You ever get the “I just smelled schit” look?

From the guys in 60k dollar bass boats? It usually happens when you start slinging them in the boat using live bait fron the hole they just got done fishing in. I saw a scowl on this one guy’s face from 100 yards away.

Probably pissed him off more when he heard me laughing.

Yeah, we got on some really nice schooling hybrids by browns ferry once. My then 6-7yo was whooping and hoolering as he was bringing em in each cast...as a pro sat on the other side of the school looking for a large head. I knew Add wasnt catching tourney fish, but his hollering at that cat was hillarious.

When they pull up and anchor right where your casting, just bounce
a leadhead jig off the side of their boat.

Yeah I got some looks back in April of this year. I was crappie fishing with minnows and there were bass guys all around and I pulled in 7.5 -8 lber on my 10ft crappie rod with 6lb test right where some of them had fished earlier. Haha good times.

Wrong forum for this remark, but this is exactly how I feel when there's an "optics" thread on the hunting forums. I love all the dudes talking about "you gotta have a $2,000 Zeiss on a $2,500 custom-fluted rifle and shoot $100 bullets, wearing $800 Sitka clothes, and you absolutely have to spend as much as you can mortgage your house for to buy binos".

I do have a $60,000 Ranger though!

I was 14...in 14ft 1974 model seacharmer with a 40hp mercury thunderbolt....she run good but she wasnt to easy on the eyes...i played hooky one day and i was pitchin a saphire blue baby brush hog up under piers..when oh wait..i forgot..bassmasters was in town and low and behold....here comes guesss who...Aaron Martin...had a camera guy with him... He come bustin up in there..an he did that whole jump up an throw the trollin motor down before the wake slaps the transom deal...i just happened to be realin in a chubby little spot i pulled off a pilling...i give it a kiss an threw it back...i looked at him an said "heyyyyy....how you doin?"..he nodded at me....i slung anothern out there....catched another little chub...at that point he had turned purple...i through the fish back...i looked back an said "boy they been bitin purty good today....you want me to give you one of my worms?"....he through the rod down an told the camera guy to "sit down..we're leaving"...i just waved and was screamin "byeeeeeeeee....come back and see usssssssss"....i felt bad for the poor feller...idah give him a worm and a hook too..sortah madeem mad i rekin....boy i worem out that afternoon tho

I get it. Back fairly early in my hunting career I was THAT guy that was a guest at a hunting club and killed a hoss first time I set foot on the land. It was during a fairly dry spell there too. I waited until everybody that was there tagged their spot and then I tagged a spot well away from everyone else. Then my buddy dropped me off on the way to his stand. By 10:30 am I had made a couple of enemies and several good longtime buddies. The two that got pizzed, finished the season and didn't come back. I don't think they were very welcome anyway. I gladly accepted an invitation to take one of their spots the following year.

Was fishing a mid lake hump one day and some dude comes flying up in his fancy boat and kinda is hanging around with his trolling motor behind us. Finally he says "I'm in a very important tournament and really need to fish your spot". Told him to go get #$#@$#ed hahaha.

I did that on Neely Henry one time during a BassMasters event. I was dropshotting a point and waxing some spots when some assclown from Missouri ran in and sat down about 15 yards on front of me and commenced to slinging a crank bait. I said something and he didn't even respond. So I fished a rod out of my rod locker with a big rattle trap on it and commenced to bouncing it off of his boat. Only took 3-4 times before he cranked up and left. Not long after that I got a visit from marine patrol. They checked everything on my boat and then told me to have a nice day when they couldn't find nothing.

What year was that?

95' ish

Sounds like Matt Brooks was the WP. Surprized he did not jump on your boat and look all over. Then again, It may have been Jimmy McClendon. Doubt it though. Jimmy would never do that to an "ordinary" fisherman, never!

I didn't catch names but there were two of them.

Another was the first time i fished the anderson boats tourney on smith. Had a 20sumthin year old tri-hull astroglass with maybe a 85hp merc on it. Think there were 700+ boats in it. I was around 150 to blast off. Im as wao as that old boat would go, grabbing air and soaking us...when this new 20'er with the driver wearing a motorcycle helmet pulls up beside me, checks up a second, gives me that i just smelled schit look...and zooms off. Next morning, he pulls up beside me when we were loading up and asked that famous question "yall do any good". His jaw dropped when i told him we had a limit. Got that same schit smell look and he said he was off to another tourney. We finished 81st in that tourney.

I got some looks when I caught a 7#er on lake Martin from my wave runner when I was 11. Every bass boat I passed I held it up as I drove by.

Many years ago my best friend had this redneck uncle who lived beside them in a trailer. He had this aluminum boat (I want to say it was a Lowe?) with a motor that stranded him more often than not. It wasn't a flat bottom, more like a Bass Tracker with a console and steering wheel. He was one of those tinkerers, always working on an old car in the driveway, always had the cowl off that old Mariner. We were over there talking with him one day, a truck goes past the house towing what was probably a top of the line Skeeter or Ranger back then (late 80's), and us boys were just dreaming out loud about one day wanting a big fancy bass boat like that. To which said uncle replies, "I wouldn't have no fiberglass bass boat!!!" And then went off about how many huge bass and catfish and bream and crappie and blah blah blah he'd caught in that aluminum boat. I reckon he was trying to convince us that somehow that skiff was superior. Anyway, even at that young age the whole thing was comical and reeked of insecurity. This whole thread is basically one long "I wouldn't have a fiberglass bass boat". Un hunh, I bet you wouldn't.

I won't say I wouldn't have another one but I will say that I highly prefer my past 4 aluminum boats over my only 2 "high end" glass boats. If I was purely bass fishing I might consider another but that will be the only reason I can think up right now.

In the end it just comes down to how a person likes to fish. Everything I care to do on the big river systems, I can do in my Ranger. Everything else, I've got a 14' flat bottom and trolling motor. I love both.

I'd give my right nut for a new 21 foot glass boat with a 250 or 300 on it, but until I can pay cash for one, I won't own one. I won't be able to do that until the kids are out of college. Until then, the Xpress will have to do. If I ever fish out of a X21 Xpress I may never get a glass boat. Glass boats sure do ride good.

Aaron Martens tried to block us for going under Palmetto Creek bridge this year. Needless to say things didn't work out his way. He thought more of that Free boat than I did the old ranger.

First let me say, I'm no fan of professional fishing. I don't follow it, etc. So in no way am I defending them. However, if I knew a pro tournament was going on, I wouldn't even go fishing on that lake, much less be a jackhole and get in their way if I did. Not sure why y'all think it's cute to do that?? They know they don't own the water, but it's their JOB, it's how they make a living. Seriously, they may have travelled from 4 states away and don't know the whole lake, this is where they've been catching their fish every day, it's their "milk run".

I saw a clip one time of an FLW event where Mark Rose was leading the tournament, catching most of his fish off the same offshore hump. (most of those tournaments are won from a guy running the same spots each day) On the final day there was a local boat sitting right on his spot when he got there. He hung around for about an hour hoping the local would leave, but they didn't. Rose wound up finishing 2nd or 3rd in event, cost him the $125,000 check for 1st place AND knocked him out of AOY (which could be worth who knows what in endorsements). Yeah, that'a way to show him!!

Now, if we're just talking about local dudes in an amateur tournament, then I agree with y'all. Get lost, buddy!

You have got to be kidding me. The pro from 4 states away has more right to the public lake than the locals that pay most of the taxes in the area? If it's his job to catch fish, he can pick more than one spot when he's doing his prefishing. I'm not going to be rude to any of them, but they better give me the same respect, and that seems to be a problem with many of them. I know that some of the locals seem to have the same attitude though.

Ya'll are some fishing bad asses. Do you train together?

I typically just read on here, but you guys are hilarious. Next time just whip your ruler out and settle it at the boat ramp.

Or take your Kayak paddle and use it like a Ninja sword.

me and a buddy tied under a bridge in a 1986 tiller steer wearing crappie out on maribou jigs under a slip bobber we were hooking 2 at a time think we wound up with over 50 when we went home. guy and his young son come trolling up and see us catching they fished all around that bridge and as close to us as they could get never caught one I heard his son say "look daddy they got another one" 6 or 7 times he finally responded "yeah son i can see now lets go!" loudly at the kid. we couldnt help but laugh

Me either.




I don't look at FLW or Bassmaster events and set my fishing schedule around them. Plus they don't have any more right to a "spot" on a public lake than I do.




I sympathize and understand that. I'm not going to let one wash me up on the bank because he saw me catching a few fish. I wouldn't let any pro fisherman or local yokel do it. I don't do it to them and they aint doing that to me.



Sucks for him. I bet there was hundreds of thousands of square yards for him to catch fish in that lake. I would be willing to bet that every fish in that lake wasn't stacked up on that hump.




What makes the FLW or Bassmaster guys any more important than anyone else on the lake? It's a public lake, right?

word

With a kid involved in the other boat, I would have offered them some jigs and tried to help them but to each his own.

Yep

I think the following two paragraphs you posted immediately after you typed this MIGHT have slightly contradicted you, though

Some of y'all know these examples and some may not, and most won't care.

Many times the locals who sit on a spot a pro has fished 2-3 days, like in the example about Mark Rose, are doing it out of nothing but spite, dislike of the pro tournaments, and a big "F**k you" to professional anglers trying to make a living. I don't understand that but it happens.

Another reason is sometimes because they just don't like a specific pro angler. So they head out an hour before the launch, rumble around the spot in their boat and then fish. Whether they catch a fish or not, they don't care. They just want to screw up the spot of the guy they dislike.

IMO in those two instances, Joe Local is being an asshole just because he can. It's not cool but it happens. I've talked with pros about these kind of situations many times and there's only one good way to handle it — the pro should ask politely if he can fish there and if not, move on. That may be his A-1 best spot on the lake or his only one. If so, tough chit. Go find another one or to the B-2 backup. It's a big lake. Joe Local ain't moving.


But probably in most instances some local guys go out because Saturday or Sunday is the only time they can fish. The "we're only here a week for this tournament" doesn't matter. That may be the only weekend Joe Local has been able to get on the water because of work or family deals, or it may be the last time he gets to fish for the next however many weeks or months due to work or something else. He knows that hump with the stumps and rocks and mussel bed is the shizzle and he wants to catch some fish, and he doesn't want to move just because a pro wants to wear it out to catch 20 pounds and then sit there for hours "protecting" it from another tourney guy.


These are factors the pros have to consider and plan for. It's just part of what they do. Some locals will move on, others won't. Politely asking if they can fish, and then moving on if the local guy won't move, is the best option unless they want to mentally spin out or pitch a fit and make the situation worse.

I've never been in their shoes, but I'd like to think that if I was a pro who had only ONE spot on a 69,000-acre lake like Guntersville that was giving up the goods then I maybe didn't do a good enough job of finding 2-3-4 good places to catch something.

well let me be one of the ones to say, i wouldnt have a fiberglass bass boat. Mainly because where i fish, it would be in the bottom of the river by now and it’s hard to put a 50 gallon bait tank in a bass boat. To each his own.

Now you know you can’t do nice things to strangers on the lake like that. His ego will cause him to call you a know it all and tell you to go fork yourself. Then his next time out, he will be sitting in that same exact spot trying to do exactly what you were doing.

i probably would have if he didnt cast that curly tail grub right on my spot 5 or 6 times when my cork would get about halfway to the boat. I dont like to offer up advice without being asked either, some people take offense to it. most people will ask you what your using if they want to know ive been asked several times by people that will see us pulling in fish off a spot they just fished. theyll troll over and say something like we couldnt catch nothing over here what are yall using ill show em my set up and throw a couple jigs in their boat.