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I cook my bass the same way I cook my pike, which is the same way I cook my walleye - heat a bit of oil in a frying pan, put the fillets in, flip once and immediately season with fresh ground pepper and seasoning salt. Simple, but I love it. I have some garlic & butter fish crisp my brother gave me, and I use that sometimes, too. It's good, but I prefer my other way. I might give a couple other ideas here a try sometime, just for variety.

I used a natural Live Target perch last night, in very clear water, and all I got was one small bass. At least I know it works, but I didn't have control of the boat so I couldn't go to my usual spots to see if I'd catch more or not.

Maybe companies should stop manufacturing scales since they're so evil.

LOL, thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJP1DphOWPs

Yeah, I track the length using my Rod Rule decal. Tough to wrap my rod around a fish, though. I could use a string or something, but I never remember to. Half the time I forget to measure length as it is, haha. Well, I guess I don't need a scale to measure the pathetically small fish I catch after all..

I'm a computer programmer, so I seem to have a natural inclination to care about numbers. I track most of the fish I catch in a spreadsheet so I can look at the data and analyze it to hopefully learn more. I'm odd, I guess.

I was looking in a few stores in my area, and there seems to be a rather large variety of scales for weighing fish. I'd like to hear from you guys if there are any you recommend. More about my needs: I catch mostly smaller fish, so it probably doesn't have to go much over 10-15lbs if it makes any difference in accuracy. I think I'd prefer digital, unless there's a good reason to go with a traditional scale. I've only owned crappy spring-based scales, and they're no good unless you're trying to tell the difference between a 40lb fish and a 50lb fish. Price doesn't matter too much, if there's a big difference, I'd pay more if I had to. I'm not in any tournaments or anything, but I'd like to be more accurate than 0.5-1lb increments if possible. On the flip side, I'd also take anti-recommendations if there's a particular brand/model I should absolutely stay away from. Thanks in advance!

Yes, I *usually* post the name of the water body when I post, especially if it's a common lake that others in my area are keenly aware of. For example, you'll see posts of mine from Anima-Nipissing and the Montreal River, two large bodies of water that are certainly no secret. And smaller lakes such as Sharpe and Gillies... Why? Because I interpreted the forum rules as "don't post VERY SPECIFIC spots" and not "don't post names of water bodies." But maybe that's just me, because that's what the rules actually say...

Hmm, yeah? That's mostly what I do... I often get pike by mistake, though, and one time a smallie somehow got hooked by my Hula Popper under the bottom jaw, from the outside, and it was near impossible to get out - luckily I was keeping that fish anyhow. The worst hooking was a pike on my floating Rap with three trebles, so I took one of the trebles off and that seemed to help. I'd love to go down to one treble, but not confident enough, not sure which to leave on, etc. Well anyhow, I do know I won't be pinching any barbs next time I try for an aurora. I'd add more barbs if I could..

I primarily target bass, not that it makes a difference, but I have lost a lot of them with barbed hooks. I want to be a better angler all around, so I think come next season, I'll start pinching some barbs on my trebles and see what happens... Worst case, I will lose every fish and I'll have to get better at fighting or go back to barbed... Maybe I could pinch the rear treble on my lures, and leave the barbs in the front hook until I gain confidence. The rare time I have issues getting little fish (usually pike) off my hooks makes me wish I had hook cutters, so barbless is where I want to eventually end up I think.

Nice fish, and I love the shirt - let the good times troll.

Now I just need an iPhone..

I use ffmpeg to convert videos, and I know it supports MTS. I run Linux, but I'm sure there's a Windows port by now... It's probably command-line though, so it may be intimidating. I also use Avidemux as a GUI tool, and I know there's a Windows version, but I'm unsure if it can read MTS files.

Mine is both.

Nice work! I am jealous - I have this craving for perch lately..

Cool read. Got anymore mythology I could check out?

Wow! Nice fish, man!

He's from North Bay, I'm from the Tri-Towns. We met somewhere in the middle, Temagami or so.

I don't have much confidence in my spinners. I only caught what's in my avatar on one of them, and other that that, nothing. I know they work. I've seen a big pike caught on a Mepps #3! The other no-confidence lures for me are the Moto Minnow (uh...) and the version of the Jitterbug that I own (hooks on back). The former, well, it's a freaking wind-up toy. The latter, I have had a few strikes, but I dunno, there are just two hooks at the back, and so the fish have to hit it a certain way to even have a chance at setting the hook. I only had one on once, and I thought I had set the hook, and suddenly I had confidence in it. Maybe I did it too hard, or maybe it didn't have the hooks in its mouth at all - I don't know, but it got off after 15-20 seconds or so, and away went my confidence. I like the lure, just not the hooks. I want the other version with the Hula Popper-like double hanging trebles.

Day starts off with a 9am-ish wake up call from a fellow OFC member. You may know him as Rod Caster, but to me, he's Rod Master. We'll get to that in a sec. We make plans to meet at Lowell Lake Rd and hit up #25 for brookies. We get there, and head in. We troll around a while and nothing. Did a bit of casting, and nothing. I think we maybe gave up a tad early, but then, I'm the guy who spent almost 12 hours going in circles at Liberty chasing ghosts.. I was antsy to land something - it'd been a week since my last catch, after all, so I was fine with moving on. Trout can wait for another day. So we landed and had a bit of lunch, picked a random lake on the map and away we went. We got in and trolled around a bit and did a bit of casting. That was mostly unproductive. Chad got a couple tiny perch on hook and worm at one point, and I was definitely feeling the nibbling, but nothing big was around. I thought we were about to pack it in, when finally we got into a few smallmouth near some downed trees near the shore. It was a long day, so my memory is a bit foggy. I think I caught the first one, and it was on a Hula Popper. But he caught more than me, and a real nice one in there, too. At this point, I was pretty happy. We had caught fish, we had great weather, calm water. Beautiful day overall. Time to go home... ...yeah right. The sun hasn't even set, it's just about to get good. "I wanna try off that point over there," he says. And so we motor over to it, and that's where we stayed the rest of the night. What followed can only be described as a massacre. My camera's autofocus messed this one up a bit, but there are some chunks taken out of this guy, probably from a pike: Finally a pic of me (all these pics are from my camera. Chad will add the pics he took, which I hope I am in at least a couple!) At one point, we were pulling up so many walleye, I just gave up trying to get pics of them all. I didn't even have time to put a fish on the stringer if it was one we decided to keep, or put away the camera before he was pulling in another one. The best single day of fishing I've ever experienced. I don't know how many fish we boated.. Well over 30, probably over 40 if you include the bass. I don't think any were over 16" but there were sure a lot of them. I took home my limit, ate two of the smaller ones (they were delicious) and will have the others soon, Thanks Rod Master, for the invite and knowing your stuff when it comes to walleye. And your CD is now permanently linked in my mind to this trip (I've played it at least a dozen times). The day was pretty epic, especially for a lake neither of us had fished before. Brookies, I'm coming, but you lucked out today.

Trolling it is, then!

I also thought this was a dog problem thread.

Thanks for the additional input, guys. I didn't plan to troll around because the three lakes I've been at are all pretty small, and I thought casting into shore would be a good option to try. I like trolling, just it seems that's all I ever do and I don't want to be spooking fish in the small lakes. Not real sure how deep they were getting. I have one of these things, I don't know what they're called, but it has a plastic piece and then several metal segments and a bunch of willow spinners on it. I tried that for a little bit one time as a guy at Liberty recommended it. I don't even remember where or when I got it or if I ever used it in my life, but he was saying it was supposed to attract trout and good for trolling. Needless to say, it also didn't work. But then again, maybe all the auroras at Liberty were sleeping when I was there. I caught the monster in my avatar on my little Panther Martin! Who is Jim, and where is Gramps?

Wow, great pics!