Yep, no deer, so time to have some fun

Hey Badger! Husker here. Looking forward to seeing you at Camp Randall tonight. I will be like you, allegedly having fun with one thing but secretly watching Matt’s vids. Except mine is a wedding. :( My prediction for the game is my team will lay egg after egg, stink up your stadium then go home with yet another loss. It’s not a game unless our QB’s give the opponent five or more turnovers. Our D is awesome, but not our offense. I hope you enjoy your bowl berth. Good luck with deer season!

Mine too.I love spinner baits

As a Connecticut resident myself, I am the same way. Jerkbaits are my specialty with pickerel in colder water, and once it gets warmer, fluke style swimbaits and topwater lures work best. But I caught my PB at 24" and 2.63lbs this year on a jig. Thought it was a 5lb bass when I hooked it.

Wish we had them where I live. I don’t have many places with smallies either.

It’s been tough going here this year. They removed a bunch of them from the river, the shallow sloughs I think were hit by winterkill the last couple years and a couple spots got over fished for a few seasons.

@ndyakangler I live in Indiana and have to drive 2.5 hours north to even touch the nearest water with them. I've been a handful of times and have caught 2 pike lol my fiancé just traveled to North Dakota and I'm jealous af I wasn't able to go. The scenery looks amazing up there from all your vids!

I did screenshot all those fish to compare them and make sure I wasn’t catching the same one over and over. I couldn’t match any of them up so I’m pretty confident I caught five different fish on this trip at least!

Yeah I could tell just looking at my audio files! Last time the road noise was about the same level as my voice, this time it was only about 1/3 as loud.

The difference is I’ll have a leader tied on while fishing pike and not end up losing $20 of lures to bite offs. If I try to use a leader smallie fishing I generally don’t catch many of the bigger, smarter fish that a leader will often scare off. What frustrates me smallie fishing is I’ll feel that nice thump expecting a big smallie, but then I’m let down by a slack line with my jig gone and it’s instant disappointment lol.

@@ndyakangler yep, that makes sense!

I tried the spinnerbait again for pike on the lake I usually fish smallies on. I caught several pike but I was surprised not a single bass on the spinnerbait.

Just moved to Houston from the Midwest about a year ago. I was just getting the hang of the rivers and the smallie hangouts. Boy do I miss it. Haven't really found any bass spots yet. I'm looking to try the Neches on my next adventure.

I was looking for some hooks to use for that at one of our local stores but didn’t see any that looked like they’d fit over the hook on the lure. I’ll have to search around online for some.

The main purpose of that fluoro was for bite off protection against the pike but it worked great to keep my spinner bait tangle free too! I can’t use a steel leader with those, most of them don’t have an actual loop to tie through just a bend in the wire so a snap on leader isn’t going to stay put.

You are right. It´s been some years since I last used a spinnerbait with both types: with an actual loop and with only a bend in the wire. I remember there used to be issues casting the type without the loop not precisely because it entangled the line, but because the costume of using a snap that would work out of the bend of the wire every three or four casts, which is so annoying!. It was a rookie mistake on my part. they need to be tied directly on your line, and if you´re fishing for pike then you need a stiff length of fluorocarbon resistant to their teeth. On my leaders, I normally use 80 lbs fluorocarbon (brand Reaction Tackle) using a pair of pullers (and power from my arms!) to fix the knots. Perhaps I´ll purchase some 50 lbs fluorocarbon because I am not quite sure I would be able to tie a proper knot with my 80 lbs. Thank you very much Matt!!!

​@@ndyakanglerI do the same thing. Seaguar 40-50# Blue Label does me well with Spinnerbaits usually, the way they hook up, it's rarely woofed and line not as likely to get chafed or scraped by them due to the lure shape etc. Best answer I've found anyways. Great video as always

I record my audio separately with a Zoom H1 and a lapel mic I run up to my hat cam. I usually mount it on top of the GoPro facing the same way so it picks up the same field of view for audio as what the camera sees. It will pick up sound from all directions but whatever the mic is pointing at is what will get picked up the most. For this trip I moved it under my hat bill, basically facing my forehead. It picked up my voice a lot stronger there so that I didn’t have to boost the volume on the audio files as much, which in turn didn’t crank up the road noise as much.

I just don’t like how much more it picks up my breathing having the mic tucked under my hat bill lol, but it picked up maybe a quarter of the road noise it did last time when I adjusted the files to the level of my voice.

The pedal drive is nice but the vast majority of my spots I like to keep it simple and stick with my Tarpon. I have a tough time slow working a stretch of shoreline with the pedal drive trying to keep it pointed straight. It seems you have to pedal 20-30ft to get the rudder to actually work and I end barging into the spot I want to fish. With the paddle a quick corrective stroke will get my kayak pointed in the right direction without moving much.