diver_sniper

So I've finally gotten myself around to learning how to use a carolina rig recently. I'm a fool for waiting this long, I can say that for sure. Anyways, I was out last night and I ran into something that sparked my curiosity. I was trying to decide which plastic I should rig up, and as I was digging through my binder I noticed that I had some 3x lizards with twirly legs and tail that would be perfect for the mission. Upon further inspection I realized that these plastics were designed to float, not sink. I had never noticed that before because I always used them texas rigged. So I went ahead and rigged one up, and sure enough, it floated well enough to keep itself and the hook on top of the water when I set it in off the side of the boat. Unfortunately though I had to head for home before I got much of a chance to see if it was going to catch fish or not. So my question is, has anyone ever had success carolina rigging with a floating plastic of any sort? Would you consider it almost a reverse drop shot? If you've had luck with it before, do you change the way you bring the rig back towards the boat because the fact that your lure probably isn't sitting on the bottom? Thanks in advance for any input!

One thing I like to do that my buddies laugh at me for is butting jig rattles on my T-rig hook before putting on whichever plastic it is that I'm using at the time.

Just chiming in here. I think that "naturally gifted talent" is sometimes mistaken for simply having started doing something at a young age. If you've ever researched anything about child development, you know that setting the ground work for success in a certain area of life is easier to do while a human is still rapidly developing than it is later on when they have reached maturity. Yes, there certainly is such thing as natural gifts. Especially when talking about sports, where physical build becomes a major factor. The lanky skrawny kid (me ;D) is never going to be a star linebacker. Even if his tackling form and play recognition are flawless. Genetics play a huge role in the things we do as well. And I'm not just talking about physical or other visibly obvious traits. Take a look at some of the families you know. I bet the ones with smart parents have smart kids. And I bet the family with the dad who was a trouble maker in school has a son who can't help but land his butt in the principals office a couple times a week. That's not by accident. The human genome is an overwhelmingly complex thing, and you'd be kidding yourself if you said that a persons starting point for intelligence and ability to preform certain tasks aren't tied into the genes they were dealt. Think of it this way, some hunting dogs are worth thousands of dollars because they come from a long line of strategically chosen ancestors. Ancestors that were good at what the breeder wanted them to be good at. On the other hand the family mutt, who comes from a bloodline of random backyard hook ups isn't worth thousands of dollars, because chances are it won't be hardwired to preform the same way as the first dog mentioned. We me be more advanced than dogs, but less than you might think. So if you combine the three things I mentioned. Early exposure to an activity, the right physical build for that activity, and the genetic advantage allowing a person to preform that activity, you've probably got a winner. If you could chart out the past and current level of ability of a person with these things in his favor side by side with the level of ability of someone without these "gifts", I'm almost certain that the "lucky" one would show much faster increases, even if they got less time to practice. Here's the thing though, by now, early exposure, physical build, and genetics are pretty much set in stone for most of us. So all we have left is practice. You wanna get better, don't you? Good, I thought so. So keep on fishin

Another quick update from me: I think it's time for me to head to the gas station and buy some lottery tickets, because I'm on a roll lately. I took some of the advice from this thread and put it to work last night in our weekly tournament. It happened to be on a lake that between me and my parter had a combined lifetime total of 7 hours fishing on. One of the bigger and more pressured lakes in the area too. But that didn't seem to matter. The winds were high and a storm had just rolled through. We ran to the first spot that we were going to try, after about 15 minutes of no luck I pulled the plug on that. Which is much sooner than I would normally give up on a spot, but I kept what you guys had told me in mind. Move quickly. We ran across the lake to another spot that we had seen from the road on the way to the launch. Too windy to even control the little 17 foot Ranger, even with a brand new 70lb thrust trolling motor. So we decided to cruise some docks on the calm side and see what we could make happen. Still no luck for the first 200 yards or so. Then all of a sudden we came to a stretch of pencil weeds. I started thinking out loud and said to my partner, "Man, one of use really should be throwing something that moves quick, probably a spinner bait." So he grabbed his spinner bait rod and sure enough, started catching fish. The pencil reeds lasted for about 75 yards. We started catching fish about half way through them. When we got to the end we turned around and redid the first half doing the same thing we had been doing on the second half to catch fish. It worked and we took first place by about a pound and a half. Next week the pressure will be on. The lake we drew out of the hat is one that I've spent a lot of time on, and hardly anyone else ever even seen. So me and my partner should be heavy favorites, but like I said, being the favorite is sometimes harder than being the underdog. Hopefully we can pull it out though, turns out winning is fun ;D

Pics of the bay

Alright guys, time for a little show and tell. So I headed to the lake this morning with your advice lingering in my head. I was planning to practice my tournament technique a little. I started out cruising around some points tossing a spinner bait. Nothin. Moved to a little grassy island that I have caught fish on before, tried the spinner bait and a little bit with the jig, nothin. Now I'm thinking, "Here we go again. I'm on one of the best bass lakes in the area and I'm gonna get skunked. Typical." After the grassy island had failed me, I decided I needed to get myself somewhere where I could find some warmer water. It was only about 71 on the main body of the lake, quite a drop from just a week ago. With that in mind I made my way over to a big bay that I knew wasn't very deep. I hadn't planned on going to this spot today, but it was starting to look like the only place I might find active fish. I made my way in and continued with the spinner bait, still no luck with that, so I decided to slow down and give the old Spro frog a shot. I made a few casts, moved forward a little, made a few more casts, had one fish go for it and miss badly, but nothing much more. It didn't take me long to realize I didn't have the patience to work to the frog as well as I know I can today. So I stopped and thought for a minute or two trying to come up with a plan to get a few hits... I looked up to the sky and noticed some spotty clouds were starting to roll in. That was all I needed to see. I mumbled to myself, "Buzzzzz bait weather." And quickly tied on a medium sized orange and yellow skirted buzz bait. My first cast finally gave me some hope. I let it fly and the instant it hit the water there was something chewing on it. I gave it a firm hook set only to see my buzz bait come flying back my direction, closely followed by (and also flying, but not hooked) one of the smaller bass I've ever seen. That got a good chuckle. You know they're small when you can sling shot them half way back to the boat when they don't even have to hook in their mouth. I worked about 50 yards of shoreline slinging that buzz bait as far as I could, dragging it past any bit of cover I could see. Then finally I hooked up with one that weighed in at 2lb 2oz on my hand held scale. I jotted the info down in my log and kept on tossing, a little more optimistically now. I made it another 30 yards or so down the shoreline and decided to turn around to see if there was anything behind me I could try to drag it by. Good decision. There was a few patches of matted down weeds and scum with some good alleys between them for me to weave my lure through. So as I've done a trillion times before, I dipped the rod back and let it fly. Now I should point out a little problem I have sometimes before I go anything further. I have a bad case of fisherman ADD, and sometimes don't keep my eye on my top water stuff. I start looking around wondering where my next cast will be, or just pondering any of the other endless random thoughts that go through my head on any given day. And sure enough, that's what I ended up doing during this retrieve. I was looking to my left side, just day dreaming away when I heard SPLASH. This wasn't a normal splash. This was a "no doubt whatever just made that noise is not small" kind of splash. The sound alone sent my heart into my throat. I yanked back on the rod and felt the tension. It's hooked! But what's it going to do now? There's soooo many weeds and junk down there that I'm not sure if I can keep her out of it all. That's when I saw her. Not a small fish. That heart that had just been sent to my throat was now also beating at about 40 million thuds a second. I made the quick decision to not let her play any games if I could help it. I had a 7 foot heavy rod with 40lb Power Pro on a good reel with the drag set pretty tight. She yanked me off balance a time or two, which would be expected, I'm not a big guy. Luckily I was able to keep her out of the thick stuff and get her up to the side of the boat. Got her up and in, and finally let out the breath that I'd been holding since she killed my little orange and yellow buzz bait just a minute ago. I layed her down on the tape measure quick, somewhere around 21 inches. Maybe a little bit more. My digital scale said 5lb 9oz. You may be wondering why I'm so excited about this. In a lot of places 5-9 isn't anything special. But I must remind you where I'm from. Up here in Minnesota our fish don't get much for a growing season, so getting one that's over 5lb in the summer is pretty special. Our state record is less than 9lb, and I'm pretty sure that was caught in the fall when our fish get especially chunky in preparation for the 3 feet of ice that will be over their heads for the next 4 months. This fish also demolished my old personal best, so it was pretty exciting. After I got a few quick pictures (crappy ones because I was fishing by myself) and my measurements I got her back into the water. I almost forgot to kiss her, but remembered just before I let her go. Straight back down she went. After I watched her go all I could do was sit down and try to collect myself a little bit. My hands were shaking, I felt like I was gonna puke, haha, I was all messed up. I decided that was all I needed out of the day. It was starting to get hot and I was hungry, so I fished my way out of the bay, not catching anything else, and headed for home. Sorry for the long post, but this thread was in my head all day so I figured it would be an appropriate place to share my little story. Here are some pictures of the fish. Like I said, it's too bad I was by myself, I wasn't able to get a picture of myself holding it. Oh well. The other pics are of the bay where I caught her. The red arrow is right where I assume she came from. The next pic is what I see when I turn 90 degrees to the left, and the last one is another 90 degrees. It's a pretty sweet spot, just thought I'd show you guys.

I'm lucky if I even get to say, "Alright... Thats number 5 for the day." ;D

Jitter bugs and hula poppers are absolute money baits. I know what you're talking about, a lot of guys who started fishing more recently look at that stuff and poke fun. But that's fine, I'd prefer they not know how well they work come tournament day anyways. 8-)

Thanks Memo, Either of the two boats that I would be in have fish/depth finders. If we use my partners boat we also have a fish finder/GPS. In a lot of cases though they aren't as helpful on our natural lakes. A lot of our lakes are basically a bowl. Depth maxes out between 25 and 50 feet, weeds are pretty thick till 10 feet and then it's bare bottom. And it's the same way all the way around the lake. We do try to use some teamwork, but you're right about covering different depths. A lot of times he'll be using a jig and I'll be using a T-rig. One of us should probably get off the bottom.

Hey guys, I'm looking for some opinions from people with a little more tournament experience and figured this was the best place to go. I'll give a run down of the situation and then ask my questions at the end. So some of my buddies and I have started holding a weekly fishing tournament up here in MN. We have a wealth of small natural lakes around that we can fish, so it's on a different body of water every week. The lakes range from about 400 acres to 3,000 acres. We fish two guys to a boat, 5 fish per boat. There's usually about 5-10 teams. Here's the part that makes it kind of tough, we only get 3 hours to fish because weeknights are the only time that everyone can show up. So far I've been finding myself on the bottom end of the weigh-in list. I'm starting to get a little frustrated because I feel that I'm a better fisherman than what I've been showing so far. So here are the things I'd love to hear some opinions on: If you were fishing a tournament like I described, what would you do to simply try and fill your limit? Would you run to a spot, make a few casts with a bunch of different lures and then quickly move on to another spot? Or would you get to a spot and work it thoroughly? I have a natural tendency to move the boat along slower and have more patience with a spot/area of the lake than a lot of guys. Do you think this is harming my chances of catching a good bag? Would it be more effective to keep the trolling motor busy and make fewer casts at more area instead of more casts at less area? Would you pre-fish little lakes like this? Or do you think I'd be smarter to find a lake that is similar nearby and fish that instead of the tournament lake, and then take what info I gathered concerning depth of fish and activity levels and try to apply it during the tournament? This way I wouldn't be disturbing any of my spots on the tournament lake, but I'd still hopefully be able to know which spots will be more productive. Am I on to something with this idea? Or does it sound like crazy talk? When you're limited on time, would you avoid big fish lures/tactics and instead take an approach that is better for numbers than for size? I'm open to any and all advice or input anyone has, even if it has nothing to do with my questions. Sorry I turned this post into a short novel. Thanks in advance!

4lb. 11oz.

Yeah you're ok by doing it that way. That's how you develop a nice "bass thumb". What you have to avoid is hoisting the fish up horizontally while you're only holding it by the lower jaw. Just think about the weight that you're putting on that joint. If you want to take a picture while you're holding the fish flat, get one hand under it's belly to support it. And make sure that hand is wet when you go to grab it. Doesn't matter if it's a big guy or just a little one, gotta take care of em all. No need to dislocate their jaw so they starve to death.

I'm surprised I read all these answers and didn't see my favorite on anyone's list. Without having to even think about it I'll say a T-rigged tube craw in any shade of green. I refer to it as my "cheat codes", because on a lot of days it feels like playing video games with the cheat codes on

That'll give the boys in Cali a little extra motivation So is anyone disappointed to see the record go over seas? I know that because of the goofy rule it will be considered a tie in the official books. But if their scales are right, we all know amongst ourselves at least that this is the biggest one so far. I honestly cant stop looking at these pics. I went out last night and caught like 4 fish, all of em under 14 inches. I'm still struggling to comprehend that they are the same species as that beast :-?

I was pretty excited about this deal too. Me and a buddy ordered together, 4 rods and 4 reels . Before sale price: $880. After the sale price $260. I'm still having a hard time believing it. The reels we got also had a nice sale price http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/templates/product/standard-item.jsp?id=0043165121435a&navCount=13&podId=0043165&parentId=cat601360&masterpathid=&navAction=jump&cmCat=MainCatcat21404-cat21406-cat601360&catalogCode=9IS&rid=&parentType=index&indexId=cat601360&hasJS=true Here's what I'm wondering though. Anyone know what company makes the blanks for these rods?

Ok guys, I have an idea I thought might be fun. There's been a lot of talk lately about dealing with the winter and how badly us guys up north want to get out on the water. So here's what I want the guys who are dealing with ice to do: When the winter draws to an end and you're able to unwinterize the boat and get back onto the lake, I want you to take a picture with the first bass that you catch and post it on this topic. I don't mean your first nice fish, just your first fish, big or small. If you want to make some kind of funny pose like you just went to the bathroom after holding it for an hour in the car, that would be encouraged. Obviously this thread is going to sink to the bottom for now, but when the time comes dig down and find it, or book mark it now so it's easy to find. So take a mental note right now and remember this: Take a picture with your first fish of the season! I hope this works. Oh, and to all the guys down south who are going to be tempted to post their pics of the fish they caught today... And yesterday... And the day before. You just leave us alone, our sanity can only be stretched so thin.

I know plenty of guys in MN that spend their days throwing baits just like that for musky. They catch the occasional bass. I don't know how big, in fact I don't think I want to know, because I'd be willing to bet they are catching some of the fish that I wish I could find. Any bass big enough to hit something like that around here is probably leaning towards the trophy variety.

Duck and goose hunting kept me busy until about a month ago. I go ice fishing once in a while but it just doesn't compare. As the ice begins to melt in April we'll be hitting the snow goose migration hard, but other than that all there is to do is read articles, look for new ways to fund the tackle box, and just scratch to hold on to those last few shreds of sanity.

I'll say the lakes are frozen. The low here was 24 below 0 yesterday. That's almost 60 degrees below freezing. That's when it's getting pretty chilly out. 0 and above I can deal with, 10 below can even be tolerable once you adjust to it. But 20 below and beyond is getting pretty bad.

Two days before Christmas was the 5 month mark for me. Season opens up May 23rd in Minnesota. On the up side, with less time to fish, the time we do have holds a little extra excitement. On the downside, not fishing sucks! Hold in there guys. We'll make it!

Haha, that's a good answer. I don't know why I love it. It could be a million other things. This certainly isn't the only activity in the world that triggers people to become so passionate. This is simply the one that was born into me, and as you guys know, it's a consuming love. It wouldn't matter if I tried to fight it or deny it, it's here, and it's not going away. I often meet people that don't seem to have found the thing that lights this kind of fire in them. And I feel bad for them, because until I have a family of my own, I don't think anything else will be able to create happiness in me the way that fishing does.

Finally got my own battery charger for juicing up the trolling motor batteries. The old man got sick of me stealing his every day.

Nailed it. Drives me nuts fishing with someone that thinks they should catch more fish than ever just because of their fancy @$$ new Loomis, or whatever it is that they just bought. Also drives me nuts when someone says the fish aren't biting today when the only change they have made all day was switching their t-rig plastic from a worm to a craw. Refusal to accept that a bait isn't working on a given day is the worst, especially if you're in a tournament with someone you don't know too well and don't want to sound like an arse for telling them how they should fish. Those massive wake boarding boats that are designed to make the biggest waves they possibly can. It's even worse when the people on those boats are so confident in themselves and how cool they are, that they will get close to you while you're fishing just so you can see how awesome they are at wake boarding. I just can't even begin to comprehend what it must feel like to be so stupid that a person doesn't think causing a guy in a bass boat to go down to one knee and hold onto his bass chair just to keep from falling in the lake is a problem. Me and some of my buddies have come up with a new rule: If you get so close to my fishing boat that I'm able to cast a crank bait and hook you with it... I'm probably going to try.

A fellow Sotan! Welcome!

I don't understand why you guys are jumping down his throat so bad. He never called anyone on here a cheater. He even says that in the story the fisherman is going to do the right thing and not cheat. What's wrong with a story about someone resisting temptation and being honest? Did anyone even read the whole post? To write a good story you need some twists. In this story the angler being pressured to cheat is the twist, and then him not cheating is another one. To answer your question George, I would never expect a real company to push their pros to cheat. However that doesn't mean it isn't believable. I think your plot should work just fine. I would say have the guy who is placing the fish put them in one of those basket things. I would also say to have him do it in only one or at most two locations. It wouldn't make sense for him to do it in anymore places than that. He would be adding a lot of unnecessary risk. Good luck with your story George. And to anyone worked up over this, calm down, it's just a little fictional writing.