Bluebasser86

I've had great success with them. They're not designed to be fished like a regular crank imo. They are great for fishing areas over grass or where there is little cover to deflect a bait off of because their wandering/hunting action causes a similar reaction that a deflection does. Areas where bass are cruising off structure and cover looking for baitfish are great places to fish them. I really like the Smash color.

Welcome to the forum from a fellow KS member The great thing about making your own is you can make them as complicated or as simple as you want. I make my own and pretty much stick to about 10 colors for 90% of my fishing, but if the fish favor something a little different I can always make some up to what they like.

What kind of boat I'm getting next year

Rain? pfft. We fished through downpours, lightning, and HAIL at Table rock last Thursday, steadily catching fish the whole time BPS 100mph suits and we were dry as a bone when the sun came back out.

As some of you know, Chris (kanasbassfisher08) and I were at Table Rock this past week while the Elites were there and fished almost all of Thursday and all Friday. Fishing was really pretty great both days, never did catch a big fish but the numbers of solid fish near keeper size to about 17" was great. We launched Thursday morning from Shell Knob and we were pretty immediately catching fish. Mike McClleland was fishing under the highway 39 bridge when we were launching but there was such a concentration of fish under there that we managed to catch some fish behind him on cranks while he was jerkbaiting. As we fished the pocket next to the ramp we caught fish steadily on jerks, bladed jigs, and football jigs. About that time it cut loose with lightning, downpour, and even hail, we caught fish right through all of it. After it cleared up we started bouncing around a bit and found fish on most any rocky point and smaller pockets with water at least 10' deep a decent cast away from the bank. We were catching them good enough that we double several times. Jerks and jigs did most of the damage but we got a few on cranks and 1 on an A-rig also. I fought off the biggest cottonmouth I've ever seen to get a Megabass Vision 110 magnum out of a tree and Chris lost a big fish in a tree almost immediately after that, so it was a pretty exciting day. We had probably close to 50 fish between us, all largemouth and spots. Friday was much colder and very windy all day. We launched from Baxter and again we caught fish immediately by the ramp on jerkbaits. Jerks were for sure the weapon of choice almost all day. Friday they seemed to be in the same areas, but there had to be some kind of wood around for the fish to be there. Lots of pros were running around Little Indian, including Aaron Martens, Chris Lane, and Randy Howell. We got in 1 pocket late morning that produced fish about every other cast for both of us all the way to the back of it, all 3 flavors of bass this time including my biggest smallmouth of the trip. Another bank in the early afternoon produced similar results, again for all 3 kinds of bass, including Chris' only smallmouth of the trip. All the spots we caught were extremely fat too like this one I caught for another double. Right at the end of the day the jerkbait bite died so I picked up an old school wart and started laying it on them right at dark. One fish was a toad, but unfortunately she had no desire to meet me and parted ways with my wart shortly after she rolled on the top We would have had close to 50 fish together again, just wearing the paint off our jerkbaits.

Several of the area lakes here are terrible; bottles, worm and liver containers, fishing line, bobbers, food wrappers and boxes, old clothes, cigarette boxes, pretty much anything. Some of the shore access areas have been closed because of the excessive amounts of waste. You can put trashcans out but it doesn't help, they just throw the trash all around the trashcan but not in it. I know some states do "Adopt a Shoreline" programs just like some states do the adopt a highway to help with trash.

That drives me insane for some reason. Cranking in a fish on a big spinning reel or low profile casting reel and they edit in the clicking noise for dramatic effect I guess? The drama of the whole thing is a little overdone too. Still, it's a show about fish and fishing so I watch it despite the little things that annoy me. One of my favorite episodes was when he was trying to catch the Gnooch catfish and caught a giant softshell turtle that almost got one of the crew members, 1:57 in the clip.

We have Chinooks fly over our house all the time, shakes the whole house, I work midnights.....

Send them to DVT and have them flushed and super tuned, you'll be impressed then

Shakyheads, dropshot, split shot rig, and swimming grubs all have to be fished on spinning gear for me. Shakyhead-6' 10" M/F LTB/3000 C14 10lb Sunline Super fluoro DS/SS/or grub-6' 10" ML/XF LTB/1000 Stradic 10lb Nanofil/8lb Sunline Super fluoro leader or a 7' 3" Ethos/1000 Symetre 6lb Mustad Ultra line mono.

A hammered brass blade is a great option in dirty/stained water, why I don't know but it has produced very well for me.

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I bought a 3D trout a couple weeks ago. Still too cold to fish it here but it looks great in the water and seems very well built.

Last time I weighed my tackle bag was on a flight to Mexico. That was back in 04 and it was a very scaled down version and weighed in at a dainty 83.5 pounds, enough that I had to put a couple 3700 boxes into my clothes bag or pay an overweight fee Now I'd have to load it all into the boat and truck and weigh it on truck scales.

Your brother must be tiny if that fish is only 20"!

If you did no good at Melvern I can almost promise you that Clinton won't be any kinder, it's rated poorly for bass for a reason. They're in there, but finding and catching them is a serious challenge. If you do go I'd suggest mainly targeting the dam for smallmouth since there's a much better population of them than largemouth in there.

In Kansas it has to be Perry or Hillsdale. Neither of those even come close to LOZ on an average summer weekend though, lots of people with the money to buy a boat who have no idea how to operate one.

Welcome to the forum! Lots of information about local lakes here, but very little from your side of the state line, would be nice to be reading some on here. I've been looking hard at registering my boat at Jacomo, seems like it's a pretty nice lake with some good fish in it.

Ryan (Cbass) and I ventured out to the same pond I fished last week. It was a little slower going and the quality wasn't quite as good but we both did get a pretty solid fish each. Mine went 3lbs 14ozs and hit a bruise colored finesse jig, Ryan's was 4lbs 4ozs and ate a Candy Bug finesse jig.

I guess if we get bad weather (wind) on the 19th we'll have to have it on the river pond below the dam , or Olathe.

You can go a lot higher than that for a Rat, like a Nezumma XL for over $200, and that's less than half what a Roman Made Mother will cost you.

I've never understood this, how do you not cross the lines when tying a knot? Isn't a knot essentially just a bunch of crossed lines? A knot wouldn't work very well if it never crossed itself. Don't take that as a jab at you at all, I just hear that a lot and it's never made sense to me. For me, I feel the SDJ knot cinches down much smoother, which reduces heat damage to the line. I tied a Palomar for a long time with fluoro and had very few problems. I agree that most probably tighten it too quickly or don't wet the line well enough and damage it while tightening it and that it isn't a matter of it being a poor knot for fluoro, I just like the SDJ better.

Next time use a bait with trebles on it. In my experience, they love topwaters. My PB slammed into a Super Spook Jr right as it swung through the door jam of my bedroom. A 10lb grey tabby with a hook in it's paw will peel drag like a river run steelhead with the attitude of a pi$$ed off bull shark. I recommend having a rubberized net, heavy duty gloves, and some long handles pliers for hook removal though. I spend a lot of time during the winter with an old pistol grip casting rod and old baitcaster, casting a knotted up old sock to our Golden Retriever. Doesn't really help much with the cabin fever but it's usually good for some pretty good comedic relief.