ChrisAW

+1 Michigander.

Or don't do anything illegal, and they can waste their time trying to find nothing. A retired police officer telling people how to make a police officers job harder? WTH is wrong with you?

Definitely no musky, quite possibly some big pike if its anything like other nearby lakes. I do have Mend-it and superglue, as well as using Megastrike.

There very well could be some toothy fish in here, but I have not had one on my line yet. Thanks for the tips guys. I have a bit of a game plan now. I have some cameras ready for Friday morning, feeling confident I will get some footage as well as some good pictures.

30 pound is a little too heavy for most fishing with spinning reels. Stick to 15#, or less if you want. If its mostly used for heavy cover, than ignore me. The only thing I have heavier braid on is a pitching rod with a large 3000 series reel I keep for friends to use if they can't use casting gear. I can see the twist in the braid on my dropshot rod, but it isn't effecting casting, and I am not getting knots.. I'm fine with it. If you want to straighten it out, run the line off your spool in your backyard, or if you're on a boat, let the line out in the water and troll out as much as needed (without a lure), and then hold tension on the line with your fingers as you reel it back in. Like you were re-spooling. This will allow the line to spin like it wants to, and help straighten it back out. Then, just use swivels like mentioned above to help keep it from twisting.

3 to 4 feet.

I was curious how some of you might attack this lake with some 6" Hudds (Or the like). I decided to get into throwing them, it just looks too fun. Now, I will be throwing a frog early, and do some punching as well where ever it mats up, but I know I could gets some hawgs on a swimbait here. Since I don't have a ton of experience fishing structure, I could use some tips. These are actually very small lakes. I made the picture side by side, but the left one is south of the right lake. Its a public lake with a crappy dirt launch, and its no-wake. This lake sees VERY little pressure, and most certainly produces big bass. I've been here four times. First, I was skunked. The second time I caught a 4.3. Third time, a 4.8 and 3.15. Just the other day, a 5.4 and missed a monster on a frog, very well could have been 6 pounds. Nearly every inch of this lake is surrounded by cat tails. All of the edges are covered in a thick moss type vegetation as well, leaving maybe a couple inches of water. Once it starts to drop off, until about 8-10 feet, there is a weed line. This might be 3 to 6 feet wide, only leaving maybe two feet between that thick mossy stuff, and the stalks of weeds. Then it just drops off. Now, I know fishing points is obvious, but since it drops off so fast, I don't know if it would do me any good here. I guess I should just be going along the edge and making long casts and bringing them back, but any other tips as to how to attack this would be great.

Yes, they are. Big Bite makes a majority of the GM plastics.

Zoom Z-Drop in Morning Dawn and Watermelon Red has been killing them for me lately. I have yet to be skunked if it comes down to throwing a drop shot after I fish everything else first.

Virginia state record largemouth is more like 16 pounds? Or did you move and not update your profile.

My co-angler gut hooked two fish Wednesday. Its a mix of leaving slack line and the mono not being sensitive enough to feel the bite. Even braid can have this problem in deep water. I watched him on the one fish. He had the line tight and either the fish hit REALLY softly, or the braid had too much of a bow in it from wanting to float up. The second was while waiting for his bait to hit the bottom. He tossed out and after feeding about 30 feet of line out, he asked how deep we are. I said 21 feet. He gave me a look and reeled up to find a fish had been swimming away with it for a bit. I hadn't been a good enough teacher that day to mention to watch for a jump on the fall.

Had our store associate tournament today. Associates were able to suggest a lake and vote on them, one of the two lakes with the most votes would be drawn from a hat two days before the day of the tournament, to keep things mostly fair. A lake called Union Lake was picked, and a lot of people complained that it was going to be crappy, and that this lake sucked. I paid in to fish the tournament the last day that I could, thinking I wouldn't have a motor for my boat. I borrowed a friends 9.9 just to get out there, and got one of the non-boaters who wanted to go but hadn't found a boater yet. My co-angler had never REALLY been out bass fishing before, so I set him up with a few good baits for the conditions. This lake is a very deep, very clear lake. Something I don't fish often. It might be 2 or 3 feet deep out from shore for about 20 to 100 feet, and then drops very fast into 20-40 feet, sometimes down to 100. I watched a few of the bassresource videos about contour and summer fishing, to get a bit better idea what I might want to do, being this is the first time I was going to here and the lake definitely has some contour to it. I tell you what, I have NO idea what they were talking about. My partner and I had a pretty good day! Right after blast-off, being in a big, slow boat, The first few good spots I wanted to fish were taken. So we started on a spot right off the launch where two points came together, with a saddle and a nice drop nearby. We were sitting in 20', casting up and dragging baits off the ledge. First 10 casts I landed a 2lb smallmouth dragging a tube. The next hour went without a bite, so we moved to my next spot, that surprisingly, no one was fishing. I thought it looked perfect on the map. A channel led up from 40 feet into an outlet with a low bridge, steep drops on either side and some grass and rocks. We fished here for the rest of the 5 hours we had, and only seen three other teams go in and come back out. I fished a dropshot for a bit, and landed a keeper smallmouth after seeing some activity on the sonar. I handed my co-angler a dropshot, and he went to town. In no time at all, had a 2lb LMB in the boat. He was happy as could be. We went up and down this channel atleast a dozen times, ended up getting our limit and proceeded to cull about 6 times. We were one of only 3 teams to weigh a limit, and took second place with 10.53. First place had big fish and 13.35. My co-angler not being very experienced, was able to learn a lot from me and he actually ended up carrying me for our second place finish. He caught our two big fish, a 2-5 and 3 pounder. He had another 3 on his line, and came off. I could have taken a tip from him. whatever he was doing was working, my bite slowed down quite a bit for the last hour or so. In terms of size, big bass was just under 4, so this lake might not be great by some standards. But being out there and being able to put a novice on some fish and really letting him get some experience makes me think this lake is pretty under rated. Not only that, but smallmouth after smallmouth, who wouldn't love some of that action? Some of these fish were so feisty, I had to play them out or a few minutes at a time before they would stop taking runs from the boat. All in all, it was a good day. Edit: Oh, and second place, we received $150 to split, and I won a Shimano Chronarch in a raffle afterwards. That made it even better.

I didn't give a kid any baits, but I did hand off an old ultralite rod to kid that was fishing off the side of a river about three years ago. He was out there fishing and his bigger brother was playing around nearby. The older brother was being loud and obnoxious, and even threw a couple rocks at me in the boat as I passed by. The younger brother had his little rod, a bucket, and his worms, just fishing away. After about an hour I came back by, and seen that his rod was gone, and he was fishing with just line and a bobber. He had one fish in his bucket and he looked pretty upset. I watched him yank at a fish with the line, it came off right at shore. I asked him what happened to your fishing rod? He replied that his brother was being mean and broke it after he caught this fish, and that his dad gave him a woopin'. I said, "Well, he wont be doing that again will he?" And I heard his dad yell from the back porch of the house, "He sure won't!" I kind of laughed, and looked forward and seen that little ultralite. I hadn't used it in a couple years since I had bought a new one, so I went and beached up a little ways passed him and jumped up on the deck with that rod. Put it together real quick, and said "Here ya go buddy." He lit up and came running so fast I thought he was gonna jump in the boat. He grabbed it and kept yelling thank you while he was running up to the porch to show his dad. His dad said thanks as well and waved to me. It made me feel pretty good, but the best thing about it was last season when I was going down the same channel, I seen that little boy out there again fishing with the same combo I gave him. I was in a different boat so I don't think he recognized me, but he still looked as happy as could be out there fishing.

Braid - Suffix 832 20, 50, 65lb, and Seaguar Kanzen 15lb Mono - P-line CXX 15lb and Yo-Zuri Hybrid 12lb Flouro - Seaguar Invis-X in 8, 10, 15, 20lb, BPS 12lb. So far I like the BPS, but I've always used Seaguar. Its no replacement, but I haven't found a reason not to keep fishing it for now.

In the first series, when I bought the Bass Pass after three episodes had already aired, I paid the full price only to find that I would NOT be able to watch the first two because I had purchased it after they were already available. I would have to pay $2.99 EXTRA per episode. They fixed it pretty quick, so I wasn't unhappy yet. Second series come along. I paid for the Bass Pass a month or so in advance so I could watch it, since at the time I did not have Outdoor Channel. Then, come to find out that the paying customer was going to have to wait a WEEK until after the new episode airs on TV to watch the one that had aired a week earlier. They changed it like they should have, so I bought the third series. But, I had come to find that they take away my right to watch these episodes after 90 days, when my season was just barely getting started, and dock fishing will be playing a big roll in the months to come on my local lakes. The point of making the extended casts available for people to watch online is so they can learn more about what the anglers were doing that may be current with the techniques someone may be using at the time. Even though its been over a year, I still have the ability to watch the very first tournament, but I can no longer watch the one that would give me the most information I can use for my area. Soo, I'm not longer buying any of them.

Oh no, its more like 18 hours of fishing footage for $15. But just the way they have been screwing over the paying customer has turned me away.

Yes, you have to pay per tournament. And no, you cannot download, and they take away your ability to go back and watch these tournaments after 90 days. I like the format, and I would like to watch the extended casts, but I'm not paying for them anymore.

Sorry maybe I didn't explain it well enough. The Lowrance will only take the MicroSD. I bought a Michigan lake map chip for the Lowrance, but one of the closest lakes to me is not on it. I have a second regular SD Navionics lake map chip that I believe has this lake. I was asking if there was a way to take the maps off of the large SD card and combine them on the MicroSD that I'm using.

I have two Navionics chips. One, an SD card that a friend gave me since he went to Lowrance and they use MicroSD. I had planned on buying Hummingbird, but recently found a better deal on Lowrance, and bought one of the $99 state lake maps, but one of my more important lakes is not on there, and I believe it is on the other map. Is there a way to combine these chips so they both show up on my Lowrance?

Like WRB said, stop relying on the brakes, use your thumb. You will backlash a lot while learning but once you learn to cast with little brakes and more thumb, you'll backlash much less when something goes wrong with your cast. Most people dial the brakes and cast like they are chopping wood. My brakes are mostly turned off, and my casts are slower and smoother. Letting the rod load with the lure. The less violent you cast, the less likely you are to backlash.

Not anymore! If she was still here, I definitely would have after just coming home with an Elite-5 sonar/GPS and a MI lake maps chip.

And you have to remember some of these shows were filmed last year when these weren't all available yet.

A friend of mine pointed this out to me when we were fishing last summer. He's had it happen a lot in the past. A bullfrog came after his River2Sea frog while we were fishing. It was quite hilarious to watch as this frog was trying to hump his hollow body, and both of them got hit by a 2 pounder. He set the hook, his lure and the frog came out of the fish' mouth and we watched that horny toad go flying over our heads. He seemed to be ok when he landed in the water on the other side of the canal. lol

I used it fishing for walleye. On a day no one else had caught anything that I talked to, I pulled two keepers out of the river.

Its hardly the equipment. A lot of them these days are fishing with the same $100-200 gear that many of us here use. There are guys here that probably have more money into their equipment than some Pros and may have never even fished a tournament. Yes, the boat is a huge piece of expensive equipment that makes it easier for them to fish, but they could jump in any little tin boat and probably fish just as well. The reason they are better is because they have better critical thinking skills. They can take all the information they learned about where the bass might be in different seasons, what type of cover is going to hold the most fish, what type of structure is in the lake and how the bass might be using that to feed, how they react to weather, your line, lure, presentation... They take all that and put together a pattern, which will lead them to be able to find more fish. Then it all changes in the flip of a switch and they start over. A lot of times you may be able to beat them on your home waters. But if you level the field, same tackle, same boat, same unknown waters... Most any of them will still hammer them.