Seth

It would have to be an absolute freak of a fish. A 4 pounder is a rare fish and I've yet to even see a 5 pounder since I started fishing the rivers a lot and doing tournaments in 2012. I've never heard of anybody catching a legit 6 pounder from any of the central MO rivers, but I'm sure it has happened at some point over the years. The two most impressive river smallies that I now of both came from the Gascoade. My buddy Tommy caught one back in 07 or 08 that was 23"+ and weighed like 5-11 or something in that area. @Mitch f's buddy caught one that looks like an absolute freak in the picture. I don't think they got any measurements on it though, but it looks like the closest thing I have seen to a 6 poung river smallmouth that I've ever seen. The river smallies just don't have the mass that lake smallmouth seem to get.

St Croix has 6'9" ML XF spinning rods in several of their line ups. Not sure if that extra 3" is a deal breaker. They seem to jump from 6'9" up to 7'6" in that action on their spinning rods.

I run in to this when I take people fishing for trout and crappie. Straight lining jigs for trout and shooting docks for crappie produce the most fish of those species for me by far, but not everybody can just pick up a rod and do it. It's takes practice. My casting abilities to get baits in tight to cover is decent (I think), but my skipping abilities are crap compared to somebody like Montgomery. It's not even fair how easy they make it look.

Two things I took away from this was fish adapt in a hurry and it doesn't hurt to fish behind somebody. Montgomery talked about the fish moving to the bushes as the water came up and he was right. Those largemouth went to the bushes in a hurry. Rose fished those docks behind Montgomery and was picking off quite a few fish even though Montgomery was fairly thorough about fishing it.

I can't think of any lakes that don't have certain areas that fish better than others. That's just fishing for you.

But overall the numbers of fish caught were WAY above the other bodies of water that they fish. It doesn't matter how good the fishing is, somebody always sucks, even the pros.

If the Cubs of baseball can win a world series after 108 years, then hopefully the Cubs of hockey can do the same thing.

I wasn't trying to spin your words, but I get your point now. I'm not Chief. I'll admit when I misunderstand somebody. Floyd Mayweather and Rocky Marciano came to my mind when I was trying to think of the closest thing to perfection in ones career. Both have undefeated pro boxing records. Anderson Silva was darn near perfect in MMA till he reached a certain point.

That dude is LUCKY! He and his boat both seem to be unscathed.

I think some sort of a multiplier for fish over a certain size could work.

Name me one athlete who was a power house throughout their entire career? I can think of some of the biggest names in several sports and even they had rough spots during their careers. That doesn't negate the fact that they are arguably the best at what they did. Are you going to try and tell me with a straight face that somebody like KVD won 6.5 million bucks fishing for bass off of pure luck? If so, I better not drink any coffee because I'll be spitting it on my computer screen from laughing too hard.

That’s why they have the AOY points. Anybody can get lucky and win once in a while. That is why the Elites did away with the win and your in classic birth. If you win AOY for the season then you definitely say you are the better fisherman.

I think the catch and instant release is the future of tournament fishing. There is no reason they can't still do the biggest five. The Bassmaster Elites do it that way for the Toyota Texas Fest. The only exception is that they allow anglers to bring on really big fish in to show crowds.

Gotcha. I thought you were talking about it happening within the past few days on Tablerock. You never mentioned anything about being on a different body of water. It all makes sense now.

Are you sure you don't have your anglers mixed up? JT Kenney is an announcer for MLF and not a competitor.

Those are some beaut's! As long as we don't get any big rains to jack up the Gasconade, I'll be on it chasing bass this weekend.

Here's the video from Skeet Facebook page.

I've tried it a few times and I don't think I've ever caught a fish on the double fluke setup. I'm usually fishing around cover though so a single fluke and getting it in to nooks and cranny's pays off more so for me. Like you said, it looks great in the water though.

Looks like TRL is producing everywhere today. It's a straight up wack fest!

Evers has been an absolute monster in MLF so far. I always knew he was good, but he is really showing it off this year.

Does collecting social security classify as working for the Federal Government? I thought you were retired.

I'm surprised mixing dough required such a high skill set. Oneshot had a more specific skill set than Liam Neeson did in the movie Taken. With all that cattin around you were doing, you could have ended up like Freddy Mercury or Eazy-E. I'm surprised the company never trained a backup.

Don't kid yourself. We fish the professional class in the CAM tournament! That classifies as professional fisherman for sure!.

It's a wonder anybody can get sponsored these days with all of the fake pros running around advertising stuff for free.