AceHigh

Not catchin' fish? 1) GO ALONE! If you are anything like me you are always trying your best to make it a good trip for your guest. So between making sure they have everything they need, the boat is always in perfect position for them, their hang ups are retrieved, etc. such that you can't concentrate on fishing. You end up fishing one spot too long using the wrong lures too long and never taking the time to think things through. In a tournament I tell my non-boater that he can have total control of the boat for exactly one half of the time and I get to choose when, but I will totally ignore him and his needs or wants during my half of the time; that way I can fish seriously. 2) Don't linger long where you are not catching fish and you believe you've given them a fair chance (a 1/2 hour is plenty), 3) Change lures often (in a crankbait area I may change crankbaits every half dozen casts unless I am using what I absolutely know is best), 4) Never leave fish - I have caught a lot of fish by watching fast moving fishermen. They will be moving to cover a large area then all of a sudden they will catch a couple of fish, but then they just keep on with their route fishing more of what looks like the same exact cover. They think they will find more just like those somewhere further on and I know for certain there are still fish where they caught the others. I simply go to where they caught the fish and usually will catch half a dozen or more from the same exact spot in 15 or 20 minutes. This is probably the most misunderstood part of bass fishing, I call it being a pattern idiot. When you catch a fish under a green willow tree (or whatever structure) it is ten times more likely than there is another fish under the same tree that will bite than it is that there will be a fish under every willow tree on the lake and its ten times more likely that there is something about that specific area (oxygen, light, baitfish, water temp, etc.) that is keeping them where they are. In short, when you catch one, beat the immediate surrounding area to death. 5) Never leave fish - its worth repeating again. In 40 years of bass fishing I have have a lot of days when I caught 20 or more fish, but I cannot recall any when I did not catch virtually all of the fish that day out of a spot less than a half acre. 6) Go back to basics and use your confidence lures. If its springtime find some 2-6 foot water and throw spinnerbaits and crankbaits; if its summer hit every major and minor point with worms; if you can fish shallow during the the time when you can see before the sun rises and the last half hour before dark. 7) in my book bass fishing is 40% skill, 30% concentration, 20% confidence and 10% luck - you can take care of 90%.

You say you know where the drop off is and that it has fish on it and you plan to stay on it during an 8 hour tournament. 1) Make a pass or two over the drop off to confirm fish are marking and where the marks are in relation to the drop off. The most active feeders will mark just on the top of the dropoff. 2) Anchor on the deep side about half a long cast away and take out the trolling motor. 99% of tournaments have rules protecting participant's space when anchored and the trolling motor is up. 2) I would have four lures rigged - a worm with as light a weight as possible that will let me feel when the worm reaches the drop off itself, a swimming grub on an 1/8 oz lead head (unless the drop off is more than 20 feet deep, then go heavier), a jig and pig on a 1/4 oz jig and finally a 3" sinking crank bait rated to dive 20' or more. 3) I would expect the worm to catch most of the fish without spooking the remaining fish, if the action gets fast the grub may be the fastest way to get them in the boat, 4) make your casts so that you lures traverse at least 10' of the bottom on the shallow side, an active feeder at the drop off will run up onto the shallow part and get the bait (when feeding the fish play leapfrog to get to the front of the chow line and will end up on the shallow part), 5) If bites slow switch among the bottom running lures and try different color and length worms, 6) If you get nothing for 30 minutes make about 10 casts with the big crankbait (this may when you catch the largest fish of the day), this will stir things up a little and may start the fish feeding again, 7) If you go an hour with nothing, pull up the anchor and with the boat right over the drop off try you best hole shot, then repeat a couple of more times, then go back and reanchor - this will get the fish feeding again with 30 minutes unless the bottom is hard and cannot be stirred up. 8 ) Regardless, do not leave the spot because ther will come at least one good feeding period during the 8 hours and most of your fish will likely come in a 45 minute period, but you must be there when it happens. 9) Once you have a limit, alternate between the jig and pig and the crankbait - these are the big fish lures. 35 years of experience in 5 minutes.

Great Choice in frogs! The Superfrog is THE FROG to use. Notice the large gap hook with the point down - it flat works better than any other frog ever made. The little weight on the weed guard make it always run right side up. 35 years ago this frog's legs were flat but it still worked great.

When I started bass fishing in the 60's 99% of bass fishing was with spinnerbaits and that didn't change much until Bill Dance took some of Nick Creme's worms down to Lake Eufala. Those of us who knew Bill in those days (before Bassmasters and his TV show) knew he was a "big stick" (a seriously good bass fisherman). Anyways in those days bass fishin was all about chunkin a spinnerbait (Jimmy Houston and the boys in OK never changed). Any color is good as long as it is white, white with chartruese, white with blue or white with blue and chartruese. I like a little red or orange on the head. Single chrome colorado blades in a size 4 or 5 probably have caught more bass than all other size and types combined. If its a tandem I want one of the blades in chrome and one in gold - doesn't matter which. If I want to fish faster or deeper I'll go with a heavier spinnerbait and willow leaf blades in the same colors. I keep 6 or 7 dozen spinnerbaits in my boat and they all are in some combination of the above. My favorite brand is Hog Rustler. Don't know if they still make them, but they must have had a hell of a salesman in the South as you can find them still on the racks just about everywhere except Wal-Mart. Forget everything else.

Depends on the time of year. Pre-spawn, spawn and post-spawn will likely find fish of all sizes in shallow cover. I have had giant fish engulf keepers while competing for the same lure and have many times let a non-keeper flop on the top of the water with a crankbait until one of several following big fish took it away. I have a few lakes where I have learned when and where there will be huge schools of bass (thousands). Invariably, there won't be much more than a one lb. difference in the size of the fish in the school. I know one large lake that for a two week (post spawn, early summer) period when each year thousands of bass between 2.25 and 3.5 lbs. school in the same place (about a 10 acre area) every year if the water level is in specific two foot range and they have been doing so since I found them in 1972. They go into this area to feed during daylight only and you can catch them on every cast with just about anything (except topwaters and bottom baits) until your hands and arms are too sore to stand any more. When the water level is right that's where I'll be each year, but three days is about all I can stand before my thumbs and forearms are shot. Once they get to about 3.5 lbs they don't show up with the school anymore. And big fish can be found in biunches together during prespawn in staging areas in about 4 to 5 weeks before winter breaks (this is about February 1 in my area).

In 1981 I was burnt out of fishing tournaments and always trying for 10 and 15 fish limits (yes, 15 bass was the limit in some states back then and tournaments in those days followed the state limit). I decided to leave my tournament rig at home and use a 14' john boat on which I had mounted a platform and seat on the front. My little "rig" has a 26 lb. thrust pfluger 12 volt in front (state of the art ten years earlier) and a 15 horse Johnson with SS prop (very high tech in 1981) on the back sporting 10 horse decals so I could fish restricted hp lakes. Anyway, the goal for 1981 was to catch big fish and not worry about numbers. On my first trip in January on a day when the high was 35 degrees, i found the creek bend with the stumps I was looking for on my Hummingbird 30 (also very high tech at the time). I also saw some flashes just above the boootom of the channel. On my first three casts with a black jig and pig I caught a 8.25 female, a 7.75 female and a 6.25 male (still the largest male I have ever seen). About that time a guy in my club came riding by and not recognizing me in the jon boat, but recognizing my club jacket asked me how I was doing. I told him I had only been there a few minutes but I had caught a few and when he said "Any size?" I knew I had him and I popped open the ice chest and pulled out the male which was nearly three feet long and asked him if he had ever seen a male bass that big, all he could say was "Jesus!", but then he said "What about the others?" and I said "Well I guess I can show you a couple of average fish and then I pulled out the two females and he looked like someone about to cry. at the next club meeting at least 20 guys wanted to know how I was fishing the cold water. Anyway to make a long story short, I toold the 14' rig out 22 times in 1981 and one 21 of those trips I caught at least one bass over 5 lbs. And yes, I got the three in a row all mounted, the mounts of the big male and larger female survive today. The following year I went back to the same lake on the last weekend of January and was fortunate to find the water level was almost exactly the same, but there were no big spawners staged in that creek bend that day. Something told me to go shallow and I followed the creek all the way up until it was in its banks and saw a good fish spook next to a old piece of stump near the bank. I found that by tossing a white spinnerbait up on the mud bank and then slowly pulling the spinnerbait into the water next to any wood in the water there was a good fish on just about every other piece of wood on a stretch of creek about a 1/4 mile. As all I had was a big ice chest I kept every fish I caught until I had a 15 fish limit, then released the rest until I tired of catching fish. At the certified scales at the store by the lake the limit weighed a little over 52 lbs. Not bad for about 3 hours of fishing.

Here the best way I have found to paint eyes on lures. Take a wooden pencil and round over the eraser, touch the eraser to the paint and then to the lure and it will make a perfect circle. Let that dry and then take an eraser with a smaller rounded section and you can put a small pupil inside the previous round eye you painted. Put the pupil off center like the bait is looking around somewhere.

From? I was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee and I believe the birthplace of bass fishing. I remember when Bill Dance was just another member in the Memphis Bass Club which had to limit itself to 200 members (he was awesome on river lakes, the real deal). And for years the Memphis Bass Club tournaments probably had tougher bass fishing competition than anywhere (there were no other tournaments back then). I'm now 90 miles to the Northwest of Memphis in Arkansas.

You have described the perfect situation for a type of topwater that few fishermen fish anymore, I call it a Bobber. Its a floating pencil thin bait that has extra weight at the tail end which causes it to float at a slight angle off of verticle (think of a very skinny Zara spook with a weighted tail) - there are no rattles or spinners and it does not pop. When you twitch the line the bait will try to move horizontal and then slide back to vertical and bob up and down several times by itself. If fished properly it will stay in the same place as long as you wish (to keep it where the fish are biting). I fish it when the bass are tight to shallow structure, the water is calm and a noisy bait will possibly spook the fish. The ones I have were made by Bomber and I want to say they were called "stick baits". My favorite is an eggshell white with black spots. Good Luck finding these lures.

Use 50# to 80# superbraid and this thin line will cut the pad stems; I only put about 35 yards on the reel to keep tangles at a minimum as I know I will never cast a frog in the pads any further - most casts are less than 15 yards. There are dozens of frog brands, use one with a single, large, wide-gap hook. I have found the frogs with downwad pointing hooks rarely lose a fish as the hook generally catches the tough lip. 2/3s of fish are lost on the hookset. With a frog ignore the strike (I know its hard) and wait until you feel the weight of the fish to set the hook. Then keep the line tight. I use a Abu Barcia 5000D reel which is basically a low speed direct drive winch with no drag. I prefer a short rod because I know I'm going to have to reach a couple of feet under the water to get 75% of the fish and trying to handle a long rod and all that line is difficult and you will much more likely to give the fish slack so he can get off. 99% of frog fishermen fish the frog too fast - try stopping the frog and counting to ten every time the frog comes to an opening in the pads; you'll find most strikes come after the count of 5 - quick strikes occur most often immediately when the frog hits the water (the impulse strike) or after the frog has been moved over 1/3 of the way back to the boat (you've just given the fish time to get to the bait, zero in and make the decision to eat it).

Here's one. Back about 25 years ago I was fishing a tournament on Sardis Reservior in North Mississippi (which was a great lake at that time). Out of 500 entrants I happen to draw a friend in my fishing club as my partner. I was very pleased as he and I had fished together several times, he was a very good fisherman and together we had about as much knowledge of the lake as anyone else in the tournament; we took my rig. As the fishing slowed in early afternoon I suggested we go to a place where I knew an old gravel road crossed a creek channel and on about the third cast I hooked a toad on a small crankbait right on the edge of the creek. Anyway, I told my partner to get the net and slowly played the big fish until I was certain he would come in easy. Well, when I eased the fish up alongside the boat my partner took a huge swipe at the fish and caught it with the edge of the net sending the fish a good 20 feet up in the air wher he just watched it fall straight back down in the water where the crank bait immediately popped out. We both guessed 8 & 1/2 to 9 lbs (10 lbs wasn't uncommon in the lake at that time). I was sick; he was equally sick and because he was my friend I couldn't kill him. This was in the days when Mississippi had a 15 per day limit on bass and while both of us weighted in an average sized limit, everyone in the top 20 had a kicker of between 3.5 and 6 lbs - in short that fish would have won me big bass and 1st place. To this day when I see him he apologises for that net job.

Since I started tournament bass fishing in 1971 I guess i have bought roughly 100 reels about one third now serve as structure in lakes from Arizona to Florida after being lost overboard. Most of the others I still have. I still have 6 Abu Garcia Ambassadeur reels that I bought before 1975, so they are all over 30 years old. Five of these reels are 5500C reels that I still use nearly every time I go out. They get better and better with age and are completely bulletproof. It amazes me that these reels now cost almost exactly the same as they did 30 years ago, so they represent a tremendous bargain. I also have 6 more Abu Garcia "round" reels that have been purchased in the last ten years or so; these serve as my primary fishing reels. Shimano baitcasting reels are my favorite when new but they rarely last more than 5 years. Daiwas are close but not quite there with Shimano. All of my spinning reels are Shimanos (but then its mainly because I prefer a rear drag control and few other makers offer this in a professional quality reel). The other brands like Quantum are nice for one or maybe two seasons at best of hard fishing, but then break. I still average buying a new Shimano baitcasting reel each year as I like to keep a couple rigged for casting small crankbaits over long distances. Having bought tens of thousands of dollars of gear over the years you come to really appreciate quality that last and keeps getting better - thanks, Abu Garcia!