Bluebasser86

I fish out of a Lowe Rougheck 1652 with a 60hp Mercury 4stroke and a 24V Minn Kota Maxxum 70lb. It's been a great boat for me, no carpet and no frills, just functional. They don't make the roughneck anymore but the Frontier series is very similar. I can get into very shallow water, less than a foot as long as I'm not loaded down. Runs about 32mph with the motor I have on it. My biggest complaint is my livewell is too small but if you're building you're own then that won't be a problem for you. I've taken mine out on bigger lakes and in rougher water than I probably should but I've never once been in a situation I didn't feel it could handle. Not sure what they go for now but I got my boat, motor, and trailer brand new at Cabela's for just over 12K in 07.

Catch a new PB smallie. Against all odds I've caught 3 now that were 5 exactly. Very respectable fish considering our state record is under 7 pounds. I hooked one last year that probably would have gone 6 and now that I live half an hour closer to one of the best smallie lakes in the state I feel I have a good shot at doing it.

Once it drops below 50 is when they really seem to slow down and transition into winter mode here.

Vegetation, heavy cover, when you need to be able to skip the bait under limbs or docks, target fishing. Frogs also work well in open water as a lot of the newer designs walk very well.

The spray is good stuff. It doesn't stay on your bait long but I've seen more than once where I believe it made a huge difference. I use the craw scent flipping jigs and soft plastics a lot.

Walking baits-covering lots of water, schooling fish, clear water Poppers-fishing cover and specific targets Buzzbaits-covering water, stained to muddy water, heavy cover That's just a ultra simplified breakdown of why I choose one over the other.

We do it when they chase shad in the summer. Sometimes they boil on the top but lots of times you'll just see the shad start to skitter across the top. Work a Spook Jr. as fast as you can through them and a majority of the time they'll nail it.

I don't know any guides but I'd agree with RW on the location purely for the big fish potential there. If I was going to go to Florida I'd also seriously consider somewhere that I could have a shot at some peacocks or snakeheads, just something to think about.

Cowardly and despicable are the only words I can think to describe what this guy has done. Killing helpless children and teachers and then kills himself, just the worst kind of person with no feelings and no remorse and a complete sociopath who can think of no one but himself. Good riddance to him and may may the fires roast his tenderest parts for all eternity

Everything except shakyheads, dropshots, and any weightless plastics I'm planning on skipping under docks. I'm fishing T-rigs mainly on a 7'1" or 7' 6" LTB rod with 200E7's and 14-20lb fluoro. Heavier line and stouter rods are a must for getting fish out of heavy cover where I prefer to fish.

Is that the air temp or water temp? If it's the water temp I wouldn't be fishing topwater. I'm guessing that's your air temps though since our water temps are in the low 40's still. My favorite late fall/early winter topwaters are buzzbaits, poppers, and walking baits. A floating minnow bait like an original rapala twitched on the surface can be deadly in colder water temps also.

Not a fan of Gulp either, again with the exception of the minnow. A 3" Gulp minnow on a 1/8oz jighead will catch everything that swims in a lake. As for the flukes, weightless with a 4/0 EWG hook is my favorite way to fish them but they're really good on a scrouger head or a C-rig also.

No you aren't but it's a busy time of year and really easy to forget to get to the post office. Christmas is still a week and a half away anyways.

Roger's in Liberty has a pretty decent selection of lure making supplies. Lots of skirt material and paint and some poured baits. Great store with tons of stuff packed into that store.

JIgs, nothing like getting that thump and setting into a fish that doesn't move

Welcome to the forum from a fellow KC area member. Like Busy said check out the KC Area thread in the Central region. We have a great group of guys that share a ton of info, 95 pages worth of reports there I believe

Should be a great rod for both the techniques you've listed. Enjoy! It's a great rod.

Thanks for the comments guys. I've caught a couple of my biggest bass of the year on my homemade chatterbaits. Always feels good to get a good one on a bait that you made.

I believe they are a 3 or 4. They have to be fairly large or they get bent trying to turn them onto the blade.

Wind permitting I'd fish a lighter jig, like a 1/4oz, with a fairly small profile and you may want to try a real pork trailer for just a little added attraction. A bulky pork trailer on a light jig will fall slowly and give the fish more time to react to the bait. If you can find any kind of channel swing or drops close to a point or other area that fish might pull up to feed at that would be a good place to start. Drag the jig slowly and give it plenty of time to soak. Bass and their prey that live in the water move slowly when it's cold so you want your jig moving slow. Most of the time during the winter my bait won't lose contact with the bottom unless it falls off a rock or ledge. This is a great way to find cover and structure you never knew was there too.

Doesn't seem to matter much in my experience. Most of the time I'm fishing a topwater is during low light conditions when fish probably can't see much more than the profile of the bait. I have mainly white or shad colors and dark colors in all my topwaters. The only exception is some translucent baits for very clear water.

homemade brush jig havoc pit boss or other beaver style bait stickbait or magnum finesse worm tube baby brush hog

A lot of bigger tournament circles have a release boat that takes the bass away from the ramp area to prevent anglers from targeting release fish.

Jon and I went to my favorite lake in the whole world today. That's right, we went to Hillsdale. It treated us surprisingly well. We were hoping for a keeper 'eye but of course we didn't catch any of those, walleye is pretty much the only thing I didn't catch. We got out there around 1 and fished until 3:30 and spent most of our time right by the Gardner Rd bridge with jigging spoons. We had probably 15 whites, 5 or 6 crappie, 5 drum, 2 bluegill, 1 catfish, and 1 walleye plus several huge shad that got snagged on our spoons. Nothing big enough to take pictures of but most of the whites were nice sized ones and they were slamming the spoons. I actually caught one that had mud in his mouth and coming out his gills. Best we could tell was he attacked my spoon right as it hit bottom and got a mouthful of mud along with my spoon. Jon caught the only walleye but it was only about 8". We fished silver and white spoons, color didn't seem to matter. Water temps were 43-42

I got to play with a Calcutta TE DC quite a bit when I worked at Cabela's and the casting ability and distance of those things were incredible. I don't know of many real uses for being able to cast that far other than to impress your friends or reach schooling fish but it's always better to be able to cast to far instead of not far enough I guess.