Bluebasser86

Walk until I find a spot I want to fish and then lay whichever one I'm not going to be using down on the shoreline.

That's the same reason why I pick them and broken lures up, I know I'll see them again and they'll fool me again. Better to pick them up the first time and be gone than keep spotting them and getting my hopes up. I use to complain because I always found KVD squarebills. Now I find the Ozark Trail ones probably as much as KVD squarebills. Shouldn't have complained about the KVD ones I guess.

Clearly Savage Gear would be the ones for the job here, not LiveTarget.

Having a really hard time not being a hater on that second fish ?. I wasn't there though, maybe it really was 9.5. Bull is a really nice lake. It does flood quite a bit it seems like but it still fishes good even when the water is up. I'd probably aim somewhere towards the dam, but that's only so I could have an easy drive to the White River below the lake also to fish for big brown trout too. Not only does Bull Shoals have good fishing for bass, but it can be really good for walleye also and occasionally produces some nice yellow perch oddly enough. It does kick out random stripers too, some of them will be huge. I've caught some really quality white bass from Bull while targeting bass with A rigs, swimbaits, and jerkbaits.

Use to be pretty active but it died off to almost nothing so the very occasional post just got put in the KC area thread but not that there's a few people fishing out there again that post here, I thought I'd bump it back up.

I fished a tournament at LOZ where I badly outfished my boater, both of us fishing a Zoom trick worm on the same size shakyhead. I was using green pumpkin/red flake, he was using regular green pumpkin. Was the red flake making that big of difference? Doubtful, he was probably doing something different in his retrieve that was effecting his catch rate, but the red flakes weren't hurting anything. Underwater, watermelon is a more translucent color whereas green pumpkin is more opaque, that could have had some effect on your bite.

It's only 1 more knot though? Tie a knot with plenty of tag end on the hook, then tie or clip the sinker on the end of the tag line and you're done. It's really not a hard rig to set up compared to some others.

Found my first Jackhammer a couple weeks ago. KVD squarebills and Ozark Trail squarebills are making up 90% of the baits I'm finding this year it seems like. The Jackhammer and the rest of the baits I found that morning.

Don't fish a drop shot for largemouth because they're too sophisticated to eat a silly rig like that ? Drop shot originated on the West coast, for mainly largemouth, and they were catching real big ones on their "cute" spinning rods. I pitch a drop shot at vertical cover and docks and shake it in place for largemouth for lethargic fish that ignore jigs and T-rigs that get pulled away from the cover too quickly. It isn't just a finesse rig either. I fish a 4/0 Owner Cover Shot with a baby brush hog and 1/4oz weight on a baitcaster to pitch at docks.

Usually 2, 1 light and one heavier.

Welcome! Looking forward to hearing what you think of that boat once it arrives.

They are plastic but they're thin and make the right sound. Hard to describe but I want a prop bait to make that rip/zip when I twitch it and the Spin Bomb does that, the R2S does not. I've fished the Spin Bomb quite a bit. It's been a solid bait and I love that the Berkley baits come with good hardware, always a nice bonus.

Every time I see a Fallfish it just reminds me of a huge creek chub and I can't help but wonder how great of flathead bait they'd be.

I use a 7' medium Ugly Stick for my channel cat rods but if you're going to be casting for saltwater fish you might want something a little nicer. I use 20lb braid on mine but you could probably step up to 30lb if you wanted since you're fishing the salt also.

Depends what I'm doing. I like fluorocarbon for bottom contact baits, braid for most spinning rod applications and anything in vegetation with casting gear as well as treble hooked topwaters and C-rig mainline. I use mono and copolymer quite a bit as well.

You can reel it onto a different reel, wind it onto an old spool, wind it onto a dowel with a drill.

I'm not exactly sure how short they are, but I have these in a 2/0 that I use to pour on a 1/8oz swing head for the Pit Boss Jr and it fits it well. I'd imagine the #1 is getting really close to what you're looking for. It's a very short shank hook just as advertised. https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/Owner_Rig-N-Hook_Worm_Hooks/descpage-ORNHW.html

The Berkley Spin Rocket is my favorite double prop. I want to like the River2Sea Lane Changer but it just doesn't have the commotion or sound with the plastic props.

Bluegills will spawn multiple times a year. They've probably just been living really shallow and their tails are rubbing on the bottom and cover they're holding on.

That doesn't do anything for the legs though does it? I usually end up with the hooks 6 ways through the legs and no hook left to stick a fish.

I've seen a ton of bullfrog tadpoles this year. Going to be a bumper crop of frog legs next couple years.

I prefer the larger reels, they're more comfortable for me to palm. The smaller reels like when I had a Curado 50E and 70I were too small and difficult to palm, my hand would end up hurting after holding them for a few hours. The Tatula 100 is much smaller than the CT or older SVs. The Fuego also seems smaller but haven't put mine side by side to compare.

When the big ones jump over the bait and then when it balls up and the hook buries back into the bait are the most frustrating things to me.

Don't overlook a swinging football head for those types of worms either. I like to fish those, and even larger worms, on swinging heads and just drag them on the bottom.

Mobility is the big benefit to lures. If you're fishing 1 or 2 holes all day, live bait will probably get you more fish because you can set it in front of them and wait for it to fool them. With lures you can hit many more places, drop a bait where it's difficult to get a live bait, pick off the more aggressive biting fish, and then move to the next likely area. Not having to deal with keeping bait alive and rebaiting constantly helps with this as well.