Wading Through Life

The bass continue to elude me. Almost got a hit today with a Texas rigged swimbait, but the fish chickened out and I never saw it again. This is why the last few trips out I've been bringing live bait, but I'm relying a little too heavily on it lately. The next couple trips I'm committing myself to only using artificial bait and lures. I'll probably keep the rigs I've been using - Texas, Carolina, and a top water frog - but I'm going to be using swimbaits, hellgrammites, and the like. Tight lines. - Andrew 

I'd be lying if I said I was in a good place right now. I got laid off, and the bass aren't biting like they were last year. Happy to catch little guys here and there but overall I'm itching to catch a lunker. Collecting and sharing all of my research into my app, https://tacklebox.vercel.app/, has helped me to focus and keep fresh in my mind the best practices in both fishing and software development. I still have a lot to learn. My focus for the rest of the year is to stick with a few pre-rigged lures and rigs when I go out. This next outing, I'm going to try to focus on a Texas rig, Carolina rig (for live bait), and a chatterbait. I've barely used any of them but I expect to have some luck on each.

  Bass pre-spawn is here in Massachusetts! While I haven't had a lot of time to go out, the fish are biting! Get your wacky rigs, top waters, shallow crankbaits, and other shallow lures ready. The weather may not be seasonally appropriate at times (given that it hit 90 a couple weeks back) but the bass are getting ready to make little babies and need to eat whatever they can. May last year was the time I caught my first bass at Buffumville Lake in Charlton, and it was on a wacky rig. The little guy in the picture was caught on a Ned rig with a 5 inch Senko, which was my first time getting a bite with that set up so that made me very happy. Not to mention that it was my first bass of the season!   2023 Goals Last year was an all-around learning year. I was learning how to fish, tie knots, boat, locate fish, how weather affects the fish, properly use lures...the whole nine yards when it comes to fishing. As a 33 year old, I had a lot of catching up to do to be on par with the lo...

  I don't know about you guys but I am ready for the warmer weather. It's funny, before I started fishing I used to look forward to the colder months because I couldn't stand the heat, but now I can't see myself sitting indoors for months on end to stay out of the heat - I need to be in or on the water. I've been spending the last few weeks watching the weather, keeping an eye on the nightly lows to find a good time to get the boat (which my dad and I lovingly call the Pork & Cheese) ready for the water. Thankfully, next week seems to be showing signs that we are finally getting out of the freezing temperatures, with only two days getting as low as 31. Last week I went through and planned out what I want to use, and the more time that goes by the more I understand why people have more than one rod of the same action/power. Currently I have one each of medium, medium-light, medium-heavy, ultralight, and light (which is my daughter's), and each is rigged up in...

I was initially thinking of doing a series of game review posts, but my backlog was getting big and I just didn't have the time or energy to complete a full game review for anything in an entire post, so I thought instead I could do a series where I review some recent games I played. I will be going over mobile games, console games, and board games. Reviews will be out of 5, using emojis of course. Survivor.io (Mobile)  I rarely find a game on my phone that I feel like I need to rave about. The first set of games were made by a developer called Hexage, and Radiant was a wonderful, beautiful shmup style game that I shared with all my friends. Today, the game I want to share with the world is probably already popular enough, but Survivor.io by the same folks who make PunBall. A very different game, Survivor.io serves as a top-down shoot-em-up style game where you take control of a little dude, geared up with armor and weapons varying from shotguns to katanas. During the course of pla...

I've always been a huge fan of music, especially in my high school years onward. I always found music to be an escape from what's going on around me, or at times a way to help cope with what I'm going through. What I didn't realize until much later in life however is that the music I was listening to may have actually been affecting how I was dealing with situations around me. Back when I was a wee rebellious lad (we're talking early 2000s here), I was listening to everything from Pink Floyd to Disturbed, and I was leaning more towards the heavier, angrier music. By the end of my high school years, I was listening to a lot of Lamb of God, Disturbed, Godsmack, and similar bands. Take this song for example, how does it make you feel? I'll tell you how this makes me feel - it makes me feel like I want to punch someone in the face, throw things around my room, BREAK things. It's a very clear cut example of what a song could be portraying, but as a kid I'm li...