Bluebasser86

HMMM, I love the Luck E Strike jerkbaits and squarebills Only issue I have with them is I can't seem to keep a French Pearl jerkbait for more than about 2 trips before I lose it Their jerkbaits are my favorite and I've had great luck with their squarebills also.

He fishes it out of a beat up old white and green Lowe aluminum with torn up seats and carpet and maybe a 25ph motor. He told my buddy that bought my Lowe Roughneck that when he wants to sell it he'd buy it so he can fish the local lakes without being bothered all the time. I'm sure that gets annoying when you're out just trying to have fun fishing and guys keep coming up to you and asking questions and everything. I know without the fans there is no sport, but they still deserve their time away.

Killer on a shakyhead

Saturday I fished the Lake Quivira fishing club tournament with my buddy Tony. It's a good group of fishermen who all live on the lake which gives them a pretty big advantage. Being an Elite Series pro who lives on the lake probably gives you an even bigger advantage though! When I saw on FB that Brent Chapman was planning on fishing it with his son I knew it was going to be a serious uphill battle. I formulated a game plan the night before that we were going to go up the canals and risk getting way fewer bites in hopes that they would be the right ones. I missed 3 fish and was not having a good start when Tony set the hook on his jig and immediately one of the biggest bass I've seen out there in a long time was on the surface. Grab the net and scooped her up. 19" and 3.52 pounds was the start of our 11lb 1oz limit. I thought we probably finished in the money but couldn't believe when I heard we'd actually won the thing! Not only first place, but Tony's fish was good for big bass as well. He fished one of my home made finesse jigs in black/ gold flake with a Okeechobee craw colored YUM craw papi while I alternated between a home made sapphire blue 1/2oz brush jig with a black and blue Zman Batwingz trailer and a home made black on black bladed jig with a sapphire blue pit boss as a trailer. Getting the win was awesome, catching them all on my baits made it that much better I got to talk to Brent quite a bit afterwords and he was super nice as he is every time I've gotten to chat with him, congratulated us on our win and fielded everyone's questions afterwords. I'm sure if we tried 99 more times he'd get the best of us, but just once we got to say that we got the best of the former AOY and Elite Series angler on his home lake

For planning on not fishing this weekend, I sure did a lot of fishing! Thursday I ran out to Olathe after work hoping to get into a wiper or two. They were busting shad like crazy but couldn't buy a strike KDWPT was out there netting so I decided to hit one of my favorite short stretches before they got to it. I missed a bite on a jig and then stuck the next one. I was surprised by the amount of weight I felt, even more surprised when I saw the size of the fish. Not a monster, but a heck of a nice fish for Olathe, my biggest of the year anyways at 19" long and 3.72 pounds on a sapphire blue home made finesse jig. After that little victory I spent the next couple hours trying to get a wiper to bite, all in vain. Even freelining a live shad was unsuccessful. I did get extremely lucky despite not catching a fish. I'd lost my favorite chrome/blue XR50 on the same point fishing from the bank the day before. I got snagged momentarily and it felt like I had a stick still when I reeled in, but this is what I found. So back to chasing bass, I hit another one of my favorite spots and caught a small one on a shakyhead. Next cast I fired a trap through and got hit by a heavy fish that was giving me slow headshakes. I was pretty sure what it was and my feelings were confirmed when it broke the surface. A fat saugeye was soon in the net that went 20" and 3.09 pounds. Nobody wanted her so back she went to get bigger Didn't catch many other fish but those couple nice fish made up for it easily, plus I didn't hook myself this time! Saturday I fished the Lake Quivira fishing club tournament with my buddy Tony. It's a good group of fishermen and obviously living on the lake gives them a pretty big advantage. Being an Elite Series pro probably gives you an even bigger advantage though! When I saw on FB that Brent Chapman was planning on fishing it with his son I knew it was going to be a serious uphill battle. I formulated a game plan the night before that we were going to go up the canals and risk getting way fewer bites in hopes that they would be the right ones. I missed 3 fish and was not having a good start when Tony set the hook on his jig and immediately one of the biggest bass I've seen out there in a long time was on the surface. Grab the net and scooped her up. 19" and 3.52 pounds was the start of our 11lb 1oz limit. I thought we probably finished in the money but couldn't believe when I heard we'd actually won the thing! Not only first place, but Tony's fish was good for big bass as well. He fished one of my home made finesse jigs in black/ gold flake with a Okeechobee craw colored YUM craw papi while I alternated between a home made sapphire blue 1/2oz brush jig with a black and blue Zman Batwingz trailer and a home made black on black bladed jig with a sapphire blue pit boss as a trailer. Getting the win was awesome, catching them all on my baits made it that much better I got to talk to Brent quite a bit afterwords and he was super nice as he is every time I've gotten to chat with him, congratulated us on our win and fielded everyone's questions afterwords. I'm sure if we tried 99 more times he'd get the best of us, but just once we got to say that we got the best of the former AOY and Elite Series angler on his home lake

I'll be fishing a buddy tournament on Lake Quivira with a friend of mine. Some stiff competition, namely Brent Chapman and his son. Going to need a lot of luck to have any chance.

Wouldn't have helped being on my side like that. Most bullet proof vest aren't stab proof also. Not that a hook would go through though. I had just taken a hoodie off, that probably would have been thick enough to stop it.

Eagle Claw actually makes the probes in the Tazers, so it's pretty close to getting hooked. Having been hooked and tazed, I'll take the hooks everytime.

Yes and I really appreciate the suggestion. It's a great color to mix in for a little flash or to stand alone for a flashy, baitfish color.

Why this XR25 is missing a hook point and has a small piece of my shirt stuck to the hook?? Been a long time since the last time but I got hooked yesterday. Fishing for wipers and saugeye from the bank, I got smacked by a fish as my bait neared the bank. Hooks missed the fish and the strike pushed my bait towards the surface so when I set the hook it rocketed back at me. One point of the brand new #8 Owner ST36's went in so easily that I didn't know I was hooked until I tried to pull it back out of my shirt. Those hooks have small barbs so I thought maybe I could just back it out with minimal force, no dice. It didn't really hurt but thankfully I was fishing with gardnerjigman. He took the front hook off to prevent further injury and we evaluated the situation. I tried to move out of the way and it ended up sticking me in my right side about 6" below my armpit. I'd almost dodged it and we could see the point lifting up the skin as it almost popped back through. Knew what had to be done so I gave Coty my pliers and told him to push it through. Didn't hurt real bad but the "pop" noise it made with it broke back through made me a little dizzy , didn't help I'd worked all night and hadn't eaten in almost 12 hours. Then the small hook gap became a problem. Got lucky again as I had some small bull nose pliers in my bag that were able to get below the barb but still be strong enough to cut the hook shank. Backed out easily once the barb was gone. Been a long time since, hopefully a long time (or never) before it happens again.

Tons of guys in the area build their own and have small lure companies. Mine are carried by a local tackle store but that was purely luck that we happened to get in with him and they've just been selling really well. You really have to do something different to stand out from the rest of the crowd though. It doesn't take much to build a jig that catches fish. If you can make a good bait and sell it for really cheap that's a good start.

I didn't catch a single keeper in my first tournament, didn't even have anything I was certain was a bite. So you did better than I did

Very limited shoreline access at Cedar Valley, and it has steep, rocky shorelines where it does have access from the bank. Either of Garnett's city lakes would be decent options though.

The start of what??

I stepped on an old, rusty piece of chicken wire once fishing barefoot. Went into my big toe and broke off right at my skin. ER visit and lots of numbing followed by lots of digging around and it was finally out, I wear shoes when I'm fishing now.

Yep, he was at the Oakley Big Bass Tour at Table Rock a few years ago while my wife and I were staying at Big Cedar where they were doing the hourly weigh ins at. I wasn't even fishing in it, and KVD was pretty busy, but he still took the time to talk to me, take a picture with my wife and I, and gave me an Oakley hat and signed it for me. Talked to me like we were old fishing buddies for a couple minutes before I left him alone so he could get back to what he was doing and so I could go fishing

It happens all the time here, especially bladed jigs. Catfish cruise the shorelines and water willows searching for bluegills and craws, right where I'm often tossing my baits. Most of them were so shallow and near the surface that they were immediately rolling on top, so no doubt what they were. I even had one jump a couple feet out and several feet over the water immediately on the hookset, about 7 pounds of catfish flying through the air is quite a sight. I can almost always feel their tails slapping my line when they roll, which is a dead giveaway to what I've hooked. There are certainly times when they fool me though. That is a full sized Pit Boss which has been my hot trailer lately. I rig them sideways (vertically) and they give the bait terrific action and extra bulk and lift so I can present a big target slowly as our water temps are cooling down.

I hope they come out with that stuff in pink like they show in the pictures, then I won't have to hunt all over for pink fireline for my wife's rod anymore

Can't hardly go fishing at a lot of the local lakes without catching someone's line they left in the water. Seems like a lot of people don't know how to break off if they get snagged so they just cut it, leaving yards and yards of line in the water. I always retrieve as much as I can of their line if I snag it and throw it away when I'm done fishing. I found a blue heron stuck in someone's heavy catfish line this summer. Taped a knife to the end of my telescoping lure retriever and managed to cut it free. It makes all fishermen look bad and it drives me crazy!

This past Saturday we had a little get together for the KC area members at a little lake a couple hours south. I fished with my brother in law Chris and we'd decided to stay and fish an extra day. We had decided on fishing a city lake a couple miles from where we stayed on Sunday but turns out they don't allow boats on the water on Sunday so off we went to Cedar Creek Valley about an hour back north towards KC. Chris had never fished there and I hadn't been there this year or during the fall so wasn't sure what to expect. I warned Chris that it was a quality lake, not quantity, then they went and proved me wrong. Not only did we catch a bunch of solid fish, we had in the neighborhood of 30-40 fish between the two of us, closer to 50 if you count all my 13 catfish and our 2 drum . At one point, I caught 4 channel cats in a row in a 50 yard stretch. We started slow, trying to force feed them jigs, which they weren't interested in. We both caught one on a jig before I started fishing one of my bladed jigs, it was on after that. I fished my Spicy Shad color and Chris threw Code Black and that was all we needed for the rest of the day. Some of them were really light bites, and some were about jerking the rod out of our hands. We both missed several and I had some that I just couldn't catch up with or keep down that jumped and tossed my bait that were really good quality fish. Weather was less than perfect but the fishing more than made up for it.

Sunday after the fall get together, Chris and I stayed to fish an extra day. We had decided on fishing Chanute City Lake but they don't allow boats on the water on Sunday so off we went to Cedar Valley. Chris had never fished there and I hadn't been there this year or during the fall so wasn't sure what to expect. I warned Chris that it was a quality lake, not quantity, then they went and proved me wrong. Not only did we catch a bunch of solid fish, we had in the neighborhood of 30-40 fish between the two of us, closer to 50 if you count all my catfish and our 2 drum We started slow, trying to force feed them jigs, which they weren't interested in. We both caught one on a jig before I started fishing one of my bladed jigs, it was on after that. I fished my Spicy Shad color and Chris threw Code Black and that was all we needed for the rest of the day. Some of them were really light bites, and some were about jerking the rod out of our hands. We both missed several and I had some that I just couldn't catch up with or keep down that jumped and tossed my bait that were really good quality fish. Weather was less than perfect but the fishing more than made up for it.

For those that couldn't make it, we caught a ton of fish at Wilson. Raymond from Mondo showed up and we were gracious enough hosts to let him win the tournament . They had 13 and some change with big bass of 4.03 pounds. Chris and I had second with just shy of 11 pounds. We caught a boatload of fish, just could not find a big one to save our lives. We caught fish on almost everything except what worked for Raymond and his partner, topwater and a jig. I caught most of mine on a bladed jig, spinnerbait, and a wacky rig. Chris even threw a couple different 6 inch swimbaits, which caught 2 of our keepers, but still never got a big fish. I did have a porker spot that we weighed in though. Chris and I stayed Sunday and went to Cedar Valley, but I'll post about that on the KC thread.

I've had much better luck from the boat. No saugeye yet though huh? They should be there shortly!

Same area as usual Chris?