HAMMER23

i listen to TOOL everytime i go fishing. something about it calms me down

Great to hear you are planning a night trip !! Anyone who has ever read anything I have written will know how I will answer your question, SPINNERBAIT ! SPINNERBAIT ! SPINNERBAIT. I would like to explain why I like it so much. I love to cover a lot of ground fishing, I will wear a trolling motor battery slap out in a night covering sometimes several miles of bank , this bait allows me to put as many cast as possible along the stretch of bank I am fishing. A good bait to start out with is a 3/8 ounce single colorado blade spinnerbait, anything black, black and blue, white or even red '' even though I throw something different from all of these". Whatever you do make sure you bump or tick the bait off of whatever structure you are fishing"GRASS, ROCKS, OR TIMBER" this will help enduce a strike from a bass. Give it a shot and let me know how you do , I would really like to know !

Bigtim ! I have been fortunate enough to catch and hunt about every game species on this continent and every other, and the one thing that is vertually the same with all of them is they all are very quick to learn when some type of hunting or fishing pressure is put on them. They are all quick to associate something out of the ordinary with danger. I personally just think after being blasted day in and day out with the same baits it doesnt take them long to realize something is just not right, thats were all of the tricks of the trade help you seal the deal. One last thing , if you noticed it's the baits that most look like there natural prey have always delivered the goods, lizards, worms, anything resembling a baitfish. JUST MY OPINION !!!

I will give all you reel lovers out there my opinion. I dont think it matters a lot to any seasoned fisherman, its kinda like golf, if you dont know the basic fundamentals it really doesnt matter what your swinging. I have cheeper reels that throw just as far as the exspensive reels I have owned, and vise versa. I have caught bass on every different setup of every kind for the last 20yrs, I mean how far is far enough to cast, how much drag is enough? just my opinion !!

I have fished toledo bend for over 20 years at night, during this time I have fished a spinnerbait almost exclusively. I was always told to throw black and white by more people than I could ever remember, and have caught bass on both colors, but I am also a little rebelous and hate to copy anything everyone else is doing. Several years ago i tied on a zorro spinnerbait in pumpkin pepper and chartruse and have never changed, it seems to catch with or without the moon. My friends throw a black Mc Throb, side by side with me and always fall short. The only thing I have changed is I put the largest black pork frog you can find on the bait and have had far more hook ups, I believe they target the frog more than the bait. If you watch it swim the frog shows up as the bigger target in the water. I am not trying to go against the grain I am just trying to tell you to keep your mind open and dont be afraid to try something different, you just might find that one special bait , that secret bait that only you know about.

Your exactly right ! But man it was easy. I admit it ,I am spoiled and dont want to look, but what kind of fisherman would I be if I didn't.

excellent info !!

EXCELLENT POINT !!!! I have seen some boat traffic that would definately put someone in defensive driving had they been in a car.

I have had that problem one time before on the Sabine river in Tx, I eventually did find the fish but they were in the backwater, extremly hard to get to , and scattered from one end of the river to the other. I switched to my aluminum boat got back in there and still had to fight for every fish. Tough situation for anyone , just takes work to find them !

a good point.WHATEVER you fish it on, over or near,...make sure you try bumping it off these structures and covers. Like Hammer said for grass,...bump the tops,....in sticks,...bump the sticks, ...rocky flat, bump the rocks. This causes reaction bites which can be violent,...hold that rod tightly. Like me and LBH said, I dont care if you are on the moon, there is some kind of structure bass relate to, no matter how big or small. It may be rocks , small drops or terrain changes ,plus it is a well known fact bass will cover a lot if ground feeding at night . I recommend you fish hard ,feel for anything different and when you catch a fish stop immediatly and think about what just happened, what did I just do to catch that bass then develop a pattern off of that and u WILL catch fish !!

If you are not in a catch and release state do everything you can to keep that fish ALIVE !!! and the rest is history, if you are in a catch and release state I would have already contacted the fishery. I am sure they will be able to tell you what the law states. You never know there may be certain exceptions or protocall if you land the state record during this time, after all the state record is kind of a big deal in any state.

I am going to try to research it, but if there is anyway to tell a male from a female outside of the spawn let me know. I really want to know for my own good so any info would be appreciated.

What part of the country are you in, I would like to try to answer your question but hear in southeast texas the sandpits warm up before the lakes and the spawn is long gone.

Trust me you are not alone about your equipment. I will keep this short, bought a carrot stick I just had to have ,could not go on living without it, waited on delivery for it to get here then the moment it arrived gave it to my son 20 seconds later because it had 1/8 inch scratch on the base of the handle.

Great to hear you are trying it at night, I think its the absolutely the best time to fish, then again I only fish at night ! I will tell u what delivers for me, first are you over grass ? I fish almost exclusively over grass in the 3 to ten 10 foot range and I will tell you if I just rip the bait along , my night will be nothing to talk a bout, but if you will slow the spinnerbait down until you feel it just bumping off the top of the grass man it's majic. Your catch ratio will go way up, and i mean way up. As far as jigging a spinnerbait I do fish some docks extended into the lake, I fish a super short arm zorro spinnerbait around these docks and if my normal presentation doesn't work I will let the bait fall into the deeper water and will reel and jig the bait back to me, I have had great success around docks doing this. One more thing, throw as close to the bank as you can, I have caught a lot of bass that I would swear were standing on the bank. These are just a couple of my favorites and I hope it helps, if you are ever on T-BEND and pass someone turning and burning a spinnerbait at night give me a shout it's probably HAMMER23. Good luck

IN Texas oil comes before bass, and if vegitation clogs ups the intake pipes the bass are !@#$ out of luck. I need to run several miles farther and hope they reached a stopping point.

Remember bigtimefish I know you!!! how many Huddelston swimbaits have you every thrown. LOL

" I LIKE THAT ANSWER"

Hey!!! that looks like me holding that trophy. JUST JOKING, GREAT JOB !!!!

Your probably better off not catching one, because when u do your life and your pocket book is about to go for a ride. At times it will consume every thought going through your head, but it is well worth it !!!

It's not cheating , it's an excellent idea. I have had holes on toledo that had good fishing but the second I started sinking structure I started concentrating fish were I wanted them. For me its not about a paycheck, I like to boat bass and a sore thumb. Thats what fishing use to be about !!

Hey guy's I am really stumped on this one, I need as many ideas as possible. I fished a big canal close to my house, this canal is straight as an arrow and one of the best places to teach a child or any amature how to fish due to the amount of hits you get in a day. The normal pattern is to line the boat parallel to the bank and just rip a spinnerbait along the grassline growing from the bank, it is nothing to catch 40 bass in a morning, not big but solid bass. Recently a local refinery, for some reason sprayed and destroyed all of the vegetation. This vegetation was full of crawfish and grassshrimp, since they killed the vegetation I cant buy a bass, it's like they all vanished, I have thrown every thing i can and cant find them. Does anyone have any idea what has happened. Rack your brain and tell me what u think !!!!

I am sure you are correct, like I said at 18 yrs old when a university tells us what the brought up I wasnt one to disagree, but it did give me something to research. Thanks for the info guys !!!

In 1989 I was fishing t-bend at night, I noticed a boat coming toward me down the bank that was very lit up, once they passed me I noticed they were bringing bass to the top of the water with two long rods that had leads extending into the water. As it turned out Texas A&M was doing a study on only bass that exceeded 8lb plus bass. They were radio tagging these bass and studying the travel and feeding patterns of just big bass. After talking to them for a while they said every large bass had two things in common, in the day time they would always suspend in the 13 to 30 ft water column but at night they would follow bass feeding along the bank as fast as there trolling motor would keep up and travel almost two miles of bank doing so. I guess that proves giant bass are big because they do have an aggressive appitite. They also said toledo bend consistantly brought up the larger bass overall. according to them they shocked up two bass out of the same cove that would have taken the state record both times, unfortunately they would not divulge that information. Anyway just something to think about.

I dont think I trust it as aftershave, I recently read were the tails of several baits fell off after being dipped in JJ'S. Then again maybe the garlic would dispatch of that ex-wife vampire of mine thats sucking the life right out of me. Aftershave huh ? maybe it worth a shot.