Seth

Not that I condone marking fish at all, but I could see the hole punch through a thin part of the tail being MUCH less intrusive and harmful to the fish than cutting half the freakin tail fan off! What the hell goes through peoples minds?

I've always used the 6.6 footer and love it. My other rod that I fish with is a 6' Falcon original ultralight. Both rods see a lot of use, but I tend to gravitate to the Air Stream the most, especially if I am throwing 1/8oz jigs. I've not tried a 6 foot Air Stream yet. The Falcon gets the nod for park fishing though.

It's been pouring here where I live since 5am. We actually have flood warning for our county. First time that has happened in forever! The rivers need the rain as do my food plots though so I'm not complaining!

Just going back on page of this thread would have produced big brown pic.

I definitely won't be dropping any money on one until I hold the 6' and 6.5' in my hands. Like you said, the feel between a 6 and 7 footer is drastically different between a lot of rods with the same action ratings.

They were out of stock in Springfield in late July when I was last down. I broke my newest one at Taneycomo that trip and went to exchange it on the way back home and they gave me a gift card. I'm thinking about just putting that money towards a St Croix Premier or possibly even an Avid in 6'6" light fast action. Those Air Streams sure fish awfully nice for a $60. I've not convinced myself that the extra $$$ for the St Croix's would be worth it.

These things look almost identical. The only difference is the TFO is $20-25 more than the Browning and you can get them in a one piece rod instead of just two. Has anybody fished both and have an opinion on whether the TFO brand rods are any better or whether the one piece makes much difference over the two piece?

Anybody who doesn't take you up on that offer needs smacked around a little bit.

That is wild. We are lucky to see more than just a couple of rainbows over 3# in the four winter tourneys. Were any of the big fish browns or was it all rainbows?

I'd be killing it in this tournament if I hadn't dropped Rick Morris for Bernie Schultz. Morris is in 5th and Schultz was basically last. I could have had four guys fishing tomorrow.

08/15/18 03:45 PM - Bernie Schultz was added. 08/15/18 03:45 PM - Rick Morris was dropped. 08/15/18 03:45 PM - Dave Lefebre was added. 08/15/18 03:45 PM - Mike McClelland was dropped. Well that decision is biting me in the butt! McClelland is sitting in 7th and Lefebre is in 14th. That's not too bad. However. Rick Morris is sitting in 8th and Bernie Schultz is in the 93rd spot! That's the kind of crap I've been doing all year long.

Mine is good now as well.

After thinking about it, maybe I should just roll with it. The way I've been picking them this year, I might be better of going with the "wrong" line up.

Did everybody else's line up revert back to their Chesapeake Bay picks? My transaction log shows where I made the changes too. The guys in bold are who I should have. 08/15/18 03:45 PM - Bernie Schultz was added. 08/15/18 03:45 PM - Rick Morris was dropped. 08/15/18 03:45 PM - Dave Lefebre was added. 08/15/18 03:45 PM - Mike McClelland was dropped. 08/15/18 03:42 PM - Rick Morris was added. 08/15/18 03:42 PM - Mike McClelland was added. 08/15/18 03:41 PM - Keith Combs was added. 08/15/18 03:40 PM - Seth Feider was added. 08/15/18 03:40 PM - Brandon Palaniuk was added. 08/15/18 03:40 PM - Bernie Schultz was dropped. 08/15/18 03:40 PM - Brandon Card was dropped. 08/15/18 03:40 PM - Bill Lowen was dropped. 08/15/18 03:40 PM - Brett Hite was dropped. 08/15/18 03:40 PM - Aaron Martens was dropped.

You better start running your traffic thorugh a VPN or proxy or else Phil is gonna h4xx0r your puter!

All things considered, that point going all the way through was the best thing to happen. You really have your hands full if the barb gets stuck under the skin fairly deep.

I wasn't even thinking about the next tournament. Glad I saw this though. Got my team updated with some small mouth hammers. I'm sure they will do horrible since I picked them.

Are you referring to the size of the fish or what?

I fished 10-2pm and ended up catching around 30. There are a lot of tiny 8-10" dinks to weed through to get the decent 13-14" fish. I did have one that was pushing 15". Half came from the first dead water hole and the other half came from the bathroom hole. There weren't any concentrations of fish anywhere below the bathroom hole so I didn't stop to fish any of it. A 1/32oz black marabou jig was the hot lure, but I only had one and broke it off after about 10 fish and resorted to a white trout magnet and green/white rubber leg jig. They were definitely preferring the darker stuff.

Maybe it was Gary Lubbes?

The ones I land usually have hooks stuck everywhere. If I had to guess, most have the front in the mouth and the rear ends up stuck in the body or elsewhere in the head. They can be a booger to get unhooked. It makes you wonder how anything bites those ploppers without getting stuck.

I've thrown the 130 plopper on a nearby lake that is full of dinks and it does seem to weed through a lot of the small fish and find some little better quality fish. There have been plenty of 8-10" eat it too though so who knows.

I didn't realize you had such artistic abilities in you Duane! Those jerkbaits are beautiful!

I found out last year what happens in that situation when I smoked one of the infamous rocks above Roaring Springs below the Sand Ford access. We continued running down river till it was deep enough to shut down and I had 6" of water in the bilge within minutes. All I could do was hammer down and run the few miles back to the ramp. Glad I had a 150 because it was starting to struggle to push the hull by the time we got back due to all the water weight. I've been wanting to fish the Meramec again, but I'm too nervous to try it in my rig with the water this low. It's been fishing a heck of a lot better than the Gasconade has been this year too.

I have had zero luck getting fish to bite again once they blow up on my baits this year. Most of the time they seem to come from nowhere and hit them near the boat so I don't really have any real estate to get them to bite again. The other day I had one about knock the bait in the boat. I'd given up on the cast and was ripping the bait in for another cast and a 15 incher came from out of nowhere in the riffle and chased the plopper all the way to boat. I killed the bait about 12" from the boat and that fish absolutely clobbered it. I've not checked the GoPro, but I'm hoping it picked it up well. Should be pretty cool footage.