Seth

So you feel that it's better to put more fish at risk of injury/death while trying to find those larger fish? No matter if you're using FFS or not, everybody is still after the same fish in the end. One is just weeding through more fish and at the same time putting more fish at risk to injury and death while trying to find those same big fish.

What if they don't own a scale? Some guys only care about inches.

Arguably one of the best fishermen in the state. He dominates on the rivers and the lake. He’s hard on catfish too. Dude can barely read a graph and gets it done with pure fishing talent and time on the water. I’ve donated a lot of money to him. Robbie is right there with him and the thought if them two paired up is scary….. He’s one of the very few to catch a legit 6+ pound smallmouth in MO. He’s likely caught two, but one came during catch and release season a few years ago and didn’t have a scale. This one was caught in a tourney on the Meramec and it weighed 6.40.

I'm pretty much a white, black, green pumpkin guy when it comes to soft platics. However, one of my favorite baits to fish is a zoom trick worm. They come in a wide variety of colors. According to that app, bubblegum just appears white to a fish. I can tell you that I've used a pink trick worm and white trick worm A LOT and the pink easily outfishes white. Chartreuse and yellow both appear yellow on that app, but I have had much better success on yellow than I ever had with chartreuse.

Well I'm glad I kept my mouth shut the other day when we had our back and forth about FFS. I wanted to make a comment about you not know squat about it, but I would have wrong. What you said about learning to use it is was spot on. Crappie are the perfect fish for learning FFS. They don't move a lot and they are easy to find.

Same here. I've played my share of games while growing up, but I can't say that any of it has helped me when it comest using FFS. The biggest asset for me when it comes to learning this stuff is YouTube. Doug Vahrenberg helped me learn side imaging and The Garmin Guru did the same when it came to Livescope. Before I ever owned either type of sonar tech, I already had a pretty good understanding of how to dial things in and put them to work. I think the younger generations are just a lot better at doing the same thing that the older crowd. I'm a soon to be 38 year old millenial so not really young, but not old either. Working in IT leads me to a lot of Googling and YouTubing for solutions though.

I'd be curious to see how many are fishing out of 80k+ boats in general.

Since the vast majority of bass fisherman probably don't own FFS or tournament fish, I doubt it will matter much. It's just another market for them to hit. Stick FFS on the package and the wannabe bass anglers with $$$ to blow and no idea on how to properly utilize their new fangled sonar will be lining up to buy it.

It won't plane out like it's supposed to though so I wouldn't really call that working. If I can still see my targets and catch the fish, what more do I need from my electronics? It's no different than disabling all the filters on 2D. You're screen is far more cluttered, but you're also getting a lot more information to the screen versus if you had filters on to make it "clean and pretty".

Anglers spend too much time worrying about getting that pretty picture than using it to find what they need. My old Humminbird 998 hdsi would still find brush and fish like my newer bird with Mega side imaging, but it wasn't as "pretty". If it weren't for buttons not working on the 998, I'd probably still be running it. Same goes for FFS. I'm using a 10" Garmin with the LVS32 and a 12v lithium battery with my gain set pretty stinking high. Do my images look as pretty as the one you posted? Not even close. Can I find what I'm looking for and does it help me catch fish? You bet your butt it does!

and here I thought it was because those areas were marked as off limits during the tournaments.....

Another way to look at is that the scoper will likely catch less fish because he is only going after the largest fish. If they are catching less fish then the overall mortality rates will be reduced. I know that's how it with using Livescope for snagging paddlefish on Lake of the Ozarks. When I troll, we catch quite a few shorts and I guarantee several of them die due to have a big hook ran through their gut. When we are scoping them, we are only catching keepers and saving a bunch of shorts from having a hook ran through them.

I should haul my portable livescope setup down to Maramec Springs and set up on the bridge with a PVC pole long enough to reach the water. I wonder what kind of responses I'd get? 😆

That's why I don't get too worked up over this crazy electronics deal. If I were doing something for a living then I would want the best tools money can buy if it helps me win. For those of us who are just fun fishing, it really doesn't matter if we have it or not. You can go get skunked and still have a good time if catching isn't your priority. The only time it really matters is when you're fishing a tournament for $$$. In that instance, I don't really see the point in handicapping yourself. You may as well just save your entry, go fun fishing and spend it on dinner after your done fishing for the day. I like having FFS, but I still don't live and die by it. It's setup on a caddy so I can throw it in the boat if I think I will need it. It's not any different than me going out and throwing a topwater all day knowing I could catch way more fish on a shakey head IMO. Somedays you enjoy the challenge of doing something the hard way and sometimes you just want to go wreck em by all means necessary.

???????????????

They will just move on to crying about something else. I'm convinced that it's some peoples favorite hobby at this point.

I need to pick up a couple of these and try them out. I have a collection of jigs laying on the deck after a day of trout fishing because I don't want to toss the wet jigs back in the storage box with the dry ones.

True, but it is crappie. Anybody that is worth a flip at finding and catching crappie can bust out a limit pretty quick. That or they just the clients catch the guides limit too and then take home some extra fillets. I doubt anybody is getting in trouble over crappie as long as the boat limit ain't exceeded and they are seperated in some way to know whose fish is whose.

I don't think it's illegal to catch a limit every day and give it away. Whoever takes the fish is the one who "possesses" the fish. It is illegal to catch and keep more than the daily limit for that body of water per day though. You could catch 15 on one lake and then go to another with a limit of 15 and catch another 15 there and you're still legal since the daily limit for the state is 30. The possession limit for the state is 60 crappie so four days worth from a body of water with a 15 fish limit or two limits from a river or anywhere that follows the statewide daily limit. As a guide, I don't think there would any "legal" issues by catching and keeping your limit each day and sending it home with your clients ONCE per day. If you do it twice in one day then you're exceeding your daily limit. Proving it would be difficult though unless somebody is watching you like a hawk all day long.

Tournament fishing in a nutshell these days. Fishing with FFS is a hoot, but watching somebody do it sucks. If they showed the screen so you could see what they are looking at then I'd be more apt to watch it. Mark Davis is probably the only guy not glued to his screen.

If there is heavy generation, you can drag them on bottom just like a bait rig. When the water is off, you rig them below a float just like you would a fly rod. Just try to keep them close to the bottom. I like #12s in heavy flow and #16 in low or zero flow. Grey and tan are the only colors I mess with.

I like to have have leader long enough that I can I real the braid/fluoro connection up in to my reel in case I get snagged and need to break the line. Otherwise you run the risk of breaking off the entire leader.

Tying the braid to the handle of my reel is what helped me the most with tying the FG knot. I always struggled to keep the line in my mouth when tying it.

First place losers this year 😂

It was the best day we’ve ever had for average size rainbows, but we just never did find those kickers we needed. Our best fish a 2-0 and everything else 1.3 to 1.6 for a total of 11.58. That’s the best bag we’ve ever brought and not placed with. Five of our weigh fish came on scuds and three came on a black jig.