Thread: My DIY Projects and Great Adventures

Good for you young man.
Sounds like you and wife are having fun together and living life.
Enjoy and experience everything you can while you are young.
Please be very careful while she is in the water with gators around.
I have seen unmentionable things occurring while in the water when no gators are within a thousand miles. Search and recovery incidents are a terrible thing!!
Have fun but be smart!!
Chuck.




Sent from my iPhone using Crappie.com Fishing mobile app

This is a great thread thanks for sharing

Yeah her swimming is concerning, but she takes chances all the time. I let her drive herself to work for example. Nothing worse than seeing a roadside accident, a horrific crash, and you know all they were doing was going to work. Cancers, falling meteorites, serial killers, and her looking so vulnerable and all. I do worry about some smelly old dragon snatching her and taking her underneath the surface and away from me forever. I limit her swim time to just a quick dip now, so she gets in, gets wet and gets back out. The heat bothers her more than it does me, and we don’t want to go home at 9:30 a.m. just because she is too hot.

I bought a pull behind the boat tube thingie and was dragging her around behind the boat as she read books and such. She loved that but I took that away now. Got her a blowup raft thingie that sits on the back deck of the boat in it’s place, as if she is inside the boat I am happy. It is comfortable enough for her to lay out on and get the effect she is after. I can troll along and she can hang out and we aren’t stepping over one another. We see people dragging tubes behind their boats in some lakes, but not in the ones we fish in. No one has said why, but imaginations can fill in the voids on that subject. A certain number of people get eaten yearly, but it is like the government having a daily allowance for rat droppings in cereal. This much is allowable but no more.


So thank you very much for the concern. I appreciate the kind thoughts.




Yes that place is expensive. When I saw the rental fee for the layout chairs, I gasped at wondered what life must be like for those that actually don’t bat an eye at $200. Must be nice. Of course none of those people were actually on scene there as no one was in one of those layouts. They had about 20 of them, all empty for two days, and no one seems to be bright enough to figure out why. Three guys in a cabana hut watching like hawks to catch someone cheating so they could charge their room for “usage fees”. Greed keeps them stuck there all day in the hot Sun, and that is just fine with me.

Now the four diamond restaurant was pricy, too.



But I saw that as a great expenditure. She was so happy to be sitting in an elegant restaurant, eating a gourmet meal, that there is no way to complain about any of it. Women like that stuff and she is a good girl all the time, and just happened to be on her vacation. Before we walked downstairs I was kind of hoping she would change her mind, but when she got dressed I knew she was serious. She looked fabulous. Money well spent as that was her favorite part of the entire stay. A little sophistication for a lady that is stuck living with a country boy and two dogs in a podunk town in the middle of nowhere.

I am a lucky lucky man and sometimes I have to just let her go a little to do these things or else run the risk of becoming a fuddy duddy and losing her. I love that she exposes me to things that I would think best avoided. Live a little.

Her vacation is over on Sunday and she will be sad faced about that. I wish she didn’t have to work. Maybe if I had I been born rich- instead of so damn good looking.

I agree sometimes you just have to splurge. But yeah what shocked me was more the $200 for a chair and umbrella, and the $20 drinks. Well unless of course that was a half gallon margarita! And the restaurant bill, yeah, frugal portions, expensive, but expected at a fancy place like that. Funny thing is, I've had Sea Bass in St. Thomas at place that was real expensive, and I made total fun of it. Didn't want to go, but we did. And you know what, it was actually awesome. That fish melted in my mouth, absolutely great. Still talk about it today (right). Never woulda thought.

Originally Posted by Slab

I agree sometimes you just have to splurge. But yeah what shocked me was more the $200 for a chair and umbrella, and the $20 drinks. Well unless of course that was a half gallon margarita! And the restaurant bill, yeah, frugal portions, expensive, but expected at a fancy place like that. Funny thing is, I've had Sea Bass in St. Thomas at place that was real expensive, and I made total fun of it. Didn't want to go, but we did. And you know what, it was actually awesome. That fish melted in my mouth, absolutely great. Still talk about it today (right). Never woulda thought.

Yes sometimes high prices at a restaurant seem crazy, but sometimes it's just that dang good! I have several dinners that still sit at the top of my head anytime I think about food. I guess the strangest one of all was flying to South Africa first class on a business trip, this leg was from Frankfort Germany to South Africa, a 17 hour leg and one of the meals they served was Springbok Antelope and Game sauce. It must have been one of the back-straps and was the most amazing meat I ever had, just fantastic!

While always high cost the really large Scallops done right are fantastic!

Skip

Got my new Victory size 1/0 sickle hooks today and hesitatheth not. Made some 1/32nd and 1/16th ounce FreeStyle jigs, with the Old School paint options.

A FreeStyle mold will accept a 1/0 hook in each time slot, as pictured.



In looking at them I wondered if anyone can explain to me why we need to downsize our hooks when we down size our lead weight. Seems silly to me. Looking at the heads fitted with hooks, looks kind of similar in each size. I like the larger hooks and feel 1/0 is a good mix. Bluegill have little mouthes and need little hooks. Crappie will have no problem getting a 1/0 down, and it catches them better seems to me. I like that Victory hook. It is sharp and the only way it could be any better is if it wasn’t shiny.

Here is my paint booth.



Wide lids allow me to grasp the hook and swish leaving eye free and clean. Dipping in a skinny container can’t do that.

Here is a shot showing the lead creeping up the hook shank towards the eye, and what it looks like after I trim.



And now all ready for the oven.



Like I said Old School. My crappie friend uses nothing but old school and flat slays them. 1/16th ounce heads and 2” curly grubs. No blades, no nothing else. I am gonna try it and see if it’s him or the jigs. He catches 50 in the time it takes me to get 20. I can get there but takes longer. That means he is more efficient. I watch him go by in his boat, and I see his presentations. He even showed me his four favorite colors and told me exactly how to fish them. Only I’m stubborn and insist on using “fancy stuff”. So I will try plain Old School and see how it goes.

My deep dish Colorado blades came in the mail. Has the lighter colored pot belly look like real fish have. The blade is unimpeded to spin hard and fast. Lots of sound and vibration. Overall the jig is still compact in length. 2 1/2” est.

Gonna dangle this right behind the ship. I cast out just a tad, and set rod in angled backwards holder. It will run and make its way to the surface, and I see it. Then I know a little line gets it couple inches under the surface. Little more line maybe a foot deep, and leave it. These two lines are entering the water at an acute angle compared to the four mostly horizontal long lines. This helps when the ship turns and the lines touch each other, as less likely to foul. Braid.

The amount of travel the blade has is great. It is free and loose to spin in whatever orbit it wants. Blade out the back makes more sense than blade in front, to me at least, but blade in back means no squirrely tailed plastic baits allowable. Blade up front or underneath for those baits. So having a mixture to experiment with is nice. I will be testing this blade to see if the fish like it or despise it.

I am going to fish in the same location she and I just did. Only by myself this time so bringing cooler and ice. I will also be testing the new setup for my rods. 30lb braid for main line, 80lb braid 10 feet or so for a “shock leader”, and 15lb flouro leader 30”. I also started liking these clips for exchanging jigs quickly and cleanly no new knots needed. Not the horsehoe looking deal, rather a corkscrew look from some factory in China. Solid no bend connection unlike the others that will flex and open. Tricky to see the thing, so you need glasses or young eyes to work it. But basically you pass it through the hook eye and slide it a little down into a bend that captures the eye and allows for loop knot movements. Cheap stuff from Ebay I think.

1/16th ounce with deep dish blade ensemble. It will ride just under the surface, too.


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