Bluebasser86

Dottie..all 25lbs 1oz of her, and the "dot" on the underside of her right gill plate that helped make her famous. The record will be broken, but it won't come from Texas and probably not Mexico either. The water temperatures in both those places get too high, causing lots of stress on the fish during summer months. Mexican lakes are also too heavily harvested by local fishermen and netters for a bass to live long enough to get that big. I'd love someone to prove me wrong, but all my chips are on California or Japan, with a majority of them being on Japan.

Depends a lot on what kind of "topwater" you're talking about. I fish a 6' 2" M/XF for my small to mid range jerkbaits, small to mid range poppers and walkers. I use a 6' 6" M/F for my larger jerkbaits and poppers. I use a 6' 6" MH/F for my full size walkers and buzzbaits.

If it's anything like what I did, you'll shake, a lot. Then you'll get a bunch of pictures where you either have a big goofy grin, you look very confused, or like you're having an out of body experience. You'll turn her loose and keep wondering to yourself if that actually just happened or not As for the OP's question, I usually have a celebratory smile and laugh but never any yelling.

I love fishing in the rain, and I love that most other guys won't fish in the rain

I prefer the weedless shad over the grass minnow but both of them are more for catching keepers than catching big fish in my experience. The shads outfish regular hollowbellys by a wide margin in the heavily pressured lakes around here.

IMO, there's more cost effective options that work well for just ticking over grass. For me the Swing Impacts really stand above the rest on a 1/4oz darter head just cast and retrieved slowly back in or stroked along the bottom.

Any idea on the girth? 30" is a ridiculously long bass. By the fishing calculator on the site, if your fish was 30" and had a very modest girth at 18" it would still weigh 15.88 pounds. George Perry's world record was only 2.5" longer and measured 28.5" around. Kurita's fish was just over 27 inches long and almost 27" around. Point being, when you get a fish that long you can get a big difference depending on the girth. Even if it was anorexic and only 12" around it would be near 10 pounds, although I doubt a bass could be that skinny and still be alive.

I had a Cabela's XMLti with the recoil guides that I sold because the sound of braid coming through the guides drove me crazy. The one sound that drives me absolutely insane while I'm fishing is the sound of my phone ringing. It seems I get 10X the phone call and texts when I'm on the water as I do when I'm not.

I've always felt that the narrow wobbling baits have a more subtle action which is why they're more effective in cold water. It isn't always the case though as I've done very well with squarebills and wide wobbling deep divers in cold weather. Personally I feel that speed is the most important part next to location. It doesn't matter how wide or narrow your bait wobbles, if you're fishing it too fast in cold water you're not going to get bit. That's why a wide wobbling bait like a Wiggle Wart can work so well in cold water, it still fishes correctly at very slow speeds, which allows fish to react to the bait even when they're moving very slowly. At the same time I've done very well with very narrow wobbling baits like a Shad Rap or DT6 in the warmer months also.

It's when they give you back a small portion of the money that was stolen from you that you earned with your hard work and then you're supposed to act like they did you a favor I concur on the whole tree/truck/briar patch, fox poop thing. Maybe after the roll through the bushes there could be a well placed fire ant hill that's closely guarded by a giant nest of angry hornets?

Don't do that to the poor kid, just start him straight on spinning gear. I have an extra spincast reel. It's a Daiwa Goldcast, next to the Omega it's as good as it gets in the spincasting world. I'll be rocking the Zebco 733 on my 7' 6" MH Daiwa flipping stick

The pro is black instead of silver also. Hate to have such a sweet reel and have it not match that rod I can honestly say I have fished with an Omega and it is leaps and bounds ahead of most spincasting reels. Now that's an interesting thought though. I know when they used to have some big bass challenge show on TV where the pros fished for a day on El Salto to catch the biggest fish, they had to catch their first fish of the day using a Coke can with line wrapped around it or take a penalty. Should we make everyone catch their first fish of the day on a spincast reel before they can start using their normal gear

Get a 7' 10" BPS Extreme when they go on sale for $80. I've been using one for a couple years now and like it pretty well. I've fished baits up to a 8" Hudd on it without any issue.

I really like them. I haven't had any problem with them not swimming at slow speeds and I don't add any scent to them and the fish don't seem to mind the plastic smell at all. They're tough for sure, I've caught more than 20 fish on them before they finally give up on me. I like to let them sink to the bottom then reel them as slow as I can stand. I also like to rig mine with a belly treble to help with hookups.

I agree with going with the Strike King series of baits. Great color options, proven baits, and they cover all depths. If you were just trying to stay with 1 brand of bait, that's what I'd go with. As far as which baits, for me it would be a Series 1, KVD 1.5, series 3, series 5, and 6XD. As far as colors go, I'd have to have chart/black back, sexy shad, green gizzard shad, sexy ghost minnow, and neon bluegill.

1. jig 2. 3/8 home made black and blue chatterbait, fished as slow as I can keep the blade working 3. 3/8oz black on black cavitron

Sure did! My wife wasn't real big on the name Lake at first but it's really grown on her, probably because of how many people hear it and say they really like the name I liked it because I obviously like fishing and being on the water, and my wife and I love camping and being on the water so why not name our son after something that we already loved? Plus, how do you say no to that face? It could have been a lot worse for him for sure. My wife's boy name was "Aspen" Something tells me "Boy Named Sue" would have been one of his favorite songs if he'd got stuck with that name

I tie direct to the split ring. If I was going to use a snap I'd remove the split ring from the front of the bait first. A snap can absolutely interfere with the action of a delicately balanced crankbait as well. I've seen baits that ran well on 8 or 10 pound test but if you stepped up to 12 they'd start rolling. Most of your bass cranks won't be effected, but it certainly can mess the action up. In my experience as snap is much more likely to fail than a standard split ring also, either because it gets opened while fighting a fish or it opens up when a bait gets snagged and pressure is applied to try to free it. I don't agree with the thought that it's really that much faster either. For one, an experienced knot tier can tie a palamar knot in just a few seconds very easily. Secondly, if you're fishing a crankbait where you should be you're going to need to retie often anyways, defeating the purpose of the snap.

The reels at least $20 if it's the Authentic 33, could be up to $27 if it's the gold series! You should step up with the big boys and get a Zebco Omega Pro, probably be the best $75 spincast reel you've ever owned

Watch out, I'll break out my Zebco 733 with 20lb mono and blistering 3.8:1 gear ratio and start winching in those hawgs! BTW, you know you can always just delete a post if your post didn't work like you wanted it to right?

I'd bet my Zebco that you won't have to fish a jerkbait at Grand to catch fish. Now Melvern in April will probably be a whole different story.

Um, that would include us buddy!

As long as Sizzle is there, we'll have that covered!

I had service all over Grand last year. Are we seriously that worried about people fibbing about their fish? Most phones keep track of the date and time a picture was taken so we could check it that way if we're really worried if someone is telling the truth or not. I'm just going to have fun and fish and if I win yeah go team! Like I said last year, I don't think we have any egos big enough to need to lie about the weight of a fish in a "just for fun" tournament.