Fishin' With Dave, Dave Kramer!

Dave's 10# 10 oz Texas Largemouth

Fishin' with Dave means Dave Kramer this week.  Dave Kramer is a friend of mine who runs the Kramer Open on the week after Labor Day, a Sporting Clay's shoot that raises money for a family that belongs to a friend of his who died early and give monetary help.  I used to shoot every year with my friend Tom Emmons however since his passing, I haven't had the opportunity as there has always been something going on that week.  I am looking forward to making it this year both as a tribute to my friend Tom and Dave always has a pretty good spread of food, beer, and friendship.  One of the things that my friends are always doing and to my delight, is send me pictures of their fishing adventures.  Dave was on vacation at the end of March and Hired a guide on Lake Fork, Texas to go largemouth bass fishing.  I am a huge advocate of hiring a guide when fishing a new area like in Texas.  Lake Fork is about 60 miles East of Dallas as is a reservoir on the Fork Creek and is really a trophy bass fishery.  According to the website 34 out of the 50 largest Largemouth Bass in Texas were caught on Lake Fork.  According to Dave they were sight fishing however the water was quite stained as the quide just knew the spot was a good one.  He had a NetBait Paca Craw, a crawfish shaped rubber bait rigged like a plastic worm texas style.  The fish hit the second cast. Wow, that's a nice fish considering that the Minnesota official State Record Largemouth is only 8# 15 oz, almost 2 pounds heavier.  I think Dave should get a graphite repoduction of this beautiful fish as it truly is once in a lifetime fish.  Thanks for sharing this wonderful experience.

Differences in Gold Colored Jigs

We have our Spring Canadian Fishing Opener trip dates set, I am going up with my friends Bruce Wiley and Pete Sipe along with 3 other guys on Monday, May 23rd.  We normally fish for 3 days and will plan on returning on Friday the 27th.  I have been fortunate to fly up the last couple of times however this trip looks like I get to bring my boat again, which is fun as well.  Flying takes about 5 hours by the time you mess around with everything and driving is about 9 hours, not too bad. One of the latest discussions is my partners love for gold colored jigs.  Lac Seul's water is stained a nice brown color even though the water is pretty clean, it's coffee colored.  The past notion presented to me is that Gold is the ticket and that color outfishes everything.  Well, I don't necessarily believe that notion but what the heck, if it works for them, I'm in.  One of the issues with gold jigs is that the color is plated on verses painted on.  Often times to facilitate the process the entire jig is plated, hook and all which tend to result in plating over the hook point and making it quite dull.  I bought some bulk jigs from Cabela's a couple of years ago to use however they are basically worthless unless you resharpen the hooks.  Bruce and I went to the sportshow and looked at Northland Tackle for Gold colored jigs.  I ended up ordering some for the guys both in 1/4 and 3/8 oz size.  I got them the other day and it was interesting, the picture above shows the 3/8 on top and the 1/4 oz on the bottom.  If you notice, the top on is only plated back to the wire keeper and the hook remains in it's original state.  The bottom one however is the 1/4 oz and for whatever reason, maybe it's just cheaper, but the whole thing is gold plated, hook and all.  If you do the thumbnail test you will find that the top, unplated hook really grabs however the plated one simply slides off the thumb.  I would never dispute their claims of fish catching abilities of Gold however my experience is that chartreuse or white works as well but then again.....whom am I to question the experts!  Oh well, the guys can sharpen these as we drive up!

Spring is finally arriving as I took the boat out of the pole shed to start the main motor, my 250hp Etec HO.  To my amazement it started within a second of hitting the start button, just like the 115 Suzuki's I had.  I am sure that because my E-Tec is fuel injected, that helped because my carbureted 9.8 hp kicker was a bear. Basically the gas drains from the carburetors and instead of being afraid to choke it too much (and flood the engine) it's the opposite, I really needed to choke the crap out of this motor.  After about 5 minutes of trying it finally fired up.  The choke is electric so I had to keep fiddling with it to keep it running until it warmed up enough, what a pain.  Anyway both motors got started and that is a great start to the season.  I did get my two depth finders to talk to each other as this was really bothering me.  I did everything possible and damn near wore out the buttons looking for the right menu.  In the end I ended up doing a soft reset of my unit up front and VOILA, the Sonichub 2 menu bar appeared.  As I told Pete, now he can change the music from the front of the boat if he don't like it!   My next project before May 1st is working on installing a third unit in the boat, this should be fun..............