Team9nine

If I'm not mistaken, the old Color-C-Lector unit guideline, which also used clear, stained and murky was 0'-2' (murky), 2'-4' (stained), and greater than 4' visibility (clear). Might be a good starting basis, and then adapt to your local waters. -T9

I guess I'm just wanting to know, based on all the discussion above, should I go ahead and buy those UV enhanced baits or not??? -T9

No offense here, but there are 4 pages of replies and a whole lot of worry over what is nothing but assumptions on your part at this point. You have no way of knowing if you're missing any jig bites at all, outside of the possible flubbed hookset now and then on what you were certain was a bite. Even if you did, there's not much you can do about it. Even the pros couldn't detect some bites when scuba divers went underwater and watched them fish (we've all seen the videos and read the stories). You only have so much control over the situation. If you're using good equipment and are comfortable with your skills and awareness in this regard, don't worry so much about what may not even be taking place underwater. Similarly, the concern over a lack of big "neutral" jig bass is again, based on an assumption. A "bass is a bass" to a certain degree, but local waters, forage, weather, etc. trump that. In every environment, bass have to adapt to the situation they're in. You live 2500 miles away from Tom on opposite ends of the country. The expectation that your big fish percentages on a given bait should match his, or follow some prescribed formula, seems a bit silly. Some lakes are simply not good jig lakes. Maybe your bass suspend much of the year. Maybe they're highly baitfish oriented. Maybe because you bank fish, the areas you can reach aren't conducive to a good jig bite. You are obviously doing something right if you're catching multiple bass over 7 lbs. for your area of the country. I'd be focusing more on what IS working and how I might be able to expand on or better capitalize it, than trying to figure out why something is not working as well as you think it should, IMHO. -T9

I've thrown several different versions of Andy's hair jigs and they all seemed to catch fish just fine. I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you're not getting the drop rate you want with a particular jig, you might thin the hair out a bit. Seems less is more with a lot of hair jigs. -T9

I'm siding with Tom on this one, until someone can show otherwise. Nevin Fenneman's paper Physiographic Subdivision of the United States, published in 1917 is where this all started (Edit: USGS adopted his map in 1915-16, and he published his work in 1917, along with two books on the subject in 1931 and 1938. He was a geologist, geographer, and teacher in the Dept. of Geology, University of Cincinnati when this was done, and worked closely at times with the USGS, but not directly for them). But no one entity appears to have directly applied those names in an effort to specifically classify reservoirs (Google "reservoir classification system" and you only get 25 results). If they had, and if they were widely published or recognized as such, we would also have classifications like mountain, tundra, prairie, coastal, and plains reservoirs, among others - probably 2 dozen different kinds or more, as there are 8 regions and 85 separate land classifications in the physiographic map of the U.S. But almost nobody outside of specific industry circles (for example, EPA was generating their own highly elaborate classification system back in 2009) refers to those types of reservoirs, instead using the widely accepted classification system developed by In-Fisherman (Al, Ron and one or two others) back in the 70s, or a very close model thereof. Buck Perry used very similar nomenclature to describe reservoir types, possibly even before In-Fish guys did, though I haven't been able to pinpoint exactly when he put his system down on paper. Wouldn't surprise me if the I-F guys built off Perry's roots. Regardless, here are just a couple examples in print recognizing the I-F reservoir classification system as the basis for what we (anglers) use now. http://www.sdafs.org/reservoir/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/RFHPStrategicPlan1.pdf report pg. 24, Appendix I: Reservoir Classification, report pg. 44 http://reservoirpartnership.org/Subcommittees/Science_data/Asheville_2010_meeting/Sci_Data_Mtg_Notes.pdf see top of last page

Both will catch bass just fine, but no doubt in my mind you'll catch more bass with less baits given the same amount of time with the ZinkerZ, and will have paid less money to do so. -T9

As a basic rule of thumb, highland tends to be deeper/steeper and clearer water, while lowland is shallower/flatter with more stained water. This link should help answer a lot of your questions and save us from a whole bunch of typing http://www.kevinvandam.com/news/article/kvds-6-season-bass-guide/ -T9

Don't do a lot of ice fishing, but have specifically targeted bass when I do and we always managed to catch a few. Can target them just like any other time of the year if you work at it. Jigging Raps was what we mostly used. Have caught plenty on partially ice covered lakes also by fishing the open water sections. -T9

Smallest silicone/rubber jig is 1/16-oz Kahara with micro trailer. Smallest hair/bucktail jig I routinely throw is 1/24-oz., but I've also caught plenty on 1/32nd oz. black "crappie" jigs and the same size jig head with 1.5" tubes and other very small plastics in bass colors. -T9

Another vote for straight fluoro, 16# TORAY Superhard Upgrade for FB jigs of 3/8-3/4 oz. -T9

Fishing isn't "practice", it's just "fishing", unless you have some type of goal or outcome you're trying to achieve. This ties in nicely with your lure specialization post in another forum section. Again, I used to do this (training techniques) pretty regularly, too. For example, one thing I did was "speed fish," where I'd put the trolling motor on a particular setting (always fairly fast) and leave it on "constant on." This teaches you casting (and retrieving) efficiency, boat control, decision-making and effective presentation. Another was timing myself to see how fast I could put the first fish in the boat, or how fast it would take to catch a limit. Again, this teaches you several things in regards to efficiency and decision-making. The same can be done with a single lure, how fast you can catch a fish on it. You'll quickly learn the importance of varying your retrieve or changing up your usual presentation. Yet another was how many different crankbaits I could catch a fish on in a certain amount of time. These are just a few examples. There are lots of others. You'll learn a heck of a lot from doing these exercises, or something similar, if you put forth a good effort. -T9

Personally, I think you're on the right track and line of thinking. I do it all the time; sometimes for a single trip, sometimes for months at a time - just depends on the specific bait/technique. It works for things besides lures, too, like line types, rods, etc. IMO, the absolute best and quickest way to learn as you put it, "the in-depth intricacies of one type of lure." If you do it and stick with it, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the outcome -T9

The Ned Rig....but a bucktail jig would be a very close second. -T9

Got a pretty nice stash of them myself. My PB bass came on one of the larger models, and the small one is simply a fish catching machine around here. -T9

Thanks for the additional comments, Tom. Murphy's book is absolutely one of the favorites in my library, and it was a big loss when he left us several years back. I did find a follow-up story by Ralph Mann's/In-Fisherman on his lunar study that is available online: http://www.in-fisherman.com/bass/largemouth-bass/moon-magic-largemouth-bass/ The original article was written back in 1992, I believe, but this update covers the 1992-2010 time period. I'll give you difference in behavior and influence based on geography, species, etc., as that is the only way you could explain away all the discrepancies in opinion on lunar theory, depth positioning, etc., among experts like yourself, Hannon, Murphy, Hope, Mann's, etc.. As such, I won't bother to point all of them out. But that then has to come with the caveat that any explanation or opinion on such (bass) behavior applies only locally/regionally to the poster and waters in question, and may not (or even more likely, doesn't) apply everywhere, or even to anyone, else. As Murphy stated in his book, "Having too many concrete, scientific rules could hamper your fishing to a point where you won't go fishing if, for example, the moon isn't exactly right. I have always stated that there is a correlation between certain moon phases and big bass activity, and I believe that intently, but I don't want to influence anyone into thinking that just because the moon isn't 3-days-before or 3-days-after full, that fishing would be a waste of time. Bass are free spirits in their world, and too much cause and effect thinking takes the freedom out of fishing." -T9

While you can never make any absolute statements, I would tend to believe that what Murphy pictured, while possibly happening in his California waters, likely isn't the case a majority of the time, or at least not for a majority of the waters. There are a few things to consider, such as the work of Ralph Mann's and his In-Fisherman report that showed that bass rarely have the ability to make large vertical movements for any length of time. While it's hard to tell by Murphy's picture exactly what depths are in his example, 10'-15' is about the max a bass can move vertically in the water column at any one time due to air bladder restrictions and adjustments. Think in terms of all those reports you hear about anglers who have issues with barotrauma, hyperinflated air bladders and death because those fish were moved over too large of a vertical distance too fast. Another hint comes from the tracking of John Hope and his study of giant largemouth bass, where he found that in most lakes he studied, there were 3 types of bass; shallow fish, mid depth fish, and deep fish, and that outside of spawning, those respective fish almost never left their home depths, though they did suspend within those depth ranges. They also fed in very predictable and repeatable patterns within their depth range. That said, Hope did report what he termed a "crazy night," where most giant bass left their normal routines and fed suspended over open water one evening - so again, there are no absolutes, perhaps just rarities and exceptions. Let me state that none of this is meant to in any way diminish or discredit the incredible amount of time and experience gained by people like yourself, or Hannon or Murphy. It seems most big bass chasers I've read about all end up believing in a lunar influence to some degree, even John Hope felt it helped. Whatever works for you on your waters is obviously what you need to be doing. But in the big scheme of things, while 60 years of an individual fishing is a lot of experience to make conclusions on, it pales in comparison to large data systems like the ShareLunker database. According to US Fish & Wildlife stats, there are 1.3 million Texas black bass anglers that fish a total of 17.9 million days a year. Multiply that by the more than 25 years that the SL program has been in place (works out to half a billion bass angler days on the water), and taking into consideration all the angling variables those anglers can cover by their sheer diversity, and it becomes hard to ignore the resulting patterns and outcomes. It's really just a shame that we only have this extensive a set of data from Texas to analyze. Is it just a Texas thing, or representative of bass behavior in the entire country? The same question could be asked of the California big bass info - region specific trend or not? A little snippet to add to Paul's comment above. We've spent a lot of time talking about the 2 days prior and the same days after a full moon (5 day moon phase cycle) as being the best cycle time for big bass. However, if you look at the lunar chart in Murphy's book on page 89, you'll see that he considered those days as only "fair." Instead, his two best cycle times were the waxing and waning quarters either side of the full moon, which works out to be the period 4-7 days before, and 4-7 days after the full moon. So to Paul's point, which is really the best cycle and who do you believe? Murphy also liked the 3 days before and after a new moon as third best sequence. If you put everyone's opinions together, there isn't much of the lunar cycle left to consider a "bad" or off time - LOL. -T9

The ShareLunker program runs Sept. through April. By far, the majority of the ShareLunkers (>40%) are caught in March, with the next best month being February (~25%). April and January both account for about 12% of the ShareLunkers. That leaves Sept. through December to pick up the remaining 10%. I used the April-June seasonal period on the first post since that data was from Kentucky, which is about 450 miles further north latitude-wise. That is correct, Paul. Saturday and Sunday account for 39.5% of all ShareLunkers caught, though they represent 28.6% of the available days. If you add Friday to the mix, that 3-day weekend period accounts for more than half (53.5%) of the ShareLunkers, but just 42.9% of available days. Here is the current breakdown for the 557 ShareLunkers in the database. Mon - 65 - 11.7% Tue - 59 - 10.6% Wed - 63 - 11.3% Thu - 72 - 12.9% Fri - 78 - 14.0% Sat - 124 - 22.3% Sun - 96 - 17.2% If all days were equal, any given day would have a 1 in 7 chance of being represented, or 14.3% of all available days. The simple take home would be that since more people fish on weekends (or even Fridays), more ShareLunkers should get caught on those days. However, there isn't enough data to know just how many more people (bass anglers in particular) fish on weekends, so we can't weight that calculation. I'm not certain if any of those day differences above would reach statistical significance or not. -T9

I pulled all the ShareLunker data from their database and analyzed it. Using your 5 day metric of F +/- 2 days plus N +/- 2 days = 10 days. A lunar cycle is 29.5 days long. Therefore, those 10 lunar days account for 34% of all lunar days. When you sort out the ShareLunker data by moon phase, you find 100 of the 557 ShareLunkers were caught during the 5 day full moon period, and 91 were caught during the 5 day new moon period. That's 191 total ShareLunkers caught during that 10 day metric, out of the 557 ShareLunkers caught, which again gives you 34%, a perfect 1:1 correlation, meaning no full moon/new moon lunar trend whatsoever. The last quarter 5 day period actually has 102 ShareLunkers, just slightly more than the new and full moon periods. The first quarter period only has 76 ShareLunkers. -T9

Only 5 of the 47 KY records fell exactly on those moon days, 4 on the full and 1 on the new. If you just look at the 3 "spawning" months (Apr.-Jun), 3 fell during (2 full, 1 new). The two that fell outside those months were both on full moons. -T9

Interesting study out of Florida that says this lunar thing is mostly in our minds, as water temps and trends (including cold fronts) drive bass spawning regardless of moon phase. http://sfrc.ufl.edu/allenlab/Popular%20Articles/Rogers&Allen_BassTimes.pdf I'd also argue that (Bassun's) data set is too limited to be statistically significant. For example, I pulled the data for the 47 Kentucky State records and found that 23 were caught during the "spawning" months of April, May and June, while 24 were caught the rest of the year. Not a big surprise that you might get a crack at the largest fish in the system when they have to come shallow to spawn, exposing them to increased angler pressure. But when you look at the lunar phase they were caught on, 11 (23.5%) came within +/- 3 days of the full moon, another 11 (23.5%) came within +/- 3 of the new moon, and the other 25 (53%) came on some other lunar phase day. Since the new+full plus +/- 3 days of each = 14 days, (~49%) of all possible moon phase days, Kentucky's records basically distribute nearly perfectly with available phases and show no lunar trending whatsoever. Even if you strictly look at just records set during spring spawning months, only 11 of 23 (48%) fell +/- 3 days of a full or new moon. You'd need to pull all state record data for all species to probably have a chance at detecting statistically significant trends, which I believe In-Fisherman did many years back in a big two part lunar story. Might be worth digging back up if you can find it, but I seem to recall they couldn't come up with anything overly favoring lunar trends either for the majority of species examined. -T9

Ahh, a fish out of water...err, a snake in the air (the journal Cell), is not the same as a fish underwater. Show me an underwater IR image of a fish or some other critter under natural lighting (or at night, unaided) and I'll be much more interested in your theory. I've never seen one. The very few underwater IR pictures I have seen all required accessory IR lighting at very close distances (e.g., 200 IR LEDs at <20" at night, 50 IR LEDs during the day) to make a discernible image. Yes, a basses eye could have evolved to be able to see what technology doesn't currently allow, but for now, I'm still hedging my bet on the more reasonable solution...but please don't let my skepticism stop anyone from creating an IR bass lure and making millions -T9

Perhaps I misunderstood, but I took your short distance to mean, say, bass within inches of prey, even at depths. My point was that this could only happen in very shallow water (<2') where you would have an IR signal to detect in the first place due to proper wavelength penetration, and that it wouldn't be able to happen at any depth beyond that, IMO. And yes, I'm taking this all as "interesting discussion" and nothing much more serious than that. Perhaps one day we'll actually get answers -T9

I guess I would argue several points. First, since bass evolved over 2 million years ago, there would have to have been some evolutionary need or benefit to them adopting IR vision abilities back then. To that point, I've yet to see any research that supports IR vision in bass. Not saying they don't, just that it's pure speculation at this point. Next, even if they were proven to see IR, you'd still have to have a reason (advantage) for that development, and the automatic assumption that it would have to do with feeding is tenuous at best. Perhaps it would be for mate or nesting area selection, or predator avoidance, or a whole host of other reasons. Again, as anglers, we like to grasp onto things that potentially fit our idealizations, but that may not be the case, even if it seems plausible. As for cold-blooded animals, the IR and thermal images I've seen taken of them show no signs of having "hot spots" or "auras" or other such differences that would stand out, at least not on thermal imaging cameras. They take on the temperature of their environment, and tend to blend in to their background environment instead of stand out (from an IR imaging perspective). Again, they can "hold" some outside heat relative to a background temperature to give them a signature short term, but it seems highly unlikely bass would have evolved to develop IR vision simply on the chance that some warmer than water creature would fall into the lake so it could eat it before taking on the local water temperature and blending in again, or making it back to land/air safely...and the idea of heating a plastic worm up between casts so it would have an IR signature just seems like a far overreach. That said, anyone who wants to take the time to test this out, please report on your findings. Instead, and taking this in a totally different direction, what you propose about muscle contractions, digestion, etc. would, to me, fall more under the category of electroreception - think sharks and rays, some catfish, paddlefish, etc.. As I understand it, all living creatures give off small electrical impulses due to muscular movement. But again, from the researchers I've seen go on record on this subject, the consensus has been that bass don't have this ability...but it gives us another wonderful area to talk about now -T9

If you look at a lot of the trick casters from back in the day (Stan Fagerstrom, Shag Shahid) as well as some of the newer "Master Casters," there are a couple things they tend to have in common. One is their use of short rods, pistol grips in many instances, and typically measuring between 5'2" and 5'6." For short, accurate "trick" casting, those type rods were hard to beat. Another thing is the rods action. Many of the trick casters wouldn't use graphite rods. Instead, they used fiberglass rods (or at best, composites) of lighter action because of their parabolic curve and ability to easily load. Frequently these rods were so flexible that they really weren't even applicable to fishing typical bass tackle with. In other words, you wouldn't want to use them for worm or jig fishing because of how "soft" they were - but they were perfect for trick casting demos. Another is line. Most would use very limp and lighter weight line, max of 10lb. test in mono. Many went to braid when it came out, focusing around the 20# range, but again, because of the limpness. Lastly, the other big thing is practice - lots and lots of practice. Watching someone do something on a video once or twice, when they could have taken hours of filming and edited out just those one or two great shots, can be a bit misleading. Like anything else, the more you practice, the better you'll get. -T9

Don't confuse short eyesight distance with distance that IR light penetrates underwater. The only real possibility might be during a surface strike. For any lure fished at any normal depth, especially anything over a foot or two deep in most waters, the IR rays would never penetrate deep enough into the water to make IR vision a reality. Thought of another way, if you've ever night fished with a black light and fluorescent blue line, that line isn't glowing all the way down to your lure fished in 20 feet of stained water. That line would appear to "glow" only as deep as the UV light can penetrate into the water before becoming attenuated. Beyond that, it would look like plain old blue/clear line. Additionally, even assuming bass had any sense of IR perception, why would we automatically correlate it to feeding and lures (beside the fact we're bass anglers) and not some other more biologically important phenomena. With IR being a "heat" signature, it would seem largely counterproductive in a cold blooded world except in very specialized adaptations. -T9