Team9nine

Bama Bug for the win if you are trying to limit or simplify what you carry. One of my favorites when I can find it available.

Sooner or later most all pros are either penalized, have their weight zeroed for a day, or are outright disqualified from an event over a rules violation. Happens a lot more frequently than you might think when you actually go looking for it.

6’6” ML spin, 10# sinking braid to 8# leader, 2/0 Owner hook, #7 shot (.04 oz) and a 4”-5” finesse worm.

Still playing with the split shot rig. Another dozen tonight despite some pretty stained water following a weed treatment. Just a couple small bass from a local reservoir on it yesterday, so need a bit more time to get things dialed in based on water type and cover/structure conditions.

Banjo minnow rigging with terminal gear in full kit…

Kind of in line with the gut hooking theme. Caught a bass and saw a tiny dark pointy something sticking out of his behind today. A quick investigation revealed it was a hook that the fish had just started to pass. Was quickly and easily able to extract it intact. Imagine it might have been gut hooked/break-off, probably a while ago based off the exterior hook condition. If gut hooked, it was able to largely self extract. Fish was aggressive, and appeared perfectly healthy, then swam off post surgical release with a little less hardware to carry around.

In pursuit of Murphy's bass - lol. I've been threatening (myself) to pull out a split shot rig the past couple years, maybe even start a good thread on it. Finally got around to doing it today, and now kind of kicking myself for not doing it earlier. Pulled 16 on it from a stingy summer pond that has been recently treated. Learned a bunch and got things dialed in pretty quick once I got that first bite. Very interested now in playing with it a little more on a couple other types of water first.

After hauling in about 40 ft of monofilament, I was rewarded with this nearly new rattle bait (Trap) in a nice bluegill pattern from the pond today Someone even took the time to change out the hooks to some fancy wide gap trebles - lol

…And then you get out on the water with FFS and really see how your baits react on the fall (and lift/hop/retrieve) ?

Yes, part of the original kits.

Agree ^^ It’s a fun little rod if you keep baits to the smaller side, probably 3/8 and under.

For crappie, yes - for bass, no. I feel you give up too much in knot strength going that route vs. any benefit gained.

Yep

I’m going with ‘No’ based on my local river. Giant catfish might live in those super deep holes, but I’ve never found smallies in them. Our smallies either hang shallower near current and current breaks, or sometimes the 8’-12’ holes created on outside river bends - so maybe in the shallower 15 ft holes you’d be good, but not the 20-30 ft holes. In winter, they will move out of the river and into pits connected to the river, but that’s different than what you are asking. But, the only way to know for sure is to fish them on your waters and see. They might behave differently there.

After running the numbers over and over again, I decided I’d had enough and took the retirement leap in March 2020 at age 54. Turned out this was less than 2 weeks before everything locked down due to the pandemic. Don’t know if that was good or bad timing, but zero regrets so far. Now I fish through the week whenever I want and leave the weekend craziness to others. Wife just cut back to part time working mostly remote from home this year. Life is short - go fishing!

I also have an older molder Clarus spinning. Have literally caught 2,000+ bass on it - love it. I tried finding more, but couldn't get any of the older model in the length/action/power I wanted - so I bought one of the newer versions, but haven’t fished it yet. A great ‘bang for the buck’ rod IMO.

I've got and read the studies showing no mortality of bass kept out of the water for 10, 13 and 15 minutes. Some of these studies included smallmouth, others were largemouth only. Smallmouth are more "sensitive" or affected than largemouth in this regard according to those studies. These would be 'worse case scenarios' in most any normal fishing situation. They also can't cover all environmental conditions, so these results aren't absolutes. In regard to air exposure, shorter is better, and no exposure, keeping the fish largely in the water while unhooking and immediately releasing, is best...but bass are apparently much tougher than some other fish species.

Use what you like - but there are numerous studies out there supporting the hooking inefficiency of circle hooks compared to other hook types. It seems circle hooks exist to solve for a bass fishing problem I don’t have, but perhaps some do based on how they fish. All good. Now, if I was using live bait or fishing for catfish…

Circle hooks will definitely cut down on the mortality of fish, mainly because you'll simply miss a lot more fish than you would have otherwise. Hard to hurt a fish that bites that you never end up hooking There have been several more recent studies come out than those mentioned in the video supporting line cutting over any hook removal techniques. These have primarily come out of Stephen Cooke's lab. How well the lab data translates to the field is the big unknown. If I were using live bait or a single wacky hook where the hook was swallowed deep and I could easily remove the plastic/live bait, I'd seriously consider just cutting the line and releasing the fish without attempting a hook removal based on those studies. Most other bait types, you probably have to go in and try to safely remove the lure/hook. The last thought on the video is at the end when he mentions barbless causing less mortality - that has largely been disproven at this point. Several other advantages to going barbless you could point to, but decreased catch mortality isn't one of them.

I use the sinking braid version in various test strengths. A great all-around finesse line. Supple right out of the box, casts well, handles great, hi-vis, sinks, holds a good knot. Power Pro and 832 are the other two lines I have spooled up, but YGK has taken over most of the bass outfits.

I use 3, 4, 5, and 8 pound braid on most all my 2000/2500 Series Shimano & Daiwa spinning reels. Never went above that for years until I started using YGK. I don't think you'd have any issues with 5 pound, but since you're used to 15 at the moment, and if your rivers are heavily rock based, you might start with 8 pound and see how things go from there.

Small lakes doesn't always mean small bass, necessarily. When our local paper ran their weekly/yearly big fish contests (for nearly 30 years), farm ponds and strip pits always gave up a majority of the biggest bass caught every year. There are a lot of factors involved, several of them mentioned above. Even in the overran lakes full of small bass, there is almost always a "barrier breaker" or two that happened to escape the resource partition that sometimes exists. One small pond I fish is 1.25 acres, and full of small bass. I've caught hundreds from it, with none even approaching 3 pounds...except two; a 5.5 and a 7. I would say the smaller the water body, the more things have to go "right" to keep the proper balance and necessary food supply in alignment to consistently produce better fish. Lots of things can mess that balance up pretty quickly.

If the lake isn't fished heavily, especially by tournament guys, I'd suspect most people will never pay it much attention or figure it out. About 30 years ago, they pulled down my local reservoir over 10 feet to do repair work on the dam. It held weekly bass tournies even back then, despite being a 10hp lake, which I also fished. I walked nearly all the banks and took pictures, drew maps, etc., and started noticing things just like what you are talking about - orange spray paint on bushes along the bank where submerged cover was; the very top rock of a line of riprap pulled just a foot out of place or stood up where a stump was located, etc. Needless to say, I "fixed" most all of it. After the water came up, I went out there with clippers and pruned off all the orange limbs. I pulled up to the riprap banks and moved the "marker rocks" about 15-20 ft in one direction or another, close enough to just throw them off. Gotta' stay one step ahead of your competition

I don’t buy jeans with holes already in them either - mine all come naturally from daily fishing wear and tear ?