Of course you know there are 2 different versions of the 6 inch Hudd, Weedless and Exposed Hook and they are tuned differently.

On the weedless version there is an air pocket in the top that keeps it buoyant. It is close to the hook “Slit” and what can happen is the hook can puncture this pocket allowing water to get in and throw its balance off. To remedy this squeeze any water out and allow to dry. Look for a hook hole around pocket and put in a drop of Mend It or use some Huddlebond to seal the hole thereby not allowing water to enter and keeping it buoyant, allow to dry, presto, problem solved.

For the exposed hook version there is an internal lead weight on the underside. What you want to do is hold the Hudd by holding the bend in the hook, feel for the lead down towards the bottomn under the hook. Look at the picture below and you can see the lead weight I’m talking about, its on the bottom. The thing towards the top of the lure is a hard foam that acts as a ballast. If your Hudd is running to the left bend the lead VERY SLIGHTLY to the left, yes opposite of how you tune a crankbait. Test it out and repeat as needed, he stressed to me that they do not take very much to adjust them so be sure to make very minor adjustments at a time. This tuning technique works for both the 6 inch and 8 inch versions

I have had people tell me to boil them to get them to run true, according to Ken, boiling them works if your baits are slightly warped, especially the tail. The main reasons for warped baits is because they are generally stored wrong, hanging on your rod in the rod locker for a week or not being placed flat when storing them. I know I had a weedless one that was attached to a rod for a week and the ling guide on the rod pressed against the bait and it took the form of the guide, after which it didn’t run true. Ken said to tie a line or wire to the hook eye and dip them into the boiling water for about 30 seconds then hang to dry at room temperature. After I did this and the Hudd ran great without any tracking issues.

There ya go, straight from the man, hope that helps, if you have any questions feel free to ask.

Thanks for visiting my site. Be sure to tell all of your fishing buddies and come back soon

Until Next Time, Good Luck and Tight Lines To Ya!

1) You have a power worm dangling from your rear view mirror because you think it makes a good air freshener.

2) Your wedding party had to tie tin cans to the back of your bass boat.

3) You call your boat “Sweetheart” and your wife “Champion”.

4) Your local tackle shop has your credit card number on file.

5) You keep a flippin stick by your favorite chair to change the TV channels with.

6) You name your black lab “Mercury” and your cat “Evinrude”.

7) Bass Pro Shop has a private line just for you.

You have your name painted on a parking space at the launch ramp.

9) You have a photo of your 10 lb. bass on your desk at work instead of your family.

10) You consider viennies and crackers a complete meal.

11) You think MEGABYTES means a great day fishing.

12) You send your kid off to the first day of school with his shoes tied in a palomar knot.

13) You think there are four seasons–Pre-spawn, Spawn, Post Spawn and Hunting.

14) Your $30,000 bass boat’s trailer needs new tires so you just “borrow” the ones off your house.

15) You trade your wife’s van for a smaller vehicle so your bass boat will fit in the garage.

16) Your kids know it’s Saturday—Because the boats gone.

Anyhow, we met up at the duct and started tossing lures. Across the duct there was a blue heron sitting on the opposite shore and he’s catching little fish, then a striper busts the surface. We make several casts and nothing as we are talking, BAM, Fish On! Yolo hooks up, as he is fighting the fish, which was a good solid 8 pounder, we see another one the same size trying to take the Rattle Trap out of his mouth. Yolo hesitates in pulling his fish up because he’s waiting for me to cast out and see about catching the other one, which didn’t happen. Finally he starts to pulls him up the side but the fish flipped again, got off the hook, slid back into the duct and promptly swam away. We tried for a few more minutes then take off to another spot.

Yolo let me make the first cast so I tossed my LC Pointer out, gave it 2 jerks and BAM, Fish On! As I’m fighting the fish Yolo looks down and there are 4 more of them, the same size, chasing the one with the lure stuck in his face. I get him to the side and do the duct slide, he’s mine! Not a DD but he went 8, not a bad fish so into the ice chest he goes. We continue to work the area but nothing doing so its time to make a move.

Next spot nothing so its onto another spot. Met up with another duct fisherman who was not having any luck but I figured seeing how I was there I might as well make a few casts but nothing doing. Time for Yolo to take off but I figured I’d fish on. At his advice I went back and hit the spots where we had caught our fish as well as another that we skipped.

I get back to the spot where I caught mine at and tossed out my 128 Pointer, jerk, jerk, BAM, Fish On! As I’m fighting this fish it suddenly gets very strong and started peeling drag, remember how I mentioned there were 4 others with the one I caught earlier, yep, double hookup. I fought them for what seemed like forever, then one of them gets off. I get the one that didn’t get off to the side and do the duct slide, he’s mine! This one only weighed a little over 6 pounds so I didn’t bother taking a picture but he went into the ice chest to become fillets.

Onto another spot, 3^rd cast with a Zoom Fluke BAM, Fish On! Damn this is a great day. This one took off, peeling drag, it then turns around and takes off in the other direction again peeling drag, he’s heading for the buoy line and bridge so I figure I have to turn him so I apply my thumb to the spool, the rod bends then BINK, he comes unbuttoned.

Welp, time to head home. Striper count in ice chest, the 1 Yolo gave me, thanks again buddy and the 2 I caught for a total of 3 so not a bad day at all. Too bad not all ducts days are as productive.

Thanks for visiting my site. Be sure to tell all of your fishing buddies and come back soon

Until Next Time, Good Luck and Tight Lines To Ya!

It’s with great pleasure that I announce…..it’s that time again…..The Darwin Awards are out! These Annual Honours are given to the persons who did the human gene pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way.

You may recall that last year’s winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out.

This year’s winner was a genuine Rocket Scientist…no jive!

Read on..and remember that each and every one of these is a true story.

The nominees were:

Semifinalist #1

A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited into the fireplace in his house. The resulting explosion and fire burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.

Semifinalist #2

Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude when another plane approached. It appears that they decided to moon the occupants of the other plane, but lost control of their own aircraft and crashed. They were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants around their ankles.

Semifinalist #3

A 22-year-old Reston, VA man was found dead after he tried to use octopus straps to bungee jump off a 70-foot rail road trestle. Fairfax County police said Eric Barcia, a fast-food worker, taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped and hit the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby. “The length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the concrete,” Carmichael said. Police say the apparent cause of death was “Major trauma.”

Semifinalist #4

A man in Alabama died from numerous rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and a friend were playing a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as a ball. The friend – no doubt a future Darwin Awards candidate – was hospitalized, but lived.

Semifinalist #5

Employees in a medium-sized warehouse in west Texas noticed the smell of a gas leak. Sensibly, management evacuated the building, extinguishing all potential sources of ignition; lights, power, etc. After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas company were dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked. Witnesses later described the sight of one of the technicians reaching into his pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a cigarette lighter. Upon operation of the lighter-like object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away. Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter was virtually untouched by the explosion. The technician suspected of causing the blast had never been thought of as ”especially bright” by his peers.

And now the winner of this year’s Darwin Award; as always, awarded posthumously;

THE 2011 WINNER!

Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded in the side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was unidentifiable at the scene.

Police investigators finally pieced together the mystery. An amateur rocket scientist had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take Off…actually a solid-fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy military transport planes an extra ‘push’ for taking off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. He attached the JATO unit to the car, jumped in, got up some speed and fired off the JATO! The facts as best could be determined are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a distance of approximately 3.0 miles from the crash site. This was established by the scorched and melted asphalt at that location.

The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph and continuing at full power for an additional 20 -25 seconds The driver, and soon-to-be pilot, would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, causing him to become irrelevant for the remainder of the event. However, the automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20 seconds) before the driver applied and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height of 125 feet leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock. Most of the driver’s remains were not recoverable.

Epilogue: It has been calculated that this moron attained a ground speed of approximately 420-mph, though much of his voyage was not actually on the ground.

Really…..we couldn’t make this stuff up. People like these are all around us. They have kids and they vote!

Thanks for visiting my site. Be sure to tell all of your fishing buddies and come back soon

Until Next Time, Good Luck and Tight Lines To Ya!

Another thing I also found was that some people can be very inconsiderate. I went to this one place that had a dock that was made for handicap people, yes it was clearly marked, and there were people fishing off of it that would not make any room for a person in a wheel chair. As I started down the ramp they continued to have all of their stuff scattered all over the dock and between 3 of them they had 6 rods out, spaced so there was no room for me to even attempt to wet a line. I asked politely if they could free up a little room for me to fish, “We were here first” was their reply. None of these people were in a wheel chair or appeared to be handicap in any way, except maybe mentally. Their statement took me by surprise and really upset me. If I could have stood up I would have thrown each of them off of the dock into the water. At another lake I went to that had a handicap dock and the ramp was not to steep, I had a similar experience.

As of this writing my cast comes off in less than 48 hours and while I’ll be wearing a walking boot for a little while, I wont be wheel chair bound so I should be able to fish again even though I’ll have slight restrictions for awhile.

Anyhow, this non-weight bearing, stuck in a wheel chair thing really got me to thinking that there really needs to be more facilities that are wheel chair friendly that would enable a person who is handicap to be able to not only wet a line but to be able to catch some fish. I realize that the water level fluctuates in a lot of the lakes out here in California so therefore a permanent type dock wouldn’t really work. Now don’t get me wrong, I have no issues with anyone using the dock to fish off of but I do feel that there should be some laws or at least rules in place that if a non handicap person is fishing on a handicap access dock, if a handicap person shows up wanting to fish the non handicap person would be required to free up at least a little room for the handicap person to be able to fish.

Thanks for visiting my site. Be sure to tell all of your fishing buddies and come back soon

Until Next Time, Good Luck and Tight Lines To Ya!

Could it be that the bass fishing has gotten that difficult? Or maybe the bass have got smarter? Where I might believe that the bass have become more conditioned over time because of the increased fishing pressure, or maybe there are just less of them to be caught, but in my opinion I feel that we as fishermen might have made it more difficult. Whatever happened to KISS, Keep it Simple Stupid? Hence the name of this post.

I remember while growing up, dad and I fished the clear deep canyon lakes of Arizona. I know that learning how to bass fish those clear waters prepared me for the lakes in California because they are basically the same. We rarely used any line over 6 pound test and the presentation was almost always slow. My favorite plastics were either the Manns Jelly worms in Grape or Mr. Twister Twin Tail grubs in black, either Texas rigged or Carolina rigged.

For crankbaits the
Rebel Wee-R and Deep Wee-R Crankers in the Ole Bass color was the hot ticket. I wish they still produced that color because I would load a tackle box with them. Top water was either the Hula Popper, Zara Spook, Jitter Bug or
Rebel Pop-R Plus.

While fishing with dad we never had a fancy bass boat, as a matter of fact we didnt have any boat but at times we would rent aluminum boats with 9 horse power motors or a canoe with a trolling motor but they never had a 
Fish Finder yet somehow we always managed to catch fish. While we couldnt see under water structure we learned to read the lay of the land by watching the slopes of the hills and of course that in turn reavealed long underwater points.

Of course if we saw birds diving this told us that there was bait close to the sufrace, usually chased there by fish. We also kept our eyes open for “nervous water”, when you see little ripples on the surface when there was no wind or current. With this knowledge we were able to figure out where the fish were or should be and we were usually right.

Anyhow, I was just wondering what caused all us to change tactics and make fishing more difficult than it really should be. Maybe the next time you go fishing try going back to basics and see if bass fishing is really as difficult as we have been lead to believe. I plan on giving it a try myself and I’ll be sure to post up my findings.

Thanks for visiting my site. Be sure to tell all of your fishing buddies and come back soon.

Until Next Time, Good Luck and Tight Lines To Ya!

Interested in what the
cheeky-faced youngster was up to, he politely asked, “What’cha doing, Tim?”

“My goldfish died,” replied the boy tearfully, without looking up. “I’ve
just buried him.”

The neighbor was concerned. “That’s an awfully big
hole for a goldfish, isn’t it?”

Tim patted down the last heap of earth,
then replied, “That’s because he’s inside your dumb cat.”

Anyhow, on Christmas afternoon I got a text from my friend Zoli that lives down in the Antelope Valley asking me if I wanted to hit the California Aqueduct to see about catching some striped bass. One nice thing about duct fishing is it has easy access to good fishing spots. I then texted another friend who lives down there as well and asked if he was available to join us, which he did so we discussed what time and where we would meet.

I woke up bright and early and headed down to the AV duct. We met up at Zoli’s house, loaded up their stuff into the Silverado and proceeded to head out and see if we could beat the duct skunk. We worked over the first few spots we stopped at but nobody got a bite so we proceeded on. The rule of thumb when duct fishing is to work an area for 15-20 minutes tops and if nothing happens pack up and move on.

After hitting several more spots for nothing we moved onto another spot. I cast out, feel the tell tale thump so I reel down to catch up with the fish that was swimming towards me, feel the weight and swing, FISH ON, WOOOO HOOOO! While it wasn’t a double digit it was a good solid 6 pounder, into the ice chest he goes to become fillets. We continued on and hit I dont remember how many more spots but nothing doing. We called it a day at 2:30ish and I headed home after dropping the guys off.

All in all it was a good day, could have been nicer if we caught more but such is life when fishing the aqueduct.

Thanks for visiting my site. Be sure to tell all of your fishing buddies and come back soon

Until Next Time, Good Luck and Tight Lines To Ya!

Thanks for visiting my site. Be sure to tell all of your fishing buddies and come back soon

Until Next Time, Good Luck and Tight Lines To Ya!

The detail in these diecast are incredible! They all have opening rod lockers with poles painted in them, opening battery compartment with batteries, swiveling butt and rear deck seats, deployable trolling motor and wired, pivoting and tilting Mercury Outboard. The trailer has padded bunks, working suspension and tie down straps.

I’m asking $110.00 each, shipped TYD, Continental United States ONLY. I cannot combine shipping costs because they are pretty big and cost almost $30.00 each to ship anywhere in the Continental United States when packaged properly. Of course if you pick them up, I’m in Ridgecrest California, I’ll deduct $30.00 from each boat making them $80.00 each. International buyers will have to pay ACTUAL shipping costs, please contact Mike for details.

That being said, here’s what I have: (Click on the Picture to Enlarge)

2003 Dale Earnhardt #3 GM Goodwrench/Silver Select 25^th Anniversary Nitro Boat w/Trailer. Only 1800 were made and this is number 871. The box does have some shelf ware as seen in picture’s above.

2003 Dale Earnhardt #3 GM Goodwrench/Bass Pro Shops Nitro Boat w/Trailer. Only 5981 were made and this is number 2970

2002 Dale Earnhardt Legacy Nitro Boat w/Trailer. Only 5206 were made and this is number 0143

2002 John Force Castrol GTX/11x Champion Ranger Boat w/Trailer. Only 1644 were made and this is number 0958

2002 Tony Stewart Home Depot Nitro Boat w/Trailer. Only 3210 were made and this is number 1831

2002 Dale Jarrett #88 UPS/Race the Truck Ranger Boat w/Trailer. Only 4238 were made and this is number 0244

2002 Hank Parker Signature Series 2001 Ranger Boat w/Trailer. Only 3273 were made and this is number 0016 -

2003 Elliott Sadler #38 M&M Ranger Boat w/Trailer. Only 2852 were made and this is number 2097    -

2003 Sterling Marlin #40 Coors Light Ranger Boat w/Trailer. Only 1728 were made and this is number 0262

 2003 Ryan Newman #12 Alltel Ranger Boat w/Trailer. Only 1608 were made and this is number 1200

 2003 Dale Jarrett #88 UPS Ranger Boat w/Trailer. Only 2996 were made and this is number 1765

2002 Rusty Wallace #2 Miller Lite Ranger Boat w/Trailer. Only 3100 were made and this is number 1713

 2003 Jimmy Johnson #48 Lowes/Power of Pride Ranger Boat w/Trailer. Only 1608 were made and this is number 247

 2002 Jeff Gordon #24 Dupont Ranger Boat w/Trailer. Only 6212 were made and this is number 568

2002 Kevin Harvick #29 GM Goodwrench Service Nitro Boat w/Trailer. Only 2821 were made and this is number 2074

 2003 Dale Earnhardt Jr #8 DMP Nitro Boat w/Trailer. Only 3556 were made and this is number 0466

 2002 Dale Earnhardt Jr #8 Looney Toons Rematch Nitro Boat w/Trailer. Only 3320 were made and this is number 1518