Red Bear

so its not really none of the above for you. i would call keeping the fish on the line part of the fight, whether he is jumping or not. to me its jumping is just one of the scenarios you face during the fight. as for me, i would have to go with the fight. everyone has days where they might get bit but not get the hooksets, then you might get the hookset but the fish comes off anyways, so for me its the fight. i love that adrenaline rush i get after landing a nice fish that i had to fight

x-raps have been bad for me. not as far as catching fish as much as the fish absolutely destroy it. the last one i bought was missing both eyes and the lip broke off after 3 fish. also, i used to catch bass on the flying lure all the time as a kid

personally, sometimes i think people spend too much time worrying about conditions and less time actually fishing with tactics they know work for them in most occasions. for me, i try to place a lot of the 'scientific' stuff relating to fish aside and focus on what im actually doing(technique and such). isnt it often that many of us catch some of our nicer fish in unlikely spots under unlikely circumstances? im thinking that if i were constantly thinking about all the stuff that the OP listed that i probably wouldnt even enjoy fishing that much, id probably end up with a headache lol. to me there is a time to factor in certain things on that list, but theres also a time where you just have to throw your bait in the water and see what happens....

my uncle has a house on smith mountain lake, and it seems like its a nightmare everytime he goes to take his boat out. first, once he lets the boat lift down and lowers it into the water he refuses to start it up and back out of the dock. i end up having to get up and push the boat backwards out into the lake before he will even start it. of course last time the batteries were dead because he hooked the charger up wrong, so here we are drifting away from the dock with no paddle, i had to open up the door on the side, get down on my knees and paddle us back with a floatation device(i made my aunt by an oar and put in the boat that weekend). but back to backing out of the dock, hes yelling to keep it straight when im pushing from one side afraid he is gonna get a tiny scratch on it if it bumps into the dock. and pulling back in is just as bad, he wont drive the boat in there slowly, he cuts it off and drifts to the dock and wants me to pull it in steady and even on both sides and gets mad when its not center the whole way in. then he gets really mad when i ask him how my aunt/his wife can pull the boat right in there with no problems and no one having to get up and do all this unneccesary stuff. she only drives it when hes not there, so he doesnt believe me because he has never seen it... after going through all that id almost assume to stay back on the dock and fish there all day and night. atleast then i can bypass the 6 pack or 12 pack, and go straight for the 24 pack and a bag of ice =]

when i was a kid we used to catch them from the small creek behind the house with plastic cups and a stick. put the cup behind them and put the stick in front of their face and they shoot right back into the cup.

1. Berkley Red Shad worm on a 3/0 or 4/0 hook 2. Rebel Crickhopper, because if the bass wont eat that day, im sure to atleast catch some panfish using this and still have a chance at bass too

6 inch Kinami Flash in red shad and baby bass colors. also pretty much anything red shad works well for me

For night fishing for cats i bought rods with glow in the dark tips on the end or rods that are white and easily visible. i even have one that takes batteries and lights up the entire rod

just the relaxation and calm it brings about me is great. and when the fish dont seem to be biting, making a change that works and sharing it with others around me

this is great, i always used the bass casting sinkers for my dropshots, but usually i just tied directly to the sinker. i was finally starting to have some success on it last year. i never had troubles with line twist, but perhaps i can get more action out of my baits this way. thanks for the tip, cant wait to try it...

red shad

i go to SML several times a year. there is definately some nice fish in there. i am most familiar with the craddock creek area myself. frequently ive seen bass just swimming around in schools. im hoping to go next month, if not definately in april, and again in may and june. things seem to get real tough in july and august for me there though. May is probably an excellent time to go and there should be a good bite. Theres a million docks and youre allowed to fish them, also there are a bunch of rock walls bordering the shores in the coves. i wouldnt limit your tackle to thinking only a couple things will work. ive thrown my whole tackle box at some of the bass in there and the only thing they would even chase that i had would be something like a crickhopper

i never really had any till last summer when i dubbed a hat my fishing hat. it was actually a camoflage mossy oak hat that was a gift for when i killed my first deer as i had gotten into hunting in 08. since i wear an orange hat when hunting i dubbed the camo hat my fishing hat. and now i havent seen it for months, like it just dissappeared. what im hoping is i left it at my aunt and uncles house on smith mountain lake. ever since i got that hat ive been outfishing my brother in law who always outfished me before that, i must find it and as far as cameras, i got a new digital camera last year and took it with me on my final trip to smith mountain lake for the year and caught a few personal bests(striper, carp, catfish, white perch) and was glad to have it with me.

well i had a good time down there at SML a couple weeks ago. i still cant get my uncle out on his boat for anything other than striper fishing, but i did manage two small largemouth from the dock at night. i also got a nice catfish off the dock. for stripers i got 1 keeper and 1 i had to throw back, first time i ever caught any stripers. my niece caught that sunfish but was afraid to hold it, so her dad held it for her in the picture. biggest sunfish i ever seen come out of SML, any idea what specific kind it is? i realize the glare on it doesnt give the clearest of images...

If you are always losing weights, and have to retie after every fish, doesn't that tell you that what you're doing is not working that well? I would look into a different rig. yeah, that doesnt make sense at all to me. i dont get why you would have to retie after every fish

i dont think its the salt cutting your hands either. like the other guy said, your skin is probably just dry and cracking. and really, i only use a couple fingers to put a plastic worm on a hook and that includes taking it out of the packaging. what are you doing, rolling them around in your hands like play dough?

im heading down there this weekend. im typically limited to the craddock creek area though. several of my personal bests have come from smith mountain lake, i hope to up one or two of those this weekend. got some new tackle and some new techniques i want to try out, just stuff ive picked up from reading on here and some stuff that have popped in my head on its own(imagine that lol)

this is what i would try, the bluegill jerking your line to free itself will draw the bass in. if there are bass big enough they will slam the bluegill

do you mean under the bridge on route 7? i went there not long ago, the water is pretty shallow through there. all i managed was one tiny smallmouth, same for my uncle. and those were on night crawlers. the funnest part was watching some guy wading in the middle of the river that kept tripping and falling over in the water.

thats awesome. i took my 4 y/o niece fishing with me at a pond saturday. she was using night crawlers and caught her first bass. she wasnt afraid to touch it and wanted to hold it but was too scared to hold it as well. she was so excited to call her dad and tell him about it. he was skunked the last two times he fished that pond. taking kids fishing is a blast even if you dont get near as much fishing in yourself. its worth it to see their excitement. i even taught my niece how to cast a spinning reel

ive had better success with ECs over Gammies. never tried owners. never had a rust problem with EC either. if youve had a hook long enough to rust its time to trash it and use a new one anyways. also never had one bend.

there are times where id rather just fish alone, but being with friends makes the trip more fun...

a few days after i first read that post about removing the hooks like that i had to use the technique 3 times in one day, amazing

if you think the oxygen is low, stick a straw in the water and start blowing ;D maybe they came up to feed?

I agree that you should remove any hook that you possibly can, but there are times when you simply cannot remove a hook from a fish without causing it more harm than leaving the hook in there.