Champ188

Donna and I have the Bill Babler signature series senior tag. 🦕🦖🦕 😆😂 No more stopping at the gate for us.

Thanks for the report! Good to know they can be caught.

If you're gonna invest in this technology and you have the greenbacks, Bill is the guy to copy. For as long as I've known him, he has gone to great extremes to ensure that everything he owns is operating at max efficiency.

I'm even later but hope everyone had a merry Christmas and here's hoping for a better 2021 --- in every way!

Like any other style --- deep stuff included --- you have to develop the skillset to (a) find them, and (b) get them to bite. I grew up fishing shallow for LM so that's what I tend to invest most of my time and effort. If I'm successful, I'll often catch a decent sack of fish. You do tend to catch bigger LM from now thru the spawn on transition banks, main-lake and secondary points --- all the places they like to "stage" in the winter for their next mission in life, which is making bass babies!

Would be hard to count the very, very good friends in my life who I initially met in the past 13 years on OA. What an awesome forum. Thanks, Phil!

You must have borrowed that picture fish from someone who had live scope, spot lock, down scan, etc. Ain't no way you caught that fish cranking that transition bank behind you. Don't you know there are no shallow fish anymore? My question is, since everyone is deep-sea fishing nowadays, when will the local paper's want ads --- and the swap shop radio show --- be flooded with lightly used Power Poles? No? Oh yeah, they were only for decoration anyway. 😆😂 Seriously, nice fish Sprint. Ain't it nice that practically everyone else is out in the abyss throwing cheater rigs and playing with their $10,000+ toys?

Nice job, Jeff. As always. Did you get livescope and not tell anyone? Pretty sure I read somewhere --- maybe even here --- that if you don't have it, you might as well stay home. Looks like you did fine without it!

How about old plasma TV's? 😂

This is all very good news. Glad to see our license dollars being put to good use here in our backyard. AGFC does good work most of the time.

My comments were 90% in jest ... I can certainly see the value in the situations that you guys mentioned. Especially napping! But until the Fortrex gives up the ghost, I think I'll make do with it. My next one will no doubt have spot lock, but I don't see myself ever stepping up to livescope. Video fishing is just not my cup of tea and to get set up right, you're looking at $10K or more. It's not worth it for me but can be worth its weight in gold to some of you deep-sea guys (Babler for sure). Later, guys. Headed to Beaver with a youngster from work and hope I can get him on some fish.

I'm waiting very patiently for my Fortrex to give out. Not showing any sign of it. Which makes me very happy. I'm a shallow-water guy and spot lock just doesn't mean much to me. Heck, the last thing I want to do is STOP and sit in one spot! 😆

At the HLS in Bella Vista, they have a downstairs storage room that is jam packed with skirts of every color (spider cut and full cut), as well as every weight and style of jighead you can imagine. I usually buy my heads and skirts separate and put them together myself. Hint: A drop of liquid Powerbait bass formula on the skirt collar will make it slide onto the jighead very easily.

Glad to hear it. I'm mostly a Bass-X guy when it comes to jigs, but Pig Sticker is a close second choice! Love that little Quick 5 football jig.

Let's make a trip soon. I finally got my truck back from the repair shop 6 weeks after our wreck at Broken Bow. Got the boat back home Friday. (It's been at a friend's house in Broken Bow since the wreck). I'm ready to go! Nothing like feeling that sharp "tick" when a drum pops that jerk bait.

Lance, you are one of the two best crappie guys I know on Beaver Lake. The other is a guy named Nicky who has won many, many bass tournaments on Beaver. He loves to crappie fish in the winter and also catches them shallow all winter.

If you decide that you must catch one, I'll take you to Grand and we will whack the hell out of them on a jerk bait.

Well said, sir. Ditto. And the same to Steve McBasser above.

A good guide will spend at least a few minutes on the phone with you and quiz you about your expectations for the trip. Is the purpose purely for entertainment or is the client looking to learn something? What is their experience level? What style of fishing do they enjoy or do they care? If a guide isn't willing to discuss the above things and perhaps more on the phone, he's probably not your guy.

Dang, Mike ... even Covid doesn't like you! 😆😂😂

Indeed, happy Thanksgiving to everyone. I've made some very, very good friends in this room and I'm thankful for each of you.

😆😂 😆😂 😆😂

There are tons of misguided folks out there -- most of them willingly turning a blind eye -- who will insist until they are blue in the face that they're making money fishing local tournaments. The rest of us know the truth -- they aren't. I quit fishing Central Pro-Am when participation dropped to the point that you literally had to WIN to recover your expenses for the event. And that did NOT include boat or truck costs. Between entry fees, gas, lodging and food, Donna and I were spending $1,500 to $2,000 per event to fish for a WINNER'S CHECK of around $1,500. You don't need a degree in finance to figure out that's not a good investment.

Did you actually weigh that fish? Looks more like 5.5 to 6 lbs to me.

Bill, surely you jest ... live scopes have been out only a couple of years. How many tens of thousands of fish did you catch before then? If that's the case, I have a 2013 Ranger for sale. No live scope. Buyer will have to add that himself or make do with a couple of obsolete old Humminbird 998's. 😂