Bluebasser86

On a good day, less than a half dozen. Great day, 1 or 2. Bad days, 2 or 3 dozen.

I have 4 crankbait rods and a big box of baits to fish on them, just to fish with them for about 2 or 3 months out of the year. The fish ignore them the rest of the year.

Not a big soft plastic jerkbait guy but I was impressed with the 6th Sense Flush last year. The packaging making sure the baits weren't kinked was nice. Seems like about half the flukes I get from Zoom are unusable they're so bent. Pretty decent durability also.

Water is getting hard around here too. Warm snap this week might open some back up but we'll see.

Welcome!

Nice! A guy in our club has the exact same one, color and everything. I'm sure the spotlock is awesome. I've got a new depthfinder I need to get put on mine now that I have all the parts in.

Welcome!

Jerkbaits, Ned rig, Dropshot, grub, and A-rig caught all our fish this weekend.

I was the guy in the boat catching all the fish this weekend. While it's fun to be catching them, it sucked because I really wanted my buddy to get on them too. Not sure why they were biting mine and not his.

That sucks. I had all my fishing gear stolen when I was a kid as well as my 2 man that I scrapped up pennies to be able to pay for, it was a huge punch in the gut.

Had a weekend fishing trip with a longtime fishing buddy this past weekend. His birthday is the first week of January, so we kind of have a tradition of going fishing together the first week of January together. This year, we went on a trip to Taneycomo/Table Rock in Missouri. Neither of us had ever fished Taneycomo for bass, it's mainly considered a trout lake, although it's a connecting body of water with current between Bull Shoals and Table Rock, so it's more of a slow to moderate river. Fairly clear water and tons of grass, it took some learning to do much. Friday we got on the water around noon and didn't get a bite for the first couple hours. Once we did, figured out the outside bends with jerkbaits and A-rigs were the deal. Saturday they weren't generating, and the bite was tough. We ran up the lake hoping to run into a big brown trout. Jon had missed his only 2 bites the day before, so I was happy to see him get on the board first. Then we poked back into a small creek mouth and he found our first trout of the trip, it was small but it was a brown, his second he'd ever caught, so we were pretty excited about it. We ran about 12 miles to the dam and fished our way back. It took 6 hours before I got my first bite, then I caught another my next cast, both on the Rig, so I stuck with it the rest of the afternoon but they were much smaller. Finally got a 3ish pound fish. They were so short and thick from that lake. With about 3 hours left, we decided to hop up to Table Rock and see how the bite was there. I caught small largemouth my first 2 cast with a Ned rig off the boat ramp while Jon was untangling his rods. We jumped across the cove to a channel swing bank and I caught a nice 4 pounder on the Ned. I tried swimming a grub and got a couple spots and a little smallmouth off the same bank before we called it a night. Sunday morning we went back to Table Rock around Kimberling City. I believe it was my 3rd cast of the morning I caught our first fish. Not 10 cast later, I caught another, both on a Berkley Stunna 112+1, the only jerkbait I fished all weekend. Then Jon scored on a Vision 110 The sun came out and the wind started blowing and the bites got scarce. A cold front pushed in and killed the jerkbait bite. After a couple hours, I finally tricked a nice smallmouth to eat the Stunna after only a few other dinks. With less than 2 hours left before we had to leave, we went to a bluff with trees to change it up. I started dropping on trees and fish I was marking with a Flat Worm. For the rest of the morning, I doubt there was 5 minutes between fish and a lot of fish on consecutive drops, it was nuts. A lot of them were 8-12 inch spots, but it was still fun and way different than what I'm use to catching them 20-60 feet deep.

I always wear my life vest on the boat. Only time I've ever gone in was in the winter and it made a big difference in my safety no doubt. Caught them pretty good today. Tomorrow supposedly is going to be a bit warmer.

Motor wouldn't start, Gopro wouldn't turn on, just trolling motor down and fish. It's a yearly tradition for my fishing buddies birthday that we go the first week of January. About to head out with him for this years trip but it's a balmy 9* this time around.

There is no offseason for me. One of my best days in recent years we launched the boat into a brisk -2* morning that barely made it above 20. Only weighed 3 of our 25-30 fish we caught because we didn't want to keep them out of water long, but those 3 were just short of 20lbs. Winter is when I catch more big fish than any other.

I badly outfished my boater in a tournament once when we were both fishing the same exact shakyheads, except mine was a green pumpkin/red flake, his was plain green pumpkin. I'd say it wasn't the flake, but they were so aggressively eating mine and ignoring his, I'm not sure what else it could have been. Normally, I don't worry about color too much except things like light vs dark or opaque vs translucent. Body style can make a big difference also though.

Flutter spoons. I've caught some white bass on them, but that's it. I can understand the folks having trouble with a bladed jig. When they first came out, I tried them and then wrote them off after several unsuccessful attempts. Then I found one in a tree one day and decided to tie it on. I caught so many fish on it when I was having a slow day. Too many people fish them too fast and I also think bite detection is an issue with them.

I've made some with a light weedguard. IMO, the reduction in hookups isn't worth the reduction in hangups. The only real place I'd use them is around wood, but I'll just switch to a spinnerbait instead.

Cheaper to replace the plastics than have to replace the plastic and jig when the hook corrodes.

Lite Trout is a great color anywhere, even with lake that have no trout.

Looks retro, pretty cool.

I've got 2 Tatula LT's and really like them. The no AR switch on the Stradic is a deal breaker for me. Not sure how "sturdy", a spinning reel should feel, I'm reeling in bass, not driving nails with it. I caught my biggest of the year last year on my 3000 CXH though.

One of, if not the best rod in that price range I've ever fished. I have one I use for buzzbaits and I bought one for my oldest son that I use fairly often also that is a 6' spinning rod, both are very nice rods.

Mine is swapped to short shank, EWG also and I'll add a suspend dot or two sometimes to make them float very slowly. I fish mine on spinning gear so casting them isn't an issue.

Okay, I think that's about enough of that. LOCKDOWN!!

I buy mine off Aliexpress for a couple bucks for a 50 or 100 pack. Been using them for a year now and they haven't let me down.