Chaz Hickcox

OK all things aside - I think I will try out Roadwarrior's advice and try a packet. What's the worst that could happen? I could ultimately have a few jigheads that sit in the tacklebox. It's not like I don't have any lures like that anyways (And those are lures I know work). Another tool in the box, per se. Also I will be checking out the jigs grimlin recommended. Again, the worst that could happen is that I end up with a lot of stuff that will be there for me to experiment with in different conditions. Roadwarrior - I'm still a bit new and didn't get the memo about the Monitors' word bein gospel! In all reality, at least Roadwarrior gives a viable recommendation and doesn't whine. I've found fishing is more of what works for you to get on the fish. Not what works for the guy in the back of the boat. I can fish buzzbaits and swimbaits all day long, but the guy in the recliner by the outboard can't catch on a swimbait to save his life. To each his own. TIGHT LINES!

I have to be honest, Swimbaits in my mind are the actual shape and size of the fish they are supposed to emulate. I have some of the money minnows. I rig them with a 1/4oz keelweighted 4/0 hook. This is ok, but to be honest, I would see the soft ones working better on a C-rig. The keelweight is good for swimming through somewhat thick shallow cover where you would never throw the expensive nice ones. In open water I go to Castaic Hard Head originals, which are not too expensive comparatively speaking at $14 bucks a pop they're great and much less expensive than the $40-$100 swimbaits.

x2, and the hooks are garbage and bend out. Bobby sent me some for free and I still have 3 of them bend out on fish, 14" fish at that. Ask bassnajr for comfirmation of it, he saw it. Ok, so if you read the first post in this string it was asking for recommendations on what would be a good alternative. This is much like Congress fighting with each other, neither side actually coming up with a viable alternative. Some say it's great, and honestly they are the manufacturers, of course they think it's great it's their product. So Tin man, what alternatives would you come up with? Or are you here just to complain? On another string roadwarrior had mentioned that he likes the cavitron buzzbaits made by the same company. I went to the website, looked at the buzzbaits, and they advertised them as the slowest and fastest planing buzzbaits around. I ordered one, and to be honest my Strike King Tri-wing buzzbaits are slower and plane faster. I'm not saying the company makes a bad product, but I know buzzbaits, and I have to say that I personally disagree with Roadwarrior's recommendations for the buzzbait. What's different here is that I really don't know jigging at all. So, where he has a point, I would like to see a more objective recommendation (I say objective because it is obvious that since Roadwarrior is an administrator, and Bobby is an advertisor, then there is a little bit of a conflict of motivations there. All due respect to both Bobby and Roadwarrior I mean no disrespect whatsoever).

Ok, so I watched all the videos on the website, and they do make sence. I also finally think I got the idea of this jog flippin thing. My next question is, would it be worth it to me to shell out 20 bucks on a few of these jig heads with the skirt forward design, or should I just go with a flipping jig. I can't use football heads too much because they get caught up the the grass too much and I lose interest too fast because of it. Here's a picture of the Evolution Jig:

I have a 7' MH Lightning Rod and I throw big 5"-6" Castaic Swimbaits on them all the time. It's not meant for them either, but I think the specialty rods are more for the fisherman's comfort of having the bait they're using written on the rod. The longer 7'6" may work better as well. Too bad my rod storage in my boat is only 7'.

Good call short basser, the old man wasn't letting anyone in the water today. He did say the winds should shift tonight and that if they hold NW the river should fill back up. Also, according to him, the bass should be at the mouths right now before they move to the shallow flats. I am seriously looking forward to next week when the sun should be out. SHOULD bein the keyword.

That's a good point. It was down about a foot and a half last week.

Micro, you ever get out to back bay?

Ok so in SE VA the weather is changing and it has been raining for a few days. The weather is supposed to clear up tomorrow afternoon. I am hoping the fall pattern begins to work tomorrow. I plan on hitting my normal spots where I generally find the shad/minnows. I plan on starting as soon as the clouds clear and hoping that the sun will draw the baitfish up to the surface. I will probably be throwing a chart/blue buzzbait, poppers and RT Shad (white and silver flake). If that goes bad I plan on hitting dropoffs with lipless cranks. If those don't work, I will be hitting some rocks with some soft plastics (Zoom pumpkin w/chart tails). If nothing above works I should be heading home. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery? BTW the water is North Landing River puttin at Blackwater Creek.

So today a friend and I were skunked. Had a few hits but nothing that actually took what we were throwing. The air temp was 60 with a windchill of about 55. The water temp was somewhere in the low 70's, we just got our cold front so the water temp hasn't changed much yet. We spent the day all over the water column, slow rolling spinners on or near the bottom, lipless cranks, buzzbaits, swimbaits, jointed rapalas, pitching jigs, rage tail shads, and anything else I could dig up from my tackle box. We got on a bunch of shad, but didn't even get hit there. the wind was about 10-15mph. We were on North Landing River. It is more like a long thin lake with a lot of creeks running into it than a major river. There is a main channel that has been dredged out to 15-20ft (depending on where you are), and the creeks average about 5-9 ft. There are a lot of sunken barges in some of the horseshoes, and there are a lot of submerged trees. However, my normal spots were no good because the water is down almost 2 ft from when I was out there two weeks ago. Any thoughts about where to find the fish would be great. My guess is that they are suspended along the main channel, but unfortunately my graph is not working so I have to guess using my flasher where the ledges are.

Also try the Rapala Clackin-Rap. It has one metal chamber with a single ball bearing. It makes a deep clacking noise vice the regular rattle of most rattle trap type baits. Lost mine today, but it brought in a decent 3 1/2 pounder before it was sacrificed to the fish god.

Figure out what your forage is. If it is golden shiners a gold Kastmaster spoon is good to go, if it is shad or regular shiners then use a silver spoon. This time of year is excellent for spoons. Especially as winter comes closer. Because of the cold, many of the forage fish will begin to die. As they die bass, and other species (especially Crappie), will be under the school of baitfish feeding on the ones that are dying off. This generally will occur over some kind of ledge or deep cover. Use your electronics to identify where this is happening then sit on top of them vertical jigging the spoon. Drop the spoon all the way to the bottom, lift the spoon a few feet while taking up the slack. Then let the spoon fall until your rod tip hits the water. You want to keep the slack up as much as possible to be able to feel the strike. Do this until the spoon comes all the way up to the boat, then start the process all over again. As far as size goes, just use something that matches both the fish you are targeting and the forage in the water. The smaller spoons will catch a whole mess of Crappie, while the larger ones will catch less fish, but more bass.

This is what I am waiting for Castaic to produce, their platinum series baby bass is phenominal (the second picture).

I went to Back Bay today. The deepest water is about 7-8 ft. There are some serious grass paddies there. I was only able to fish for a couple hours, I spent most of the time wondering around the bay. First, putting in at Mill Landing Road is good, but along the south side there are about 80 old pilings that you can't see. Make sure to head straight for the white PVC polls and go between them (they're about 100yds out). I did not do this and almost killed my boat. Thankfully I just nicked some of them with the main, and it did no damage. Also, when on a plane, watch for long poles randomly throughout the bay. I think they are old duck blinds. They don't coincide with the reeds like most places do, instead they are out in open water. Just keep an eye out. Once you get up to the north there are a few choices to be made. You can go to the residential area, which is Sandbridge, and fish amongst those, or you can go to the other creek heading north, its called Hell's Point Creek. Seemed like it would have been awesome fishing up there. I took a bass (appx 17 in) near the residential area on a 1/4oz spinner with a gold colorado blade. Then I was fishing a paddle frog on a submerged grassy area. There was a lot of activity on the serface, but I think they were all dinks. That's because I had a bass come up on the paddle frog, but when I went to set the hook I pulled him out of the water, and he was probably between 6-8 inches. Just a little one. Not a bad thing though. That means the dinks have somewhere to hang out. Overall just be prepared for shallow water, lots of submerged grass and some decent fishing. The water in some places has about 2-3 ft of visibility. Where I caught the one and had the dink play had only about 1 ft visibility. I misjudged the weather this morning and thought it was going to be overcast all day. It was actually sunny and bright.

When I have been gone 7 months out of the year for the past 8 years, then I can let her know who spends the money during the time I am in some desert s***hole dealing with 'desert monkeys'. Then the bait monkey trumps everything.

My alarm was broken so I never new what was going on by sound other than the engine. When I would open the throttle it would sound like it would be surging back and forth causing the boat to cavetate in the water. It was just as you described.

I've got a 93 Johnson 150Hp and had the exact same problem. It was overheating and Johnson has a failsafe in place to shut down your RPM so you don't blow it up. All I had to do was replace the thermostat and it works just fine. So in short I can say you're overheating, but that's just a symptom, I can't tell you why.

ok, so your feeling for the bottom. gotcha, how do you present the bait to do that? Is it a slow drag, a twitch at cypress knees, bouncing it along the bottom? What's a good presentation? I know it's a lot more subtle when a bass hits it, and you have to be paying attention. I just am not sure if I am doing it right and have no confidence in the presentations I am making.

Bass, Largemouth 16 lb. 7.68 oz 28.0 in., Canyon Lake Randall E. White, Mesa 4/22/97 That's Az's State Record

I use a buzzbait when there's a lot of chop. Poppers in glassy water. and jitterbug right at dusk/dawn. Frogs on lilly pads or between the knees of cypress trees. Basically on an overcast windy day I will keep a buzzbait goin off the points in the chop and as soon as I get amongst the trees I will switch to a popper or a frog. Does well for me. the four pounder in this picture was a result of choppy water buzzbaits

OK so I can fish well with simbaits, anything topwater, buzzbaits, and cranks. I think I do well with those because I learned on them. In fact I did well on saturday with only a buzzbait and a skitterpop catching nothing under 16" and filling up the boat. I know there are many times that I fish and it will be better to go down into the fallen trees with a soft plastic, but I haven't a clue on what presentation I should use. I know how to rig all of them, c-rig, texas, and dropshot, and that's all I ever find online. When it comes to presentation what works best?

Nope, out west, just in from Az

So I just read an article on Back Bay and they think it's going to make a comeback. Where are good places to go on Back Bay right now? I saw something from a tournament there this year where some ol' boy hauled in an 8 pounder. Here's the article I read. If I were to put in at the old game warden's place, where should I go from there? http://hamptonroads.com/2009/07/grass-fueling-revival-va-beachs-back-bay

pgersumky - The idea is to get away from soft swimbaits. Unlike Cali, I just moved here from Lake Elsinor, the softbaits, while awesome, will get destroyed by the bigger predators.

Hey used mine all day today and found out how to make it come up on its side. I was curious about your case and thought I would experiment. Anyhew, SLOW DOWN!!!! If you burn it too quickly it will torque up on its side. It has the three blades for the specific purpose of going slow. That's what sets it apart from the heavy two bladed models. Ironically enough I found this Bowfin amongst the bass today thought it was interesting.