Shad_Master

Two suggestions come to mind: 1) Gary Yamamoto Custom Baits makes a little "dooly" that fits on your line ahead of the hook knot that will keep the grass from balling up on your Senko (which would be a good bait in your situation) - maybe Road Warrior will see this and post the link (he told me about 'em a couple of years ago). 2) Parasite Clips - you can get these at Bass Pro Shops (Stacy King made 'em famous on one of the BPS fishing shows) - "don't know why they work or how they work, just know they work".

Wow guys, way to turn a funny into a downer :-X

Ain't Texan (I really like your handle, btw) how long of a leader are you using in the heavy grass?

Well, the debate rages on - love it or hate it, this stuff catches fish. Just watched a rerun of the BassMaster Tourney on Lake Erie this morning - Greg Hackney was singing the praises of GULP! and even noted that it wasn't one of his sponsors, "but it's the only thing I can get 'em to bite on". You must be using the Sinking Minnow for your drop shot and you are right, they don't have as much action as a Senko - but try the night crawlers for drop shottin - they work great. P.S., if I keep this up, I may have to contact Berkley about some kind of sponsorship :

Bass-n-Bucks, you got to learn to write it correctly - it is GULP! and it is my goto bait when things are tough. It ain't cheap and it will dry out, but if you soak it in water it will come back. Another problem (?) with GULP! is that it will catch everything that swims. So I use it for a search bait and then switch to ZOOM or someother plastic to do my hard fishing and then when things quiet down, I throw another GULP! for good measure to see if they are still biting - if they are they will bite at GULP!

Actually this was a pattern that I used on my home lake a couple of years ago - I would see the small fish (in my case it was blue gill) playing with the line and some times even swimming off with it. I just let 'em run and most times a bass would follow up and hit my worm. It seemed like the bg's made 'em mad and they were trying to take the bait away from them. Give it a try, but it does require some patience.

Just because the dude has a big boat doesn't necessarily mean he has a clue. I was recently fishing in a club tournament. There is a particular spot that is known, but not easy to find on this lake. Last year my partner and I loaded the boat there in the first 15-20 minutes of the tourney. Lots of people talked about it, but I had it GPS'd. So I pull up on the spot, get the boat positioned and start throwing crank baits - after about the third cast, this other club member pulls in with his brand new Triton (he has only had for about 2 months) and drove right over the spot. My partner and I had to stop casting or we would have thrown over the top of him. He smiled and waived as he passed by - while I stood there with a I don't understand look on my face. To this day, he doesn't know what he did.

Thanks for the reply

I am planning on making pouring jigs my winter project this year - I have a friend that has been making his own for years and he recently gave me a whole box of some that he made. Roughly half of them have a Y guard rather than the traditional brush guard. Is there an advantage in this? Just curious what your thoughts are.

Thanks for the replies guys - What I'm really getting at is the while the dual beam feature is nice, I really don't need it for most of the lakes I fish in this area. What I'm trying to do is save some work (I'm lazy) and some $'s (I'm cheap). If I could move the 565 to the console for most running and use the 525 up front while fishing. This would work best most of the time - however, occasionally I would like to have the dual beam up front while fishing and, if possible, would like to be able to switch them back and forth when needed. I will probably contact Humminbird to see what they say. Thanks for helping me organize the questions.

I have a Humminbird 565 mounted on the bow of my boat with the transducer mounted on the trolling motor. It works great and I really like the dual beam function. But now my console unit (not a Humminbird) has gone out and needs to be replaced. If I were to buy a 525 to mount on the console, would I be able to switch the screens and have the bigger pixel unit in back while running and then, when needed, switch back when the TM is down? 525's are about $70 cheaper than 565's 'cause they don't have as many pixels and don't have the dual beam capability. The transducers are the same. Hope I am asking this in a way that makes sense.

You definitely don't want to stick 'em all on practice day, but you probably do need to stick one or two just to give you an idea of the size so you can know(?) what is holding there. Just another story to show you some empathy - fished a tournament last weekend - we spent Friday locating brush piles in deep water (20-30 feet). We would fish the piles until we caught one, GPS the spot, and move on. Saturday, we spent the entire day on 5 different brush piles where we had caught fish the day before and the results were disappointing. The following day there was another tournament on the same lake and the winner brought in over 20# from just one of the brush piles we had fished. Now I know it couldn't be the fishermen - it had to be something the fish were doing -- right????

Around this area the standard question is "how do the fish know it's Saturday????" - in all honesty it probably is nerves. This goes away after a while and you will begin to pick up again. My favorite saying is, "If I had to catch fish to be happy, I'd be a miserable $@& most of the time". Just enjoy what your doing, the fishing will get better.

You know they have spawned when they roll over and light up a cigarette. Some even rent videos of other shad spawning to get them in the mood. ;D Sorry, just couldn't pass this up - I tried -- honest.

Thanks for all the suggestions - I guess I'm kinda debating with myself about the drop shot baits - I don't do this often enough to have a seperate category, but maybe if I did I would throw it more :-/

The current rumor floating around is that Cosgrove may beat Pedersen out the door and that Callahan has been told that Texas will be his last game. You are right about how bad things have gotten. Hope this gets 'em back on the right track, but it could be several years now to undo the damage.

Around here we just call your parts Yankee land Seriously, keep on stickin 'em til the ice gets set. Good luck.

Don't be too quick to condem these codgers - some of them have forgotten more about fishing than you will ever learn. There are several "codgers" in this area that have taught me a lot about fishing and I have been fishing all my life. Just weed through the bull stuff and listen to what they have to say - of course if the guy is too much of a horse's patoot, just leave him alone.

Hey thanks guys, I forgot about tubes and toads - I guess I consider lizards to be creature baits. Keep the suggestions comming - I am working on a system and will let you know how it works out.

With the end of the tournament season fast approaching here in the upper mid-west, my thoughts immediately turn to getting organized for next year. I find that I have so many soft plastic baits of various types that I need some way to organize them better. I have identified the following classificaitons of soft platics and wonder if you have any other suggestions or ways of groupin 'em up: Worms Senko type creatures trailers flukes ring fries grubs (and of course) GULP! Have I over looked anything?

BTW, "NE" is the abbreviation for Nebraska - I was all set to reply to your question when I checked your tag.

On a recent fishing trip, the guy in front started playing with a snake in the water by pitching his lure in the snake's direction - I told him, you have two options - you can have me in the boat or the snake in the boat - there are no other options. Other than that - really cool pictures

Many years ago, when my son (now almost 16) was about that age, I spent an entire day installing babylocks on all the drawrs and cabinet doors. I started at the back of the house in the bathroom and worked my way to the kitchen. As I was about to finish the job, my wife called me to the back of the house only to find that he had figured out how to open the locks and had put lipstick and makeup on the dog. That brought back some memories for me.

A lot of it has to do with the depth of the lake - shallower lakes will turnover sooner than those with deeper water. In a previous thread on this subject, I was told that the lake I was describing couldn't be turning over - but it was. Why? Because it is a very shallow lake (max depth maybe 30') - since then I have been on another lake in this area that was turning over (max depth maybe 20 feet). But some lakes never "turnover" because there is a good range in the thermocline and the lake can adjust as the temps change. But to answer your question, it would seem to be that Northwest to Southeast wold be the movement.

Preach4bass, I checked out the website and they said that they can't use grey hair, but that they sell it and use the $'s. I have been trying to talk myself into getting a flat top for a couple of years and thought this would be a good way to do it - I may look into it more.