Bluebasser86

Put the ring in the bottom of a fresh jar of JJ's, if she'll go in for it, she's a keeper! Maybe hide the ring somewhere in your tackle and while you're rummaging through it mention something about how you're looking for the perfect bait for the best catch of your life before you find it an propose? Corny I know but that's the best I can do at 1am

For the few of you that haven't seen them, Cbass12 and I went to Melvern Wednesday for a little cast and blast. We got down there around 11 and fished until 2:30 before we went and set our decoys out and did some duck hunting. I started with a jigging spoon and I think it took two whole casts to catch a 17.5" 3 pounder. I caught another one or two on the spoon before the Ned started to get bit pretty well. I caught a couple "dinks" (smallest fish we caught was 15" and 2.5 pounds) along with a couple more solid fish like this football with fins. Right before we left we doubled and mine proved to be the biggest of the day at 17 3/4" and 3lbs 5ozs. Wasn't fast fishing in any stretch of the imagination but I'll trade all the dinks I normally catch out there for the quality we were catching any day!

The split rings are fine now. The hooks are decent but still bend out under too much pressure so I change them straight out of the package. The French Pearl is a killer bait on smallmouth around here. I love fishing jerkbaits and I have a ton of them and they're in my top 5 baits for sure.

Don't want to hijack the thread but how do you like those Biffle Head jigs? Have you used them with other styles of baits with any success? I just ordered a mold to start pouring my own and I'm pretty excited about the different rigging possibilities.

X2, won't find a more realistic imitation at an affordable price.

Poor Boy or Snack Daddy for a regular tube, anything green pumpkin SK Flipping Pro model flipping tube for a flipping tube, black/blue, gold shiner, blue sapphire, brown/blue, black neon.

A bulkier skirt will also slow the fall quite a bit. It doesn't sound like much only adding 11 or strands but remember those numbers are basically going to be doubled (unless it's tied like a finesse style jig). So instead of having a jig with 110 skirt ends, you're going to have 132 (the band or wire wrap in the middle portion doubles the skirt over at the point it's attached to the skirt collar).

Getting the fish at the proper angle to the camera will also greatly affect how big it looks. A fish head with it's back or stomach angling away from the camera will look smaller than one held at it's widest point towards the camera.

Pretty much all the water I fish is what I considered stained (less than 3' of visibility). I do very well finesse fishing at times. One of the most stained lake that I fish a lot I do really well with a Zoom Magnum Finesse worm in redbug color on a 1/8oz shakyhead.

Roger's has Hummingbird 998 SI units for $999, normally $1,999. If I just had an extra grand laying around.

Maybe I've just been missing it on my visits to Academy but my buddy had one of these H2O Ultimate Jerk Shads when we went fishing last Thursday, looks a lot like the RC STX/Vision 110 style baits, but for $6. Some really good looking colors and if it's like the other H2O baits I'll bet it catches fish. My buddy caught some on his last week and I bought 3 I'm going to give a test drive today. The website says floating but he said his suspended perfect, which is what I'm hoping for. http://www.academy.com/shop/pdp/h20-xpress-153-ultimate-jerk-shad-1-2-oz-floating-twitch-bait/pid-891753?color=Ghost+Shad&N=4294956313+97009336+4294966997

The Staysee is a good deeper jerkbait as is the Spro Mcrip.

With water temps around 50 I'd be looking for the first drop off near their normal summertime haunts. Bass will pull off to these spots so they can quickly move vertically if the weather changes suddenly. I find they seem to prefer hard bottoms this time of year, unless you can find an area with a soft bottom that still has clumps of live weeds. What depth will vary greatly but the 5-15 foot range is probably a good starting range, but you may find them in water just covering their backs or in 20' or deeper in that water temp. As for baits, it's really open in that water temp also. My favorites are a suspending jerkbait, spinnerbait, chatterbait, rattle trap, squarebill, or a jig. I'll usually start shallow and work deeper until I find the fish. A lot of fish will move to really vertical areas at times when the water cools also. One of my favorite areas to look for is stair step drops that have "steps" in the 5, 10, and 15 foot ranges. One of our local lakes has a textbook example of this kind of area an even though it's a very small area, it will produce dozens of bass at times in late fall/early winter when our lakes have those water temps.

Our lakes are set up very nicely for squarebills, mostly shallow with stained to muddy water and the primary forage in lots of them is bluegills or shad. I fish a lot of different squarebills, KVD 1.5 and 1.0, Luck E Strike 2 and 3, Lucky Craft 1.5, Spro Little John and Fat John, H2O, and the Bandit 100 are among some of my favorites. I try to keep colors pretty simple and a majority of the time I'm fishing something chartreuse or shad colored.

When the rope broke on mine I replaced it with that exact replacement, so much nicer than a regular pull rope.

JIg is usually my first choice when fishing a dock, probably something in a natural color with that kind of water clarity. If a jig isn't working I'll usually switch to a soft stick worm T rigged weightless. If they don't eat that then there's no fish under those docks.

That sucks man. I had to go through the gut wrenching experience of losing the biggest archery buck I've ever shot last year. Made a perfect shot (I thought) and found lots of good blood sign with small bubbles, indicating a lung hit. After tracking for about 400 yards the trail just dried up. I marked the last spot I saw blood and came back with a couple friends that night, never found anymore sign after searching for hours. It was a terrible feeling, at least you can hold onto the hope that you may have missed cleanly.

I fish 8" Hudds on a 7' 10" H/F BPS Extreme that's rated for 1-3 ounce baits without any problem. Just make sure to make lob casts, no quick snap casts that will overload the rod, and you should be fine. I don't fish enough of the true bigger swimbaits to justify a rod just for them but I've had no problems fishing them on the rod I have.

#6 for me too. The hook hangers are very close together and bigger hooks seem to tangle too often for me.

I fish the 7" Slammer quite a bit, it's amazing how many smaller fish will follow and attack this bait. I've caught largemouth, smallmouth, and spots that were just barely bigger than the bait. It still attracts bigger fish and fishes really easily too. I'm probably going to go up to a 9" bait next year after seeing how effective the 7" bait is though.

Gonna go to lacygne and freeze my butt off tomorrow. I'll let you know if any other crazies are out there. Hopefully I'll catch something that makes freezing worth it. Only takes one cast to the right spot down there. It was really slow the day I caught that one that was almost 8 in March.

X2, looks like a Fallfish. Creek Chubs usually have a dark stripe in the same area as their lateral line. http://gallery.nanfa.org/v/members/Nate+Tessler/nativenorthamericanfreshwaterfish/cyprinidae/Semotilus/corporalis/Fallfish_+Kennebec+River_+10-12-11_+NT.jpg.html?g2_imageViewsIndex=1

I really like the looks of the 186's. I had my mind made up on another tin boat but now I'm not sure after seeing what I can get in glass for the same price. Looks like a nice ride! It was a good time, despite the weather. I promise we were earning our fish we were catching. Should have put another 10-15 in the boat if I could have kept my jerkbait fish stuck instead of just poking them and losing them. We'll have to do it again sometime when the weather is supposed to be a little less iffy.

Loctite Gel is the way to go. Takes a little longer to dry but it holds great and doesn't run like regular super glue. No gluing your fingers together!

Bigger swimbaits, for me anyways. Started tossing quite a few 5-8 inch baits and had way better results than I thought I'd have, not all big fish either. I also fished Keitech Swing Impacts for the first time this year, they're now a go to bait in clear water, especially for smallies.