Chris

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In gin clear water no.. color don't matter as much as action but natural colors work the best. In stained to muddy water displacement and vibration matters the most second would be color. If you just drop a worm and let it sit without moving it how is a bass going to figure out it is there or alive or something to eat? If the bass was in the area and saw it drop they would go to it to see if it was alive. If the bait has the shape of something real or smells good they might nail it but in most cases the lure would need to be visible to distinguish it from the bottom or cover or move. Most of the time it is the movement that tricks a bass into thinking it is real. If this wasn't the case they would be feeding on any branch or trash that dropped into the water. Color can be important when the bass is in water that is clear enough to see the color and is important when you need to have your bait a different color than the bottom or cover. If I used a green worm in green grass how easy would it be to see and not be mistaken for another weed. A lot of times I would use a green worm but will have a different color metal flake so that it can be distinguished from the other grass and when I move the bait I draw attention to it. With little light penetration the ability for a bass to see some colors is less so other colors like green's, violates, chartreuse, blue's, and dark shades are more visible.

http://www.bassresource.com/fish/depthfinders.html There is more stuff on the bottom of this page.

Over the past 2 months we've had unusually warm temps here in Oklahoma. The water temps were starting to climb into the high 40's and low 50's, and some fish were starting to move up to the pre-spawn staging area's. Now we've received about 3"s of snow and ice, it's starting to melt and the temps are supposed to be back into the 60's by Wednesday Now, here's my question if the water temps drop by 5 or 6 degree's will this make those fish that had moved up retreat to deeper water?? If you found them on the bank they might drop back to 5ft or 10ft of water if there is a drop that is near the shallow area they will move to it. If the area is protected they might not move at all. A lot depends on water volume of the lake and if it has current or is protected. If it is a large lake a bass might just need to make a slight adjustment for warmer water. If the area has a lot of sun the areas that hold heat will also hold bass. If your fishing a bluff they might drop down some same with a point or reposition to the to the side that has a sharp drop on either side of the point. If your fishing a cove they might move back to the mouth but if it has overhead cover in it they will move to it. On some lakes they will just head for heavy shallow cover or any depression. Or will it take a drop of 10 degree's or more or, will they stay in the area and just not feed as well as they had been??? A 10 degree drop the fish might do the same thing as the 5 degree drop but the shallow fish will be super tight to cover and not want to feed. (fish super slow and dead stick alot) Your deep fish will bite lures that are on the bottom and would be more active. The fish that are on point's, bluff's, near a drop would be what I would target because it would be a short adjustment to warm water. Fish that where on the flats will move out and stage and might be hard to find and get to bite. I use the three day rule and it has worked for me. If I get three days of stable weather or temps then that should give the fish enough time to adjust to the change in temp. This could mean that I get 2 weeks of 60 degree temps then overnight the temp drops to 50 degree's after three days of temps around 50 degree's the bass would adjust to the temp and become active again.

They will say that about any lake not that it is wrong or right but I wouldn't put much faith in it.

Here are some prototype: The side paddles are longer than a beaver and there is a web between the paddle and the main body on the left one. This forces the paddles to stay out on the fall and displace more water than a sweetbeaver on the fall.

bass calculator on this sitemost of them are based upon his record. I'm trying to figure out your reply. Bass weight calculations are based on math, not Georgia's record. If I hold up two fish that are the same weight neither one will measure the same. If I hold up two fish that measure the same they will not weigh the same. The math part is based upon what the weight/ length/ girth of a known fish. Most tables and calculator "find the weight" stuff is based upon the known weight/length/girth of Buck's fish. It was the only known fish that big at the time so they figured out a formula that seems to work with in ounces based on his fish's measurements. Today we are a little smarter and have figured out a little different way of figuring it out. But that was what all the math stuff was based on for years.

Double fluke great schooler bait. You rig one fluke up on a short leader tied to a barrel swivel and another fluke tied to a longer barrel swivel. You thread the short leader fluke up your line then tie on the second swivel. You want the lead fluke to be just a inch ahead of the other. When you work the bait both flukes go in different directions and when you stop spooking them one will follow the other. Sometimes if you jerk it just right one will shoot up the line.

bass calculator on this sitemost of them are based upon his record.

I do this a lot in Florida it is called swimming a worm. You take a large creme natural worm rig it Texas style no weight. (make sure the tail is white) You cast it out and let it fall you reel down to the worm and drag it to the side while you quiver the rod. The worm will run with it's head straight and the tail will paddle around like a snake but exaggerated. This is a great summer bait in stained water go with a junebug.

I alter most of the baits in my box in one shape or form which one do you want? Sometimes I change it because it is a jedi mind trick other times it is because it works. Here is one you take a plastic crawfish and take some round rubber skirt and thread it through a needle and poke it through the crawfish to make legs. Then you take a split ring and attach it to the hook and add a small willow leaf blade to the split ring. When the bait falls the blade will pivot back and forth.

http://www.bassresource.com/fishing_lures/thoughts_on_scent.html http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/understanding_bass_fishing_2.html (more stuff)

Bass Biology 101 A bass has a very small brain in comparison to the human brain. A bass isn't dumb, but it's not smart either by the human definition. A bass basically has three purposes in its lifecycle eating, surviving, and reproducing. Bass simply interpret environmental stimuli, then react to it. Bass are very territorial by nature, but also very alert to changes in their environment.This same creature is also capable of conditioned behavioral responses. Dr. Loren Hill studied and documented conditioned behavior in bass while he was doing studies for the development of the Color-C-Lector Bass are undoubtedly very complex creatures. Reactions to any environmental stimuli including artificial lures can be directly related to three senses. These senses are mechanoreception (the use of their lateral line, hearing, and touch senses), photoreception (their use of vision), and chemoreception (use of their senses of smell and taste). Biologically speaking, chemoreception is further broken down into two categories: olfaction (sense of smell), and gustation (sense of taste). Let's analyze the subject matter of fish olfaction (their sense of smell). Bass have two nostrils on each side of their snout. One is the anterior nostril and the other one is the posterior nostril. Water will flow into the anterior nostril, over the olfactory nerves, and back out through the posterior nostril. There is no link between these sets of nostrils and their throat. As the water flows across the olfactory nerves, a message is sent to the brain, where the scent is then interpreted as either a positive or negative scent.As fish mature, their senses of smell and taste become even more sensitive. Fish use their sense of smell in many different ways: to locate spawning areas, feeding areas, predator awareness, and even their schoolmates in open water. Have you ever been catching schooling fish, then have one hooked deep enough that it was bleeding when you released it? Most often in this case, the school probably stopped feeding shortly after you released the fish. Do you know why the frenzied fish stopped? The schoolmate released a chemical known as schreckstoffen. Schreckstoffen is sensed by the other fish in the school through chemoreception, and interpreted as a negative scent by the brain.

The Chris Study (from another post): If you are aloud to use outboards on the lake take a good tally of how many docks and boathouses there are. Now figure out which ones have boats that are used often. If you have a lake or pond that the whole shore out to 4' has weeds when these guys with boats use their boats they are cutting a lane in the weeds with the outboard. This is something that causes a irregular feature in the grass. This also creates and ambush point for the bass and a highway. Up in the shallows there is shade under the boathouse. You have an irregular feature that is different then the rest of the weeds (the boat lane). You have a short distance to deep water. Add in any brush that the owner might have discarded (or you placed) into the lake and you have a bass magnet. A big bass can tuck itself up under that boathouse to spawn and never get bothered or even get any notice that it was there. If you find the right one that has everything you just weeded out 90% of the docks. Places where the grass forms a point and anywhere that the grass line has a depression or indention will hold a good fish. The grass line if it just stops and forms a wall of weeds will hold fish but not trophy fish. You need to find something different from the rest and that is what will hold a trophy. It is unique features that hold trophy fish and a big bass will defend it also so your only fishing for lone solitary fish. A big fish will take up the best house he can find because he is king as long as it has everything that it needs it might stay there year after year and might not travel far from it unless things change. Either the food source moved or was depleted or the cover/ structure content drops off. Sometimes if you have a small weed patch that is a different color because it is at a different stage of growth will draw a trophy. If you have a large flat with nothing on it and you stick a brush pile on the edge not far from the drop off you stand a high percentage chance of drawing a big fish. Why? You just gave a bass everything it needs. The flat is its hunting ground and spawning area, the brush pile is its home when it is inactive and is an irregular feature different that the surrounding area, the drop off gives is its escape route from danger and a place to go to when conditions are sour and the drop edge is a highway to a new home if needed. <~ This is the kind of stuff you need to be looking for and the questions you need to ask each time you find something and start to wonder if it has the potential to hold a trophy. This also weeds out most of a given area or lake and lets you focus on high percentage areas. Take a hard look at the cover or structure and ask yourself what is the natural flow of bait and if I was a big bass where would I position and which direction would I be pointing to intercept this flow of bait. Big bass hide and ambush and know the difference between natural flow and unnatural flow. If you don't bring your bait from the right direction and the right depth a big bass will never hit because the way he is postioned is in such a way that he will nail something with a 90% success rate. A big bass wants to surprise its prey not scare it away and will not move far to expend to much energy if it doesn't need to. It would rather wait for the next dummy to run by. A swim bait is a heck of a bait if you find the right direction and depth on the right irregular feature. If you don't figure these three things out you might as well be fishing in the middle of the lake. You have got guys that say big bait big fish but there is more to than that. I can throw the wrong bait in the right place and run rings around most people throwing the right bait because they don't understand those three key things. You will tempt a larger fish with a big bait more often because of the energy expended is worth the reward. The same will hold true with any bait of any size if it is fished right. When a trophy has found its home you can bank on it being there year after year. Most people either hook a trophy because it was looking for a better home range and in transition or the fishermen had stumbled onto the trophies feeding area. Very few people ever locate their home. Most of the guys that you see in Cali who are talking about catching the same bass year after year has found their home. The guys who say that they have only caught 3 or less trophy bass in their life caught fish in transition more than likely. You have guys on this forum that give praise to people who catch the same trophy often which isn't a great feat in my opinion. That just tells me that they fish a lake a lot and have found maybe 4 key trophy bass homes and have figured out how to catch them. You take most of them to a different state on different water then see who can duplicate the same success. Just something to think about. I am feeling kinda saucy so here is some more. Most of the bass caught in California are caught deep most of the bass caught down south are caught shallow. What's the difference? In shallow water a trophy bass will make a home in areas that you can not get to with a rod or reel. In places that have good deep structure with a deep water food base, clear water, and a lack of good nasty hard to get to shallow cover the bass make their home deep. Deep water structure is easy to get to you just got to find it. Do you see the difference? The fish you are fishing for are feeding and the window is short when you can get your fish before they go back to their home. The fish in California are sitting at home inactive or neutral or waiting to feed and can be accessed anytime. Whether they will bite or not in deep water that's a different story you just need to hit it at the right time. A California bass will suspend to feed on trout a Florida bass will move shallow to feeding areas, flats, edge of drop offs, irregular features to feed. Take a good look at the guys from Florida who catch trophy bass a lot most of the time they are flipping in jungle areas(That's their home) KVD caught that big bass in the E-50 event in Texas on a shakeyhead/ worm (home) Takahiro at that Toho tournament (feeding flat) Ike caught one deep on a crankbait (home)

I have a lake that I fish in Illinois that has a trout stocking program and the bass here do feed on the trout. Sometimes guys fishing for trout have their trout taken off the hook by a bass. A bass can eat a fish that is 75% of it's size. Most bait's even swim baits are not to big for a grown bass.

size 3-8 www.staminainc.com

*cough* no he wasn't Sinking Slugger... These baits just might be the best-kept secrets along the bass tournament trails. The Sinking Slugger is the perfect blend between a soft-plastic jerk bait and a salt-laden "sink" bait. Its special "hinge" makes it work like a jointed lure for added action. George says: Rig the 6" Sinking Slugger on a 5/0 offset worm hook and watch it cast like a bullet. Cast it beyond visible cover and, using twitches of the rod, work it right up and through the cover. As soon as it clears the target, "dead-stick" the rod, letting the bait sink out of sight while "feeling" the fall. Get ready for action. A Salty Old Veteran Comes Out Of Retirement Back into the Larew line-up by popular demand is the Sinking Slugger. Talk about a bait that was ahead of its time, the salt-loaded Slugger has been out of sight for a while, but not out of mind. Fishermen familiar with the fish-catching abilities of the bait have been begging for a reintroduction now for over a year. Finally, the engineers got out the molds, dusted them off, made a few manufacturing improvements and put them on the injection molding machines. As a result, the Sinking Slugger is back on the market. The Sinking Slugger comes in two sizes, 4 inch and 6 inch. Both are heavily loaded with salt, a process that Larew originally introduced and patented. The weighting of salt causes the bait to sink parallel to the bottom, but there's more to its fish-catching secrets than just that. The Sinking Slugger has about a half-inch oblong hole molded into its middle that gives the bait a limber action similar to that found in jointed lures. There's also a slit designed to hold the hook and make hooksets easier. It's a combination that makes the Sinking Slugger a great soft plastic jerk bait. Both the 4 inch and 6 inch sizes come in a variety of fish-catching colors ranging from Watermelon to Smoke Blue. And all contain garlic scenting.

That would be hard to answer because bass in Florida reacts a little different than an bass in South Carolina. Also a bass in a shallow lake don't move as far as a bass in a large lake and forage plays into movement also. But they ALLstage and spawn. In the north temp and food is why fish move to deep water. Some fish like shad can not live in extreme temps so when the food leaves so does the bass. You need to understand something guys that live around lakes with Florida stain bass. A Florida bass is its own species which is related to the northern and southern bass. They don't act the same in some instances like cold water/weather and fronts. Florida bass will shut down quick. Southern bass do find wintering holes and even though the lake don't freeze southern bass will drop deep or will make a home in thick stuff until the water warms up. A staging spot in the south might be a weed patch.

yep

Techniques I used in real situations so that you understand the real deal: I fished a clear water lake last year and found a out of the way slough that looked good. What I found was there was a lane that the shad and bass where using as a highway to get back into this backwater area. Early season I caught them on a yo-zuri vibrating rattletrap slow rolling it down the chute. I watched all the early birds flipping to all the shore cover and never turned up anything (not that is wasn't a good pattern). What I noticed was this was the natural flow of bait into the area and the bass where staging there sucking up shad. Later that afternoon I found a old bush up against the bank and nailed "Big Momma" on a spinnerbait still moving the bait in the same direction that the shad should be coming from. This area has a lot of points and I found that if I would swim a jig down the points the bass would knock the fire out of it. This was another pattern I figured out during the day. Points are places that give a bass an obstacle to corner bait and is also a highway to shallow water/staging area. Mid spring the main pattern was a jerkbait cast beyond the point and worked down until it reached it and I would just kill it. Right after ice out I used a countdown bait (rapala shad pattern) and bounced from point to point. (Still on the point patten on a different clear lake) I caught fish in the beginning of the day on a rattletrap slow rolling it across the point. Later in day I refined my pattern and found points that where at more of a sharp drop into deep water. In one cove I just went to the back of the cove and went directly to the only point that had a sharp drop. I rigged up a senko wacky rigged and pitched it out to where I thought the point made the drop and just dead sticking it. I picked up the rod and hopped it then played the waiting game. This produced one over 5lbs in the back of another cove I found a point but this time I had enough running room to run a crankbait and hit the prime depth that the fish where holding. I was using a DT6 shad color and ran it down the point. About my 5th cast and nailed a pig 8th cast found her friend. The key was that I had enough room to get the bait down and I was cranking slow and positioning the bait perfect to put it parallel to the edge of the point. Clear lake same bait same time of the year. I found a small flat that was at the mouth of a chute I caught my fish right on the break. I had to reel it down until I got it where I thought the break was and just kill it and twitch it. When I started reeling it again they would nail it. Dirty water cold front early spring. I knew it was going to be a slow day and the fish should be on but the cold front might push them off the beds. Anytime that you get a cold front during the spawn if you have good shore cover they are not going to move 50 yards to the break they will hang in the cover. I made perfect pitches into the thick cover and fished at a snails pace really working over each area. The key was silent pitches into cover and making that jig rattle without moving it far. The bigger fish where in the thickest stuff I could find that would hold heat. My big fish came off of an area that was protected by the wind and the fish was tight to a bush. Later in the day the sun came out and the fish moved to the outside of the cover and those fish where caught on a spinnerbait. Dirty water on another lake early spring I was using a wood crankbait made by JM Woodcraft and I found that the fish where tight to hard cover. This lake had tons of stumps and I found groups of fish that where right on the edge (outside edge) of the stumps. I would position my boat in the deep water and let the bait dump off the edge. The second group was on the inside edge and those fish where caught when the bait came from the shallow water and entered the patch of stumps. Rock banks a vertical jig produced the key was working it slow and slightly shaking it in place to make it vibrate. On the shallow rock the main key was the slow fall most of the bites came on the fall. Carolina rig can be a big producer also so don't rule it out.

I mean what if the temps come up early?Are the bass going to wait on the moon? You might have a group that will move up early and mock spawn but when a cold front rolls through they will drop back to the staging areas. The full moon is when they get serious about the spawn. Temp can be prime and might be in the right range but they will not lock down till the moon is near full. (weird but true)

http://www.bassresource.com/bass_fishing_forums/YaBB.pl?num=1139485102

http://www.bassresource.com/bass_fishing_forums/YaBB.pl?num=1139471636

Did it thump enough that you could feel it in your hands? I wouldn't wait till summer now is the time for a short arm stick a #11 black pork or a zoom swim chunk and slow roll it. Target any shore cover and when you bring it to the end of a log stop the bait and let it fall You can also just cast it out and let it fall to the bottom and sweep the rod up and let it fall back on slack line they will nail it before it hits the bottom. (Great looking bait!)

The thing about bass fishing is that you can never stop learning because fishing is changing. Even when conditions stink and you read books telling you to stay home you go out to kill time and figure out that the bass can't read because they are biting like mad. Then you read that this is the correct way to work this and that bait then you stick a plastic worm on the hook like a real worm and catch a mess of fish then years later they call it a wacky rig. All the stuff you read that is new is because someone broke the rules and figured out it works. Think outside of the box and take the time with each lure to learn the limitations of each and how to work it a mess of different ways. Have fun!