Osprey39

Thanks, appreciate it

Hey all, I am going to be visiting my folks down in Central Florida over the Memorial Day Weekend. My dad is not really into bass fishing (he's a saltwater guy) but he is going to take me bass fishing while I'm there. I need to know where is a good place to go and what are some general patterns for this time of year? My folks live in Merritt Island so somewhere within an hour of there would be preferable. Thanks in advance.

KVD Perfect Plastics Ocho is the best IMHO.

I'd love to but it's kind of a long haul from Albuquerque to Phoenix, Denver or Dallas just to try on shoes Those are the closest BPS stores to me.

I like both of those and I like that BPS is offering free shipping on footwear and apparel right now too!

I'm looking for a pair of shoes I can wear barefoot (no socks) and dry quickly if they get wet. I don't really want any sandal type shoes because I always seem to get sunburned with those even if I use sunscreen. Also, comfort is the most important thing to me because I have flat feet. I saw some at a local store but they had basically no padding inside and I knew without even trying them on they would be murder on me standing up all day in them. Let me know if you have suggestions.

Some plastics do have a memory, just depends but I would try to avoid it.

I have two soft tacklebags and in one of those I keep all my plastics in 3 soft satchels where I keep most of them in the original bags. I have one for craws/creatures, one for finesse worms and one for worms with moving tails.

Chatterbaits, I have plenty of those and they seem to work better than spinnerbaits here for whatever reason. I'll have to check and see if I have any black ones though.

Yeah, I was referring to the ones made back in the late 80s early 90s. They bled like a stuck pig lol.

That's true but the OP's point, and he is correct, is that crawfish pattern cranks don't resemble a crawfish at all besides the paint scheme.

Bigbill, it's not so much that I don't have confidence in spinnerbaits I guess, it's just that they don't seem to work too well in our lakes. Not for bass anyway. The only time I've ever caught bass on them is when there is a big shad hatch and the shad are popping on the surface. A white spinnerbait run just underneath the surface has produced for me then. Most of the other guys in our club don't use them much either so it's not just my take on it. That said, I did throw one for awhile last weekend with no success but that doesn't mean much because the one fish I caught was the only bite I had all day on anything. I'm just looking for some alternatives to the spinnerbait. I see black jigs have been mentioned a couple of times. I have plenty of black and blue jigs and plastics. Guess I will put one of those on my jig rod and see how it goes.

I've often wondered the same thing. I'm convinced that a fish cannot see that much detail with a bait moving by quickly so to them it just looks brown or orange. Even if you're hitting bottom with it, crawfish don't wobble and when they move fast, it's backward not forward. I've caught fish on crawfish pattern rat-l-traps by just jigging them on the bottom. I don't think I've ever caught one on a crawfish pattern lipped bait but I will still throw those sometimes if they have bright orange on them and the water is really murky.

Used to be back in the old days the colors would bleed pretty badly and I have also seen the oil they were packed in wreak havoc on tackleboxes. I don't think that's much of an issue anymore but perhaps old habits remain.

That's unfortunately commonplace these days. I sell construction tools and almost all of them are made in China these days. One manufacturer does that and gets a competitive advantage and the rest follow suit. Kind of sad really.

Did not know that but I wouldn't pay the $ they want for those anyway. I have a pair of Revos that cost $249 when I got them and there's really nothing that special about them other than the metal in the frames is heavier than normal. I remember when Oakley first hit the scene and they were not too pricey but they are so popular now, that is no longer the case.

I just got a pair of these from TW: http://www.solarbat.com/products/nocs-1005 Reasonably priced, good lenses and to my pleasant surprise they are made in USA (something I highly doubt any of the other brands mentioned in this thread can claim.) Because of that last fact, I am going to buy this brand solely from now on. We don't make much in the USA anymore and companies that make stuff here at a good price should be rewarded IMO.

I went to fish the lake our club tourney is at next weekend and found the water to be extremely dirty. It wasn't quite what I would call muddy, just really dirty. The water everywhere is pretty shallow as it's a reservoir that's been drawn down to about 4% capacity. Lots of trees, a fair amount of rock structure. Curious to hear what everyone goes to in that kind of water as far as baits and colors. I only caught one dink on a sexy shad KVD 2.5. I know people are going to say spinnerbaits w/colorado blades but I have very little confidence in them. I rarely ever catch fish on them so what else is good for those conditions.

Coulda been short strikes where they only had 1 hook of 1 treble in them and they just shook it loose. It happens with crankbaits sometimes.

Fluorocarbon is a poor choice on any topwater bait because it sinks and pulls the nose of the bait under water. That will kill the action of most topwater baits.

Weeds aren't really an issue here in New Mexico. The only lake that has any to speak of is Ute and that's mostly that snot grass stuff. Bushy type trees however are prevalent and many of them are well below the waterline so you only become aware of them after you hang a lure in them

Keep it on a semi-slack line and like POPRG said just twitch the rod tip a few times and reel up most of the slack and do it again. That will make the bait do what is known as 'walking the dog'. It will dart back and forth and it's pretty deadly if bass are on a topwater bite. The reason I say keep a semi-slack line is because in my experience if you try to keep the line tight the whole time it kills the action quite a bit.

A buddy of mine that works in a weld shop made a few and gave me a couple. I'm wondering if they work as well as I've heard. I mean these things are getting banned from tournament tours left and right, are they really that good? I ask because about the only rod I have that could handle these things is my flipping stick and I don't want to go out and buy a new combo and find out it's all hype. Also, the lakes I fish in have lots of submerged bush/trees with lots of limbs. Do they get hung up a lot?

Exactly. This is hardly an efficient way of fishing. Not only is the time involved prohibitive but staying on your trolling motor constantly means you will be lucky if your batteries last all day.

I've only had one of the ceramic inserts come out of one of my Mojos and I just popped it back in after putting a little epoxy on it. I am actually surprised how rugged the guides are because I step on them a lot (I hate trying to get rods out of the crappy rod lockers on my boat so I just keep them on the deck) and they are no worse for wear after being bent back to the correct angle. Like I said though, If I were the OP, I'd get the better rod if I had the budget for it. My main point is that if money is an issue, the Mojo is still a good rod. I hear all this crap about sensitivity and I tend to agree with the thread someone else started here about that...it's a highly overrated characteristic. Almost every fish I've caught this year has been on a 30 year old glass spinning rod and several of those fish were caught when they weren't hitting my tube so much as just picking it up off the bottom. In other words, there was no bite to be felt, just some steady resistance. I still knew they were there and still caught 'em even with my antique fishing implement