dinkman

You're not alone on this, I grew up never sight fishing and if I saw a fish on the bed my dad told me to leave it alone so it could just spawn in peace. I have done it on occasion during the spring when I started tourney fishing but I hate the idea of sitting on a spot for an hour trying to catch one fish, seems a little too easy sometimes when they are just sitting there and you can basically wait em out until they bite.

The biggest one I used to make is making fishing complicated and really over-thinking it. Last year I finally realized what I was doing and made a serious effort not to get to caught up in "dock talk" or hot new lures but just going and fishing the moment. The other big thing I used to do was make a few casts with a bait and then retie with something else, I give each bait a while longer now and try to work it every possible way before I decide to change it.

the beaver bug is pretty awesome, that is the one that consistently outperforms all my other creature baits, problem is my partner buys so i have to wait until he starts catching them before i put one on. ;D

i need to start shopping at your walmart, the one down here is close to saltwater and i have a hard time finding anything useful in the fishing aisle here. i doubt the ppl in this one would even know where the rat-l-traps were if i ask them, they might point me to the baby aisle.

the way that i understand tubes to be poured (not sure so don't quote me) is that the tube is poured as a hollow body single piece and then the skirts cut after the tubes are done. if you could come up with a way to pour that bait and at the open end have it curl back toward the head on the outside, you might have tiny ribbontail tentacles providing movement on the fall as well. not sure if it's possible to pour them like that but just a thought, i don't pour my own so i'm just spitballing ideas.

thanks WRB, we were trying the opposite effect earlier in the year, making longs casts with cranks and tops in the morning and then flipping when the sun got high. once we figured out to fish during midday then we didn't flip much anymore. that's a backwards approach to my normal day but makes sense when you think of it in terms of the bass being that tuned into the shad. we did find a dead shad floating earlier this year that was in excess of 8-9". shad were introduced to that pond illegally so i'm not 100% sure the type, all the research i looked up points to threadfin over gizzard but i'm not an expert on shad.

the only thing i could think to do is take a basic lake fork craw tube but instead of the claws on the sides replace those with rage claws. you'd probably have to make the tubes overall a little bigger just because of the sheer mass of the tubes, say 4-5 inches, but in theory if you're throwing a big rage tube like that then you're probably already targeting larger fish anyway.

thanks for the tips Paul, I've think I've got some 4x trebles I picked up that I'll put on a couple of lipless cranks and see how they work. Appreciate it.

no reason in particular Paul, just a catchy title to get ppl to read the thread and offer up some advice and tips. Thanks to everyone for the tips, I'll keep everyone posted as we fish and see what we can figure out on our end.

we've tried all times of day throughout the summer, starting with first light, then starting around lunch and then starting in late afternoon. we have trouble getting bites on any kind of topwater, mostly frogs, buzzbaits and poppers until the crankbait bite picks up when the sun gets high. i'll give that rage tail shad a shot, haven't tried any of those yet. keep bring suggestions though if you have any.

me and my fishing partner fish a small pond (5-10 acres) and it has a great population of shad, bass and bluegill. we do great catching bass when the sun is high and bright but as soon as the shadows hit we can't get a nibble. mostly catch them on lipless cranks and shallow running cranks. any suggestions, i'm running out of stuff to throw. max depth- 8' moderate stain, 1-2' vis trashy bottom with leaf decay and black bottom, scattered brush around the edges but little middle cover or structure. water temp today was 68-69 deg.

i had a feeling the rod is a little too stiff, it has a soft tip but maybe not soft enough. i usually use big game but i just recently respooled with flouro so that might have something to do with it. i'll try going back to big game for this rod/reel, been fishing these things all year but really started using it as an all day pattern have lost more fish since i switched to flouro than i did on mono. thanks for the tips, should have thought about that earlier, just went and figured the hooks instead of the line.

i've been fishing with lipless cranks alot in the past couple weeks but lose a few fish due to the hooks pulling out of there mouths. i use a little stiffer rod for lipless cranks (kistler 7'3" small swimbait rod), i like it because i can really feel them but i feel that at the boat the rod puts a little too much pressure on their lips and rips them free. will going to ewg trebles on the hooks help or hurt this.... they are getting the bait pretty good so it's not like they are slapping at it.

when we get in a real bad front with a high pressure system i generally try to either fish deeper or fish really slow if there's no deep water available. i love flipping or pitching in a high pressure front bc usually it means they are right on the wood, or you can try a crankbait and bang it around for a reaction strike. don't know what to tell you about the full moon, i usually do best with either a full moon or a new moon.

the free fishing log in the tacklebox section is the best one i've ever seen. when i actually remember to make a log that's the one i use, it's got just about everything i can think of.

nice fish man, that things a beast.

I went throught the same thing last year, I have a bass boat I've always wanted, all the tackle and rods a guy could ask for but I wasn't happy with it. Alot of it has to do with the fact I have to drive at least 1 1/2 hours to get somewhere decent to fish. All it took for me was a trip home to see my parents and do some trout fishing with my dad with light action spinning rods. That really made me remember how much fun it was to just fish and enjoy the fact that I get to go fishing in a nice boat with lots of gear. I'm not fishing tourney's this year and I'm already feeling great about not having to think about fishing them.

I've gone through this on one of the ponds I fish down here, in my case the fish became so tuned in to the shad population in the pond that they wouldn't sniff anything that didn't resemble a shad. The only thing I can get consistently bit on is a Rat-L-Trap or a shallow crankbait of somekind. If you have alot of bream a swim'n jig or a gp or junebug senko might be the ticket, just keep rolling with it until you find out what they want.

I saw an episode of the Bass Pro's and KVD was ripping the Strike King King Shad and fishing it really fast to catch smallies on it. Never tried it but the theory sounded good coming from him in that you need a swimbait that you can really burn back and get reaction strikes from the smallies in clearer water.

must be a tossup between the memphis store and the savannah store. the one in savannah used to be a Belk in the mall and is now the BPS- very small but it's the best thing around besides the internet.

that first second when my crankbait rod loads up and every fish feels like he could pass for a 5 lber- only to be disappointed.

One thing I figured out is to upsize your bait too, the bait has had a chance to grow all summer just like the bass and sometimes the bass will start gorging on only larger baits preparing for the winter. Instead of trying a 3" tube, go up to a 3.5" or 4" on up. I usually always go with a 3.5 or 4" tube or a 4.25" yum crawbug in rivers or creeks when I smallie fish. Some of my best days on wading size rivers have also come on unweighted T-rig 5" senkos, it doesn't have to be a 4 lb fish to get a bait that big.

I haven't seen anyone mention the Yum Crawbug yet, that thing is an all time producer for me when I fish for smallies and there are crawdads present. Bitsy Bug jigs with zoom trailers, 6" pumpkin/ chartreuse tail lizards and any type of rapala minnow imitator are always ready to go when smallmouth fishing.

nice fish man, i sure do miss catching the brown ones in a river.