Red Bear

why do you believe this? im pretty sure i can go catch fish on my husky jerk right now and have been during this summer, im in va as well. Its of my opinion that during the cold months its ideal to slow down your retrieves, and the husky jerk is a good bait for that. But at the same time, in the summer/warm months you can be way more versatile and fish fast or slow or in between...

2 - VA and NC been contemplating WV as i recently found a nice little spot on the shenandoah, been driving by it on occasion for years and just recently noticed this spot in particular. small mouth were chasing bait fish and busting the surface near the rocks when i checked it out....

i wouldnt use senkos for it because theyre not durable enough to be used over and over. i would use 5" berkley red shad shakey worms t-rigged weightless. or a small booyah pond magic white spinnerbait with the red head or those cheap $1 spinnerbaits at walmart, dinks love those...

Brett Favres farm, he has several ponds there i here

there are plenty of threads here on fishing poppers, search for them...

i primarily fish with mono and the line does not stretch as easily as some of you make it out to, its not even close to a rubberband...

even if it takes a minute or two to retie, its not really that much time...

its way too loose, tighten it up till you can barely pull it off by hand, because its so loose your pulling off line when you set the hook, and not really getting a good hook set

i think this is exactly the problem. too light on the drag and causing light hook sets. instead of driving the hook home the light drag may be causing line to spool off creating less actual pressure on the hookset. i would suggest tightening your drag and see if that helps. if not, check your hooks to see if theyre adequately sharp. if you hook a big fish and feel like its gonna break you off you can always loosen your drag while fighting the fish

when i cant buy a bite on artificial, i will throw live bait. usually nose hook a night crawler throught he fat part of it and toss that out. works especially well if you can see the bass there....

i was killing them yesterday evening from about 7:20-8:20 here in NoVa. It was still pretty hot out as i was pouring sweat. The power was out almost all day yesterday due to a vicious thunderstorm so after i got back from eating dinner out i decided to hit up a pond. fish were jumping everywhere, started off with a baby bass torpedo and caught one and missed like 3. feeling i could do better i tied on a red eye sexy shad and tore them up. ended up with 8 bass in an hour, most in the 2lb range, and they were hitting hard too. One slammed me at the bank as i was pulling my lure out of the water, i never saw it coming either. was pretty good for what was mostly a boring day. despite the heat, they were definately feeding heavy...

try changing your colors or presentations. or try senkos, they work everywhere

if you were to do smith mountain lake, id wait until about mid to late september

i have an 808 and the drags on them are for crap, i swear it seems the 33s have better drags on them. the drag on my 808 was shot in less than a year, the only positives are it seems to cast really good and far and holds big line compared to most spincasts

white spinner bait with a red head/eyes has been my number one producer this year on a clear shallow pond i fish

i love music when fishing, especially if the bite is slow. and if im nightfishing off a dock, music is a must. ive seen times where a change of station turned the bite off, a change back to the previous station and bite back on...

this is what i heard too. the males have a more pointy lip and the females more rounded. i heard it on strike king pro team journal i believe...

explain in more detail please

my 'lucky' pole is a shakespeare tiger spincast combo i bought about like 4 years ago at walmart. i absolutely love it though, its my go to pole. i had it spooled with 20lb mono and could cast lightweight stuff like rooster tails and crickhoppers a mile on it, changed the line this year to 15lb and it still works great. and its a really fun fight with bigger fish with the weaker drag. the rod is a 6'6 MH and its great, its not an ugly stick. the reel has held up well too. the only problem i had was with the lower guide on it came apart, but i easily put it back together and it was my fault in the first place. i also have a spinning tiger combo 7'0 M that has served me very well. but this was an older model of the tiger shakespeare line, the newer ones have absolute crap for reels. i bought one mainly for the rod, and the reel broke in less than a month. other than that though shakespeare products have been pretty good to me. but now i have a reason to buy a new reel which wont be a s'peare to pair up with that rod, which was the plan when i bought my first lucky one 4 years ago but the thing aint broke yet. and i catch my biggest fish on it from bass to catfish to stripers, so i almost always take it with me fishing.

haha its not a superstition but i made up a fishing song to Joe Walsh - I Like Big T***. "I like big fish. They come in schools, but will they bite, I like big fish" instead of "they come in twos, left and right"

Good luck with all the jetskis and pleasure boaters. Which river arm will you be in? Theres the Roanoke and the Blackwater rivers and they merge not too far from the dam. Im headed down to SML this weekend myself. Im not very familiar with the river arms at all, as im usually in the Craddock Creek area. Before my uncle moved lake houses to a different area of the lake, he owned a house in a cove that always had big bass cruising around his dock. if you make it out in the main lake youll see a point with a black and white lighthouse, if you go to the left youll see a cove with a ton of sailboats, thats a nice cove to fish in back there, plus its no wake and you dont have to deal with pleasure boaters and jet skis, dont be afraid to go all the way back in the corner of it either... Edit: this is a good fishing report that i read for the lake. he will tell you whats working, he runs a tackle shop and talks to a lot of people from around the lake. it gets updated once a week and is also published in the smith mountain eagle paper i believe. http://www.virginiaoutdoorsman.com/content/report.html

from my own experiences, it works better in ponds than in lakes

i remember night fishing off a dock with my brother in law and we kept catching this large turtle. we were catching him with nightcrawlers and 2-3" live bluegill we caught with a net off the dock. poor guy had about 6-7 hooks in his mouth by the end of the night

thats great. i hooked up with a flathead like that on 8lb test using a night crawler and zebco 33. didnt take long to get him to the dock or top of water because he mostly swam right at me, got it to the top of the water to see and it started rolling and snapped my line, ive been dying to hook up with another monster catfish like that since

if the new balances were working fine before then id just get another pair of them. to be honest, new balance are one of the most comfortable tennis shoes i have worn straight out of the box without having to break them in the first week or two...