Tons of great advice in all of your posts, you obviously know your stuff. Do you usually fish rivers or lakes?

Definitely, you never know what might show up on a trot line, exciting way to fish because of the variety, might be a big billy gar trying to take your finger off...

Fished a lot as a kid, and picked it back up four or five years ago. Every year the cabin fever gets worse, and this year it's terrible, especially since I got a taste of Truman Lake. I mainly hit up Longview & Blue Springs with my old man, and beat the banks at James A Reed every once in a while.

Every year I try to fully learn a new technique or lure, and this year I plan to get into jerkbaits & drop shotting.

I love all of fishings contradictions that are ALL yet very true... 'dark colors in dark water', no! some will say, its bright colors in dark water ... 'nah see, ya work a grub slowly'

Yet i've proven tons of hard & fast fishing rules wrong, many times over.

You guys in the tropics are so lucky... all year round & saltwater to boot.

Depends. I loathe fly fishing, but I do it because of the situations. It's just so much of a pain in the ass in terms of digging under rocks for hatchlings and watching the surface for the rise, etc. It's a shit ton of work. I like the beer after fly fishing more than anything. It just seems to taste better.

Trolling gets the big ones, but it's almost as frustrating as fly fishing. You see the bigguns on the radar, but they never move no mater what you drag past them.

As of last year, I was enjoying spin casting for big pike more than anything. Hit hard as hell, and it's an adventure just to get them off the lure and back into the water.

You -loathe- it? :spock:

I'm not sure I'd do any hobby I loathe, but anyway. Your post reminds me of one of my friends who won't pick up fly fishing. His objection: it's too hard to drink beer and fly fish at the same time.

Thanks. :thumb: I've been reading up on flat heads because I caught a big one, well big by my standards not necessarily big by flat head standards, totally by accident a few years ago so I'm now hooked on going after big cats.

Both and it's seasonal.
I like getting out to the river in early spring when the rains and ice melt have it swollen and rolling. This is what triggers their pre-spawn feed, particularly that first big wash of water coming down stream. It brings a whole bunch of catfish food down with it and the big cats will be out patrolling looking to fill the empty spot after the winter slow down and to load up on carbs before the spawn.
When that slows down I like to head for the mud flats of a lake because that's where they'll start staging for the spawn.
After the spawn there's a slow down as the females become disinterested in feeding and males are guarding the nests. This is usually around July to August and during this time you'll have to drop your bait on top of a male to get him to bite.
This is about the time I'll switch to fishing for bass, crappie or channel cat. I really dig top water fishing for bass and July to August is a great time of year for that.
After about mid August, after the eggs have hatched and the males have come off their nests, they and the females will go into post spawn feed mode loading up for the winter slow down. At this time I'll hit the river if there has been a storm, or Redman is dumping, and the water is coming up but otherwise stick mostly to the lakes.

Blasphemer!
I love fly fishing but there just isn't much of a call for that in SE Kansas.
I'll occasionally take mine out to catch perch or jig for crappies and small bass just for fun but usually get worn out on getting snagged in every tree in sight trying to cast it. I know, there's techniques and I can work them but it still gets annoying when I could just go out with my light spin cast rod and do just as good with less hassle.

Bwana started this one about 5 years ago.

http://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/showthread.php?t=112902

Looks like it got lost though. No one has posted in it since 2008.

I'm headed down to Bennett Springs in a couple of weeks for some trout fishing. Me and three of my buds do this annually and is always a good time.

To catch opening day?
Seems like we've talked about that before.

No, the following weekend. It will be bad enough then, I will probably never do opening day. To ****ing many people for me.

And yes, I've discussed Bennett Springs before in Bwana's fishing thread.

I did opening day once... once!

I've seen pictures of it.
Not something I'm in a hurry to get in the middle of.

BTW, here's a site that tracks John Redman Lake.
It's level, inflow, output. Comes in handy.

http://www.swt-wc.usace.army.mil/JOHN.lakepage.html

You can even check in on monitoring stations up and down the Neosho River.

http://www.swt-wc.usace.army.mil/web...1.current.html

These have been very handy sites for me so I thought I would pass them along.

Zebco power baby!