Bluebasser86

And a big thanks to you for your generous donation! We'll have some great prizes to give away at this one to anyone attending!

No but I will next week. Was planning on fishing it next Thursday with Scrogg but obviously not if they closed the lake. I haven't heard anything about them closing it but since it was semi private as it was it made me wonder.

I'm not planning on fishing the tournaments next year so I probably won't even buy a permit next year, it's too much of a drive to catch a bunch of dinks.

I'm glad the Wednesday nighters are almost over! 3 fish weighed in by 3 teams (not us) first place and biggest fish was a massive 1.74 pounder. I bet in the last 3 weeks there has been well over 50 fish put in my boat without one being even very close to measuring, just terrible. I had one that I thought was the right fish last night until I saw those white, rubbery lips and look down face. Stupid drum even jumped like a bass!

My favorites in order, Pit Boss Sick Fish Flat Dawg Juice Worm Rocket Craw Bottom Hopper Beat Shad No use for the Devil's spear. I've used it in lakes where they'll hit nearly anything and never had a bite. Didn't like the craw fatty but it did catch some fish.

Beaver dams are one of my favorite places to fish and almost always produce. All the sticks make lots of places for baitfish and bass to hide. No reason the beavers should be chasing the bass off since they don't eat fish. They do tend to like backwaters and shallow areas which aren't the best option if the weather has been hot like it has been lately.

Anything that will eat a hook is fair game in my book. My favorites are catfish, wipers, white bass, and walleye but I'll fish for bluegill, crappie, drum, gar, carp and just about anything else. Each fish has qualities that I enjoy about them and all hold a special place with me.

I normally let water color and cover dictate my color selection. Dirty water gets bright colors or solid colors while clear water gets the more natural colors. Docks, standing timber, brushpiles, or grass I like bluegill colors. Rocks and laydowns I like craw colors. More open areas I like shad. This is just how I select them starting out and obviously isn't set in stone. Sometimes craw colors work great around grass when the craws are grazing on the grass stocks and shad colors or chartreuse is great around rocks and docks sometimes. Very rarely do I feel a shad color crank is a bad idea, if shad are present or not. Oddly enough one of the times I try to avoid shad colors is when there are tons of shad in an area because I feel the odds of fish eating my bait that looks like the millions of shad around it are a lot less than if I'm fishing a bait that stands out a little more.

A smaller, hollow belly swimbait or boot tail grub style swimbait was the first thing that came to my mind. Shallow water, good spinnerbait bite, plus you could skip it way under docks where they probably never see a bait like that.

I drag by lifting straight up, from about 9 o' clock to 11 o' clock, no hops or bounces and trying to feel every rock and stick down there.

Both very nice fish but that one has a serious gut on it!

The wife and I fished Melvern again Saturday. It was a lot tougher to find the bigger fish for some reason. We had several in the 15-16 inch range but only 2 bigger than that and they were both largemouth, 17 and 18 inches. We tried a little bit of everything and caught fish on a little bit of everything but they were mainly small fish. I got onto some big white bass for a minute that were fun. Caught a couple really healthy channel cats that pulled really well on light tackle. Caught all 3 kinds of bass again, I think that's 3 trips in a row now

When mine was hurting I got the same thing and it worked great for me. It isn't restrictive at all either so I had no problem fishing while I was wearing it.

We aren't far above the freeze line so maybe that's why we get them. I believe all we have are Gizzard shad which I think are the hardier of the 2.

Really unfortunate news here, I hope they don't close the lake now I guess if there is any shining light in this maybe they won't do all the boat spraying crap anymore, and we don't have to change the name, it can still be the Razor Clam Classic Sept. 5, 2013 Glen Elder Reservoir (Waconda Lake) and Lake Wabaunsee have the invasive species TOPEKA – The Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism (KDWPT) has confirmed the presence of zebra mussels in Glen Elder Reservoir (Waconda Lake) in Mitchell County and Lake Wabaunsee in Wabaunsee County. Zebra mussels are bean-sized mollusks with striped, sharp-edged, two-part shells. Twenty-one Kansas lakes have now been confirmed to have zebra mussels.

I have several of the LTB's and I really like them. I don't notice them being really tip heavy like others say. I do notice them being very sensitive, tough, and a joy to fish with.

Do yours not say "strong squid scent" somewhere on the package?? All mine do.

With a football jig like you're talking about I use a twin tail grub about 90% of the time. I use lots of different trailers with my brush and finesse jigs, twin tail grubs, rage craws, zoom speed,cross, big and little critter craws, paca chunks and craws, bass assassin craws, pork chunks, 1/2 a senko, pit bosses, beavers, lots of room for experimentation with jig trailers. Sometimes I try to match the colors, sometimes a mismatched bait will get bit more.

One of the best colors there is for night fishing. I to have the matching blue jig and trailer for night fishing.

Nice! I got this monster smallie on a KVD 1.0 Thursday

They're already starting to chase the big shad, and shad swimbaits, around here

I set the hook fast, pretty much as soon as I feel a bite, and I try to do more of a fast sweep set than a really hard, snap set.

Our lakes freeze and we have lots of shad?? Easiest way to tell that I know of is to watch for them flipping around on the top, it's pretty distinct once you know what you're looking at.

I have a small, bendable tripod and a timer on my camera that I can take a pretty good picture with. I can't remember the last time I went fishing by myself other than short trips after work or to poor lakes that I didn't want anyone else to have to suffer through.

I normally am really good about it because I spend so much time fishing Melvern, which is 100 times worse than Wyco for zebra mussels. I actually hadn't seen one out there until Chris caught a rock with a few on it on his crankbait. I was fishing 16lb Sunline and it's just easy to feel like you're safe with line that heavy but I know better than that and I let laziness get the best of me and it cost us.