The Spoonpluggers Forum

Bill Siemantel was one of the few to recognize Buck's contributions to the sport and publicly acknowledge him, along with paying tribute after his passing...but he's not the only one. Here's a good one from the #1 ranked professional bass angler in the country right now (actually has been for the pa...

Blake Honeycutt was a Spoonplugger and he used to troll and map the lakes ahead of time to find the spots and then cast on Tournament days. Many times he would just call Buck about a lake if he didnt have time to map it himself. then he would go out and win! He had the largest poundage ever caught ...

I'm sure you'll get different opinions on this one, and it would be hard to pin down anything as 100% accurate at this point, but based on all the research I've done, I'm going with "false." As best I've been able to determine, Ray didn't allow trolling because it was unfair to the anglers...

So, my question is will these electronics be an aid or a hindrance to my learning? My “hope” is that I can use GPS, digital maps, lures, trolling, auto chart (which IMHO is the biggest game changer), down and side imaging, etc. - all in tandem to get a better interpretation of the bottom, more accu...

Hal, to my knowledge it isn't used at all while trolling - or at least I’ve not heard of it. It is used from a casting position off the trolling motor or an accessory rod. It allows you to scan up ahead of you and see fish and cover in real time. You can see your bait working and the fish swimming a...

John - always enjoy the "back and forth" discussions with you. Ironically, I'd argue Buck didn't intend Spoonplugging to be an art. He designed the Spoonplug and other spoonplugging equipment, in part, to be a way to transfer knowledge and procedures to anyone who would listen and follow t...

Jerry will probably be the last to have to worry, but one day he'll be cruising along, trolling that deep open water and there will be a Livescoper right in his way - lol. Too many diehard musky anglers, and those fish are too large - and likely too easy to find with forward facing sonar. They can't...

Homer.JPG This is pretty long winded for me, but bear with me. Just my thoughts and opinions on the subject right now. "Over the future, we see the day when most of this knowledge will be absorbed and forgotten by most. It will be replaced by the same thoughts and sayings of the past and of th...

Thought you weren't going to fight the wind today? I'll be waiting...

Crazy here - I decided to leave the boat home and just walk a pond.

Bad enough here in central IN - looking to possibly head further south now that I'm retired...or become a winter "snowbird." Wife and I are trying to decide best route right now.

If you're not having to worry about the larger pike/musky, then a pure rubber conservation net is the best thing for the fish. I got mine from Cabela's over a decade ago - probably much longer than that. And you can buy rubber replacements when it eventually does go bad. Mine has an aluminum handle ...

Lots of written advice already, so I've labeled a picture showing the breaklines along a river channel from a screen capture on Kentucky Lake. In this case, there is a top breakline and a base breakline, but no obvious breakline inbetween them. Sometimes there are secondary breaklines further down b...

Fishing News magazines have been sold.

I still have the extra Home Study guides listed above, any or all, if interested. Just message me.

Good resource for Spoonplugggers. I had forgotten about them. I don't have a Dropbox account, but got them from you when you first shared them. Unless you added some new ones, after sorting through and eliminating the duplicates, there were 31 Fishing News files out of the 74 total issues. Not sure ...

Bill Binkelman started "Fishing News & Wisconsin Spoonplugger" newsletter as a means of selling Spoonplugs at the Boston Store in Milwaukee. It grew over the years to become Fishing Facts magazine in 1970. I have 48 of the old newspaper versions dating from 1964-1969 that I will sell f...