Bluebasser86

I enjoyed my guide trips that I’ve taken people on for the most part, but there’s a side to it you don’t get told about when you’re getting into it. It’s a lot of work and a lot of pressure. Some people are never happy no matter what you do for them and for some reason, those people will go out and hire a guide that does everything for them, and they will never be satisfied. Then there’s the spot buzzards. People will hire you with the sole intention of coming back to the spots you take them to and fishing them out, some might even be looking to eat those fish that you’re counting on to be there. It can really start to feel like work after a while if you schedule enough. Also, if you want to fish while you’re out, you might not be able to. Some people might be okay with you fishing along with them, others are not at all. So if you don’t want to give up fishing time just to instruct someone else, you might not enjoy it. Then you get the people who don’t listen to anything you tell them. They for some reason hire a guide to take them out to the fish and then act like they know more than you. They’ll ignore your suggestions and struggle all day and be mad at you at the end of the day for not knowing what you’re doing. If it’s something you want to do, go for it, but there are certainly some things to consider before making your decision. It wasn’t just like taking a person out fishing. Once money gets involved, it changes a lot.

My buddy took this pic of me sitting and waiting for lines in on day 2 of the Championship tournament last year on Melvern Lake, my main smallmouth lake in Kansas. We were both sharing this spot, a boat ramp and couple points close together. I eventually won and he got second, with a majority of both our fish coming off that area. I don’t know why I had all those rods, I caught fish on 3 of them in 2 days 😂

The Big Bite Baits Kriet Tail Worm is my favorite big worm. Not only is it a big tail, but it’s a thick bodied worm, just a bulky bait overall. I don’t like “big”, worms that are very 10” but only as thick as a pencil, that’s not a big bait at all to me. The old standby Power worm is a solid second option too.

I’m still a subscriber, have to be a member to qualify for the national kayak championship. I miss the adventures of Harry and Charlie in the Stump Jumper. I still read the Day on the Water and skim through the rest before I put it in the recycling. I never save them for months like I use to with the older ones.

I’ve done it for many different reasons throughout my life. When I was young, it was mainly for food. We grew up poor and it cost nothing to take a fishing rod to a nearby pond, catch some grasshoppers and get some bluegills or catfish. As a teen, it was something I did with my friends. I wasn’t a party person, I wanted to be in the outdoors, so that’s what we did. Later in my teens I started tournament fishing, and being a competitive person, it really appealed to me. I’m also a thinker and problem solver, something that has to be done constantly to have a good day on the water. Once I started my current career, it became my main stress relief. All too many people in my line of work turn to alcohol to help them forget the things they deal with. Fishing quiets the noise and makes my mind too busy to think about other things. So is it a waste of time? For me it hasn’t been, it’s been a huge part of my life and a major part of who I am. If you feel like it might be a waste of time, maybe it is for you, and that’s okay. It’s fine to step away from things that might not be for you, we all have different paths and maybe fishing isn’t yours.

I did it to myself Sunday. My friend was complementing my blue bladed jigs. He’d tried one for the first time the weekend before when everything else failed. He said he remembered me telling him when the water is hot and green, that’s when it shines and it did that day. We were just launching our yaks while he was telling me. I said “Yep, those are perfect conditions when the water looks almost exactly like it does here”. I didn’t have one tied on, he did. At the end of the day, he texted me 4 or 5 pictures of nice fish he’d caught on it. I was struggling all day to get a bite. Why didn’t I listen to myself? I guess because I’d caught them on the baits I was using there before and was completely convinced I could make them eat that stuff if I tried hard enough.

I have caught them everywhere I’ve fished for them, and there has been a pretty wide variety of bodies of water. The toughest for me are always the deep, clear lakes. I’m a shallow water, junk fishermen. When I can see bottom in 30’ of water like last time I was on Beaver Lake, I know I’m going to struggle.

I like poppers when I’m fishing targets and calmer conditions. I’ve done better on a popper than all other top waters this year.

Had one of the toughest weekends of fishing I’ve had in a long while this weekend. Took the family out on the 4th. Water had stabilized at our favorite smallmouth lake and I was hoping for an improved bite, it was not, if anything it was worse. I had 2 bites I’m sure were smallmouth and lost both of them. I caught one tiny largemouth and a rare keeper sized spotted bass along with several walleye. A grand total of 3 bass were caught between the 4 of us and my wife took a complete skunk. Sunday I did some prefishing for a tournament that is next weekend and struggled all day to catch 10 bass. I did get 1 good blowup on a frog throwing the Okuma X combo and 50lb Smackdown. Not my normal frogging combo but man did it feel so good with that super lightweight rod and reel fishing a frog! My only decent bite of the day was a solid chunk of an 18.50” fish on a BBB Kriet tail worm on a laydown in 7’ of water.

I’ve met and fished with several members, mostly local guys, but I did get to host the great @roadwarrior in my boat once. I’ve met @Glenn in person a couple times. I met some very generous members from Florida that provided me with gear and one even took my wife and I on his boat in the Everglades for a few hours and caught some fish. I took another member from South Carolina I believe out in my boat for a few hours when he was in town for work.

Had a cold and hot day of fishing this weekend. Saturday I took the family out in the boat to our favorite lake that usually is very good for smallmouth. I should have checked my Deep Dive App and I would have seen they had been generating a lot of water out of the lake, it had dropped a lot and fishing was very difficult. Sunday, I went to a little lake I haven’t been to in a few years that is loaded with timber. Our next tournament is a roadrunner and this is one of the lakes on the list. I caught a bass on my first cast, and 60 more during the course of the day. Size was not as good as I’d hoped, but it sure was fun with the nonstop action. Even had a double and almost did it twice but the second time one of the fish fell off at the kayak. At one point I was scoping some deep trees in 32’ of water and had a rod in my hand, dragging a worm right on the surface and a fish ate it right off the top in that deep water. They were really active.

My before work trips this week have been very productive. The shad have hatched at my local lake and the bass are schooling hard on them. It’s a small enough lake that they’ll often come up within reach of the bank. A wacky rig is getting bit well and a Spro popper on my St Croix GXR spinning reel have been picking up lots of fish before work. None of them big, but it’s a fun way to spend 30 minutes before work each day.

Sounds like a good situation for a wacky rig or a Neko rig. Both are light enough they don’t tend to bury in vegetation or a fish will catch them on the drop before they even make it to the grass. If the weeds are fairly uniform depth, you can count down and keep the bait just above the grass during your retrieve. Like was mentioned, keep back off the spot and make longer cast, it can make a big difference in clear water.

I used the BSE prefishing for my last tournament. It's a very dense bait that does skip well and has a unique action. Biggest issue I had was hookups. I was getting bit but getting a hook in a fish was very difficult. I don't think I was using the right rod and wasn't really worried about it since I was prefishing, but the few I swung on didn't hook up.

Turtles will clean a big catfish carcass pretty quick. I find some big floaters every year and there’s always a few big snappers working them over.

Wind was HOWLING this weekend, 20-30 with gust over 40. I decided to play it relatively safe and go to a smaller, local lake that would be situated to be somewhat protected from it. I really wanted to try and get some Livescope fish but the wind was making it very difficult. I caught a bunch flipping the grass and on the grass edges, including one really healthy one. I hooked a big fish off a concrete structure on the dam, but I don’t think it was a bass. Whatever it was, it went away from me pretty fast and broke me off. I did manage to scope my first fish, a big bluegill. Then I found a few trees I didn’t know about previously and caught a fish out of them on a Texas rig. As my day was winding down, I found some fish on a point and started getting bit on a Mooch Minnow. Then it was every cast for several minutes. I lost a really nice one on the jump, but it was constant action and I was watching the fish swimming and chasing my bait. One was another good fish. They slowed down a little so I picked up a Ned and started picking off several more. One cast I got back to under the kayak when a big fish was coming for my bait, then my rod slowly started bending. When I set the hook, it dove and drug me into a tree. My 8lb Pounce leader was squeaking and screaming but I felt it pop free from the tree. I played it carefully with the scraped line but got it into the net. I ended up with over 50 fish on the day, over half of them off that one point with the Livescope. Felt really good to learn something new and do something successfully that is completely out of my comfort zone.

A few of the last weeks reports. The family and I went camping with my parents and a few other family members for Father's Day weekend. All I really wanted was to spend time with them and do some fishing. We had a great weekend, the boys spent a lot of time with my parents, playing with some of the other kids in the campground, and swimming. Mrs. Blue and I did a pretty fair amount of fishing. She had the hot hand on Friday. We were fishing the same bait, but I was catching dinks and walleye, while she was catching the quality fish. I was catching tons of these on my Ned rigs. Saturday, I took my dad out for a few hours and I finally caught a quality fish of my own. Sunday, I went out by myself in my kayak to a local lake for a few hours because I finally got everything installed for the Livescope on my kayak and wanted to try it out. I didn't use it a lot but drove around and looked at stuff with it. The water was up in the trees and grass and I couldn't help myself. Thursday, I went to a private lake with a friend of mine to really play with the Livescope more. I used it to find a brushpile and caught a fish out of it, that was exciting. I'd have never caught that fish without it. That's the kind of stuff I'm hoping to do with it. I caught a ton of fish, but not many bigger ones. Tons of jig fish, so that was fun. Had a pretty good bite early on with a Savage Gear Pulse Tail LB swimbait. My biggest of the day was a glutton.

Mark is a good guy. Moved here from South Africa and is a machine with a shakyhead or C-rig. Our whole group is solid guys. I really want to go down there just to try to target them. I hooked one in practice on a Cull Shad that was probably 10lbs (state record is just shy of 8), but it came off at the boat. I wouldn't mind having that state record. Unfortunately, KS recognizes bowfishing records as state records, and the current record was taken bowfishing.

Better late than never report from my June 7th tournament. Work and life have been busy lately and just haven't had time to sit down and write it up. I've won the last 2 years in a row on Big Hill Lake, despite not really liking the lake, it does fish to my strengths usually. This year, the water was up into the grass and practice day on Friday they were eating a swim jig really well along with a topwater and then a Texas rig when the sun got up. I had around 87" and didn't really try all that hard and everyone else was complaining about how tough the fishing was, I really thought I might 3-peat. Saturday morning, it stormed like crazy. I pulled my tent down Friday night because of the forecast and slept in my truck and it was just dumping rain and flashing non-stop. On top of that, they dropped the lake several inches overnight. My topwater and swim jig bite never happened, not even a sniff. It took almost a hour to finally get my first bite on a T-rig, fishing it super slow. That would be the deal of the day. The weather would be crazy all day. It kept switching from flat calm and hot, to windy and raining, until it finally cleared off completely and was blazing hot and slick calm. I locked the T-rig in my hand and just fished slowly, as fast as I could to cover as much water as possible and every once in a while, I'd find one willing to bite. Notice the raingear on, raingear off theme? I tried flipping grass and thought I had a giant for a second. I did, almost a state record, just not the right species. Less than a pound off the state record for a spotted gar, which was also from the same lake. With less than a hour left, I decided to run back to my starting spot by the ramp where I couldn't get any bites in the morning. I'd caugh 3 solid keepers in practice there and marked a bunch of fish in the morning, I was going to pick it apart and try to get one to bite. I needed to cull a 14.50" fish. I rolled up to the ramp and fired a long cast with a Ned rig and started dragging it down the side of the ramp. Didn't take long before I felt like I was getting maching gunned by a green sunfish. He wouldn't stop so I gave a half-hearted hookset, which was met with a considerable amount of weight and a fish screaming for deeper water. I had to crank like crazy and caught up just as the smallie went airborne. I was begging the hook to stay stuck after my rookie mistake of not setting the hook on a biting fish. I got lucky and my biggest fish of the day pulled hard enough that the hook dug all the way in and it made it to the net. I really didn't think I had done anything, I had struggled all day on a lake that it isn't unusal to need over 90" to get in the money, but in the end, I just barely missed the 3-peat! Mark said he had 4 fish with less than a hour left for about 50", but passed over a dropoff with some fish on it and caught a 16.50, 20, and 19.50 3 cast in a row off of it. Got to add another cool chalkboard trophy to the collection.

Bluegills will eat about anything, but the big ones are a little more selective. I like grasshoppers if I'm using live bait. I usually opt for a piece of a trout worm on a trout magnet head. They come in bright colors that the bluegills love and the trout magnet heads come in light weights that I like to use for gills.

They are just cheap ones from Ali or Temu. They don’t hold really well if you’re flipping really heavy cover but they work well for a majority of situations I need them for and they were only a couple bucks.

These are Rustrictor boxes so they have the extra rust protection, plus I have some of the silica tabs to absorb extra moisture in the box also. I have a bag with a bunch of specialty hooks I carry in their original packaging in addition to this box already. A lot of what is in this box is rigging or something that I pour.

I’ve been using a cheap, double sided box for my terminal box in my kayak, but of course it got some moisture in it and it cost me some money. I got a new Plano 3600 with the big, single latch and rigid dividers (to keep those small hooks and terminal pieces in place), and really like it. Tons of slots to customize to the sizes I wanted and nothing is running underneath the dividers.

I use a 7’ MH Kistler Kyrios and an Okuma Hakai with 17lb mono. It cast super well with that combo. The blade is pretty small so it doesn’t catch wind and it’s built really compact. I was threading it back through flooded trees and grass Sunday and getting bit.

I have one tied on 100% of the time. It’s one of my biggest confidence baits and it catches numbers and big fish. My biggest fish ever submitted in a kayak tournament was on one of my homemade blue bladed jigs. About the only places I don’t like them are open water or heavy timber.