Nick

Did you spot any hollowed out places(beds)? Or were these fish roaming? Was it pre- or post-spawn? Help is on the way if we get more facts.

Squid, Although it's not for everyone, the baitcaster can be used for skipping. Tubes, jigs, flukes come to mind. The baitcaster offers so much more control of a hooked fish that the effort taken to learn skipping pays off big dividends. Just like skipping a rock by hand,, look for a jig with a flattened head is a good skipping candidate. And for tubes, those rigged with the weight inside work better. Place some electrical tape across baitcaster's spool about 10 feet farther than your longest flip will cut down on lashes.

1. Use a bait that you can see. 2. Hook it weedless if necessary. 3. Try different profiles of soft plastics. 4. Use a heavy sinker 1/4 to 1/2 oz. to keep the bait in the bed longer to agitate the bass. Occasionally rub the sinker and soft plastic on the fish to make it angry. 4. Learn to find the sweetspot on each bed where the bass gets most irritated and keep pitching back to that spot. 5. Have patience. Somethimes a choreographed 10-50 minute "dance" is needed. 6. Learn when a bass is "locked on" and catchable and not locked which may be a big time waster. 7. If the male is caught on one day, don't expect the female to stay on the nest much longer. Males are more aggressive and easier to catch. 8. Learn to spot beds that others miss in deeper water. 9. Put all of the bass caught back! You can catch them again the following day usually.

Feel the trialer wheel for heat. They should be just a little warmer than the air. If they are hot to the touch, you're in need of new bearings. Let a pro maintain your bearings unless you are pretty good mechanically speaking. It's not worth the hassle of doing a poor job or seating a bearing incorrectly. Lug nuts can loosen. Check them every trip. Also check the nuts and bolts on your outboard. I nearly lost a motor last month on the interstate last month, and had I not checked them at a service station, I could have been involved in a fatal accident.

Next week in the FLW I expect at least 80% of the co-anglers will be throwing these or Kinami's(same thing) at Okeechobee. In heavy pressured waters, they are very hard to beat. I was always a trick worm fanatic, but I have to admit that the Senko is better the majority of the time. I too will be using it as my go-to bait if we are fishing cover.

Playmaker, you sound excited and confident, and that's such a big part of fishing. Keep on catching them, and don't forget to try the 4 inch and the new 2.5 inch for dropshotting. I have days on streams where the bass will ignore my topwaters, but inhale the fluke. It's a dandy skipping bait also.

Just about any walking bait like the Spook or Spittin' Image. I used to make a good wooden one back when good walking baits were scarce. One of my all time favorites was a little known bait made my Rebel about 12 years ago called the Jumpin' Minnow. It was the small size (3/8 oz.) and the only color that I could get to walk right was the shore minnow color. I have no idea why a color helped balance the bait better. This bait had one very loud ball in it that drove the fish crazy. You could hear the sharp click 40 feet away from the boat. Always looking for another. I wore out the two that I could find.

Snag, I like the safety pin idea, especially if the hooks get wet, you can quickly dry them all at once without losing any! Over the years I've seen lots of disappointed anglers who let wet tackle and tools remain in boats. About two days in warm weather in all it takes for rust to set in in a dark storage compartment. Even today's bass boats will occasionally have a water retention problem which will damage tools, tackle, and other equipment. Remember to raise the hatches to let that dry air in, and take tools out of materials like canvas that really hold water. I have a couple of the BPS storage bags with the little zipper compartments. They look neat but it's hard to get individual pieces out of them, especially sharp hooks.

It's just five acres, fish all of the timber. Some will be better, some won't. Use baits that are timber friendly. Depending on your latitude, you could have some very thick water. You will know very soon if there is a good population of bass in it. Funy I have a pond in my subdivision that has had a very interesting bass to crappie ratio over the years. I can tell you that both can co-exist in good numbers provided you have an excellent forage base. The crappie in my 2 acre pond eventually overcrowded, but at the same time, the bass provided two super spawns and the little bass survived well enough. I counted 8 big bass beds last year, and the fry of 2002 are now 8-10 inches. Somehow q

Remember, Underwood saw these thing while accumulating over 1700 hours of watching bass while scuba diving, not interpolating from just fishing. O.K. p.71 paraphrasing....To have a concentration of bass, his order of important musts are cover, food, proximity to deep water. To him temperature doesn't mean much except during the spawn: As long as the temperatures don't affect a bass' health, it was not a factor on where bass were located. colors of lures: bass show a preference of one or more colors that may change during the day. Bass will strike a variety of them on a given day, but one or two shades will predominate. Color is second only to the action of a lure given that it is presented to a school of bass. In different sections of the same lake on the same day, different colors were preferred by different schools of bass. position of bass: the great majority of the time bass schools hover over some type of cover, not in it. moving in or getting active: He reports that bass have great periods of inactivity. Anglers can fish through schools for hours without tempting the bass, then they begin to show restless motions, get agitated, and they will strike. Without fail the quickest way to put bass off the feed is if a fellow bass was injured, "skin broken outside the mouth area" and then released back into the water frighten the others. The remaining fish will swim away from it. A fish hooked in the mouth and released will not put the school of bass off the feed. Most effective depth to get a strike on a plastic worm was swimming it just off the bottom. Adding scents to baits (in the 70's) such as an anise extract, did not increase strikes nor did placing rattles in hard lures of plastic worms. The larger the bass, the less dependent on cover for camoflage it is. Smaller bass need cover for protection, not so for larger predators. Larger bass only needed cover for concealment when actively hunting. He found no appreciable difference in night fishing as it corresponds to moon phases taking data on 92 nights. #1 rule at night is the same as it is in day. Locate the fish. Then you can catch them. (duh) On a falling barometer, bass and baitfish seek a greater depth. No appreciable difference on numbers of fish caught on falling or rising barometer. Larger bass in a school became more aggressive in the lower barometer (cloudy) days. In shallow water, less than 8 feet, outboard motors will frighten the fish, though they get back to normal within minutes. Idling a motor in shallow water does not frighten them until it gets very close. Come in fast to an area and stopping suddenly will scare them away.

Fellows, a winter smallie in my parts is a colder, slower moving beast. That water in the lower 40's really slows and weakens even a big sow. They can be handled on four pound decently, but I do long for 6 when I see a 20 inch plus fat winter brownie trying to shake free. Hey, if she gets away, so what? I can catch her again next week!Rather than broken lines, I find that the jig hook will occasionally fall out because the jigs I use have smaller hooks which were "secured" on hookset, not slammed, and the 4lb. line will have a little more stretch than 6.

Pork works! I really like the Super Pork brand. Uncle Josh stuff in inconsistent. Many pieces of it are just too thick to have much movement. Talk about scents and proteins forever, but pork gets the job done in cold (sub 55 degree waters) better than plastic for me. Every bass I catch with pork rind has that satisfied look of a pig fed bass!

JT, Glad you liked Zona. He's a really good guy with a very sharp wit as well as an excellent angler. I got to know him on the Everstart tour where he was very dominating in 02 and 03. Sorry I missed the show today.

I've not encountered that kind of black mouth problem in many, many years of catching.

I will never fish light jigs in river smallie waters with 8lb. I can't cast it as well, the action of the jig is impeded, and I think the bass see it better. On really tough days like today was, I went down to four pound line after an hour of no fish with six, to catch the five that I worked hard to get. Since my eyes are no longer as good as they once were, I use a slightly flourescent line to watch very carefully. Four of my five bites were not really felt at all. The current just seemed a tad heavier.

I am a sucker for jerfkbaits so I bought a couple of the X Raps with Santa $.

I'm from Missouri and I fish both lakes and streams year round. I always catch my biggest brown bass in winter. When it gets below freezing, I hate to go because the guides freeze up and casting becomes a pain. In 1999 on Lake of the Ozarks I was averaging over 50 bass per day with several fish over five pounds. Watrer temps were in the 40's, and the clown Rogue was supreme! Right now the bite at Lake O. is tough, but I'll be heading there within the week. Drop me an e mail. Also check mid america outdoors website for up-to-date tournament results. As you can see, lot's of guys fish through the winter with success.

Yes, and let the warm feelings of Christmas last through the year as we strive to act with dignity and show kindness and respect for all others with whom we share the earth and waters. We are all stewards of our great outdoors and ambassadors of angling.

Yep, in clear lakes such as the White River impoundments in the Ozarks, a downsized #3 double willow burned will sometimes catch bass when larger, slower baits just won't get touched in the clear water in fall. On Lake Erie, the big smallies love that burned chartruese or white bladed spinnerbait in summer. Hold on baby. Those bass are fast! Mke it bulge the surface! The minus 1's and minus 4's are grrreat for this approach in the post spawn. I wish I had a 6-1 reel with a spool thrice the size of the ones I have now! And I don't fish them much, but lot's of guys move that Trap at a fast pace too.

Chris, you better get your name changed to Socrates today! Spinnerbait is a tool like any other bait, and one should use a bait commensurate with the conditions. In two weeks I get to go to Okeechobee to fish the first biggie of the year. Last year the deal was gold willows with gold skirt in a 3/8 oz. model. That will be my starting point this year, but if the water is clear and about 70 as usual the smaller willow blades will get the nod for me. Conversely, at Beaver Lake Last year with 50 degree water, chocolate milk in color, I used a big double colorado gold blade with chartreuse skirt with a large trailer to slow down the bait as I pulled it through submerged cockleburr fields in less than 4 feet deep as slow as I could with the blades still moving. In the Ozarks last year at this time, a 3/4 oz. big willow blade slow rolled and bounced down steeper rock banks took some big bass. These were fished from 5-15 feet deep. Many years ago when good designs were hard to come by and our reservoirs had lots of new inundated timber, I alwys wanted one with a good hook, placed well back, a light wire frame for max. vibration, and a blade arm that protected the hook from most hangups. Today, the Mann,s Classic spinnerbait has about all those attributes. I also fish War Eagle although some of the arms are beginning to break off at bad times. We don't have many weedbeds here to worry with in the Ozarks.

In-Fisherman usually has an interesting slant.

A bud on Table Rock likes to rig two gitzits on a very heavy drop shot concoction. The weight is usually an ounce and he fishes this deal vertically from 50-110 feet. It actually works on the bass, but it looks more like a halibut rig! He locates schools of bass and lowers the rig down through them.

More of a comment than a question. If you haven't read this book written in 1975, it's a great read. The author spent over 1700 hours logging bass behavior through scuba observation. Very informative behaviors observed. In the barometric pressure discussion, I remembered his ideas vaguely so the search was on, and today I found the book in our public library. It's about 250 pages!

Ernel, air that is more dense must be heavier, not lighter. In lower pressure and warmer air, there is more room between air molecules to allow water vapor to increase. Water vapor floats as in a cloud. The sticky air may feel heavy to you and me, but it will not make a barometer rise. It will lower the reading.

Do a lot of motor work traveling back and forth looking for balls of shad. They help determine where to fish. Without them, I would have to try lots of places trial and error until I unlocked a depth, type of rock, transition zone, rock pile or some other structure that held the fish. Eliminate as many places as quickly as possible with deep cranks if feasible depthwise, jigs, C-rig, spoons or dropshot. In an Ozark impoundment, I would try to eliminate either pole timber or cedars, smooth gravel bottoms as opposed to larger chunk rock, secondary points as opposed to cove banks, windy vs. calm. 15 as opposed to 25 feet, or 25 vs. 40 feet. Fish these opposites will help one tune in on the fish. Also, check to see where the mojority of boats are positioned for a good starting point.