paul.

yeah, that's the same study i think.

with all of us looking forward to a new season of fishing, inevitably we start to dream of big fish. maybe this will be THE year that you catch your pb, break double digits again, or just bang a bunch of really nice ones. with this in mind, thought it might be a good idea to just do a simple thread to help some of the newcomers to the sport or to serve as a reminder to us all about what it takes to land a hawg. one catch, no complicated bassin' mumbo jumbo. let's keep it simple. three words or less. it can deal with location, bait choice, timing, technique, equipment choice, weather trends, or some mental adjustment that you use. anything at all that you think makes a difference. you are limited only by your imagination. expound on what you post if you want, but remember - 3 words or less. by the time we're through, if enough people participate, there ought to be a pretty good collection of lunker insight here. i'll start: throw a jig.

as long as i'm catching fish off a spot, i never leave it to begin with. when the bite slows down, i'll try different colors, different baits, and different angles than i did the first time and often do just as well. when i've milked a spot for all it is worth, i'll leave and go somewhere else. i often will come back later on to see if the fish have turned back on, regrouped, or perhaps a new bunch of fish has moved in. but there are some long term consequences to this i believe. obviously on public water, if guys see you constantly camped out on a spot, you're gonna get gps'd and there's likely to be someone sitting on your honey hole next time you try to fish it. even on private water that doesn't get hit often, i'm sometimes convinced that the fish pattern us just like we pattern them. spots that get beat to death don't often stay hot. i made the mistake of fishing the spot i caught my pb on to death over the course of a couple of months. and i caught some other nice fish from it. but it finally just seemed to dry up. and it took a long, long time of letting it rest to catch another decent fish off of it. so you kinda have to pick your poison. fish a spot to death and risk ruining it, or fish it sparsely and miss out on some fish you could have caught. but that's just my opinion.

keep it up bud. you will fall in love with these baits very quickly. i rarely go without having one tied on. like a lot of other folks will tell you, the first thing you need to do on these baits is make sure you have good sticky sharp hooks. many of the older baits especially have crappy, dull hooks. because of the design of these baits, fish tend to throw them every once in a while. sharp hooks won't totally cure this but it will help a great deal. good luck.

very nice bb. congrats on the win and a great day of fishing.

you da man dwight. by the way, your smallmouth called. they want you to stay in florida.

actually this brings up a very interesting question and i'd be curious to get some opinions on this. do y'all think that there is such a thing as a bass that is totally uncatchable? are there bass out there that die of old age without ever having been caught? if so, is it because of the area of the lake they choose to inhabit (a place where most people wouldn't think to fish for example) or is it because of the times they feed (take for example a fish that prefers to feed mostly at night) or is it because of these "traits", whatever they are, that make them less likely to bite? i think a fish that lived in a "strange" location that most anglers wouldn't think to fish that fed mostly at night and possessed the "hard to catch" trait(s) would be next to impossible to catch and could conceivably die of old age without ever having a hook in its mouth. but i could be wrong. what do y'all think?

the study was actually conducted in illinois. and i have often wondered myself when i am going to get lucky and find the stupid fish. ;D and ku, you are so right. at the very least we have another excuse for crappy fishing. too funny. ;D

read this in this month's north american fisherman magazine. i'll give ya the short version. in a study that spanned nearly 2 decades, scientists concluded that "catchability" is actually heritable. bass in a small lake were fished for and marked when they were caught. the lake was then drained and those that were caught frequently were placed in a pond to spawn. those that were caught infrequently or not at all were placed in another. their offspring were grown to adults. the bass were again fished for and marked, and again placed in separate ponds as before to spawn. finally the procedure was repeated a third time. even after 3 generations of selective breeding, the catch rate of the descendants of the "high vulnerability" fish remained the same. but, very interestingly, the catch rate of the descendants of the "low vulnerability" bass DECLINED WITH EACH SUCCESSIVE GENERATION. in other words the children and grandchildren of the original "easily caught" bass were caught just as easily. but the children and grandchildren of the original "hard to catch" bass became even harder yet to catch, with the last generation being the MOST difficult to catch. very interesting stuff. perhaps not only are these fish "smarter" than we give them credit for sometimes, this "intelligence" is actually passed and increased in the next generation. this type of stuff might bore y'all to death, but it's very interesting to me. just thought i'd share it.

excellent! that's a great day for sure. hope you have plenty more like it. cool that your water temps have already hit nearly 50. just goes to show it only takes a few warm days for those fish to get busy.

thanks guys. i was just tickled to be out there catching a few in jan. especially since i wasn't sure how this lake would be. this is the one i posted about a little while back that was drawn way down. i hadn't fished it in nearly 2 yrs. but it obviously still kicks out some fish and i'm glad. it was always a great spot to fish and it holds some great memories. it would be a real shame for it to be ruined. glad it's still healthy. based on what chris and i saw, i'm expecting a real strong comeback for this lake barring something unforseen. yeah, a lot of fish were taken out when it was low and it probably lost a few big ones too. but in the long run, the drawdown might be a great thing. we'll see soon enough i guess.

wtg bud! great trip. your bragging rights were well deserved.

yeah, pretty decent. :-?: great as always. wtg chris.

me and Chris went out to one of my favorite little lakes for some cold water jig fishing today. it was good to shake off the bassin' rust and stick a few fish with my buddy. we were fishing a deep treeline with jigs and our favorite color rage craw. we have so much confidence in this color that when the bass would tear up our craws, we'd just rip off the back end and use 'em as chunks to conserve baits. can't afford to be without these for sure. fishing the thickest stuff and working it over slowly and thoroughly seemed to really be key to catching 'em in the 42* water. i used to be one of those guys who didn't believe in using "high action" plastics in cold water. not anymore. the bass have taught me otherwise and now my eyes are wide open to the possibilities. no giants today, but some good fish and definitely some good times as always when chris is in the boat. here's some pics. hope y'all are catching some too.

my little girl on a windy day.

great lookin' fish there. awesome trip. great job!

for years, senkos orbitted the earth in a cryogenically frozen state. now they have arrived, intent on world domination. they make their home in an evil lair, with their evil bait underlings and cronies, which include the bait monkey, live baits, and a variety of bed fishing baits. their master plan is to catch so many bass that fishermen will have no choice but to use them to the exclusion of all others. demand will exceed supply, thus driving the price up to HAHAHA...........ONE MILLION DOLLARS!!!!!! "senkos, dr. evil's favorite bait."

senkos have caught a lot of fish and a lot of big fish - particularly when you take into account what's considered big for northern waters. and i think plenty of 10+ bass have been caught on them too. what cj said made a lot of sense. the only time i would want to go against the grain is when whatever is "supposed to work" doesn't. if what is "supposed to work" IS working, then you better believe i'm gonna use it. as far as refusing to use a perfectly legal bait (like a senko or a live bait of some kind) because it catches fish too easily goes, that kind of "logic" makes my head hurt. :-? i'll take easy fishing over hard fishing any day of the week. but that's just me.

bingo! right on J.

last year it got real cold towards the end of dec. here. water temps on the river 33*. all the bays were iced up and there was big chunks of ice floating down the river. we fished the same shallow point 2 days in a row using baby rage craws and squarebills. we didn't catch any giants, but the first day we caught 33 and the second day we caught 27. on another lake, about 3-4 years ago, i remember catching a bunch of fish real shallow on a bandit flat maxxx with suspend strips on it. all these came in about 3-5 ft. of water. one of 'em weighed over 4 and another was over 7. you had to pause the bait a loooooong time. it was almost like fishing for catfish. you just held the rod and waited for the line to jump and set the hook. funny thing was i caught 2 7's that day, but the other was in about 18 ft. w/ a jig. go figure. i remember another day there doing pretty well on small fish fishing shallow wood with a lightly weighted tube. i lost a real monster that day doing the same, but i don't even want to talk about that. now ponds are a different story. in some ponds, MOST of the water is shallow. so if you're gonna catch 'em at all, chances are it could be shallow. especially since the shallowest water could be the warmest after even a small warming trend. i remember back in feb. '09 (at least i think it was '09)catching two nice fish shallow in a pond (only about 3-4 fow) on live bluegill. one was over 8, the other over 11. not sure how cold the water was, but it was pretty cold outside. those are the only times that really come to mind. other times i've tried shallow when it's cold have been miserable failures. truth be told, i prefer to fish deep with a jig or plastic if it's cold. the last two winters, i've fished for stripers when it got cold, so i've caught very few bass shallow or deep. ;D

for me, going against the grain does not necessarily have anything to do with bait choice. i just try to fish what i think is the best tool for producing a fish given the set of conditions and location i'm working with. i couldn't care less whether everyone else is throwing it or whether no one else is. you can overthink bait choice pretty easily. for me, most of the time going against the grain means fishing the most WHERE others fish the least and sometimes WHEN others fish the least. i think "where" and "when" are much more important variables in the bassin' equation than "what". but that's just my opinion.

good memories? you know it bud. (see avatar ;D)and hopefully some more good memories to be made. bmadd, are you down to take a few trips out there this year and help me figure this place out? hope so. i still believe there's some bigguns in there.

thanks guys. to answer a few questions. bankbeater, to my knowledge, no fish were relocated except those that ended up in somebody's frying pan. i am sure the lake lost quite a few fish to greedy folks just trying to take advantage. but none of the fish were moved anywhere that i know of. Tom, this lake does have cormorants. they were always there when the lake was full and healthy, so i'm sure they stuck around when it was drawn down and the fish more more vulnerable. Steve, it's interesting what you said about the survivors being hungry and agressive. Again, i only have my friend's reports to use for a reference, but he is a VERY good fisherman. in fact, he's fished this lake for a lot longer than i ever did and much of what i've learned about the lake and how to catch the big fish in there, i owe to him. so he's a very reliable source. but based on his reports, it seems that since the lake came back up to full pool last spring, the bigger fish have been anything but hungry and aggressive. i attribute this to decreased numbers of bass with the same amount of forage as they always had. to my knowledge, nothing happened to forage populations when the lake was drawn down. so my thinking is less bass w/ ample forage = well fed bass = harder to catch bass. i could be wrong though. i do really appreciate y'all's input.

this year, i am going to start fishing a little lake that i used to catch some nice bass out of a couple of years ago. i stopped fishing this spot when they halfway drained the lake to fix the leaky overflow pipe. when this happened, i knew there were going to be a couple of things to go down. first, i knew there would be a few jerks who would come in and take advantage of things and basically rape the place while it was low and all those fish were jammed up into half the water. and i was right, one day day when i went out to take some pictures of the exposed bottom contours, i saw a couple of guys out in the middle of the lake catching fish after fish. they had a 6 foot long stringer almost completely full, so heavy they could barely pick it up out of the water. it made me sick. after that, i didn't even bother to go back for a while. and i never fished the lake while it was low. i also knew that grass and weeds would quickly take root in the mud, and that there would be a pretty thick growth on the lake bottom by the time the water came back up. i was right about this too. when i finally did go back for another look, there were weeds about a foot tall growing where the bottom of the lake used to be. finally, i knew most the standing timber would fall down. now that the lake is back up to full pool, you can see only a fraction of the trees that used to be there sticking up. during the 2 years that i didn't fish the lake, i had a friend that did, particularly last year when it was back at full pool. he said that nothing was the same as it used to be. still plenty of fish, but the things that used to be money before they drained the lake no longer worked at all, particularly for big fish, which now seem to be few and far between. the fish and the fishing had completely changed. here are my guesses about this. 1. i suspect that the idiots who took advantage and overfished the place while it was down took a toll on the bass numbers. however, this might actually be a blessing in disguise if they did not catch and keep very many big fish as this "thinning of the herd" will eventually result in more big fish. 2. i suspect that the dying vegetation (producing co2) relocated a lot of the fish. 3. i suspect that with the lake being so low for so long, the fish were forced to learn new patterns and routines to survive. with no long term memory to fall back on, and with the landmarks/geography of the lake totally changed when the lake came back up, the fish had to again learn new patterns/routines. 4. with the lake being low during the hottest months, this could have stressed and killed some fish. these are my thoughts and ideas anyway. has anyone else had experience fishing a similar situation? if so what were your experiences and what worked for you? despite having fallen on hard times, i think this little lake still holds some big fish, so i'm going to give it a shot. just looking for some answers that might help. again, your input would be very helpful if you've faced a similar circumstance. thanks.

teach us how to dougie.