Bluebasser86

Fished Gardner from 9-12 today after I got off work. Caught a ton of fish, probably 30-40, I doubt one of them would have gone 15" and most didn't even go 10". Jerkbaits, rattle traps, and a shallow running crankbait were about all I needed. Water was pretty stained, more than I would have guessed it would be. 56 at the dam, 53.5 at the south end. Best water temp seemed to be around 54 for some reason, about 2/3 of the way down the lake. Probably was more the water color than the temp.

I started my then girlfriend now wife out on bluegills. It's better for them to be catching fish or they'll lose interest quickly and never want to go again. One day my wife wanted to fish for bass like I did so I gave her a swimming grub and let her fish it on a jighead with a stead retrieve. She mastered that and caught tons of bass and other species on it and has since mastered several other baits. Concentrate on catching fish now, worry about teaching her other aspects of the game later.

What's the water color? A T rigged senko, spinnerbait, and T-rigged 7-8 inch worm are good baits for pond fish. If the water is dirty I'd take the senko out of the mix though and if it's deep enough I'd add a trap to the mix.

They're actually just thin gardening gloves. She doesn't wear them when she's fishing though, just for posing for fish pictures.

That's crazy. I'm out on that just due to the amount of mosquitoes and flies he had buzzing around him in the early parts of the video alone. No way I could have kept my concentration with all those things buzzing around me.

Frozen baitfish can be pretty tough to rig. You can either use a smaller hook that doesn't tear the fish up as bad or you can get some thing mesh like spawn bags or pantyhose and wrap them in that and put the hook through the mesh material.

Look for shad getting rushed or birds are two of the most sure fire ways. I like covering shallow flats with a rattle trap also. They don't get on them all the time but when they're up on the flats they're only there for one reason.

Mine does pretty well for herself, she's outfished me more than once too.

My dad and I fished JEC lakes a lot when I was a kid, caught lots of fish out there, but we mainly walleye fished out there because that's what my dad likes to fish for. There's lots of smallies but they average pretty small in our experiences with them. Last time we were on them we got on a really good topwater bite for the wipers, put about 2 dozen of them in the boat on Super Spook Jr's, that was a good time. Marion has an excellent rating for wipers and Cheney has a good rating so you might check both of those out. Right now is a great time to catch wipers while the shad are schooled up.

Go to "TOOLS" at the top of the page and from the drop bar select "Interactive Lake Maps". It doesn't have the smaller lakes but you can check out a free topo map of lots of the bigger lakes you've listed. I don't know of anywhere to fine topo maps of those smaller lakes.

Marion is supposed to have some monster wipers in it. Wolf Creek has a decent population of them. If you really wanted to catch one I'd go to Milford. Some days out there it's hard to catch anything else. Jefferey Energy Center lakes have a great population of them and they're small enough to fish with a kayak pretty easily.

Yeah we must have just missed you. I think we got out there around 2pm and fished until 4:30. My wife was just casting and slow reeling a 3" smoke/black/red flake grub on a pink 1/8oz jighead and couldn't hardly make a cast without getting a bite.

I may on Thursday but I'll be prefishing for a tournament that I'm fishing at La Cygne Saturday so that's where I'll be Thursday. They aren't generating and I guess they may not be for up to a year?? So it isn't going to be a fun day I'm sure. All the guys I know that have been out there recently haven't even gotten a bite.

Nice wiper! What'd you catch her on?

St Croix Avids are tough to beat for the money. Made in the USA, hand wrapped guides, and a life time warranty doesn't hurt things either.

Guess you'll just have to catch a bigger one and post a picture of that Congrats on the new PB!

My wife has an Avid Pearl also, very nice rod. I've used it on a couple occasions and it feels great. I wish they'd make a split grip version of the regular Avid.

If you have any open water areas to fish them in they fish really well on a football head also. I like to slow roll them along the bottom.

The wife and I went to Douglas State Lake today for about two and a half hours to enjoy some of the nice weather. Didn't really matter what we fished, put about 40 bass, 2 crappie, and a bluegill in the boat. Caught fish on finesse jigs, shakyheads, warts, scatter raps, jerks, keitechs, grubs, and a spinnerbait. Area wasn't real important either. They were typical DCSL fish, biggest was maybe 12 inches but probably more like 10.5". Still a good time to get out and just tear them up like that. Always nice when the wife is just cranking them in too.

I pour, paint, and tie all my chatterbaits and jigs. I use either a football head or finesse jig head for my chatterbaits. Seems like the 3/8 or 5/16 ounce sizes work the best.

Great job man!

I didn't catch any wipers but I've caught a lot of them that were close to the same size as some of the stripers I caught and I would say the stripers didn't fight as hard as a wiper of similar size. The big stripers, however, pulled extremely hard and were extremely fast and could change directions on a dime. It's been a long time since I've hooked a fish that I wasn't sure I was going to be able to land.

They seem to do that a lot. This one is one of my biggest from last year that ate a zebra shad colored homemade chatterbait. You can see that the blade is about the only thing left sticking out of her mouth. Caught her at Bourban State Lake.

The Pit Boss, Craw Fatty, Sick Fish, Deuce, Rocket Craw, Grass Pig, Juice Worm, all great baits. Haven't caught anything on a Devil's Spear, even on my "practice lakes".

This is a just made one from this summer. The blade still needs to be bent up slightly before it's ready to be fished with. You can kind of tell the angle it's bent at in this picture, which is actually a good fish from Pleasanton East Lake