Rayraff

I've actually been thinking about starting it this year. I do most of my fishing in small ponds so I don't know if it's going to do much but ill try

I fish with live bait if nothing else is working. My dad used to fish tournies and I plan to do the same some day so artificial comes first. On the other hand if I'm not catching cr@p then I'm switching to live because I go fishing to have a good time. As for mammals , I could never hook a mouse on my hook, but I could tie it to the hook. Mice are pests and I kill 10+ a year with traps in my basement. I'm not saying I've ever/will use mice for bait but if i did they would be caught with human traps and put in a cage till my next fishing trip. The way I see it, I was going to kill them anyway so they might as well be used for something usefull.

Sorry for bashing on you man but dark clothes are the absolute worst thing you can wear fishing because it's easier for the fish to see you body against the sky. Btw, this pond is the wierdest pond ever... Its about a 1/4 of a square mile and it holds 6lb walleye, 20+lb carp, 10+lb bass, Nice channel catfish and I caught a 35" pike on one of the bluegill. They don't just throw the big fish in there because it hasn't been stocked in 10 years. And like I said the ONLY thing that the bass bite are live bluegills, they won't even touch the dead ones.

You could do a couple things... 1) Throw them in a box and hope they are worth something some day my dad has every magazine since it started in a boxes. 2) If you want to take the time to organize them you can cut out the articles and put them in a binder for a huge encyclopedia of bass fishing. 3) THE SHREADER

I met a guy on a lake that trained his dog to bring the net to him every time he said "its a hog"

-A lawn chair -A condom -Flat Screen Monitor I also caught a moray eel in salt water before... it was 5 feet long and one of the hardest fight fish ive ever caught..... Needless to say when I got him at the boat I cut the line.

Since I haven't made 10 posts yet I can't actually post the link but if you search "man made structures" you'll find a thread with some really nice bass boxes.

I was actually up north fishing for arctic grayling on an ultra lite. When I hooked a grayling a northern came up and swallowed it whole and I was left with a 43" pike on 4lb test. Biggest fish of the trip

In salt water you can actually tie the fish's nostril to a hook but I don't know if that will work with a blue gill

I have a mouse shaped top water lure thats black and i've caught a load of bass on it.

I have tried everything...Crank baits, Worms, Jigs, Spoons, Night crawlers, top waters, spinner baits, the only other thing that worked was a fly, but I'm not that big of a fly fisherman. Their feeding habit is really weird as well. They only eat until 8 a.m. and then they stop. You'd think they'd go into deeper water because of the water temperature but they stay shallow and whenever you walk along the shore you see them.

I live near Chicago where its almost impossible to find 10+ pound bass because the lakes are all over fished. The bass in the pond don't bite anything but bluegill, I've tried a bluegill lipless crankbait and that didn't work

Over the summer I go fishing in a small pond in a neighborhood around the area. It was stocked 10 years ago and holds some monster bass (12+ pounds) The problems is getting them to bite. I have tried every lure, every method, and due to rules in the ponds you can't use bait fish bought from a store. So, I bring a ultra light and catch a couple of bluegill to fish with. The blue gill work great and you get a bite ever 5 minutes or so but the problem is hooking the bass. I've tried hooking the bluegill everywhere....the tail, the lip, the back..... but whenever I set the hook the bluegill always pops out of the bass's mouth. I've tried waiting for 2seconds, 10 seconds, even 2 minutes when a monster took the bluegill but it never seems to hook. So my question is, how can I hook these fish so that I get a pretty successful hook percentage.