Bluebasser86

Just in summer time though.

A homemade bladed jig, beaver baits, and Berkley Cane Walker have been my hot baits lately.

I've never broken a circuit board crankbait lip. I've broken who knows how many standard crankbait bills.

The 6th tournament of the kayak circuit I'm fishing this year was Saturday. It was at a place called Mined Wildlife Area in southeastern Kansas, which is over 1,000 strip pits spread out over a huge area. There was 4 different clubs in the tournament, including the local one, so a lot of locals were in that knew them well, had my work cut out for me. I've fished down there several times, but a lot of these guys fish them several times a month. To make it worse, 2 of my favorite pits had been drained, 1 to be turned into a duck marsh, 1 so they could add a culvert. I was not feeling confident at all. I drove down Friday morning to prefish and went straight to my favorite pit. Normally, it has pretty good water clarity, but when I pulled up to it, I could tell it was dirty even in the early morning dim light. It was already hot at 6am, forcast in the upper 90's to low 100's both days and very little wind, it was brutal. I fished for 4 hours, caught 3 fish, the biggest just shy of 17". I left and went to a different pit that's very small but has good fish, and found a guy fishing it in his pond hopper. Went across the road to a different one and caught 2 15 inchers in 5 cast on swimbaits, and then not even a bite for the next 2 hours. Went and set up my tent and ate a sandwich before trying another pit that has some of the biggest fish in the state in it. I caught more fish than I had at the other 2 combined, but nothing even over 15". After that I went full panic mode and fished probably 8 more pits in the last 9 hours. I didn't measure many fish but I know I didn't break 80 inches. One of the guys in our club said he caught 100" of bass. I knew I was going to get crushed and had no idea where I was even fishing. There was about 40-50 kayaks fishing Saturday. When everyone took off from our meeting to their starting spots, I sat in the parking lot talking to another guy and we both were just lost about what to do. I ended up deciding to go back to my muddy pit and hope for the best. I'd caught good limits of fish there 10 years ago, and I had nothing else. It was only a mile from takeoff, so I took my time setting up, drank a bunch of water, retied knots, switched a couple baits, pushed off and jumped in to get away from the mosquitos. Looked at the time, 5:45, time to fish. Literally missed a fish my first cast, hooked and lost him my next cast, 2 cast later, I boat a 16.75, which was as big as anything I'd caught in practice. I was just hoping to break 80", so that was a good start. I missed another bite and heard a big explosion behind me. Worked towards it and hooked up with a good fish that jumped a few times before I netted it. Not a monster, but an 18" bass looks giant when you've been catching 8-12 inchers the day before. I really thought I was going to do something with those 2 in the first 5 minutes. So an hour later, I'm looking for my next bite. Finally get it on a wacky rig, an 11.25" fish, not what I needed but #3 anyways. 30 minutes later, the voices are already going in my head, telling me I should have gone to the other pit I thought about going to this morning and if I leave now I could still maybe get a morning bite there. Then another one stopped my bait, another 16" fish had swallowed my homemade bladed jig. Told myself I just needed to calm down and grind them out. So that's what I did. I spent 6 hours on that pit, casting that bladed jig until my arm felt like it was going to fall off, going a hour between bites and then catching 2 back to back it felt like each time. When I finally decided to move around 11AM, I'd caught 11 fish and had a little over 84". When the day was over at 1:45PM, I had a little over 84". I wish I could have convinced myself it was going to be that tough for everyone and stayed there. First place was only 5" more than what I had. If I could have found a couple of the 20" fish I know live there, I had a shot. Still, with all the local knowledge, and for how tough it had been for me on Friday, I was happy with how I'd done. At the awards ceremony afterwards, I was even more surprised to find out I'd finished in 4th place overall in what turned out to be an extremely difficult day for everyone. Every one of my bigger fish was on a homemade bladed jig.

Nothing wrong with fishing livebait occasionally, but I couldn't imagine dealing with it all the time, at least not in the quantity needed for targeting creek bass. Glad it's working out for you.

Welcome!

I was 18 when I caught my largemouth PB on a trip to Lake Comendero, MX. The trip was my high school graduation present. I was 33 when I caught my smallmouth PB, a couple weekends after my birthday.

I grew up fishing for everything. Fish were food and bass were a poor option for taste and because they had stricter limits, so we didn't target them often. When we moved to the area I'm in now, I made a friend who fished for bass at a small, semi-private lake that his parents would take us to often. We fished Warden's Roostertails a lot, especially the 1/8oz Red ones. I can remember one day catching 11 bass and thinking I had really done something. I got more and more into it, started reading tons of magazines and am really self taught on a majority of what I know now.

Didn't happen as often in the boat, but aince I've mainly been kayak fishing, it's like I'm invisible to a lot of people. I just make it a point to try really hard to catch fish while they're right on top of me.

Assuming you're talking about the standard bull shad, I don't really see a difference but I've got more confidence in the silent version. I fish them in water with fairly good visibility most of the time, so I don't need rattles and it makes them a little more realistic.

I fished the OG's exclusively in stained water <2' visibility, and had pretty good success this past winter. They're just so dang fragile. It was like if I got one snagged, if I could get it unsnagged by just going past it and pulling, I might as well cut the line because they kept pulling apart if I used my lure retriever. My first one I had, I got to catch 1 fish, a 5 pounder, then it got snagged and all I got back was part of the top of the bait with my lure retriever. That's a tough pill to swallow at $10 a pop. Hoping these will be a more durable option.

Green pumpkin/orange is one of my favorite Ned rig bait colors. Orange and red bladed jigs are kind of popular in the spring.

Glad you like them. Those swingheads are a great way to fish about any plastic in rocks and do so much better at avoiding snags than a T-rig. I never do anything fancy with my videos, but I got a vicious topwater strike on camera Saturday so I did what I could with my very limited abilities to make it even more dramatic. That Berkley Cane Walker is the real deal.

Welcome back!

I love ice cream and avocados, but that sounds horrible ?

Can you pull an entire plant up? Usually the "leaves" grow thicker towards the tops/ends so there's space below but sometimes the stalks of certain plants grow so close together that it doesn't matter. I run into this issue with water willows here that if there's too many plants growing too close together, the bass won't get in them simply because there's no room. If you can pull a plant and there's not much on the bottom of the stalk and the plants don't grow too close together, there should be some kind of canopy. At the very least, you'll have one on the edges of the grass that you could try punching.

Probably longer than me by the way he's going ?

I try to formulate a plan prior to the tournament and stick with it. The times that I've done that, I've done well. It's the tournaments that I spin out and scramble that I suck. The first 4 tournaments I fished this year, I won. 1st one, never left the bank I started on despite heavy fishing pressure and a slow bite. 2nd one, long run, fished 1 bank all day. 3rd, long run into heavy winds, I fished a single small pocket the entire day. 4th, fished the same cove and 100 yards of bank all day. Since then I've gotten out of my game plans except for the last one that I won, when we fished the same pattern all night despite a tough bite and ground out the bites we needed. It's only 5 bites. You've got more than a hour per bite to make it happen on an average tournament day. Have to keep yourself calm and believe in what you're doing. It's not going to work every time, but scrambling around has done nothing but frustrate myself. I believe I'd have been in the money at least one of the other times if I'd have sat down and fished, because second place came from the area I started, he said the bite didn't start until mid morning after I left.

I'd imagine he could do that pretty easily, it's only a 10 yard pass and he's a pretty okay QB I've heard.

Fish will crush an A-rig looking like a chandelier coming through the water, but we worry about them seeing braid that's .25mm thick and being spooked. If I'm fishing braid on a baitcaster, there's no leader involved, ever, end of story. 20lb braid is not hard to break if it's badly snagged, and there's a better chance of getting your bait back with a strong pull than if you have a leader. So if you're using a tungsten weight you got a better shot of getting it back instead of breaking it off.

I've made a few but haven't ever fished on myself.

Is there a canopy or is it solid grass? If there's no room for them to hide under it, there's not going to be many in it. If you have holes under it or between the stalks of grass, I'd give it a shot for sure. It's going to be a hassle, but just remind yourself it's a big fish technique, it'll be worth it in the end if it works out.

?‍♂️ I have about a dozen jars that I've been carefully guarding and using only for special occasions. Say it with me now "Pigs like pork".

Welcome!

Took 3 cast after work to get the approval from the experts of the new TK KO.