Seth

I've never caught any smallies on the fly rod, but I do remember landing a 19" largemouth on one. I was fishing a small dry fly near some rocks when I was in my early teens, possibly preteen, for bluegill and green sun fish on a lake I lived on. The bite was just like the perch bites, but then this beautiful green bass flew out of the water and put up a great fight. It was a pretty awesome experience. If I had a fly rod heavy enough to throw bass sized gear, I'd probably give it a whirl just to say I did it. It does sound fun. I'd imagine it would be similar to chasing big browns albeit you would be fishing tighter to the bank and cover. I'd probably spend more time in the trees than the in the water.......

I can think of times when I bet a fly rod would definitely wreck them, but it would be when the water clears up and flows are lower. Basically anytime I would throw a fluke or trick worm.

Are you fly rod guys fishing anything besides clear low pressure stretches? I'd love to see somebody with a fly rod come go toe to toe with conventional gear in the areas that I regularly fish. I'm honestly not sure how a fly rod angler would effectively fish the areas that I catch a lot of my fish in. Too deep and swift or relating to heavy wood cover.

I've only had two FOR SURE 20" smallies in my boat. My PB 20.5" came while fun fishing one evening on the Gasconade and my buddy Tommy caught a 20.5" 4.38 pounder on the Gasconade in a tournament last fall. We've caught several we thought would hit 20", but ended up being 19-19.5" on a Golden Rule. We didn't measure these three, but I think they were all just above or below the 19" mark. The one I am holding on the left weighed 3.59. The one is his left hand looked very similar to the one I am holding while the middle one had length, but skipped breakfast. I'm kicking myself for not measuring and weighing all three just to know for sure.

Thanks! We had one of those days where everything went right. We got first dibs on every spot in my milk run and had 9-9.5# of bass in the boat in the first hour of fishing. That alone would have been enough for 4th or 5th place. The 3.59 smallmouth was our last keeper and sealed the deal for us by a good margin. Tommy had two really nice smallies in the first 30 minutes too. Everything was caught on the Go Pro's as well so I'll be sure to post the video of our day when I get it done later this week.

I dropped the 2k on an Ultrex this past winter and my only regret so far was not doing it sooner! I'm a cheapskate too and it takes a lot to talk me in to dropping that kind of coin on something.

I'll keep that in mind, but none of that really makes sense as to why it would help with signal. If LTE coverage isn't available, it will fall back to 4G. Bluetooth is just a type of connection that allows you to sync with other bluetooth devices such as a speaker, head set, hell even modern trolling motors (people get a kick out of me controlling my Ultrex with the Minnkota app on my phone). Now I have been in areas where LTE was showing up, but nothing was loading and switching LTE off and using 4G did help. You still have to get service for that to work though. It's not just my phone, it's everybody in the boat using different brands and models of phones. I've spent a lot of time in that stretch during the past ten years during snagging season and it has always been that way for us.

I haven't tried the hooded sun shirts yet, but I do wear either a long sleeve sun shirt or a short sleeve version with sun sleeves, fingerless sun gloves, a buff and now a floppy hat. In the past, I always work a regular hat, but sometimes I would forget to pull my buff back up after pulling it down or whatever reason. My ears would be exposed and start burning before I realized it. With the floppy hat, my ears are still protected and my buff will protect most if not all of my neck while pulled down. Long sleeves, buff and floppy hat Picture from last year with the sleeves. Those sleeves are great for when it gets REALLY hot out.

That would be a fun one to watch them fish. They would probably have to keep the boats below Hurricane Deck though because there is a huge dead zone on the Osage arm from the 50mm all the way up to about the 83mm. I've snagged that entire stretch for paddlefish and you're pretty well dead to the world with AT&T. Not sure about other providers though.

A wacky rig is one of those deals that should always be on the deck IMO unless you're strictly fishing deep water. Even then, you can still fish a wacky drop shot. They just get bit.

I floated the Bourbeuse last fall and the quality of fish that we caught really surprised me. A few others I know who have fished it in recent years have caught some extremely nice fish on it. There's not a ton of water, but the lack of pressure makes up for it. I'm about 15 minutes from the Bourbeuse and really need to start fishing it more often.

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.