Bluebasser86

No, but it's pretty similar to Carolina rigging for bass, which TONS of bass guys do.

I make my own because I couldn't find any that held together very well or worked as well as I felt like they should. I do best with black and blue, bluegill, crappie, and sexy shad colors. I use a ton of different things for trailers; 2/3 of a trick worm or stick worm, grubs, pit boss, Rage craws or Menace, subwoofers, beat shads, C tail worms, just about anything. Lately I've really be doing well with a 4" Havoc Pit Boss trimmed down and rigged sideways, they have a ton of action rigged that way and you can catch a couple dozen before it either won't stay up on the hook or all the legs get ripped off.

I have my lure building room with my table covered with all my bladed jig/jig building supplies. Above it are 3 plaque mounted deer racks and a shelf with various antique fishing lures, a Oakley Big Bass hat signed by KVD, and my Robin Hooded arrow from a few years back. To the right is my wall of tournament plaques, 4 from the bass club I used to fish in and 1 from a BASS Weekend Series tournament. Across from that table is my only skin mount (or any fish mount for that matter) of a 6.5lb bass that used to be my PB that died after a long fight and deeply eaten crankbait while I was crappie fishing. There's several award certificates from the bass club I used to fish in and a couple fishing signs also. Across from that is an old boat prop with a "Life's better at the lake", sign and they're surrounded by a bunch of blown up pictures of some of the big flatheads I used to spend so much time pursuing. To get there you have to go through the door with my "Through these doors pass the world's greatest fishermen" sign So yeah, I have some fishing decor

Fishing for catfish bait a couple days ago when I caught this prize winner! That's shorten 2" grub on a 1/80th ounce jighead for scale

He doesn't want to share, already told me that I'll tell you he was in Kansas!

Yesterday was a good day for big fish I guess! There was another PB caught yesterday by a KC area guy too but I'll let him decide if he wants to tell the story or not.

The tungsten I'm using has inserts, and there was nothing hard for my baits to hit in the lakes and areas I was fishing.

You think a plastic bead would do the same? I understand the issue with a glass bead potentially cutting the line. I have a bunch of plastic beads I use between my bobber stop and sinker at times.

Maybe broaden your horizons by pursuing different species of fish. When the weather gets really hot during the summer and the bass bite gets tough I start chasing big catfish, bowfishing, or night fishing.

Know that you guys mention it, I have Sufix Performance braid on my swim jig rod that also does some light weed pitching duty and never had an issue with it. I hate to waste expensive braid but I lose a few more tungsten weights and I'll be there anyways, might have to get some Sufix and see if that does it.

No pike, pickeral, bowfin, or snakeheads here. Only toothy fish in the lake are saugeye, which I've never heard of biting a line or hiding in water willows. Like I said, line was brand new, probably less than 20 flips, and they were purely flips. No rocks, almost completely mud bottoms, no laydowns or anything hard for the line to fray against at all. I know it seems like it should work perfect, that's what has me so baffled. I'm using a Palomar knot fwiw, never had a problem with using it for braid before.

I've always been a straight flouro/copolymer guy, this is my first year really fishing braid a lot. One of my favorite techniques during the heat of the summer is flipping the holes in the water willows that line a lot of our lakes. For those that don't know them, they're a tough weed but not abrasive or anything. A few weeks ago I was flipping with a 7' 3" MH/MF LTB and 50lb Power Pro with a pegged 3/8oz tungsten weight and T rigged Pit Boss. Pitched into a hole and the weeds started moving immediately, felt the thump, but when I set my line immediately broke? Cussing what I assumed was just a bad knot or something I retied and caught a few more with no issues. Next night with the same setup and during a weeknight tournament it happened again! At this point I'm thinking it has to be my line is just getting too old (2 or 3 seasons), so a few days ago I bought a new spool of 50lb Power Pro super slick because I have some on my shakyhead rod and really liked it and have had zero issues with it. Thursday night, weeknight tournament again, pitch into the weeds with a pegged 3/8oz lead bullet weight and T rigged B Bug. Weeds moved immediately but nothing happened, shake, shake thump. Again, set the hook and my line immediately broke! WTH??? Especially frustrating as the fishing was very difficult and needed to put every bite into the boat. Any ideas what is going on? I know that some tungsten can be rough and fray line but it happened with tungsten and lead. I thought maybe line slippage so I retied and left a little extra tag line but never got another bite on that rod so didn't get to test that theory. Guides are good on the rod and reel and no zebra mussels in either lake it happened in.

I had an BPS Extreme that I'd owned for 4 months before it broke on the cast It was a HUGE hassle to try to return it because I didn't have my receipt. My wife worked there for awhile so I knew they could look it up by looking at my past purchases on my rewards card, but it was still almost more of a headache than it was worth. After that experience I wouldn't buy another.

I love heavy line, heavy rod, heavy jig fishing. I love fishing a jerkbait in the spring too but I think that's mainly because it's the first thing they start hitting that isn't super slow moving after the long, cold winter.

3/8oz black on black Cavitron, not even a close second.

A slow steady retrieve in shallower water will cause it to bang into the bottom, kicking up little puffs of sediment every time it does, kind of like a crawdad flipping away along the bottom

I get skunked occasionally during the winter months. I can't remember the last time I got skunked once the water temps were above about 50 though.

I'll usually spend 8-10 hours on a full day of fishing. Numbers depends a lot on where I'm at. Lakes that are known to produce good numbers, I'm pretty disappointed if I don't approach or pass 50 fish in a day. If I'm on a big fish lake I'm not worried about numbers, just quality. On those lakes a really good day could be 10 fish, but a majority of them will be quality fish.

Get a topo map if possible and forget about all the trees, look for the breaklines, long points, rockpiles, humps, anything that would hold a fish even if the trees weren't there. Find those spots and then fish the trees that are around and on the structure. If you stick to fishing those high percentage spots instead of just fishing vast amounts of trees that are all basically the same with nothing different to attract fish from the other 100 trees around it, you'll catch more fish in less time.

I'd have given it to someone else if possible. If not, then there's nothing you can do but leave it unfortunately.

Last time I was at Pomme was in October a few years ago and they were really liking a black and orange bucktail and a silver and yellow bucktail, no love for any hard baits.

Hazel. Chris and I caught 9 up to 42" and saw several more in 3 days last year along with catching several bass over 5 pounds. Love that little lake. My buddy that's going with me has never caught a muskie so hoping he gets a hold of one. Only recent report I've seen was a guy fishing for bass that caught 4 muskie in 6 hours.

For those that haven't heard already, 4 boats last night at Miola, 5 fish weighed in, Coty and I had 4 of them. RJ and 1strikeking had the other one that was 1.90 pounds. Coty and I had 4 for 4.94 pounds. We had the big bass as well, the biggest 2.40 pound fish I've ever seen, think I need to check my scale??

I'll be chasing Ski's in MO next week as well, but not at Pomme

Everything works, senkos and stick worms included, but this time of year is a good time of year for cranking and winding to cover water and get in touch with those aggressive fish. If you find them concentrated in one area or missing the moving baits, then break out the senkos to clean up or because they're not quite getting the moving baits good enough. A bluegill colored bladed jig has been killing them for me lately.