Gangley

its fishing for sure, just not your style .

Since there are no laws against it, it comes down to your conscience <sp?>. If you feel guilty using live bait, then you are cheating yourself of a good experiance on the water because you wont enjoy it, and therefore should go back to plastic baits. If you have no problems with live bait, then by all means fish with live bait. If there are no laws against it, then the only cheating that can be done is the fisherman cheating himself out of a good trip. In which case, its only cheating if you feel guilty doing it, but that applies only to yourself. Don't push your thoughts onto somebody else simply because you feel one way or the other, especially if what they are doing is legal.

yeah it is. looks to be getting pretty big as well.

Jeez, thats a stinker. Water Temp here is 67 degrees, almost too cold for me to bother getting out on it

i use 30 lb braid and a medium heavy 6'6" rod and am very succesful with hookups now, but it wasn't the rod that allowed me to hookup better, it was patience. The main thing to remember on frog fishing is to wait a second or two before setting the hook. Once you see or hear the swirl that generally accompanies sucessful frog fishing, reel down to the fish and then set the hook straight up. That does two things: 1) Gives the bass a chance to swallow the frog nice and deep. Too often the bass will bite the legs and not the body, and you end up ripping the legs off your frogs when you set the hook. However, if you give it a second, often times she will let go and inhale it completely if she only had the legs at first. 2) By reeling down to the bass, it puts your rod close to the water, and your straight up hookset has enough "oomph" to pierce through the roof of the bass' mouth adequately. With the larger hooks used with frog fishing, if hooked hard, that bass isnt going anywhere but directly to the livewell when hooked through the roof ps, I cant stress enough to use a quality hook (Owner, Gamakatsu, Mustad). Depending on the frog size, hooks can range from 4/0 to 6/0.

awesome. I'm interested to know how that strike king jerkbait works out for you.

thats the best reply i have heard yet. I about spilled my coffee when i got down to that reply after quickly scanning the above replies.

I have pulled numerous Owners out from between the eyes of bass, and have very rarely had to change one out because it became dull. I will generally lose a hook to a snag before I lose one to dullness. Granted, after a few sets between the eyes and through the middle of the tough stuff, they aren't as sharp as they were straight out of the box, but they are still plenty sharp to get the job done and then some. I simply cant justify the price tag of the Trokar, regardless of ability, when I already have something that works extremely well, and is generally hung-up and lost before it ever becomes too dull to use.

New to me Horny Toad. Killed them on the local ponds this year.

Fishing is a way to momentarily step away from the things in life that drain you. I enjoy it because it is quiet, I enjoy it because it is calm, i enjoy it because its peaceful. There is no rushing or hurrying, no screaming or yelling, just patience and peacefulness. I'm fine with not catching anything. I'm never happy about it, but it doesnt negatively affect my view of the day. Like I said earlier, my main goal when fishing is to get away from the struggles of every day life, and just relax by myself or with a close friend, and just enjoy being away from everything else.

glad to see it still going. was worried there for a day or so, haha. That Strike King King Shad in bass should work well for you

as far as quality control, if the problems within a jig manufacturer are that blatantly obvious, you need to move to another manufacturer regardless of how much you prefer their hooks. Fishing is about consistancy, and you cant fish consistantly with a jig that performs different everytime you tie a new one on. From what I have read, Gamakatsu is the best hook for jigs, with Mustad right on their heels. This is not spoken from experiance though, only from what I have read from others in the past. The jigs I use are mostly EWG hooks. The football head jig i have on my rod right now is a KaRu football head jig with an EWG hook. I have both KaRu and Omega jigs and I havent had any problems with either at this time, and both Mustads and Gamakatsu's are used in the jig hook lineup.

Others: Frogs After frogs would be a wounded minnow crankbait, though i don't consider it a crankbait, and then rubber worms.

I wonder if that tickled the bass?

I would assume deep diving cranks and spinner baits. Drop shotting is a great deep water fishing method, but it is slow, carolina rigging as well.

wow, this thing is going to have a wild mix of assorted items. Great takes and great puts!

I have two that I will never forget 1. Zoom Horny Toad: Its the lure that got me hooked into fishing again, more specifically it got me into bass fishing. I've caught my personal best, along with all of my "close-to" personal best with this lure. I flat out love it. 2. Rebel Minnow in the F4901 (Smallest Available): It doesn't produce big fish, but it sure enough produces a lot of fish. It's what i go to when I am just wanting to have fun. When my son gets old enough to keep from hooking himself with treble hooks, that will be the lure I put on his fishing pole. It's just old reliable, and makes fishing fun.

You can forgive somebody for a wrong doing, but if the chance to redeem themselves is in the palm of their hands, and they just stare at it, then fogiveness does nothing.

AWESOME, I cant wait to see what people choose and why. If possible, a "how-to" and "When-To" summary on fishing the lures that you put in would be great. I'm looking forward to trying out different things that I havent seen or tried before, and "How-To's" really help when trying to learn new lures. Jeez, I'm excited, hahaha, like a kid waiting for Christmas, thanks fishin hard for going out of your way to make it happen.

I was thinking that 14lb flouro would be harder to see than 20lb mono.

Castaway Medium-Heavy with a Fast Action Tip. 20 lb mono with a 14lb Flouro Leader I will be switching to braid this afternoon and giving it another shot to see if that helps.

BPS is more expensive on everything, and I dislike it a lot. However, BPS is the one place where I can go and find EVERYTHING that I need. If i just need a few things then i stay far away from bass pro shops, but if I need a large assortment of specific items that can't be found many places, thats when I hit the BPS store. Its a lot easier to pay the extra price tag of BPS when you are able to get everything you need at one place and not have to run all over town to 5 different stores looking for a specific item that isnt popular. Still though, for a few bags of worms, or a couple lures, BPS wont be getting my business, just too much markup. Academy has Senkos at 5.99 almost year round if I remember correctly

Man, If I could find a Rapala in a discount bin, it woul dbe on like Donkey Kong!!! Trouble is, I have yet to come across one. I do like the bandit and rebel lures that you have. I just picked up a black Jitterbug as well. Looks like a really nice variety of lures, good luck giving all those lures time on the water, haha!!!

I have been dedicating considerably more time to jig fishing recently, which finally paid off with my first jig'd LMB. However, I am having a great deal of trouble determining what is a bite and what isnt. The large pond that I do most of my fishing on has numerous laydowns that go as deep as 10 feet, but the water isnt clear enough to see them and I don't know where all of the laydowns, or possible wood piles are located. Because of this, I cant tell when I am bouncing off of a tree llimb or getting a hit. I have set the hook numerous times into what I thought was a bass, but wound up spending the next 5 minutes getting my jig unstuck from a limb. Other times, i will be bouncing the jig through a brush pile, never feel a thing, and just see my line start moving whereupon I set the hook but the fish has already spit it out. I have yet to experiance a THUD on the line with a jig. I have had numerous bites, but I have only landed one. What are some things that you all look for or feel for when trying to determine if its a bass or not? What type of hooksets do you all employ? Being a very patient and methodical fisherman, I really do enjoy the jig, I would just like to have better landing percentages with it. Thanks in advance for any and all information.

Im just starting with Jigs, but for right now, it has to be Karu Lures in the Crigger Craw with a Berkley Crazy Legs Chigger Craw trailer.