One of the knocks on trolling artificial is it catches smaller fish. And there is something to that at times. Smaller fish tend to be the more aggressive fish and you usually need aggressive fish to chase a faster moving artificial bait versus putting a live bait right in front of their nose. Having said that, I've had to change up some things to accommodate larger fish breaking leaders and straightening hooks on slide divers. The overall size is better than it's been in a long time and the possibility for a lake trophy is there. It's hard to ask for more than that, in my opinion.

If you read Lance Sasser's latest report, he talks about this topic and he gives credit to the biologists for dropping the size limit to 22. They initially did that as an emergency measure and I agree with him, in general that it's good to keep it that way, especially through the summer.