Matt Fly

Since your in Kentucky, and I don't know when your fish starts to spawn, and not knowing what the lake temps have been the last couple of weeks, I had to base my choice of numerous possibilities, not knowing how the weather or sun is going to warm the water, or if that was the third good day of weather, post front or pre-frontal conditions, I used seasonal patterns and search baits, its my first time to fish this lake. At what times where the fish caught? Early morning, fish could have been deep, late afternoon, fish could be shallower!!! There are a number of patterns used to find pre-staging fish. Best Guess, 1. Crankbaits 2. suspending 3. 12' 4. lake points close to the river channel 5. chunk rocks seasonal patterns and science, I have no experience in the eastern hemisphere on climate and seasonal patterns(ie.... when fish spawn in Kentucky, or how cold it gets in the winter..... what is normal lake temps in the winter? is 48-52 degrees a warming trend, normal for this time of the year, colder than normal, warmer for this time of the year?????That is were experience is applied to the seesonal pattern, knowing what stage the fish are in and how far off spawn is. Do fish bed in Late march, April, May. Knowing how far off the spawn is lets us know where the fish should be. Are they a month from being on beds or two months?

An ultra lite and a string on the end has always kept my drag and cat in shape.LOL

It appears that most boats in this class are about 6.5%. Just weighing out the travel to pick it up and sales tax. Thanks for the reply Matt.

Looking for single woman with boat and motor, doesn't have to cook or clean, that would take time away from the fishing that we could be doing together. We can catch up on that during winter months. LOL Fishing and Hunting are percieved as a mans thing, only when women lets it go as such. I've known too many good ladies in the outdoors. Sorry that some men assume those things. I too have been dusted on the water by the other sex. My buddies have laughed about it, and my mom gave them some pointers also while on the water. And if you haven't noticed on the big trails, FLW has had some ladies in the top ten on the mens side. Kudos, it will only be a matter of time until they win an event on the men side in my opinion. Judy Israel (sp) has already won 2 events. and I do believe she's made another cut this year again at Pickwick by qualifing in 4th. She's been very consistent this year.

I have use the double cinched blood knot or what i thought was the doubled blood knot. I would always snag a little grass with my doubled ends. Texas has lots of grass and the palomar knot since switching has always proven the best in strength and slides through the grass with more ease and less snags.

I wonder what methods a small father figure has to go through to protect his daughters?

The sales tax applied to new boats, are they the same pretty much throughout the US? 6%? Found a 2006 skeeter in LA. They are willing to give me what the area DFW dealers aren't. Two tournament vests w/ skeeter logo. Hand held GPS, variousT-shirts, decals for windshield on dual consoles, collaspable net, measuring board, which the last two I thought are standard issue with all new Skeeters. A warm skeeter jacket and rain gear. The best deal, price, and all the bells and whistles I could get so far. Have I left something out that I should asked for. Skeeters have the best free bonus money available for the current tourney trail. BassChamps. If you call 31,000 free.

A doctor, who had been seeing an 80-year-old woman for most of her life,finally retired. At her next checkup, the new doctor told her to bring a list of all the medicines that had been prescribed for her. As the young doctor was looking through these, his eyes grew wide as he realized she had a prescription for birth control pills. "Mrs. Smith, do you realize these are BIRTH CONTROL pills?" "Yes, they help me sleep at night." "Mrs. Smith, I assure you there is absolutely NOTHING in these that could possibly help you sleep!" She reached out and patted the young Doctor's knee. "Yes, dear, I know that. But every morning, I grind one up and mix it in the glass of orange juice that my 16 year old granddaughter drinks..................................And believe me, it helps me sleep at night." [You gotta love Grandmas!]

Was on the lake yesterday, on Fork. I knew when I arrived at the lake on a 85 degree day and the ramps looked normal, I just knew one had been caught. Sure enough, #400 was caught. Wasn't going to stop us. Found some 65 degree water in the backs of creeks and coves. Saw some bedding, not locked on, saw some good ones cruising, not interested in eating, looking to bed. With this current warming trend, 2-3 days more and they'll lock in. Backed off, and went down lake, much cooler water, fish were interested in eating in lower 50's in staging areas. Thanks Ku for keeping every one current. Hookem Matt.

Slush baits are those with props, the Hedon Torpedo, I like these baits when I have some ripple, but not really chop. I even saw a big bass caught at this years classic with a slush bait. Dual props, one on each end. Trying to remember who it was on Day one. http://www.lurenet.com/catalog.aspx?catid=Torpedo I have bunches of the Heddon torps, all colors and sizes. It was one of the first lures I stole out of my dads tackle boxes when I was in the 4th grade. I actually got a huge bass and was aftraid to tell my dad what I caught it on thinking he would be mad. Nope, not all, come to find out, he always left his top water tackle box on a lower garage shelf, his thinking was, if I was to nose around in his tackle box, he figured I'd have a harder time losing top water plugs instead of his cranks, which he didn't have even close to the variety that we have now days. He had bombers, Pico perches, hellbenders, lazy ikes and some others I didn't know the name of. Fell in love with slush baits, took me awhile to realize, plugs are tools, each has its own use. Hope this helps Ryan. Hookem Matt

Zimmy, sent PM. Hookem Matt.

June and July, blue bird days, which in Tx means constant High Pressure on the norm and patterns are usually true and don't change much more than slight colors. Morning till the sun appears is top water prime time. Buzz baits with a chop or a slush bait. Spooks, chuggers, or popper baits on calm mornings. If the bite has been good early, once the topwater dies off, I might go with spinnerbait if the presence of baitfish is there. A chrome rattle trap w/blu back is a no brainer bait, some good fish are caught this way, but sizes can run into the dinks zone. If good size has been caught, I back off in depth around 8am to 5-12ft area and may attack with c-rig, not my favorite, but does work. Drop shotting is good on numbers with small plastics. If the bite doesn't pick back up, I head for main lake off shore structure and contour areas. From mid morning on, I'm fishing 15-25ft with 10 inch plastics t- rigged. This is were the better fish are on my area lakes, shallow at night and early morning, and deep in the after noons. Sometimes the 7 inch worms do the trick, july starts picking up on my bigger worms.

Was afraid to open this thread. Thought LBH was going natural like the young guns and their gulp baits. I really didn't know what to expect. Read a thread early that mentioned in the subject area, #400 caught yesterday, got pics!!!!!!!!! so I clicked and opened, kinda bummed to see it caught, when I opened it up, it said JUST JOKING, BUT DID SAVE ALOT ON MY CAR INSURANCE THOUGH!!!! So I didn't know what to expect, specially from you!!!!! LBH, With the C.A.S.T. for kids, clothing line, working at UPS, and fishing, how do you manage it all? That is only some of your irons in the fire, and thats alot to get done. My Tx Longhorn hat is tipped to you. Kudos to your drive and determination. Hookem Matt

Hopefully, I'm sick tomorrow. 85 degrees would be a great day to be sick, sick of indoors, a little whitelie that my boss will asked me, so, where you heading tomorrow? Fork! Good luck!.

I am surprised #400 wasn't caught this weekend. Fork had full parking lots at every ramp. Caught some good ones this weekend on Sunday. I looked for Rickeys rental boats on the water, but did not see Zimmy and his bunch down from Chicago on Fork. I was busy on trying to catch #400. My partner through a swim bait all day. No bites, but I threw a 1oz white spinner bait with extra large willow leafs for a chunk and a Tiki Moto wave lizzard, grn red flake for my other chunks. Sunday was a beautiful day, sunny and no wind. Did see some buck bass crusing the shallows, water temp was 48-54 degrees, depending on where you were.

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/spdest/visitorcenters/tffc/budsharelunker/archives/lunkerdetails.phtml?fishid=399

How do you figure. If none are in the livewell and its a legal keeper of 14" or better, it legal in TX. Unless you are on a slot lake, where anything under the slot is legal to keep up to five or as special lake regulations apply.

I'm gonna butcher this, Antassawamock, I think, I just say Antass. His name his Scott, I actually met him through another fellow from Ma. that has lived in Tx for a long time. He loves Fork. He actually arrives on Tues, We will fish wed-sat, I told them I would take a day off, but have scheduled way too much time has it is in March. I have another inspection, surprise inspection, that could be any time. Lots of irons going right know. Matt

Thoughts and prayers to you and your family. Matt and the Bass Resource family.

Roger310, Thats something I didn't know, stipers in the lake. How did that happen, on purpose, or accident?

Trap, keep an eye on Cuba and Mexico, if you read the post on the supposedly 26 pound found dead with a 3lb talipia stuck in its throat I posted, it mentioned some good info on Cuba and their climate. My mom bass fished Mexico many times in the 70's, great fishery then. What has changed is, biologist from the US, mainly Tx has aided Mexico program since early 90's. They kick out some giants, which isn't bad because some of those lakes are only open certain times of the year. Some protect the spawn and allow no fishing, some do. They are comparing numbers from their lakes during those open and closed seasons to see if the pressure makes that much of a difference. Within the next 70yrs as Trap likes to highlight, the heat will get turned up on pursuit of the record. It will fall as long as mother nature does her part, and mankind doesn't do nothing stupid. The genes are out there, and Cuba supposedly has a fish adapted the the climate with a life expectancy longer than F-1's and Native northern bass. That was the interesting part of the Mexico article. Trap, stay cool, as in a cuecumber cool. Matt

Theres a few more recent than that, The Minnow Bucket can confirm that 2 have been caugt since summer last year. The guide Randy Oldfield caught one and is photographed by the minnow bucket that would have gone 15.7, and if the same scale weighed Tues fish at 15.27 or .29, TPW has weighed the fish in at 15.5, their scale appears to be weighing light. Another local peg one in Aug at 15.02, since its not sharelunker season then and it didn't make the top 50, its not a big deal to the local guy. Local news only. If you check the infusions of fingerlings into Fork since 2000, they numbers are way up. Before 2000, it wasn't surprising to go out and catch 20, 40, 50, fish days and have a 5lb average, didn't happen every time, but not uncommon to spend coupl days on water back to back and have numerous 7's and 8's with some pushing 10. Those days you could actually graph schools and see that the size is small and move on, until you found the right group, this group was loaded with 5-9lbers, steady diet till it played out, and move on to another spot, what is nice about the hot weather in the summer, constant high pressure, you could set your watch pretty close to the same bite, same location every day, thus the better consistent quality fish. That has been a rareity these days, you don't find the larger schools as you used to. Fork has the numbers and the big bass, they aren't as easy to catch as they once where, when I say easy, I mean locating, because in timber filled lake, snags are gonna happen. Forks massive stockings has her full of all kinds of fish, sometimes you gotta wade through the smaller ones to get to a good one now days. I would concur with fletchero reasoning, I too thought less pressure on bait fish, but, Fork has had some huge populations of shad, and having no white bass, hybrids, or stripers, basically, Fork has bass, cats, and crappie. Competion is not a concern on baitfish as long as we have those huge shad hatches thats been the norm for years. They say a lake ages and passes its prime after 10-12 years, but the sharelunker program and all the other info said she's lost one round in a 20 round fight. She's the Bass Capital of Texas, and it will be awhile before she's knocked out.

Welcome, spring withdrawls, only one cure I know of. Fish, fish, fish. Matt

Bd, My first graph was a lowrance paper graph. I found the clearest water available. I started with muddy bottoms to see how it marked, the thickness of the black line was approx. 3/4' thick on bottom symbolizing soft bottom. I moved to a sandy bottom, not mud, like beach sand, and it marked about 3/8", not as soft as mud, a little harder. I graphed the dam with rocks of the facing, the rocks gave irregular black line 1/8-1/4 inch with some gray area mixed in, seen as not a solid black line. The rule, the softer the bottom was created because some of the compression waves are asorbed by the bottom, less return. on hard bottom, the returns are sharper, more defined black line on graph. I found stumps and compared to a rock return to decipher the difference on screen, then bushes, like buck brush, xmas tree, then on to trees. I went to known areas, clear water to see with no doubt what was down there. I went parallel down bridges at idle speed, my transducer was mounted on stern, rear of the boat. I wanted to see how far at idle speed the bridge pilings showed up on screen as i passed them. This gave me an ideal of the realationship of an object i passed by before I saw it on screen. I repeated the passes, doing what the others mentioned, turn off Auto Mode, adjusted chart speed due to boat speed to see at what speed of the boat correlated to when it appeared. I adjusted gains also to see what it did to my current picture as compare to before. I moved further away from the bridge in small incriments to see how wide my cone angle was seeing. I was looking in 20ft of water to see when the bridge pilings no longer showed on screen. This gave me an idea of big an area my trans ducer was covering. In 5 ft of water, my window was limited to a couple of yards on each side of the boat, actually, i saw more on the starboard side because of the mounting position. As the depth changed so did my coverage area down below. I saw more bottom and what was between. My graph only had boomer rang symbols. I watched the birds to tell me when baitfish were schooling, I made passes over them, large schools of shad looked like clutter, tight clutter indicated fish are feeding. This is how I learned my old graph, the nice thing was, I could keep my paper graphs for future study. Time on water using your graph in manual mode is the best teacher. Don't worry about fishing while your learning, spend a day in good known structures and contours and you'll gain confidence in your electronics. I hope this will help you out. Matt.

http://www.geocities.com/Baja/8205/bass_top25.html This site offers fishing logs and said it monitors state to state bass records and this is the most up to date as per state agencies.