Bluebasser86

Sapphire blue Plum or Plum Apple I use a variety of non-traditional colors on my Ned rigs. Some of my favorites are Hot Snakes, Hot Craw, and White Lightning.

I have a couple very memorable ones.

I usually run Kahle hooks, because I like to hear the clicker scream and I like to hammer the hook home. Plus, I always use to fish for flatheads and I don't like circles for flatheads, but I think I'm going to have to start running circles for these blues. Flatheads never seem to drop a bait, but blues seem do it all the time when they feel pressure when they run with a bait.

I got out Sunday on the power plant lake, only thing open in the state right now that I'm aware of, even the other power plant lake is mostly frozen over. Forcast to be in the low 50's and moderate south winds, I expected it to be a zoo, so I got out really early and did some catfishing before the sun even got up. I had one slow runner that I hooked up with and popped off about halfway in, and then an absolute screamer that dropped the bait as soon as I touched the rod. When the sun got up, I pushed off and was already at my spot, so I started tossing a Ned around the point. First time in a while I've fished in the morning and not had my guides icing immediately, it was really nice. Didn't take long before I got my first bite, a whopping 10" bass. The next one was decidedly different. A heavy thump when it popped off a rock, and slow, heavy headshakes on the hookset before she was wallowing on the surface. She was trying hard for my pedal drive and my trolling motor, but I steered her away and into the net. 30 minutes into my morning and I had already made my day with a 20" fish that was a shad shy of 6lbs at 5.93, my second biggest of the year. The shad weren't on this spot nearly as good as they had been, and the bite was a lot slower, but I was picking one off every now and then. I think I only caught 12 or 13 all day and missed a few more, mostly on a Ned but a few on a jerkbait. None were quite as big as that one but I did get another that was just shy of 4 on the Ned.

205 here, down from 235, still got a ways to go but getting there. Other than that and fishing, I'm always trying to be the best husband and father I can be. I'm a work in progress there too, but I hope they know how hard I try for them.

My BIL is a plumber and HVAC guy and gets me all my lead from old lead pipes and lead sheeting when he's doing remodel work in older houses. Takes some work to clean up, but it's free.

I fish a lot of small bodies of water, less than 200 acres. Some are no wake, some electric only, and some have no restrictions. I'm always shocked how many people feel the need to run WOT on a 100 acre lake, or how many will disregard speed limits and wake restrictions. The problem on smaller lakes, is there is less area to avoid those people and the lake gets to be like a washing machine, with waves going everywhere, which are much more difficult to ride out on a small boat or kayak. I'm pretty much the man powered/electric powered side of things everywhere I go anymore. I fish a lot of reservoirs much larger than my normal state lakes and get around just fine. It just takes some planning and forethought to try and prevent issues. It's much easier for me to avoid issues on big lakes typically than it is on small lakes with no restrictions.

I think it's because musky are so much of an apex predator that their curiosity gets the best of them sometimes. They see some gaudy, noisy thing in the water and the only way for them to determine if it's food or not is to bite it. Being that a lot of muskie baits are hand crafted one at a time also, it's extremely time consuming to make a bait that size with lots of details, and when you do, you end up with a very expensive lure (see large bass swimbaits). Musky have a tendency to trash baits, so having them be really expensive, and detailed works of art when it's not really necessary, is just not cost effective and likely wouldn't sell many. I've caught more muskie on bass lures than I have muskie baits, but none of them were particularly realistic baits. They've been on squarebills, T-rigged plastics, spinnerbaits, and frogs, none that looked a lot like anything real.

Since I started adding the silica gel packs to my boxes, rust hasn't been an issue. I use to fight with it every season it seemed like before I started using them in my boxes.

Hey but you get free shipping!

I have a Co-angler bag that holds up to 6 3700 boxes and then I have a couple gallon bags of plastics I carry. I keep the basics and then add some specific things I feel I might need. I use to carry too much stuff but it’s helped a lot to cut down a lot of gear and just carry the essentials.

I buy them all the time, but then hate fishing them, I don’t understand myself sometimes.

I’d go with the #1, the 2.8 is tiny. I have a pack and wish I hadn’t bought them, haven’t found any use for them.

I would look somewhere in the middle between KC and Springfield. The Ozark lakes are great, then there’s lots of smaller lakes in the SE Kansas area that are really good and nice to avoid the crowds. Those are mostly my stomping grounds.

One of my biggest spinnerbait bass was on an all red with tandem red willow leaf blades Strike King in March many years ago.

So sorry to hear about this. Thoughts and prayers for you and your family.

I guess it depends what your bare minimum requirements are. How big does the boat need to be? Do you need it to have a trolling motor or a gas motor? Do you need a trailer? I’ve bought a few John boats with nothing in them for less than $500. Last one was a 16’ boat that was 5’ wide with a trailer for $300. It needed work but I fixed it up and fished out of it for a few years before I sold it for $1000.

I bought a pack a few weeks ago but have yet to try them. Put them in my box and keep forgetting about them.

TW doesn't seem to carry the standard colors of the shallow Flicker Shad, but they do have a couple of the HD colors that are currently on sale. https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/Berkley_Flicker_Shad_HD_Shallow_Crankbait/descpage-BFKS.html DUO makes a little shad bait that I really like also, but TW doesn't carry them though unfortunately.

You're not going to get better quality for your money than Siebert's. If you have to be able to buy it in a store, the Booyah Boo Jig and Finance Jig are pretty solid options but I don't like the banded skirts they come with, seems like they dry rot really fast so make sure you zip tie them or something.

Worth it is subjective to the user. Will it catch fish? Absolutely. This is a pretty typical size fish for me to catch on a swimbait. But they can get even smaller. But occasionally, you find what you're looking for, and that's what makes it "worth it" to me.

@AlabamaSpothunter I caught so many fish on that exact color shad rap in the #5 size when I was growing up. I trolled it from my 2 man and caught crappie and cast it for bass, but it caught everything. I still have probably 10 of them in that color and I'd guess 20 in assorted colors. They cast like a potato chip, but bass also eat them like we eat chips. I don't throw them often in favor of the Flicker Shad Shallow because it cast so much better, but I might have to break out the old shad rap on an upcoming trip. That's an awesome fish. They're just different when they get to that size.

Lake record is 10lbs 15oz, caught not too long ago in a tournament on the guys first cast of the morning on a DT6, he’s got a good video of it on YouTube. Our state record is only a pound heavier. I’ve caught more fish over 7 out of that lake than all other lakes in the state combined, but I’ve never broke 8 yet.

I've never had a good experience from mixing different color Zman baits. The only time it's been okay has been anything green pumpkin is compatible with other green pumpkin hues. I mixed some white with some Laguna Shrimp, and now have a bag of orange baits? I thought light with light would be okay but I guess I was wrong.

Made it out on Sunday in the yak on the power plant. I thought about skipping it and going to a different lake to avoid the crowds after the idiocy I dealt with out there last week, but I decided I'd go and stay until boats got bad or until the fish quit biting, whichever came first. It was a cold morning with a pretty good breeze, I headed straight to my point that I got ran off of last week and it was on right away. There was tiny shad everywhere, looking like they were stunned from the cold snap, and fish were occasionally boiling on them. Water temps had come up about 6* since the week before and I don't know if that or the cold front rolling in or maybe a combination of both, but something had them moving. I had several baits to try but my guides were freezing all day, and that always messes with my willingness to switch up too much. They were chewing a Ned real good like usual, but I had some Geecrack Neko Hack neko rigging tools I wanted to try, so I tossed a Neko rigged Big Bite Baits worm and stuck a nice one. When I say these fish were gorging on dying shad, I'm starting to wonder if it's possible for a bass to eat itself to death? 18.5" and 5.08lbs, a fitting football on Superb Owl Sunday. Very next cast with the Neko, another bite, another heavy fish. I was thinking megabag at this point. This one was "only" 4 and some change. Those would be my only big bites of the day though. I caught fish steadily the entire 9 hours I was on the water, to the tune of over 30 fish and constantly had them boiling around me, but the big ones stopped biting after those 2. I did catch the biggest little bass I've ever seen. I thought it was a white bass when I first saw it flash under the surface. Nope, just a 13 incher that weighed 1.75lbs. Huge winter storm coming again this week. We're looking 6" to a foot of snow on Wednesday and really cold temps, not looking good for next weekend. Might have to finally do some trailer maintenance that I've been neglecting all winter.