Bluebasser86

Probably 6 or 7 pounds. A bass that long would be around 10 and they aren't as thick as bass. I'm sure that was a good fight though.

Yes you can catch fish on it year round. Anywhere there isn't a lot of snags is best. You can fish it around snags if you get jigheads with a single wire or small fiber weedguard, but you still have to get the fish out of the cover with light line. It's great around docks and vertical cover like seawalls or pole timber because it falls slowly.

Maybe not 20 but I'd take one for $200 for sure! With all the small ponds and pits around here a beat up old jon boat that leaks sells for $200. I'd go with a jon boat too. I've had a couple of the plastic pondhoppers but they are heavy and they start to fall apart after several years. The aluminum jons will last forever if you take care of them and they're easy to move by yourself. I have an old 12 footer that I can pick up over my head and carry by myself, makes packing in to ponds with difficult access a lot easier.

I wonder if they can do that because they can breath air out of water? Strictly freshwater fish don't last long in saltwater otherwise.

I saw that and if I didn't already have almost the same rod in the LTB I'd be all over that.

I made some homemade biscuits and gravy for dinner tonight. On a cold winter night that's about as good as it gets

I had it in Texas, it was pretty decent but not something I could eat a lot of.

They don't really migrate but they move to deeper water during the cold water months and they school up really thick like you described. There's probably a deep pool close by that they're wintering in.

What kind of boxes? Like a regular hard tackle box or tackle trays like a 3700 plano? Falcon makes some really nice tackle trays.

That is an extremely difficult angle to guess the weight of that fish. I'd say you're probably pretty close with 5.5.

Very nice fish man! Finally getting some action on swimbaits again around here too with water temps in the low 50's.

I spent an amazing day of catching smallmouth with 2 friends this past spring. We got on the water around 6am and literally from my first cast of the day to our last casts of the day there was not a time when someone was not fighting a fish or unhooking a fish. We had more doubles than we could track and several triples. A majority of them fell for jerkbaits and were in the 12-15 inch range. I had over 100 smallies by myself and we ended up with 256 fish on the day, give or take a fish or two. On top of those smallmouth we had 10 walleye, gobs of white bass, and a few big crappie. We didn't have any real big ones but when you're catching fish like that it doesn't really matter. Our state record isn't even 7 pounds but I've managed to hit the 5lb mark 3 times. In all three cases the fish had no problems launching themselves to surprising heights.

Don't know, I didn't weigh it but I'd guess probably 5 or 6 pounds.

I've had a few reels done, a couple older curado B's, a couple 200e7's, and a 50e. There is a huge difference between a stock reel and a tuned reel, especially in casting distance.

I have a full handled LTB 7' 3" C-rig rod with a 200E7 and I like it really well. Haven't really ever tested the balance but not really worried about it tossing a C-rig. I have several of the split grip, not a huge difference that I can tell. You won't be disappointed with it, they're really nice rods.

I've bought quite a bit of used gear from the guys in the flea market forum, I have no complaints about any of the gear I've got from anyone.

Rage craws, Netbait Paca Craws, Zoom big and little critter craws, twin tail grubs.

What were you getting them on? Ned rig again? basshunter0731 (Jon) and I fished his uncle's pond Tuesday and La Cygne Wednesday. Caught a bunch out of the ponds on jigs and traps. I tossed a 6" swimbait around a bit, had a good fish pull off and caught this little guy. La Cygne was pretty decent for La Cygne. I had 20 bass, 1 white, several wipers, a channel cat, and a buffalo. Jon had 8 bass with a few near misses. Don't think he had any other fish, just bass. Shakyhead and a spinnerbait were our best baits. Caught a couple on shad fishing for wipers and Jon had one on a squarebill. The wipers and shad were really stacked up in the warm water. Didn't get any real monsters of anything but my first wiper was a pretty nice one, it ate a 4" swimbait. Biggest bass was probably around 3lbs on a spinnerbait up the river a ways.

My dad has always provided for his family and done the best he can with what he has. He's always been there for my sister and I and is still with my mom after 30 years. He's far from perfect but as I get older and notice myself doing or acting like he did when I was little it doesn't really bother me, I could certainly do a lot worse than ending up like him.

I'm in Kansas but still get to fish year round thanks to a couple warm water discharge lakes. Nothing quite like a topwater bite when it's snowing and 20 degrees out

I've got a bunch of H20 squarebills and have no complaints about them. Good paint and good baits. Anytime I'm around the thick stuff where I don't want to run my LC baits through I break them out and they usually produce. I've bounced more than one off a rock on the cast and have yet to break or crack one. I'm sure their other baits work just the same.

I just store them in a compartment in a 3700 box like I do crankbaits. I carry dozens of them like this without any problems.

I have a telescoping lure retriever that has basically a wire corkscrew on the end of it and I can't remember the last time I lost a crankbait since I bought it. They run about $30 for a good one and when you use expensive baits that's only one or two saved baits to pay for itself I'm fishing from a boat though so I can get close enough for it to be effective. They'll work from the bank, you just have to be able to reach the bait. If you're fishing from the bank you can make your own plug knocker with a 1 or 2 ounce bell sinker attached to a snap. Just clip it on your line and hold it as tight and high as you can and let the sinker go so it slides down and hits your bait as hard as possible. Usually the initial impact knocks it loose but if it doesn't you and raise and lower the rod so the sinker pulls up and down on the line right by the bait, that will pop it loose a lot of the time also.

As long as the water is soft there are fish to be caught! The water temps have more sway on what the fish are doing than the air temps anyways.

We have the same thing happen a lot with smallmouth on one of the lakes we fish a lot. Keep a fluke jr on a scrouger head or regular jighead rigged up and when those fish follow in just drop that in front of them while the other fish is still in the water, almost guaranteed to get one of the followers to bite.