Bluebasser86

Much prefer the Crock-O-Gator Ring Craw. Similar but I get so many more fish with the Ring Craw for whatever reason.

Yeah it's shad scales color. It's one of the closest baits to the Paycheck Repoman I've found.

I can't remember exactly which Fuji guide it was but pretty sure they made them. They never told us who made the blanks but I doubt it was Loomis.

I make a bladed jig with that color combo, even with a chartreuse blade. It's a good dirty water or night fishing bait but like others have said, it's a hard sell.

Blues are just as big of fish eaters as flatheads are, but don't do as well in ponds so they'd likely just die after eating everything in the pond. I use to guide for flatheads and one thing a flathead will do on occasion during a fight is throw their stomach up along with all it's contents. I've seen little 20 pounders puke up 5lb largemouth. They know how to use that giant mouth and they're not afraid to.

15-20lb Pline CXX

I use identical 6.3 Tatula SV's on both my spinnerbait and bladed jig rods.

I have that 7' 3" TCS as well as one of the 7' 11" Matt Daddy rods. The Matt Daddy is everything it's rated as being. The Frog rod is a great jig and T rig rod, but would make a very poor frog rod IMO. It does not have the backbone, or tip that I look for in a frog rod. The Tatula may be a better option. I'm using a Falcon Bucoo SR 7' 4" that has been an excellent frogging rod.

I know a pretty good bit about the IM6 Fish Eagle, IM7 Tourney Trail, and XML TI. I worked in the fishing department at Cabela's for several years while those rods were on the shelf. What do you want to know about them?

I don't know about that color, but that bait is pretty sweet.

I could probably throw a little 3.5' net from a kayak, which is about all I'd want to do from one anyways. Those are small enough you can throw with just your arms without having to put any twisting or upper body into it.

I feel like I've barely fished for bass in the last month, I'm right around 1620 for the year.

The problem with a flathead is they'll continue to grow, live for a very long time, and are capable of eating all but the very largest bass in a body of water. It's nothing for a modest sized flathead to eat a 4-8 pound largemouth bass, and they have no issues with doing so if they get the chance. They're also very difficult to remove from a pond once placed in one because they can become almost sedentary and just let their food come to them.

Hopefully the OP found his answer sometime sooner than 13+ years after they originally asked it...

Fishing with Gerald Swindle would be a blast I'd think.

In between bites, I'm trying to make the next one bite.

Welcome!

Pretty hard to beat the quality you're getting with a Frabill. You figure a fish folding down into a net 27" deep will give you almost double that depth, so a 40" fish should fit easily in a net that deep. I guess it depends how big the pike you're planning on catching are.

To me, a jerkbait is a suspending bait. When it's a floater, it's a floating minnow or wakebait depending on how it's intended to be fished. When it sinks, it's a countdown. I fish the suspending style 95% of the time and almost never fish a countdown bait. I fish the floating minnows more for walleye than I do bass but I do fish wakebait style minnow baits for bass occasionally.

Never did it with any of mine but that looks really nice.

I use to do really well on a black Spook at night. Stopped fishing it because I dodged the bait flying back at me too many times from overanxious hook sets. I have a Super Spook Jr black with a chartreuse back I had a friend paint for me but I haven't ever even thrown it, looks great though.

When I buy stuff, I'm just borrowing it until the lake claims what it rightfully owns. I have rods and reels for beating around the bank and creek fishing, but not cheap hooks and stuff, and even my bank fishing combos are still solid. No way I'd go fishing with anything I wouldn't use as an everyday piece of equipment and risk losing the fish of a lifetime just to save a couple bucks.

I did twice today, again both were not my baits but a friends bait. One was a custom made wooden glide bait, the other a Baitsanity Antidote that he'd just got and broken off in a bush. Had to wade in to to recover both of them he'd lost previously and wasn't able to recover himself. A telescoping lure retriever gets a lot of those lost baits back though.

It's been a little tough there lately. Fish have not been in their normal places, or if they are, they're not biting. I was there with my family last Thursday.