I know you guys got more stories.....bring em!

I placed in my first bass tourney in the late 70's. I fished , at 10 yrs old, in a big tourney on Lewisville. I got 7th place. Probably around 150-175 boats. I fished from my dads Taylor Craft SS jet boat. My dad drove me everywhere I wanted to go. He didn't Bass fish, he was just a guy that loved fishing banks and fishing barges. I'll never forget it. Caught one decent bass in little elm area Then started catching crappie. My dad asked if I wanted to go weigh in the one bass I had. I said yes...of course.

I won a plaque, some fishing poles, and a "pro seat" for a bass boat. Lol


I dad bought me a bass buster so I had a place for my seat I won. I devistated local ponds with that boat.

Bass fishing is easier now.....I don't care what you guys say. You simply drive your boat till you see em on side scan....then throw at em. Kinda like window shopping.

brutha you got one hell of memory, Your poor wife!!

ONE MORE CAST
Incurable and insatiable �Bass Fever� hooked me in the early 60�s when I first began walking the banks of some of our local farm ponds and from there it wasn�t long before I had graduated to a new fangled Fish-Master Float Tube that actually put you in the water with the fish and it was off to Bass Fishing Heaven for me. I vividly recall my first time tubing on a chilly late March morning using a Mitchell 300 spinning reel while fishing a weightless plastic �Dad Nabber� along a milfoil edge and I caught my first 7 pounder along with 3 more over 4 pounds. There was no way I could ever recover from that experience, so I soon convinced my better half I just had to have a new stick steer 40 HP Bass Boat with a new secret invention painted camouflage green with a red flashing disc called a fish locator and after reading everything Buck Perry had ever written at least a dozen times that I could practically quote verbatim from memory started me on my way to my Bass Angling Odyssey of a lifetime and the thousands of mostly wonderful memories that I have had while chasing jaws�

A trip to Florida with my first double digit bass and drifting �CR�ME� worms on the humps at Lake T with Mike C. and a wild and crazy trip to Cuba in 1969 on �Red Carpet Airlines� in an old vintage DC-3, which is a book just waiting to be written in itself was the final act and I�ve been hooked ever since�

Was it better then than now? That�s really a tough question for me to answer. One thing is however an undeniable fact. The cost factor per each bass in the boat has increased to a point that has many longing for the good old days when everyone could actually afford to go fish without going to the bank for a loan before making a trip to the lake. $100,000.00 dollar bass boats and $100.00 lures and $5,000.00 dollar electronic gadgets were not even a figment of one�s overly creative imagination back in the 60�s and we just learned to keep our lures active in areas of the water column with the right cover and structure where bass should have been located based on water clarity and temperature and generally we came home with a smile and plenty of fish stories about the one that got away.

Today however, we have so many new tools and innovative methods at our disposal it almost makes it too easy compared to the old days. On the other hand, anyone that has learned the basics and then given even the slightest thought to what the major impediment to spending more time catching than fishing has come to the realization long ago that FISHING PRESSURE on any given body of water is the major cause for failure.

Since America has had a drastic decline over the past many years in constructing new lakes which tend to offer those first few years of fantastic action regardless of pressure I feel it is imperative that one learns to study the natural up and down fish population cycles of most inland lakes and spend a maximum amount of time on a body of water while it is in an up cycle as far as producing good quality angling and learning to use all the latest electronic technology to the best of one�s ability. There are still plentiful bass populations in many lakes and with the enhanced management programs that many States have adapted along with improved catch and release tournament technologies, I look for the future of bass angling to only become better, even if you have to fish a little harder on some days than when you were the only boat on the lake back in the good old days. Personally, I can�t wait for the next trip to get my old beautiful vintage Ranger back on the water to make just �one more cast.�

His wife has a better one than his, poor Ken.

I will admit, fishing during the week has been nice... I rarely go out on Fork on the weekend... Unless a friend or family want to venture out.... That is fun, not much traffic, I also have found the fish don't start biting, until I get there....LOL......

Dilly Dilly

Prior to the early 70's,every lake had boats for rent generally at several landings and you would carry your own small motor and rent a boat.....as a kid,I fished with my parents on TVA lakes in east Tenn in the 40's and 50's with an occasional trip to other parts of the country..most fishermen on the lakes in those days were fishing for crappie or bream and you might go all day and not see another bass fisherman...the older wooden boats with pointed bows didn't lend themselves to sculling well so in the area i lived,we would fish topwater early..putt-putting along the bank and casting then stopping to fish the points or creek mouths then troll throughout middle of day...the plastic worm changed all that and allowed us to cast for bass in middle of day but we didn't have trolling motors so we had to anchor the boat to fish a worm.......

Dad owned several wooden boats, couple of which he built himself and he would get somebody to take it to the lake in a truck and leave it chained (and locked) up at one of the landings..nobody trailered boats back then and few people had pickup trucks either except farmers..I recall a rite of passage is when i got old enough(early teens) that my Dad let me run the boat from the upper lake/river where he kept the boat in spring to the lower lake in mid summer by myself....a trip that took most of the day because we had a 10 hp motor.......

in the 60's,the boats available for rent changed from wood boats that leaked like hell to aluminum boats that leaked like hell but weren't as heavy...if you didn't carry your own bailing can,you looked around the landing til you found one.......these boats were generally cheap,narrow,easy to turn over and didn't have flotation in them...and every year you would have a drowning or two in area lakes..... I had owned several used small (and temperamental)motors and my first new motor was about a 68 E-rude 9 1/2 (that cost $325.00)and it may have been the best motor I ever owned......it was wonderful to have a motor that cranked easy and it would fly on a 14 ft jon boat....probaly every bit of 20 mph.....which was blazing speed compared to how fast a 3-5 hp would push one of those boats......

I lived on Miss. river in mid 60's and we would rent a boat and use sculling paddle...i got introduced to "doodle-socking" and it was unbelievable the fish you could catch with 12-14 ft. cane pole and a top water bait worked up under cypress trees and bushes.....I didn't use a rod and reel for several years until I joined a bass club and they wouldn't let us use those poles....we hadn't learned to flip yet so using that cane pole was only way to get back under stuff that you couldn't cast to....bass clubs started springing up back in late 60's/early 70's and that plus electric trolling motors changed everything....we did find that trolling motors scared fish in real shallow water so we would use sculling paddles when we were doodle socking but the fish soon got used to trolling motors...


you were liable to see most anything in early years of tournaments...those that could afford bassboats generally showed up with stick steering 14-16 ft boats with engines from 25-40 hp.......trolling motors on front and trolling motors on back(and both)..those that couldn't afford a bassboat generally modified what they had or could afford and there were weird and dangerous rigs that showed up in first few years of tourny fishing.....50 hp engines on aluminum boats with the transom full of angle iron bracing because the boat was designed for 10 hp motor....ski boats with trolling motors and everything in between....

my first bass boat was a a crosby ski sled that I installed swivel seats in with a 50 hp johnson and Otasco hand operated trolling motor and it was probaly one of the more normal looking rigs....it didn't take long for for tournys to turn into half fishing contest and half boat race with each about equal in importance...within just a few years,the engines got bigger and bigger and it was really getting dangerous......it was not unusual to see 14ft stick steering boats rated for a 25 hp with 80 hp engines on them....
Bass thankfully started limitations on horsepower and the boat manufacturers caught up with pad boats and dual steering that would handle the higher speeds......fishing boats and tackle since mid 70's have gradually evolved into what we have today but the 6-8 years from late 60's to mid-70's was the period of greatest change when we went literally from a jon boat,paddle and one rod and reel to the high horsepower boat with electric trolling motors and multiple fishing rods across the deck.......

one last remembrance.....when our bass club scheduled it's first out of town of town tournament against another club,I went out and bought my second rod and reel.....a red ambassadeur with a $4.98 True Temper 5 1/2 ft pistol grip glass casting rod....and the guy I drew commented how he liked my two matching rod/reel combos....

I don't know that things were better back then but life just went by a little slower. The fishing is just so much different nowadays. Back then we had to know how to read the land (and maps)as there was no GPS to take us through unfamiliar places. To be truthful, I never did learn to read a flasher very well. I don't fish tournaments anymore and haven't for a long time because it made me lose sight of what fishing was all about for me. I don't have to catch fish every time out and I don't have to go 70 mph to get to my favorite hole. Was fishing better back then? Maybe yes, maybe no....it's what you make it.
Oh, by the way...I still have my Plano 747 sitting on a shelf out in the shop.

Fishing is lots better now. People are a lot ruder.

Wow bear trap, really enjoyed that, thank you for sharing

You don't like folks out West? However I think you are wrong. Back in the 60's the biggest bass club in Texas and the nation was the Permian bass club in Odessa. Actually for me it was much better and one of the reasons was that people were more courteous back then.

West as in California, Washington State, Oregon, and such places. You know all the "hipster liberal" places, not western Texas

Dilly Dilly

The only thing better now is GPS and our electronics, and I wish I was the only one on the water that had them lol. It's not fair that the youth of today have never had the good fortune of being LOST on a lake! Try fishing Table Rock in Missouri, Eufaula in Oklahoma, Ouachita in Arkansas, or Toledo Bend for the first time without your gps. Back in the 70's we had to drive and hold a paper map at the same time, I've been so lost I didn't think I was ever going to make it back to the ramp. Some of the maps were two different sections, about as thick as a newspaper sheet, and disintegrated the first drop of water you got on them. Of course, we were only running about 35 wide open with a 90 horse johnson. But even not knowing where we were, a hundred fish day on Toledo Bend or Eufaula was routine.

Me and my best friend growing up got lost on Caddo in the early 80's, we were 12 or 13 and everywhere we turned looked just the same, GPS would have been nice

I like it the same I catch more fish now than I did then.