LarrySTL

Haris I agree with the others that you are doing something different however unintentionally. If you are stumped for how to change, you can change lure size, or retrieve speed ( fast slow or medium), smooth and steady or big sweeps of the rod or little twitches, those are all simple to change almost instantly. Type of line particularly mono vs fluoro vs braid, line diameter, line stiffness ( Maxima vs Triline xl vs Big Game ) line color (original fluorescent blue stren in very clear water is notorious for getting fewer bites) yellow power Pro braid, some lines sink some float. If you are down 17 to 1, I agree that's not a random issue something is different. You don't have to know what's different you can just change something if you do it in a organized way. Try a bigger lure for 5 minutes then a smaller lure for 5 minutes. If you don't want to keep track of time keep track of casts; 10 casts with fast retrieves than 10 casts with slow retrieves 10 with steady retrieves 10 with erratic retrieves. You may not bump into the best solution but if you methodically stick with this you will bump into some better combinations. Some days these things will matter a lot, other days they will matter very little but if you keep eliminating what doesn't work you will end up with something that is better for that day.

Congrats on the PB !

I hear you all about these chuggers being too slow and actually I agree. I could sometimes slow down enough to try the Lucky 13 but the bass had about 15 minutes to bite it or I would change away from it. I did know a guy who loved the Hoodler beyond words. Picture a huge Lucky 13 with a good sized prop on the back. One day, yes from the back of my boat, he caught two LM over 5 lbs throwing it over about 50 feet of water in the middle of one of those deep steep TR coves that was crammed full of cedars starting about 15 or 20 feet down. It got a little heated when I announced that I had not caught anything and that we were going to go do something different in a different type of water. I can actually do ok with a Chug Bug but I am fishing about the speed of a semi-slow to moderate WTD retrieve.

This retrieve also used to work and probably still does on Table Rock and Bull with the medium size or large ....drum roll....get this.....Lucky 13. Painfully let-mold-grow-on-it type slow. One Bloosh.,,.., then eat lunch, then move it again. Rinse and repeat. Plus ( have fun on Ebay when you read this next one)....the Hoodler.

For the 2 or 3 people on earth who don't know this, Tackle Warehouse has 15 % off of "almost everything" if your order is placed by 5:00 pm Friday California time. And they do seem to mean the "almost everything."

If there is 3+ FOW under some of those pads, I'd also take a flipping stick with serious braid and something like a texas rigged plastic craw with a strong hook, peg your weight, and pitch it into any hole in the pads or the spots where a fish missed your frog. Craws will hang up a lot less than worms or creature baits with long skinny appendages. You'll know real soon if there are some bigger bass in there.

Very very cool video ! However, I think all drones should be programed to play Ride of the Valkyries if they come within some specified distance of another person.

As one of the folks old enough that I don't have to buy a Mo fishing license anymore, I haven't ever been asked for one in a zillion years but I suspect what would happen if I said I was exempt because of my age, that they'd ask to see proof of my age. That Mo ID card/driver's license doesn't have SS #s on it anymore but you can bet it's tied into databases that already have the SS numbers. Besides, the feds had "a security breach" about 6 or 8 years ago and let some hackers access about 5 million SS #s, mine included. Whoever ended up with mine tried to collect my tax refund. I bet he were surprised to find out that I owed the IRS a whole bunch of money on that year's return. LOL 2nd Amendment-wise as Al just said, the right to bear arms has limits. Probably very few of us think that everybody should have an unlimited right to have machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, surface to air missiles, or suitcase-seize nukes. YMMV

I bought one spool of Vanish once, 10 lb. It seemed stiffer on the reel and casting than most line and yes, it broke several times for no reason at all. I had recently bought it from BPS mail order so I assume it was fresh. I took it off the reel after that one day and haven't tried it again. IMO it was really bad.

Great fish, way to go!

OK, two comments. 1 is that I didnt know this particular forum existed until I was so bored today that I was surfing all of OAF, and 2 is that you folks are making me crazy level hungry !!

OK.I'm going to ask and I hope that doesn't color me greedy. As one of Dave's many many satisfied customers, and as one of them who lives 195 miles away, is there any chance that this seminar could be recorded and available later on as a podcast or something like that ? If not, I do understand there may be lots more to doing that than I know, but if it was possible I am sure there are a lot of us who would love to see it.

Congrats, thats great Mitch, and before you know it you'll be taking her fishing.

Two sort of random comments. First is on the bathroom thing. The first time I went to Germany I was told there were "attendants" in the bathrooms. OK, whatever. It turns out they didnt mean just the bathrooms in the big fancy hotels and such, but most of the bathrooms. None of the germans bothered to tell me ( maybe because it wasnt remarkable to them, or maybe it was "mess with the American guy" day, or whatever), What I didnt know until I was in the large mens bathroom in a big train station was that the attendants were women. Every one of them. In both the men's and the women's bathroom. After a couple days it didnt seem remarkable. The other thing is about those weak willed medical defectives who need to live near a pharmacy. I'm one of them. I have an underactive thyroid and every day since about age 14 I take a little tan thyroid supplement pill. I have been consistently told by doctors that if I stopped taking it for a couple months some very bad things, possibly including death, could happen. I'll go line up over to the side with all the other defective folks, including those with epilepsy, mental health problems, high blood pressure, and yes I am also one of those weak willed medication seeking cancer survivors. Maybe we can harness our collective will power and control those pesky neurotransmitters and our weak-willed cells that allowed their various cancerous mutations to occur.

An interesting thread. Some of the posts, basically the "society is going to h#%& " ones remind me of my grandmothers. Now thats going back a few years as one of them died in 1972 and the other died a few years before that. My mom's mother lived out west and was a Republican. Capital R. She literally thought that FDR was a communist and if you anybody mentioned an elected official who was a Democrat, if she was outside she would spit. Literally. And then give a short blast of "THATS what all those communists in that party are worth. Warm spit". She despised unions almost as vehemently. She was not particularly religious. My father's mother lived in Jefferson County. She, and most of my father's relatives, were Democrats, and my grandfather was a union railroad worker.. This grandmother seemed like a nice TV sitcom grandmother when I was very young, because she lived "in the country" and she baked lots of good pies. When I was little that was enough to win me over. As I got a little older I realized she was Very Religious, the kind of religious that took pleasure in loudly telling other people that they were sinners and were going to "burn in hell for eternity". If you cussed, just once, even saying "dam*" within earshot, you got threatened with "burn in hell for eternity". I forget what religious denomination she was, but it was one of the mainstream protestant ones, methodist or baptist or something, and if you were not religious, or were not that exact one branch of the protestant religions, you were going to ...guess what ? Yep, burn in hell for eternity. Now if you were Catholic that was a lot worse ( I guess you were going to burn for longer than eternity). Jews were worse than that. Then there were the african americans, and somewhere perhaps even lower on the scorecard were people who drank. You didn't have to be alcoholic; one drink, one time, and...yeppp.....you got it... you-know-what for all eternity. By the time I was high school if both grandmothers were around you could feel the venom and the tension. And then the Beatles happened. And Vietnam, And the anti-war protests, and the Civil Rights movement. By then I sometimes wondered, in my long haired chemically induced haze, what special section of hell she was booking rooms in for those folks and for me. Certain aspects of this thread remind me of them. Go figure.

Nice fish, way to go !

Historically the Elite guys are much more impressed with the Angler of the Year standings than the results of any one tournament as far as who is really "best". Whether because of the prize money or sponsorship contract incentives, a few of them have been much more focused on a win. Clunn, Brauer, Jordon, and a few others have been much more about winning than the annual standings. I have read a few times that most of the Elites didnt like "win and youre in". I agree that its a lot easier ( tho nowhere near "easy") to win an Open and I have wondered in the past if "fish all three in an Open division, win one of those and you're in" was done by the owners to try to get more people fishing the Opens ( and paying the $ 2500 x 3 tournaments) entry fees. Either that or the relative ease of getting a pretty good check in relation to the entry fee, has resulted in a lot of mid-level Elites fishing the Opens.

Great fish, way to go !!

Hmm..... I thought they stopped "win and you're in" about the Elite tournaments after 2014. I think they still do it for the Opens if you also fish all 3 in that division. I could be wrong though.

Coombs would be tough there. If Clunn can qualify he could be a beast on that lake.

Without googling, I think its 14th St at St Louis Ave. mjk has is exactly right, there are worse parts of town, but it can be adventurous pretty close by.

I take a couple crosslock snaps with me wading. If I think I might want to change lures quickly or want to experiment with several lures, I will use a snap. Otherwise, I just retie; I tend to use a palomar knot which makes retying a pretty quick process, particularly if the backup lure is where I can get it pretty fast. I do like Wrench's wade with canoe idea tho for places where that makes sense.

Congrats most of all on the clean checkup, but also on getting a boat you really like as a present to yourself. And after some more time passes, the checkups generally dont worry us as much ( I'm at 3 + years of them) and you'll still be using that boat !

I have one additional suggestion on WTD. If you are brand new to that technique some folks find it easier to learn if they go to a pond ( no current) and just throw it out into open water, take the slack out of the line, point your rod slightly down and somewhat to the side. Then.....the wierd part...do not reel. Just do the twitch and see if the lure turns 45 degrees or more to the side. Dont reel. Twitch again..does it turn back to the original side ? Dont reel. We're just trying to get the feel of the twitch and the lure pivoting. See if you can get three or four twitches before there is so much slack that you have to reel up some slack line. At that point, just reel the slack out, dont twitch. When you have all the slack out, start over with the "just twitch" part. When you are pretty good at twitching, then try to twitch and reel a tiny amount, no more than 1/2 a turn of the reel handle ( and that might be too much). Some folks find learning WTD one action at a time easier than working on all the parts of the puzzle at the same time. I strongly suggest that you not use braid to WTD or if you just have to use braid, add at least a few feet of mono ( yeah plain old mono) as a leader. If you imagine the hooks of a WTD lure stuck in a ball of braid, you'll understand why. The fluke: you might also try a 6 " Sluggo. Just like the fluke it can WTD on top, or do a gentle underwater twitch, or let it settle even deeper and just do a tiny small but crisp twitch ( try to make it shudder but not move forward) as slow as you would a jerkbait in a lake in the late winter. You can also add part of a nail weight or use a weighted EWG hook, on either a fluke or a sluggo. I generally do a "texposed" hook position on either one..

Looks great, you're gonna love it !