Paul Roberts

I believe this sums it up. In my small waters, it really helps to search out concentrations of appropriate sized bluegills. There's cover everywhere, but the feeding is not going on everywhere. And, although there are consistent spots, much of this is transient in both space as well as time.

Short answer: Yes. I picked one up new for $30 last year as a dedicated early season crankbait reel. So far so good.

It's one of the best ways to dupe BIG bass.

Nice report.

Start with depth you'll be fishing. The rest is just details.

I use both. Chest is more stable and you get a view of the retrieve. Head I use to capture jumps and releases and added perspective. It's a lot of hardware though. Head strap is darn uncomfortable so I use a baseball cap type from Samtree from Amazon. Audio on GP is poor esp in a waterproof case. May want a lavalier mic too.

I think that local conditions and circumstances are the most important. They would likely mask any "celestial" events. Statistically, such events just don't hold up. I suspect that the search for one big factor -and thereby make things easier to grasp- underlies this. That's just a supposition. That's my current belief. However, I'm still holding out that there might be a lunar effect influencing the spawn. But I'm still not convinced either way. I just don't have the data, nor have seen any that is convincing.

As far as I've been able to find, it's not known. Bass can move for short periods quite a vertical distance, although they would have to be sufficiently motivated. Telemetry generally shows little vertical movement, although smallmouth were shown to make substantial relatively short term vertical movements (up to 18ft) daily in one water body, presumably to feed. Most observations are by anglers via sonar. From what I've been able to ferret out, movements of 10 vertical feet are not uncommon. But again, such fish would have to be sufficiently motivated; i.e. not conserving energy. How long it takes to adjust is unknown for bass. There was some early work on yellow perch (which are known to show greater vertical movement than bass generally speaking, but are still physoclists) showed a certian level of acclimation over 24hrs. If you think about it, that's a long time considering that fish are so energy conservative.

LOL. I don't purposely shake fish off very often. I'll defer to you guys on this one.

Jigs imitate fishes too. And in most waters, LM are primarily piscivorous. Crayfish tend to make up a small percentage of their food. How long they hold? IME, they are much quicker to spit a jig. I almost never have jig caught fish hooked in the esophagus. But it's not uncommon with soft plastics. I have gone barbless with a lot of my soft plastics now, bc of this.

This was my initial thought here too. How you control your tackle (rod, reel, and line), is the critical piece. Esp early on in the process, I suggest retrieving holding the rod rock solid still. Any changes, then, were not you. What are they? Well that comes with experience, but you can steepen the learning curve by casting to visible submerged objects. Each has it's own feel: rock, wood, brush, weeds, gravel, muck, current, etc... My description of a fish bite, peck, slap, nip, rush, etc... is that it "feels alive", and/or was "something" that wasn't in that particular spot on previous casts. And I've always told people not to worry to much about it, "You'll know it when you feel it." You can trust that. If you are getting bites you are not detecting... so what, you didn't detect them! You'll get much better at this. If you miss fish, so what. You just learned something. Take it in. Soft plastics are often good to start with bc bass will often hold them for a time before spitting them, giving you plenty of time to detect that "aliveness" and respond. Jigs are great depth and speed control and contact lures, but bass often spit them quicker. Don't shy away from them, as they are the best teaching tools in my mind, bass LOVE them, and you'll detect plenty. Also, part of this control of your tackle is knowing where in the water column you are, sink rate (timing), the tension on the line created by depth, until you can visualize where your lure is. This comes with experience -sheer time doing it. The only short cuts I guess is as I suggested, practicing some in controlled environments. The toughest thing is feeling... lost and... out of control. Stay with it. The fish will teach you fast. You were built for it. Trust that.

Hmmmm... I am heavy on the spinning. Habit, and... tackle weight. 65/35 ?? In early spring it's almost 90/10. By mid-summer, it's 40/60. I use casting gear for spinnerbaits, crankbaits, and flippin/pitching. I use MH spinning rigs a lot for soft plastics and jigs -swim jigs, small to mid swimbaits, in particular. Spinning is esp useful when fishing from the shoreline as it's easier to cast from beneath shoreline cover.

For me, it depends a lot on how much pressure a place might get. When you figure in timing and approaches, there's a lot more real estate out there than one might expect. That said, I've been burned before so I am cautious. I find that if I share good info with good people, it comes back around.

Short answer is, No. I break worm boxes down to Straight-tail, Swimming-tail, Stick, Finesse. That pretty much does it. I have favorites but am happy to mix em up. That said, there are advantages to certain... Straight-tails, for example. I have some that are heavy and cast well unweighted -Jelly Worms and a Boone worm used to fit that scenario. But, stick worms have pretty much filled that niche since.

A drop weighted Brachycentrus cased larva tie. Although that trout, and most in small infertile streams, was feeding eclectically.

A bass defending a bed is a different animal entirely than a feeding bass. SM's are known to be more aggressive defenders. And every individual bass is... an individual. I believe you! Although 7 times is pretty extreme.

I often skip a tube. They skip really well.

That's... small.

It's a good video, Glenn. A good addition to the BR library. You have a nice presentation style... friendly, clear, and easy to follow. Length is good. If I have one criticism it's the lack of scene diversity. Breaking things up a bit with different camera angles, and possibly some B-roll, would make them visually more interesting. Not a lot either, as your vids being educational are clear and to the point.

Hey... stop it. i haven't had lunch yet.

Excellent. Steven Cooke has been a very active warmwater (bass in particular) researcher for quite a while now. He's done a lot of work on the effects of angling, notably on catchability and on spawning bass. Waters are plied so heavily now that its a good line of research. Not surprised at those findings. You know why bass jump? I believe that it's the best way to get the best leverage to throw a spiny sunfish lodged in the throat. There may be subsurface behaviors we don't tend to see, although we all know the head shaking. As to hooks in gullets, it appears that hooks behind the tongue, in the esophagus are most dangerous to the fish bc of chance of infection and difficulty in extraction. I like Roger's suggestion. But hooks in most other parts of the mouth and even swallowed, can often be dealt with by fish. As a trout fly-fisher I often check stomach contents of trout (by stomach pump or those I take home to eat). Here's a not all that uncommon finding: This was from a 9" brown. The fish was well fed as you can see, and that big hook was in process of dissolving:

Great post. Thanks so much for the thoughtful and detailed follow up. As per A-Jay... Next up -actually first up in my book: jigs. You already are using SP's on jig heads so realize you can put almost anything on a jig head. Skirted jigs with a trailer (although when I started using them in the 80s I used no trailer at all and did great), are HUGE in the bass world. They can be fished top (swum) to bottom (dragged, hopped to dead-sticked). An interesting thing about skirted jigs is that they tend to attract bigger bass. This will be noticeable. Why I say jigs are first up -the best starting point- is bc they are the most fundamental depth and speed control tools. By adjusting line dia, jig weight and style, and body/trailer buoyancy and resistance, you can manually control these two primary keys to presentation. Sounds complicated and can get so over time, but you are already hip to this stuff now from your detailed descriptions above. Regardless, jigs catch bass and big ones. Jigs do something else that is critical to presentation control and that is knowing (by feel/visualization) where in the water column you are. After jigs, if you so desire, I'd think in two veins: -Rigs (Drop-Shot, Carolina, Split-Shot, T-rig, jig worm, Wacky, Bubba, Punch, etc...) that offer greater presentation changes than simply changing lure type or color. -Start collecting effective presentations that you hear about (Swimming Worm, Shaky, Flick-Shake, Ned, Burnin', Rippin', Stroking, Bulging, etc, etc, etc.... People discover things all the time and is what the name "In-Fisherman" meant in its founding -fisherman "IN the know". It's amazing how a certain presentation technique can be SO much better than others at certain times and conditions. Don't go hog wild as it can complicate things and get expensive. There's more to do than there is time to do it. Worth knowing and adding to your bag of tricks over time. Then there's always water bodies (Limnology) and fish biology (physiology, ecology, behavior).

Go! If you are free to pick your days, then you have that luxury. Otherwise... Go! If you are uncomfortable it's easier to lose heart and not put the effort in to find biters. You may have to adjust expectations some. Ok with putting in a tough day and not catching? If not, it might be a good day for honey-do's. But you may also put something together that will change your outlook on cold days forever.

Not sure how long your spawn season is overall, but it's probably pretty much done. You'll have fish in post-spawn and into pre-summer now. The bass are now hungry and have switched gears toward finding the best hunting. Your sunfish and shad are probably spawning so those areas will be bass magnets. Covering the whole water column will matter at this time. -Post-spawn fish may still be high (nearer the surface) so vertical and overhead cover may be important. Topwaters, buzzbaits, squarebills, tubes, swim jigs, jigs in cover. -Pre-summer fish may be anywhere but you're looking for fish leaving known spawning areas. Look shallow for sunfish spawners (there WILL be bass hanging around them), and for shad spawners around shallow hard cover like docks, logs, rip-rap, and weed beds. Look deeper for bass collecting up on main structure such as the ends of points and drops. Crankbaits are a good bet there. You may have to search some bc bass are in transition and not distributed yet. Once you find some there mat be a lot of them piled up. Let us know what you find.

I've been using the stick-ons for a few years now. Work fine. Dunno the brand.