Bill Babler

Just saw the BD thread. Thanks Guys. Phil kept us plenty busy on my birthday out of the resort. Been working hard trying to make my old age pension check this week. Guess from what the wife is telling me, I'll still be in the work force until the unforeseeable future. Thanks all for the kind words and God Bless

A Rig photo slipped in. It was in the file above my Ned Rig pictures. My apologies. Tired to remove it to avoid confusion but could not. Depending on what side of the lake I'm on I will throw the multiple hook up the White or in Long Creek above the line. I usually just use a single hook in Missouri, All participants were as usually released unharmed.

Wonderful pics and report. We are surly blessed

Ales, buddy you are correct. I have kept it off the carpet. I did get it on a brand new pair of carhartt jeans and it completely ruined them. Put a hole right thru the knee. Burned like fire. Guess I could give them to a kid and he could wear them as distressed. Not a lot of short and fats like me out there however. Now I put a little board in the boat to glue over. We also glue our trout stuff so it is something I have to mess with all the time that I wish I didn't.

I bet a jack Russell coon fight would be something to see. On the other hand hope there are no bunny huggers on board. Had a good buddy of mine tell me he thought when the world came to an end there would be a house fly, a coyote and a coon left standing. Be pretty hard to dispute that.

Help me on this. I have a big glop of it stuck to the side of my Phoenix, I have tried everything but a hammer and It will not melt off. Alchol and goof off or go gone won't work. Tried it.

Here is another quick tip on the jig heads. I have heard folks talk about rust. I left 20 jigheads already cut down and attached to ZMan baits all Winter without a drop of rust on any of the hooks. How you ask. Here is the deal that works for me. I started using Flambau ZeRust boxes from Walmart to keep all my rustables in. In the N. Rig boxes I also put an Inhibitor Strip. You can go to the Inhibitor.com and see them. I have had zero rust on anything since I started using both of these products and they have absolutely no odor that the fish can tell. This is a super fool proof way to make your hard earned fishing dollars last. If you buy a dozen of those boxes at WalMart they will cut the cost. I bought a case of them. I think they were 6 dollars each but the lady at the counter gave me a case price of I believe 60 bucks or knocked a buck each off. Pretty cheap insurance. Don't let the word get out that I recommended something that I got a deal on.

Terr, Dave sent me some Gami hooks in a batch I purchased last year and to tell you the truth, I really have seen no difference using the Mustad, either in hook longevity or strength. Both worked equally well. That little bait seems to always get them right in the top or on the left top. It is very sticky.

Guys this gentlemen calls coons in the day with a predator caller. How fun would that be? You can see from his success killing 8 in 3 trips that he has seriously got it down. I forget the number he told me from year before last but it was a lot and what a charge. I put coons and squirrels in the same rat pack. Both think my log house is a den tree and they REALLY want in. Year before last with the permission of the game warden I disposed of 44 coons on my deck in a 40 day period. They would come up the stairs about dark and just kind of take it over. Had to put the Kibash on that and I did.

Hunter you and that sweet wife of yours are as bad as I am. Your both gear horses and love fishing quality equipment. Best of Luck. How many coons have you killed? Last night under my deck I took a trail cam photo of a bobcat, coon and a big grey fox. I'm going to come up there and have you take me predator hunting you know. Went Salt Water fishing a couple of weeks ago off Captiva Island. The guide had his personal gear in the boat and you should have been there. He is a friend of Bill Beck's. He had 12 8000 Stella's 4 bigger numbers, I think they were like 20000. I had never seen them before. He also had about a dozen Torsa 40's. This is suspose to be the top tuna reel in the world. Gosh they were just beautiful and were butter. You all ever go to Captiva I got your guy. If you want to catch big ones. They scare me and pull to hard.

Ham got along fine with the additional lead and collar and keeper on his rigs. I did not, it is that simple. I will never use a collard hook again if I can avoid it. For one thing even though the elastic is very strechy, when you insert the collard head it forms a pocket they does not really like to adhear to the lead shank of the collar. it is also very hard to glue it to the head as the bait does not like to slid up the lead collar and the additional hook keeper. I also had a lot of problems with the lead hook keeper which is part of the collar ripping out the side of the bait and then again creating a problem. For Me. On the non-collard jig head the bait is not damaged and does not create a pocket but is tight fitted to the hook shank and when you cut the bait in half it glues perfectly to the flat butt of the jig head making a perfect fit. The head seems to be designed to not only create a perfect flat attachment point for the bait but is also the same diameter as the bait and makes a smooth finish with nothing hanging over the side. I will try and post some pictures of a collard head vs a smooth shank flat head in the future. I misspoke by saying the collard head was worthless, I should have said that I was not satisfied with it and needed a better wheel, I apologize for that. He said he caught 100's and never had one pull down. I did not have that success, if I had I would not have stated other wise. Perhaps it was my glue or my technique in setting the hook, but myself and my clients did have problems to the extent that I was looking for a better mouse trap. Nothing negative about the collard heads I use them to swim a grub and fish deep all the time. I just prefer not to use them on the Ned. Sorry for the confusion.

Yes, you all were one of the few, but the proud. To tell you the truth, I like your junk better than mine. I don't have to say that often. YOur not the top however. Not mentioning any names but there are guys on this forum that fish Stella and bring them into the boat by the arm load. Bill and Bill

Thats the exact point, they do get paid. Again I will make a point here. Getting some equipment at a small percentage discount and signing a financial compensation package for using and promoting said equip worth 10's of thousands of dollars a year is not in the same universe. You work for bass pro, you know this. On BP I said to check the return bin, for repaired or reels that had been returned it is possible they could be less. If they don't want people seeing how many reels they have that have malfunctioned and been returned there is a very simple answer. As for me, I do not pay full price on every item I fish with. I do pay full price for my Daiwa reels. Full Retail... With the Lew's if you are a guide or a tournament fishermen they do have pro-staff pricing which by no means is free. It is just a percentage discount that varies depending on who you are and the amount you purchase. I usually purchase in large volume and get very good pricing by doing so. An example being I have no deal with Maxima, but I purchased 15, 3300 yrd. spool of fishing line this last fall and they sold them to me for 15% under dealer cost. We have a business with a tax number and that made that possible. If that is a deal, then I'm guilty. You need 40,000 yrds of line I bet I can get you the same deal. As for any kind of match with only 4 posts on this forum how would you know anything about what goes on here in any capacity? What have you contributed that you can question me on anything or anyone on this forum? You also tried to make a previous poster look foolish by offering to buy reels on this blog and then when they were offered to you at 1/3 the price of new, you turned him down. Seems to me the hypocrite may be a new poster with perhaps a hidden agenda of his own. Or perhaps have we heard from you selling BP equipment here under many different guises. I get no monitary compensation from any equipment that I talk about here on this forum or any other. This is just what works for me. Again I speak here from experience with 1000's of days on the water and 1000's of clients in my boat. But, you probably know better, so we will yield to you. Please come back and give us a current fishing report with some pictures of what is working for you and how you are doing it. Welcome to the forum.

Wrench, I'm kind of like Dave on this. The only time not speaking for you cause I know you probably have seen just about everything. Lots of head scratchers no doubt. But the only time you seem to see these things is when someone is trying to make a silk purse out of a sows ear. Mostly I have seen them here on a 18 to 20 ft aluminum boat that is powered by a 50 hp motor or some such crapola. Used to see them on some of the flat bottom pad fiberglass old stuff on Lake O when I lived up there, but now of days with the hulls we have and the proper set up, I just don't see how they do anything to a properly tuned up set up rig. Tks for jumpin in on this.

MOGUY 73 There are much better heads on the market. I am on Dave to show another video and explain more about his system for the Ned, as it is a system. You have multiple parts and each is as important as the next when you are fishing such a finesse type of presentation. The jig head is one of the most important aspects of the entire package. A jig with a extended led collar and a bait holder is just about worthless as far as I'm concerned. First you are dealing with a very fragile piece of equipment. With a lead collar and a bait holder below the head it makes the 2.5 inch bait either split at the top or it extends the sides of the bait complete outside of the jig head. Also no matter how much glue you put on this head it looks like CRUD, and will not hold. If you make a jig head that has a flat bottom and allows the bait to slide completely to the flat head to be glued it looks uniform and clean. Look at my post of the bait from a couple of days ago. This is the correct method of attaching the body to the perfect head that matches the entire system. I had another head and I believe Swing Oil sent me one. It is a flat stand alone head without a collar it also worked very well. The weight of the collar also extending down the hook shaft instead of being in the head its self I'm for sure would make a difference. Dave, get on this.

I'm for sure with you Dave. I cannot for the life of me figure out how adding more exterior drag on the bottom of the motor would give you better fuel economy. You gonna have to splain that one to me Lucy B.E. I would leave that Champ alone. If it is setup correctly it don't need no Stinkin Hydrafoil Good Luck

And gets paid $50,000 a year to say so. I harken back to KVD. "Jut cause it works for me, does not mean it will work like that for you. Use the equipment that works best for the way you fish and what your fishing for." KVD does not fish BP reels. And as he says, he can fish what ever he wants and his choice is not BP even though they are his biggest sponsor. Might want to put that on the burner a bit and see what flames up. A reel is priced at 50 bucks for a reason. Another reel is priced at 250 bucks for a reason. Can a 50 dollar reel preform as well as a 250 dollar reel. NO. not even close. Yes Edwin Evers, KVD or any of the cast for cash pro's can make it look so. Can you? How many days can you be without that reel just if it happens to puke? What if god forbid you are on vacation and 2 of them puke. What ya gonna do? For the last 20 yrs. I have fished only Shimano and Daiwa and now some Lew's. Still all Shimano spinning, but I have passed the torch on the casting to the Daiwa and the Lew's. I really like the Lew's but I am a gear horse and if I put a Steez in your hand while your fishing with me you will not want the Pro-Speed Spool back, or any other casting reel for that matter. Can we all afford to fish Steez? Of course not nor could most justify it even if they wanted to. I speak from 20 yrs. on the water on a nearly everyday basis and no one is paying me to say so. I have had fishing equipment from every company in my boat that the clients have brought. From Stella's to Steez, to Pro-Qualifer to Revo. During that period I have had but a handful that did not use my equipment, even though they brought their own and thought it was good. Until I handed them one of mine. What I'm saying, is this stuff lasts a long time. Buy the best you can afford and you will not be sorry. I have never had a Shimano-Daiwa or Lew's casting reel quit on me. Never. My time on the water is valuable. Not so much from a monetary standpoint as much as a time standpoint. a piece of equipment that breaks down for me is a piece of equipment that I no longer own. I will not tolerate it. My livelihood and my reputation along with my piece of mind are on display everyday that I'm on the water. I cannot afford a 50 buck casting reel, when across the street I see 200 in a recycle bin and know the reason. Most of us that can afford to fish however can fish a Lew's Tournament Pro, or Pro Lite. Skip that restaurant lunch for a month and take the brown bag you can then buy a couple of them. They will last you a very long time, and you will not have to lug a 9 oz. 50 buck reel around, that may or may not break your heart. Good luck on any that you chose.

What type of a boat do you have that would need one? I cannot believe that on any of the major B Boat lines you would have to have one if the package is set up properly. I have had over 20 boats and the thought has never entered my mind. Good Luck

Again lets put this in perspective. Walleye are stocked for harvest in Bull Shoals and Table Rock. Just as trout are stocked in Taneycomo. They do not reproduce in harvestable numbers. BASS ARE NOT STOCKED. They can reproduce in sustainable numbers as long as "conservation" minded fishermen catch and release the majority of what they hook. Conservation means wise use of. Wise being the key words here. They are also pursued at a rate of over a 1000 to one in comparison to walleye in our Midwest, White River impoundments. Lets not try and stir the pot. Lots of folks on this board catch and release large walleye for the reason that the only way they are going to get to be trophy size is to not be harvested. As far a proliferation of the population on Bull and TR. do to releasing, that is not an issue with the walleye.

Ya, I don't think that one was released with the dead bass lying in the picture below on a filleting board. Here again and we have broached this topic many, many times, as with Table Rock the recruitment on Bull Shoals is extremely poor. It is stocked as a put and take fishery once the fish have obtained a legal length. Better not be keeping 16 and 17 inch walleye there. You take the trout stocking away from Taneycomo and the trout are no more. You take the walleye stocking away from Bull and it would not take long to get the same result.

Did a little reading on the Crayfish life cycle. What I found out is that after reading at least 25 blogs, each by a different expert that there is only one constant and that is that the eggs hatch in 2 to 20 weeks on the abdomen of the female. Life cycle some say is short. Others say is up to 8 yrs. Breeding season is early Spring but can occur anytime and multiple times during the year, depending on light penetration and water temperatures. It really reminds me of my recent vacation to Florida. We went to the Manatee park at Fort Myers and were told this is an endangered species. I asked how many are they and what are their range. They told me the range was from Central America to New York but mostly in the gulf. I asked how many were there. They said they really did not know. I asked how old will they live to. They again said at least 50 in the wild if they are not killed by boat propellers, but again they said they did not really know. How are they endangered I asked. The professor giving the tour said that over 1000 had been accidently killed by boats and their population is falling. I then stupid of me asked how do you know this if you don't know how many of them there really are? He did not answer me.

Boats were running this morning before sun-up here at the Lodge this morn. Quite a bit more overcast and still warm. I had a very good day yesterday, but have a feeling that today may be the day, with the cloud cover. Lodge work and a hair cut away so it will have to be another day.

This deal is just about to get started again just like last year.

You might go over to the outlet, there are usually a couple of hundred of them over there for less, that have either been returned or refurbished.

Nice job Snake. I think they were munching a little today