Paul Roberts

Perfect example of what bass are like that have little experience with angling. With C&R this such waters can maintain good populations of bass, but their catchability will drop away. If you continue to fish this water, keep tabs for us. I'm going to predict that by the middle of next year, it'll still be a good fishery, but you'll be earning your fish.

Ditto.

Guess I'll give my 2cents on both your posts. Crankbaits are generally poor imitations of live prey -in fact all lures are. They have to appear like prey at just the right moment to elicit a strike. Most of the time they just don't look right. Usually, just retrieving rhythmically through open water just doesn't do the trick. Aggressive fish and those in competition with one another, tip the odds. So does crashing things, direction changes, speed changes, burning, ripping, ...and other triggers. Burning works, I think bc it excites active fish into chasing -and something running dead straight is a vulnerable position for a preyfish (there's research that backs this up). And it doesn't give a fish a good look at the lure. But I actually catch most of my CB fish working it slowly, almost like a jig. Maybe bc I'm so often fishing them through and around cover. As to lure speed and action: In trolling, lures tend to achieve best action at a certain speed. This is critical in trolling spoons for trout and salmon -it's the key factor. A really good troller uses the boat like a giant fishing rod, adjusting for current and wind -plus throwing certain triggers in too. Some lures have wider range of speed than others. As mentioned tighter wigglers tend to be more stable thus can be run faster. Wider wobblers tend to need a slower speed. Some designs use some instability that cause them to "hunt" -shimmy laterally as you retrieve, effectively adding in a trigger (direction change). The best advice would be to choose a design that suits the water in front of you. If you have relatively open water, burning is a good ploy and so a tighter runner might be good -I like lipless for this. In cover I like fat plugs with a wide wobble that have good action at slower speeds -since I'm feeling my way through the stuff. BUT...since you bring up your out-of-tune plug. I have a story... I once met a young angler who invited me to fish a pond he had permission for. He owned ONE lure -a small chrome cheapo crankbait. He'd chuck it into the pond's channel and burn it. It was so badly out of tune it literally spun in circles out there, and bass crashed it! He caught 4 good ones before I could complete as many casts with the worm I was using. He ran out of water pretty quick though, as the plug only could be fished that way in the open channel. I then added a few lures to his arsenal. But, even a plug that hunts (or spins out of control lol) won't catch 'em all, and will usually bring additional strikes with deflections or rips, at opportune times. A trigger is most effective at just the right time and place -and this can be really precise in time and space -the right angle on the object, and a bass in range.

I think I get the joke -coontail doesn't root? Or did I mis-ID -again! Nice to have you on board to keep me on my toes Roger.

Nice story. Nice pics.

Very cool. I had no idea they would re-grow THAT quickly.

Sorry ice, just re-read your post. No, I've never jerked or twitched a diving type crank. But I do the other stuff mentioned above regularly.

Finding aggressive fish is always your best bet -and a straight chuck-n-wind retrieve can work just fine. But... there are also times when added triggers help, and sometimes make a BIG difference. This is true with any lure. I tend to start with a straight retrieve and add triggers if needed. Scarcely a fishing day goes by when I don't have to milk a spot with added triggers. Nowhere I suppose is the possible importance of triggering in crankbaits more obvious than in a jerkbait. These plugs, being long and slender with a small lip, change direction radically they hunt like a Zara. Try fishing a jerkbait with a straight retrieve! And you'll get bored. This isn't really doable with most lipped, fat bodied cranks though. But there's still stuff you can do that can make a difference. Smoothly accelerating a few turns can do it -I do this a LOT with jigs. This is one of my favorite ways of fishing lipless cranks too, using a slow to moderate retrieve then accelerating through 2 or 3 turns. It can also be really effective done more vertically through sparse vegetation -ripping it up through the weeds. At times, without doing this I'd never have known there were willing biters there. Here's a pic from just such a day: brilliant blue and no bites until I started vertically ripping a lipless. This was a 4lber that topped off this run of fish. With lipped cranks, I tend to crank straight to achieve depth and search for aggressive fish. But if I believe I'm on fish and not catching, or just getting slaps, I will start playing with triggers. I will slow the retrieve, then accelerate (like I would a jig above), or find something to bang into. Crashing something can really increase strikes. And crashing then sticking and accelerating off of something usually beats just bumping it. I actually believe it's the acceleration again, and direction change, that results. Changing direction can really work too, but this can only really be done (when casting) when the lure is relatively close to you near the end of the retrieve. I do this a lot. When fish are a bit stale or at least not really aggressive they may follow a bait for a ways. Changes in direction (as well as speed -slight is often better then too fast and long) can elicit a strike. Subtle direction changes can be built into a cranks action too it's called hunting and this action is often why people pay big bucks for custom cranks, and why the original Wiggle-Wart is so coveted compared to the stabilized new models. I have some old Tom Seward Natural Ikes that do this too. I have two left now! :-/ A plug that hunts' shimmies to one side, then the other, as you chuck-n-wind.

Fish were happy; I just had a bear of a time making good on it. I could've gotten the heck outta my tube and fished a jig from shore. Probably would have done a bit better. The wind and those cats kept bringing me to shore -Guess I should've taken the hint!

Fins can re-grow too -at least with young fish. You've got to get the very base, without cutting too deep. Here's another idea. Take a digital photo of the lateral stripe on each bass, so you can compare them later. This is somewhat labor intensive, but would allow you to record as much info as you like for each catch. This has been used in fisheries research for observing brown trout in the wild, and it's used for whales too. See my thread: http://www.bassresource.com/bass_fishing_forums/YaBB.pl?num=1251317530

I tried it with walleyes in a canal system. But they moved too much -never had a recapture. I later found that, as Russ?...Matt? mentioned above, that the holes will heal. If you were to use the hole punch idea you could try punching out a single spine on the dorsal. That would not likely heal entirely. But that would only tell you whether it's a recapture, but not which one -which might be fine for your purposes.

Definitely true there. You are making a good case for the taste and lubricant properties of "attractants".

That there my friend is over the top. On a serious note I do love the smell of the coffee scented plastics, quite refined. ;D ;D

Global warming! ;D Send some up here, will ya! Problem is with GW, none of us individually have a global perspective. Nor any data.

In re-reading the parts about scents of Keith Jones book, "Knowing Bass", (for a related thread), I found this paragraph: "Other bass offending substances used by anglers include...It is suspected, but not known, that bass also (minnows do) find nicotine offensive. Caffeine is believed to believed to taste bitter to fish in general." But, I've caught bass on Coffee Tubes -I like the size and two-tone 'color' pattern they offer. In this kind of question I pretty much find Stringjam's experiences similar to my own.

Thanks. One of these days I'll have to get around to playing around with it myself. With plastics though, the bass often hold the bait so long that I have gone barbless bc they may ingest them. Not sure I want to add to that. Then again, they do spit a jig pretty quick -even with pork. Not sure why that is: weight I'm assuming. I wonder if an attractant would have them old a jig longer?

You are right on the DEET (insect repellent) and PABA (sunscreen)...but there is more. Read pages 84-85. You are also right that we will never know all there is to know about bass. And what we do know is full of qualifications.

Very nice. And some fun pics too. Thanks for sharing 'em.

Interesting observations. Sounds plausible. I suppose the trick is getting a substance the bass can detect, like, make it stick to a lure long enough, then has enough shelf life to be practical. Which ones do this? I've also heard that bass don't like bullfrog tadpoles, and noticed there can be more of them in bass ponds than I'd expect. That sunscreen post was within the year -on Lake Erie I believe. They were dropping tubes to smallies on sonar. As I remember it, the sunscreen outfished those without. Statisitically it wasn't anything to write home about, but it at least showed that the sunscreen did not repel the bass. I also remember a very old experiment done or reported by Homer Circle in F&S (I think) in which they soaked one group of plastic worms in gasoline, and found no difference in catch rate.

Go! Water doesn't cool quick enough to bother the fish much. Water dropping through the 70s is no issue. It might even move deeper fish shallower. Go Go Go!

Yes. I've liked them too. Fun sharing in Roger's many triumphs.

Complete that experiment: Lose the MS for a chunk of the season. If you again fail to boat a single muskie, (or very few), then you might be onto something. As to Matt's question, I've never used it. Just never got around to it. Keith Jones claimed that a lot substances that pass for fish attractants fish aren't even capable of detecting. And finding bass repellents wasn't so easy either. The one thing he said bass noticeably disliked was soap.

Great read! I feel like I was there! Great to hear actual weights too.

Thanks Todd. I use this method as a form of illustration. There is a difference between something manipulated to deceive and an illustration. Using photographic images for illustration I think is just another tool. Few divers have even seen such an image, much less captured it. The limitations of shooting underwater, especially in the wild state, virtually prohibit this being done. Presently, most UW shots of bass are either done in an aquarium, or shot in the springs in Florida, where water clarity allow. These are also almost always of spawning fish, or relatively inactive fish. The speed exhibited by hunting bass is not likely to be captured. Of course I put nothing past an enterprising individual figuring out a way. But I'm not going to be the guy to do it. I'm happy illustrating ideas and concepts, and am thrilled to have photography as a tool, as long as the images are not misrepresented, and labeled appropriately. I call them digital photo montages -a collection of photographic images layered into a single image. BTW: I've seen some of your work. You certainly know your business.

Congrats! Nice when plans work out, and to understand a bit more about it -even if only a little bit. Glad we got to hear the outcome. I was gonna ask.