Goose52

WOW - about 30 IPT. Good grief - I've got to buy ANOTHER reel...................... Thanks for posting...

GREAT vid - looks like it was a fun day!

Not gonna be a problem - water temps should be in the 40s for at least the next 10 days... ----------------------------------------------------- Last catch of this thread since it looks like my 30-degree water is gone as of this afternoon. Same lake as this morning - 17" / 2.5 pounds. Surface water temp - JUST made it to 40 degrees. Looks like it will be regular 'ole 40-degree fishing for the near future - nothin' special to talk about...

Thanks! I fished the lipless crank on the first lake this morning. On that lake, with a max cast, you can reach 10 fow. You can yo-yo there for only about the first 20 % of the retrieve, after that the bottom shoals up pretty fast so when you get to that point it's rod tip up, burn the bait a bit to get it above the ledge, then a moderate speed retrieve with brief pauses. Do it right, and you might get a fish...do it wrong, and you'll lose the lipless on a log, laydown, stump, wood pallet, rock ledge, etc. Today - no fish but I kept the bait... No lipless at the second lake this morning - just the Chigger Craw.

Sunday morning. It was a chilly night but now a sunny day when I leave around 8am to hit a couple lakes; air temp is already up to 39/40. Drive to first lake, no skim ice (first time in a week)...but no fish either... Drive to next lake - the one where I got the 5.8 yesterday. No takers along the dam. Walk through the trees to get to a small spot where you have JUST enough room to make a cast. This is an interesting spot. From the bank you have a mildly sloping drop-off for about 20 feet, then a ledge and a steep drop-off to 18 fow. That ledge is so steep that you can practically vertically jig over it. On about the 5th cast, after one of those jigging motions, I feel a tug. Sinker bounce I'm thinking. Then another tug. Duh. Hookset. Not much of a fight on this little guy BUT, as I've said, I'll take anything in cold water. Only 13" - smallest bass I've caught this year. BUT, the story of this thread is not the size of the fish...it's fishing in cold water. For those of you with cabin fever, but also some soft water...give it a try! Drop the thermometer in the lake. Surface water temp was:

I would sum it up as a little bit lucky, not very good, but VERY persistent...

As predicted, warmer air temps are here - a nice sunny day and a whopping 45 degrees when I headed out to fish. However, temps at night are still below freezing so the pesky skim ice keeps coming back. Drive to one lake - skim ice all around the access point. Drive to the next lake - skim ice covering entire lake. Drive to the 3rd lake - skim ice in the corners but mostly all open water along the dam - open the trunk and grab a rod. I start tossing a Berkley Chigger Craw right next to the edge of the skim ice and begin to work my way down the dam. Just a couple casts later, I toss out the bait, let it sink and soak for a bit in about 10-12 fow, drag it a couple times...and then a BIG bump. Reel in the slack, sweep the rod - I've got a fish on. Drag pulled a couple times - I've got a NICE fish on. 22"+ / 5.8 pounds Drop the alcohol thermometer in the water - 39 degrees.

Wow - a great deal indeed. I have MORE BC reels than I need to last the rest of my life so I won't be getting any more PQs but this is a GREAT chance for folks to stock up - especially for the 4.7:1 and 5.2:1 that could fill niches in one's arsenal for not many bucks. BPS has got to replace it eventually - all the competition is way past it now. BPS must really get any eventual replacement RIGHT on this bread-and-butter reel...

Nice rod and classic spoon....

I have never caught a bass whose girth exceeds the length ... but I'd very much like to... Great fish!!

Go get 'em! Similar temps coming up here - forecast is for 46 on Friday, 48 on Saturday, but back down to a high of 38 on Sunday. I might see the water temp get into the low 40s here in the next few days. Not sure it will improve the bite much...but it will be much more pleasant standing on the bank fishing than the 24 degree day that started this thread!

Well, you have to "know" your water. I would guess I've now lost about 35-40 lipless cranks over the past 5 seasons to submerged stumps, logs, laydowns, etc when fishing from the bank.. BUT, those are high-percentage spots - once you know where those places are, you're trying to run the bait over them...but not into them... In the case of the lake in this thread, I've only lost 3 lipless cranks in thousands of casts. Two of them probably hit single logs on the bottom - one was lost just last month on a cast that was aimed to miss, but must have hit, the lake draw down pipe in 35 fow. Otherwise, the bottom of this lake is mostly muck and decomposing leaves - nothing to hang up on. Shallower than 15 feet there are still some weeds but I can rip out of those. I know the depths where I'm tossing the bait and I could just count-down the bait and start the retrieve a couple feet above bottom, but I've been bit before just as the bait reaches bottom...and I've gotten bit at the point when you "pop" the bait off the bottom. So, if I know the bottom well enough, I always wait for the bait to land before popping up and starting the retrieve. The fish in this thread were caught on 15lb Big Game (the round reel) and on 10lb Yo-Zuri Ultrasoft (the PQ reel).

Well, I'm fishing from the bank so relocating is easy to do - I hop in the car and drive to the next lake... (There's not a bass on the planet that's worth, to me, the risk involved in fishing from a boat solo in combined air/water temps of around 60 to 80!) I have several lakes that have the potential for "catching" in winter. They are all a bit different in the depth and structure accessible from the bank. In some, I might fish a plastic craw deep and slow if I have something to target (bottom structure/cover, rapid depth changes, etc). Others, like the lake in this thread, have gradual depth changes and essentially no bottom contours or cover so I tend to use the lipless to cover more water since there is nothing to specifically target. Sometimes, depending on the lake, I might do both - one presentation slow on the bottom, and another pass using lipless, spinnerbait, jerkbait, etc. If I get a bite on the lipless, I might then re-cover that water with a slower presentation to see if there are any more takers down there. Time spent depends on the lake, on how much time I have that day, and whether I can still feel my fingers and make a cast without "casting" the rod into the lake... Anyway, I will usually make one or two passes across the available water and if no bites, it's on to the next lake. I figure if I don't come across a fish willing to bite on those two passes then that's it. I could just keep casting and wait for a fish to swim into the target area but who knows how long that would take, if ever. Better to just try the next lake. This time of year, I would not spend more than an hour at any one lake unless I was catching. This is a photo from last year - in these kind of conditions, I might only be on the lake for 30 minutes and decide to call it a day...but at least I "went fishing"...instead of sitting on the sofa watching fishing shows! :lol: Well - outside temp is now 29 - about as good as it's going to get today - time to go fishing!

Is chumming legal...

A warm rain system came through last night and all day today and cleared out a lot of ice on the lakes. Drive to Lake A - still mostly iced over but a low-percentage corner was open. Fan-casted around that open water. Nothing. I wasn't surprised. Drive to Lake B, only ice left is in the corners, otherwise all open. Fish this one deep and slow with a plastic craw. Nothing. Drive to Lake C (same lake as all the fish on this thread). Got out the trusty lipless crank rod and started the usual routine - cast out, let it sink to the bottom, pop it up, slow retrieve with pauses. On one cast, I'm counting down the bait and I see the line go slack a couple seconds before I was expecting it to. Reel in the slack real fast, feel the weight, sweep the rod, FISH ON. This little guy hit the bait on the fall at the end of a max cast so it took a while to reel him in. Surface water temp? Just barely under 40 - call it 39.5. AND, another score for the PQ 5-Year Challenge test reel. Not a big bass, but like I've been saying, catching anything in 30'ish water is OK with me...

Thanks! Grab a little more popcorn... Thanks!

Thanks A-Jay! The good news about having soft water most of the winter is that you get the opportunity to fish but the flip-side is you are trying to "catch" for about 3 or 3 1/2 months in water that is in the 40s or high 30s. Here in my part of TN, surface water temps reach the 40s in mid- to late-November and stay there until usually end of February, sometimes into March. I only fish everyday because all my lakes are within a 6-mile drive and it only takes a few minutes to get to a lake. If I had to tackle-up and take a fishing "trip"....I would skip most of this winter period.

Excel is your friend - all the tabulated numbers, averages, bar charts, etc. that I post are either automatically calculated by Excel or only take a couple mouse clicks to generate. Record keeping on the water DOES take a bit of time and is what turns off most people especially if you're on a hot bite and taking the time to record each catch (length for all, weight for 14" and over) might cost you some fish. Based on my professional background in aviation/aerospace, record keeping has always been part of the job and is a natural thing for me. I also turn all my data over to the guy that manages our 11 lakes and my data, along with the local bass clubs data, gives him around 4,000 LMB observations a year and provides him with additional insight into the health (or usually the lack thereof ) of the fishery.

All of my smaller lakes did end up icing over last night...EXCEPT for a little pocket in the same lake as where I caught the fish at the top of this thread. This hole was probably about the size of an Olympic swimming pool. Start casting out a lipless crank and aim for the edges of the ice-line. Let the bait sink to the bottom (between 15-20 fow), pop it up, slow retrieve with pauses. On one cast, I've got the bait nearly back to the bank, where I usually do a couple jigs on the bait (the old dying baitfish trick) before pulling it out of the water and I see this bass come up from deep water and take a whack at the bait. I literally did not have to reel in the fish - just played it out, raised the rod and guided the fish to the edge of the water and lipped it. 20" but a skinny 3.6lb. Another score for the PQ 5-Year Challenge test reel. It's almost cheating though, the water has warmed all the way up to a toasty 39 degrees... Who says you can't catch fish in a swimming pool?

I wish it was 1,400 fish in a month! Those bars represent the total fish caught in each month from August 2009 to December 2014. - a total of 7,148 fish. My highest single-month total was 416 in June 2013. Leaving aside the actual numbers, the chart just shows that while I can fish nearly all year, and have never lost more than 3 or 4 weeks in any one year to hard water....the productive fishing season here is really only 7-8 months long.

My winter bite just about parallels Turtle135's description of his winter bite. I fish most days in winter, except when the water is hard, it's too dangerous to drive, or the air temp is below 20 or so. Also, I put the boat away when the water gets dangerously cold so I'm fishing from the bank. For most of the winter, you're fishing for the chance at one bite, perhaps two, a day. You might go days in a row with no bites at all. This is in surface water temps from 41-43 on down. In my part of Tennessee, we have some winters where the lakes ice over from time to time but we don't have hard water all winter like the folks further north. Some winters we have soft water all winter. Today - my lakes are iced over but will clear out in the next couple days. So, with all of that in mind, it's expected that catch rates will plummet, and end up being a lot lower than 25%... A picture (graph) paints a thousand words!

Thanks! I went back to that lake yesterday - only a thin strip of water along the dam open - the rest of the 25 acre lake was iced over. Most of my smaller lakes will be solid this morning but warmer weather and rain is coming in for tonight and tomorrow so I should have some open water again by Tuesday. Might even be able to find some holes in the ice big enough to drop a bait through late today...

I have both and both work...but I generally reach for the Hedgehog tool. The only time I use the Boca now is if a pin seems pretty tight and I'll try to move it with the Boca first before putting a lot of torque on the aluminum bodied Hedgehog tool. As was already mentioned, when pushing the spool pin with the Hedgehog, you need to start with the concave end of the Hedgehog "cross wrench" (their terminology). The smaller diameter end of the cross wrench is only used to push the spool pin out of the spool shaft once you have the pin flush with the shaft. Just make sure that you get the spool pin centered in the concave end of the cross wrench before applying any torque. I just got a steel-bodied Hedgehog tool in last month - it was a shop sample/blem/whatever and they had it marked way down so I added it to my order. Haven't used it yet but it should address any concerns about stripping the threads in the aluminum bodied tool.

I use the Rapala digital scales. A report on these scales here: Rapala Mini Digital Scale - Load Test Report You might check out this thread from a couple weeks ago - lots of recommendations: http://www.bassresource.com/bass-fishing-forums/topic/148645-i-need-a-new-scale/

Calcutta B, which Maxx is probably thinking of, HAS been out for 10 years and is still for sale. Conquest was out for nearly that long before the CQ14 was introduced. Calcutta TEs had a pretty good tenure as well before being (prematurely) discontinued. So, I think Maxx's point about the product cycle being longer for the round reels is valid.