Chris

Bagley's wake'n B

I guess my question is how do you work a lake and what drives your choices? I find where shallow water meets deep water. Areas where the deep water is close to shore tend to be higher percentage areas. Shallow flats that dump of into a channel or drop off tend to hold fish around the break. If you have stumps or cover before the drop off the fish might position farther up on the cover and not on the drop edge itself. Any other depression like where a drain pipe dumps water or where outboards have cut out the bottom will hold a fish because it is different than the surrounding depth. Most of your shallow cover fish will be good for a fish or two unless something draws a group like wind. I had several good tournaments fishing parallel to the rip rap in summer fishing tight on out about 3 ft from shore speed reeling a crankbait. The fish where there because of the wind. Areas where the deeper water is close to the shore can be fished effectively with a crankbait. I try to position the boat parallel to the shore to fish a zone of depth. I change the depth I am fishing until I can narrow down what depth they are using. When you speed reel it the bait tends to react to the cover drawing strikes where a jig will not. As you move up you can pick off the stragglers with a jig or other slow moving bait. If the bass are positioned on a drop off edge like where a flat drops off into deeper water. I try to fish the bait from shallow to deep to try to figure out what part they are using. I want to position the boat out a ways from the drop to pick of any that might be suspended out off the edge. I don't want to be sitting on top of catchable fish. I then move to the edge itself and parallel it making sure the lure I use covers the depth I need. Next I position the boat in the shallow part bringing my lure from deep to shallow. If the edge has cover or some rock on it I focus on that first. I want to fish the bait the same as the edge bringing it from different angles. Shallow edges work about the same as deeper channels but your high percentage areas are going to be in the bends (deeper inside bend) and such. In the parts of the channels where you have a straight shot no bends focus on isolated cover or any depth change that might occur. Bass love little dug out areas where it is deeper than the surrounding depth. What drives what I use? water color, depth, cover, and speed Water color- shad or natural colors for clear brighter colors or darker colors in the case of jigs for darker water. Depth- the right lure to effectively cover the depth I am fishing Cover- If I can't get a crankbait through the stuff without much hassle I use something that will. Speed- time of the year and mood of the fish determines speed. In the summer I reaction fish more than any other time of the year in shallow water. Remember I am looking for areas where the shallow water meets deeper water so don't think I am just running the whole bank hitting everything as I go because I am not. When fishing a crankbait I speed reel it to make the bait react to stuff and bounce off it. If it is just a nothing break then I use lures that either drag the bottom to make the lure dart around or I use one that hunts or searches. If I am fishing a grass edge I use a spinnerbait and rip and jerk it to change the vibration pattern from time to time or make the blades smack together. I fish it real aggressively to draw a reaction. If I am flipping a jig or tube in the grass I want it to fall fast and hop it aggressively once or twice before moving it. If they will not react I might need several pitches to the same spot. Sometimes if they are sitting in a spot if you poke at them enough they will bite it just depends on mood. Weather conditions for me just tells me how close to the cover the bass will be and how active they might be. Weather and water clarity also influence how shallow they might move. Things like wind, shade, and bait tend to change these rules to a degree. Same as reaction fishing tends to change the bass's mood to bite. If your fishing grass mats focus on pitching to the holes in the mat or outer edge in about 5 ft. A frog, matts, and summer is always a good combo. Just like a jigging spoon, creek channel or point in summer can be a good combo also.

There is a little known company called Wacky Worm Inc. (wackyworm.com) who invented the Paca Craw and chunk who sold the rights to the lure to NetBait. The chunk has the patent (not sure of the other) and it is both of these lures that the company was built on. The original names for these baits where the wacky craw and wacky chunk. http://www.wackyworm.com/wwcustombaits.html

Your better off with a DT flat the 9 ft deep lure. Super tight wiggle/flash.

what is the best way to catch them? i fish in a medium pond from 4pm to about 6 pm. heavily pressured, and murky water. Here is an old post I did. The Spring approach Early spring after ice out the first thing I look for is the warmest part of the lake. This time of the year a few degree's can make a huge difference. You need to find shallow areas that are warmer than the rest of the shallow areas in the lake. When you find the right area all things must come together algae starts the life cycle then the shad move up and the bass follow soon after. This is the last feed before the bass turn their attention to spawning areas. Bass tend to move up in waves the first bass to move up are usually the larger fish. The first thing to look for is staging areas that lead to shallow spawning flats. A staging area can be a point or any dock in the mouth of a cove. If you are fishing a creek channel you want to try to find where the channel swings close to the flat. Any sharp drop that sits next to a spawning can be a place where bass will load up. Deep water is relative to the surrounding water in a given area. This means if the surrounding area is 3 ft deep and you find a small depression right next to it that is 3 1/2 or 4 ft deeper that could be a staging area. This time of the year you will get a lot of cold fronts that will blow in and a bass will escape to deeper water. Areas that the deeper water is close to the flat means less of an area you need to fish to locate them even when conditions change. This time of the year (early spring) the bass tend to gravitate to hard structure and cover. Points that are sharp tend to hold more fish than long tapering points but this changes the closer you get to the spawn. My number one places I look for and fish if available is beaver huts, docks that are in the mouth of coves that are close to a drop, rock banks that have a lot of sun all day, Docks that get a lot of sun that are wood, points that have stumps, places that are protected by wind because they heat up faster. If I am fishing a small pond or from shore the first tip off that tells you that the bass have moved up is life close to the shore. You may not see any bass at all so don't get discouraged. The clue is bluegills of any size and minnows. You will go to the lake one weekend and see nothing no life at all then come Monday all at once the temp just clicks and you see life minnows, bluegills they just appear. You might not load the boat but you will catch a bass within the time frame of the first sign of life and within the next few days. If I am shore fishing I start with a red rattle trap every year 1/4 oz. I try to fish from a foot out away from shore to about 5 ft out on small ponds. I beef up my line to 17 lb mono because it will allow me to slow down that trap and slow roll it without hanging up. I want to use lures that look like bluegills. If I am fishing larger water I throw a 1/4 oz jig with a large trailer like a 3 x by strike king and I thread it on to change the profile of the jig. The 3 x trailer floats and will slow it down a bunch along with heavy mono or braid pork trailer will do the same thing but have more fluid action in the water. The rate of fall is everything at first spring. Spinnerbaits work great this time of the year just make sure that you use a double blade combination with Colorado blades with a trailer to slow it way down. I sometimes use a short arm spinnerbait with a #4 Colorado blade with a #11 white pork trailer. I just try to slow roll the bait down any trees or hit the edges of flats. If you trim the nose of the pork so that it is tapered the pork will flop around more to give it more action also if needed you can double skirt the bait to add bulk and it also helps slow it down. Crankbait selection changes for me this time of the year. I tend to go with flat thin baits in cold early spring especially in clear water. I am trying to mimic the shad that might not have eaten their wheaties and might still be moving kinda slow. When the water temp gets a little warmer in late spring I change gears again. In spring when the water reaches the 60 degree mark bass move up shallow. This is when you dig out the fat body wood crankbaits that are more buoyant and tackle the heavy cover. This style crankbait is my number one choice because I find that it is able to get through the cover the best without hanging up. By this time you should have already gotten the spring rains and a big jump in water temp which will drive the bass to those staging areas I mentioned earlier. 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 am kinda in the same boat if it don't work for me after a fair shake it gets donated. The original Doug Hannon foam head snake bait...never bought the new one after the great success of the old one...I don't want to. Soft foam weedless jitterbug looks great never got a bite on it. (don't remember who made it)

Actually I have been using this bait for years they just came back out with it but a Senko will do the same thing. http://www.genelarew.com/SinkingSluggers/4sinkslug.html

I fish most of the DT's, Bandits, Norman, Bomber (Fat Free Shads), some of the Lucky Crafts (Fat CB B.D.S., and the RC series) Bagleys (most of them), and a bunch of customs (mostly wood). Got a question about cranking standing timber. Should I worry about the limbs that are still on the tree and under the water. The tree is in 15 foot of water but has a limb that is only 3-5 feet under water. Should I run a crank that designed to crank into the limb? Or is it alright to run a deeper diving crank and hopefulliy hit the trunk before starting the vertical rise to the limb? I can always reposition and hit the side of the tree without limbs and go deep then bounce the limbs later. This has me fairly stumped. You want to fish the trunk of the tree for lay downs and bring the bait right down the middle letting it bounce off the limbs. Fat Free Shads are good for this. With standing timber If you have any limbs on it bass will hang on the "Y" because it is the first thing different on the tree. When the fish become less active they will suspend anywhere on the truck that is a depth they feel comfortable in. Bass use the "Y" like overhead cover and you fish it like the lay down that I mentioned above. The bass will either roll on the bait or wait till it clears the limb and nail it. Your larger fish will be positioned right at the "Y" because it offers the best spot but when bass are active they can be positioned anywhere depending on bait. In clear water the bass may not even use the limb at all and will just position on the trunk because of comfort. In stained to muddy water you can almost bank that they will be at the "Y".

To be honest I use a medium wiggle year round. I don't get caught up in the wide wiggle for summer tight wiggle for winter thing from the standpoint that I don't buy a ton of lures. I do change vibration patterns for how much color the water has. If I feel like I need less wiggle I tie directly to the pull point and sometimes use heavier line to deaden the action mostly in clear pressured water. If I feel like I need a wider action some times I change the back hook to a heavier wire or add weight to the back of the bait which changes the vibration pattern on some lures. I choose crankbaits based on the vibration I feel in my hands when I cast the bait. I say this because if you go by action it becomes misleading. It all starts with the vibrations that are transferred from the bait through the line down the guides in the rod from the reel in your hands. If you can't feel the bait vibration in your hands you have a hard time figuring out a strike at the end of your cast. You can have the greatest bait known to man with the best paint job under the sun that the bait monkey told you to buy but if you can't feel the vibration it isn't doing you much good. At times if you choose the wrong vibration pattern for how stained the water is can leave you pulling water instead of bass. In simple terms choose your lures by vibration much like you choose your spinnerbaits. The more stained the water becomes the more vibration your going to need to draw attention to your bait rattles are secondary. Some companies add loud rattles to try to make up for the fact that the lure throws off a lame vibration but loud rattles don't make up for a lack of vibration. In clear water you can get away with it because the bass are more sight feeders and color becomes more important from the standpoint of choosing bait fish looking colors. As the light becomes less because of depth or cloud cover or when the sun is low in the sky like early and late choose colors and vibration patterns as if the water has become stained. In low light watermelon, chartreuse, violate, and most of your fluorescents become easier to see for a bass. Your fluorescents reflect more light and almost glow under water when there is low light. The green watermelon is just a weird color that works well in this situation bass can see it under low light. You can get away with using the wrong color with the right vibration but it is hard to get away with the right color with the wrong vibration particularly in stained to muddy water just food for thought. I choose medium wiggle because it will work in a wider variety of water conditions and year round and if need be the vibration pattern can be changed. With crankbaits I like lures that have a low pitch lead thud rattle over high pitch BB rattles or no rattles. Over the years I have found that it draws more strikes and does tempt bigger fish. In my mind between the vibration pattern and the low pitch rattle I am presenting the bass a vibration image of a bigger bait than what I am using. I am tricking the bass to think that the lure is bigger than it actually is based on the vibration pattern and rattle.

I like to sight fish and most of my shallow clear water fish are caught by sight fishing. I also love the challenge of bed fishing.

Huddle bug, Sweetbeaver, tube

If the bass are schooled up busting bait I generally throw a pop R, spit'n image or a soft jerkbait. If they reject it I throw a suspending jerkbait or floating trap and fish a little deeper.

Also a Spence Scout by Strike King will get through that stuff a little better.

Actually the past few weeks I have been teaching my youngest how to work crankbaits while fishing for Rainbow trout. He caught one pushing 4 lbs on a KVD Bomber long A clown pattern. His friend caught another one of equal size on a gold KVD plug. Both bass and trout eat crawfish, bugs, and fish. Anything that might look or act like it they will tag. That Kastmaster and a Rooster tail spinner both look like bait fish and will catch them. You don't need to really scale up the bait either unless you want to. When the bass school up eating small bait you can load the boat on the small trout size. I have also caught both trout and bass on shad darts trout streamers, beetle spins, and other crankbaits.

Bomber Bandit Bill Norman lures Rebel Cotton Cordell Cheap nothing fancy and can get the job done. When you get into wood crankbaits they will cost a few more bucks and at times can be worth it. The other baits you mentioned do catch fish on a straight retrieve.

Fish the senko like a jerk bait not a drop bait. With the senko your going to be able to maintain depth better than a regular jerk bait because of the salt. Other soft jerk baits should also work well. If your having a hard time getting cranks through try weedless swim baits.

Is there something specific you needed to know about cranking? I will answer a few questions if you like.

Sometimes I use a bill that has the same 45 degree angle as a shallow runner but a longer deeper bill than the depth I am fishing because the lip will act like a weed guard and not get stuck as much. Do choose wood cranks for this because it will back up when it is stopped. It is the angle and length of the lip that is important to keep the bait from getting lodged in the rocks and the back up feature of wood plugs.

Learn shallow water and shallow cranks first. (5' or less)Then move to fishing deeper points, drops, humps and such. It would be easy only because you are throwing to visible objects. It is easier to visualize stuff you move most people out deep and tell them to fish something they can't see it kinda throws a lot of people for a loop.

Can you use 2 ton epoxy to glue diving lips to the foam lure blank or do you literally need to wire through the whole bait to keep the lip in place?

But what actually defines clear or stained water. Here is my theory If the water is usually tea color or tannic for that lake it is considered clear. The water will never get any clearer just down grade. The fish have already adjusted to the water and are still accurate sight feeders. When you have a storm roll in and the water has more stuff mixed in the water then to what degree determines if it is stained or muddy. If the lake is normally murky. The fish are less of a sight feeder but have already adjusted to the lack of clarity and are still accurate feeders. A storm rolls in and messes up the water more the fish adjust quickly. Also the influx of clearer water at times turns them on. In lakes that are normally gin clear you can go by the white lure idea. Any stain to the water or debre really messes up the fish and it takes the fish a much longer time to adjust to the change in clarity. The bass become very inaccurate if the lake turns muddy or heavy stained and have a hard time feeding until they adjust. wind, cloud cover makes fishing gin clear water easier to fish because the wind breaks up the surface and the fish become more active the same with overcast days and early and late when the sun is low. High pressure blue bird sky's positions fish tight to cover or in it.

1) learn seasonal movements (bass and bait) 2) find the bait find the fish or at least more active fish 3) find the thermocline yeah it can be that important 4) whole lot of cover find something unique that will draw fish 5) fish what you know then expand if you like to flip then find flipping water for example. 6) It is all in the lure placement and the retrieve not the cast count. 7) not getting bites is not a bad thing it is just telling you where they are not and what they are not hitting so change. 8) Perfect pitches promote perfect fish so don't fish sloppy. 9) don't leave fish to find fish change what your doing to catch your larger fish first. 10) learn the limitations of your lures 11) bass will want a lure either vertical or horizontal the rest is just details and it changes from day to day. 12) don't follow the crowd 13) tournaments are won before you hit the water so study. 14) don't beat yourself

I fish Lake Alan Henry. (lipped crankbaits) When I fish submerged vegetation: 1) try to tick the top of the grass(wood or plastic crank works but a balsa bait can be slowed more) 2) reel a long bill crank down and touch the grass then let it rise off of it then snap it back into it. The bait looks like it is feeding. The bill acts like a weed guard by not letting the lure dig into the grass. It takes a little finesse but can be deadly.(balsa lure works best for this) 3) rip it..you try to hit the grass with force and rip the lure free. (plastic lure works best) All of them will work in that tannic water.

http://www.fishingdiscountdirect.com/backstabber

A tube works well also I use it a lot in clear water.