Bluebasser86

very cool. Looks like a lot of our craws are golden craws.

Sapphire blue is a great jig color. Never tried with any white but I wouldn't be surprised if you could catch some fish on them. Most of the craws I've seen in the lakes I fish are either dark brown all over or alternating dark and light browns, usually both will have red or orange tipped claws. There's tons of different kinds of craws but I'd rather just know about the colors of the ones in the lakes I fish. I'll often take the time to flip a few rocks my first time at a new lake and pay attention to not only the colors but the size and numbers of craws I can find.

I believe it's because the craws have been hidden most of the winter and they're full of proteins needed to help eggs develop. I do well on red cranks all year long really though. Maybe it has something to do with few people fishing red baits the rest of the year so it's a color they don't see a lot of the year.

RIP the biggest bass I've seen at Hillsdale Lake, probably one of the only ones in there

I caught my first fish from a non warm water lake a few days ago, just a dink largemouth on a 78 pointer. The last two weeks we've gone to a power plant lake and had 110 fish one day and 94 the next with a big mix of largemouth, smallmouth, white bass, wipers, catfish, and crappie.

Nope, a heavy weight is just fine. The bait can't go far in less than a foot of water and that big weight slamming into the mud and silt is going to kick up little clouds like a baitfish or crawdad messing around on the bottom and help get their attention.

Frank's Marine in Lansing, Ks is where I take mine. They do good work and are very reasonably priced. Cabela's takes you behind the woodshed in hourly labor rates, don't know about Bass Pro's rates but I'm sure they're high just because they can be. Turn around at Cabela's is terrible too. I took my old Ranger there once during the summer and it took nearly 2 months to get it back, just to get the steering bled. I've heard good things about US boats from friends and it's where my dad takes his boat but never dealt with them personally. Denny, the guy at the boat house at Wyandotte is a wizard with older, smaller hp motors. He got my old 15hp Johnson to where it fires up the first pull every time after it wouldn't even turnover when I bought it. Not the friendliest guy around but he knows older motors as good as anyone I've ever seen. He gets those 30 year old motors that fools leave locked in ice at the boat docks all winter to start every year anyways.

I've caught them in less than a foot of water in the right conditions.

I've heard that if they're eating lots of craws they get a slight orange tint to their fins but don't know if there's any truth to that. Odds are, if it lives in or gets into the water where there's bass and it's small enough to fit in their mouth at least a few bass are eating it.

The smaller sized Zell Pop is magic for me.

Hands down my favorite lipless bait. Rayburn Red and Ghost are my favorite colors. I really like the one knocker version of them also. I do change the hooks out with short shank #3's on the front and back, the stock hooks are sharp but kind of flimsy.

Welcome to the board! We've got quite a few guys that post regularly from the KC area in the Central Forum, check it out!

It was 63 when I left work at 8am this morning and got up to 72 the day before. When I woke up at 6pm tonight it was 37 and dropping and supposed to snow tonight just in time for my days off of course

Hope you get better man. Always seems like bad things always happen all at once like that. I'm sure they'll get you fixed up. I'm just 26 myself (I believe we discussed the odd coincidence of us having the same first name and being the same age before) and I had to spend most of the night in the hospital one night this summer. I had an agonizing pain in my head that wouldn't go away and threw up until had nothing left to do and just started dry heaving so hard I was choking and making my head hurt even worse. Thank God for whatever they started running into me through that IV. Spent the next week disoriented and confused. Had a hard time putting sentences together and understanding what people were talking about even discussing the simplest things. I got lost driving to my friends house and if it hadn't been for my wife being in the truck with me I would have had to call to ask for directions to a place I've been hundreds of times. Doctors said it was a combined Aura migraine and rapid firing cluster migraines on top of each other that caused it. I take medication for the Aura migraines and I get them a couple times a week without them but never had anything like that. It's not a good feeling to go from never even getting sick to being that sick and not knowing why.

http://www.bassresource.com/bass-fishing-forums/topic/111923-cork-cleaningits-been-discussed-but-i-also-have-adhd/

Half a senko or trick worm works well also. Small swimbaits add a different kind of vibration also.

I'm the opposite, I hate braid with swimbaits. 25lb P-line CXXtra strong crystal clear gets the job done for me. If you've ever tried to make a long cast with a heavy bait with braid and had it blow up in your face and watched a 20-50 dollar bait hit the end of that no stretch line hard and sale into the lake you'll understand why. Plus the extra stretch is nice to keep from ripping the hooks loose when you're fighting a big, hard pulling fish. Only time I'd use braid is around heavy weeds. Those Express baits aren't too heavy though. I normally fish them on a 7' MH rod with 14-20lb copoly and have never lost one.

You didn't happen to toss in a bait made of elastec plastic did you? Those will melt in a hurry and ruin a whole pack of baits. Other than that I've never seen today's plastic do that. The older plastics used to do it bad if left in direct sunlight but I fish all summer long when it's north of 100 degrees by 9am and never had that happen.

It will catch fish as long as you have bass feeding on schooling baitfish. I've fish the A-rig a lot in Missouri and Arkansas on Lake of the Ozarks, Table Rock, and Bull Shoals and have yet to catch more than one fish at a time on it. Don't know if that means the fish were just singles or if they were just the most aggressive fish in the school. Early in the season has been by far the best time of year for the rig for me though.

If you ever find catfish eating mayflies falling out of bushes or carp eating mulberries dropping out of trees that is a serious rush on a flyrod.

I was born in Manhattan and grew up near there (St.George). Spent a lot of time fishing Pott. 2, Tuttle Creek, Milford, Alma, Rocky Ford, River Pond, and the ponds in the area. Milford is by far my favorite for the variety and quality of the fish available there. I get back there a couple times a year normally, usually to fish Milford. I'll have an empty back of the boat about every other week this year and fish some lakes that are about half way between here and Manhattan if you're interested in meeting halfway. You can PM me for more info about the lakes in your area.

Welcome to the club!

That was my first thought.

Doesn't seem like I can ever fish a chatterbait at night without catching a channel cat. They like that strong vibration. Wipers and white bass love them too.

3/8oz black and blue chatterbait is one of my favorite night fishing baits. I usually put a 4" grub on the back. The bulky profile and strong vibration really calls them in at night.