from the minute his feet hit the floor in the morning til his head hits the pillow at night.

Sure as heck isn't in resale value. Pretty hard to top Ranger or BassCat there.

Can't forget custom bait painters Tim Hughes or Rob McGilvrey (Fall Creek Lures).

Bet that Scrounger head deal would work with a Keitech-style swimbait. Same with the horsehead. The bridge pilings deal at KC was Swindle and Zell Rowland. Swindle was dropshotting the second piling from the south side when Zell pulled up on the one just north of him. Swindle, being younger and much more volatile than now, jumped down behind the console, cranked the motor and plowed over there without even pulling up his trolling motor and tore into Zell (verbally). Not sure if Zell eventually left or not but it was pretty comical because Zell never even raised his voice. Just kept fishing while Swindle was practically turning backflips in his boat and reading Zell the riot act.

For sale: SPRO Rock Crawlers in all colors, immediate availability. $19.95 plus shipping/handling.

Could not agree more. Would've been poetic justice if that 80-pound "furry freak of nature" (look out Mercer, I'm gunning for you!) had flipped that Expedition when Dave ran it over like a savage.

I'm intrigued by the Shadow Rap stickbait, but then I'm intrigued by practically every new jerkbait that comes along. Otherwise, yes ... a homemade version of the ancient horsehead jig kicked the butts of all the newfangled stuff, including those Livingston crank baits that can emit four different sounds. Casey's horsehead may not have made any sound, but the crowd sure did when he held up the trophy.

Couldn't agree more. I don't think it will ever happen on TV because it's only a very small percentage of us who are captivated by the little stuff and would sit still for more than 20 seconds with someone just casting and dragging or winding. But I hope it stays that way with the online coverage for sure.

Only thing I questioned Ashley on is what he questioned himself about -- why spend so many hours dragging that jig when it wasn't producing? I know he didn't want to beat on his spinhead fish too hard the first two days -- i.e., save some for Sunday -- but seems that being local he could have tried something else (docks?) with the jig bite being just nonexistent. Regardless, really glad it worked out for him. He worked his tail off and was justly rewarded.