Bluebasser86

I made my own and absolutely crushed them this spring. It was the best bladed jig color I used while the water was cool and dirty and it wasn't even close. And so did the people I made them for.

Baits that hold water that need to dry are good for the Hydraflo. I like them for jigs because of how the skirts hold water and take a long time to dry. It allows air to circulate and the skirts to dry even after they're put away.

I swim a black and blue jig occasionally with a black and blue Christie Craw on the back, it's a great combo.

Congrats on the new PB! I use imgbb.com to upload my pictures. It's free and easy to start an account and upload your pictures. You can email me the picture if you want and I can upload it also.

Welcome!

Welcome!

Not really the time of year that I fish a lot of soft plastics yet. Caught a good amount on the Zoom mag finesse worm this winter along with the Berkley Ribsnake, both on a shakyhead. Zman TRD and Big TRD on a Ned rig like usual have been solid. Had my first short lived bite pitching plastics last Tuesday morning on a YUM Bad Momma, a bait I don't hear much about that flat out gets bit.

It's a tough decision and part of constant mental game that is bass fishing. We played it big time Saturday during our tournament. During prefishing, we covered a lot of water, eliminated a lot of water, found some marginal spots, and a couple solid areas. This lake also has 2 large marinas that hold tons of fish, but get pounded day in and day out and have very little room to fish if there's more than a couple boats. It's also the spawn and the bass love to spawn in marinas. We made the decision that we were going to live and die in our spots and hope that the marina fishermen would steal enough fish from each other to keep one of them from catching a mega bag. We started on our main spot and it produced fish, and then a big fish, and another, and then the lake got busy and all the other good stuff got covered up. We worked it for 4 or 5 hours and left to check one of our secondary spots and it was much murkier than it had been and the fish weren't there. Then we had to wait in line to get back to our spot and we fished some new stuff nearby and never got another good bite. Finally it opened back up, we jumped back on it, caught our last cull that gave us another 1.5lbs, we won by just over a pound, should have never left.

Who is that guy? 1 year later, can't believe I looked like that.

Caught a bunch of different kinds of fish this weekend, only took a picture of a couple of my "other" fish though. Not pictured were green sunfish, white bass, channel cat, and sauger. Caught dozens of crappie on everything I fished from a Ned rig to a jerkbait, drop shot, 1/2oz spinnerbait and a tube jig. Couldn't resist trying to sight fish a big ugly drum on a Ned rig either. They're too easy sometimes and not so heartbreaking when you know for sure what you've got.

I was using a 7' 3" H/F Ethos Micro from Academy until this year and it was a great rod for frogging. I have 2 of them I bought for $27 each.

Buy better line. No way I'd be taking the time even to put all mine in warm water before a fishing trip. Good line should be manageable enough to fish with without doing anything extra.

My buddy @cbass12 has an older Stratos with an Evinrude on it and it's a great running motor. When I fished in a bass club, there was a couple guys with older Evinrudes that never seemed to have any problems. I think as long as you get them in the right age range they're really solid motors.

I made a bladed jig for a guy that was a throwback color type color with a red blade, red head, white skirt. Basically the same as the Red Head color. According to the pictures he's sent me, it still works.

Found another 90 Whopper Plopper last week while bank fishing. Not sure why they didn't just grab it, hung up in a bush right next to the bank in an area only bank fishermen can get to. Yellow head color, second one I have and I found both of them.

Check your local Wal-Marts. The ones here all have Havoc Pit Bosses laying on the bottom racks, black and blue, junebug, green pumpkin, and green pumpkin/purple. One of these days I'm going to buy a bunch of the junebug and black and blue before they go away forever. The Havoc lineup for sure is missed. Pre-Rapala Wiggle Warts and Chug Bugs Terminator Ball Buster buzzbait

Pretty proficient with a lot of baits. Don't make me fish a C-rig or a crankbait and I'll be alright.

Getting ready for frogging season, hopefully if it ever warms up and stays that way. This was a hard color for me to find for anything very close to retail price, not sure why.

I haven't noticed them being any more or less weedless than a regular offset hook.

For the past few seasons I've helped run and fished in some local Thursday night tournaments. They've been a blast and I'm going to miss them, but they've kind of run their course, but we had to do last years fish off to wrap everything up and pay out the pot for the year. We were fishing a lake I use to fish pretty often and loved fishing, but hadn't fished since 2015 until this year and hadn't fished well back then or the last few years. I'd done decent the few times I've fished it this year, but the small largemouth are so thick that it's hard to put a good tournament bag together. My buddy and I prefished it last week and found some pretty good spots and then at the end of the day we hit a spot he'd been suggesting but I kept writing off because I didn't catch fish there 7 or 8 years ago when I fished it last. Long story short, it was where we were starting at Saturday. Of our small group, we had 5 teams show up to fish including us but the boat traffic was crazy as there was supposed to be a big tournament on the lake the following weekend and a ton of people were prefishing it. Started out in a thick fog in 30 degree temps, not very spring-like. Still, we went to work quickly and had a small limit by 8am, something that took us until 1PM the following week. One recurring issue we had was losing big fish. I lost a heavy one on a swing head and Menace that just pulled off, and then lost a 3-3.5lb largemouth that I hooked on a jig in a laid down tree when it hung up in someone's old line. Jon also had a big one just let go of his Ned rig later in the day. With all the boat traffic and knowing how many fish were on that 100 yard stretch of bank, we started just going back and forth, picking up fish every trip and just trying to cull up. It was a shallow, rocky ledge with some flooded bushes in the water and 20' off the bank dropped sharply into 20+ feet of water, the smallies were cruising the top of the ledge in the morning and drop later in the day. Probably around 10AM I fired a long cast with the Menace along the edge of the drop and was dragging it back. When I went to lift a fish pulled back down and I knew it was big when I hammered the hook home but wasn't really ready for the fish the rocketed out of the water. I've caught 2 over 4 from this lake this year so far, but this smallmouth was noticeably bigger. Thankfully, she stayed down and just pulled hard until it was time to go to the net, then she just slid right in. 4.91lbs makes it my 5th largest Kansas smallmouth ever and it was a huge upgrade to our bag. Our next trip down that bank we were talking about making a move since we weren't even catching many little largemouth anymore, when Jon stuck a good one on a 110 right off the flooded boat ramp. Smallmouth fight hard, but I swear they fight even harder at this lake and this one was doing everything it could to tear those hooks out, but we got it in the net and added a 3.5 pounder to our bag. We gave it another pass and decided to bounce around some of our other spots and see what we could do. Nothing, not a fish bigger than 1.5 pounds anywhere. Our spot was covered up with boats every time we tried to get back on it until there was 1.5 left in the day. We pulled back in and started catching little largemouth right away again. About halfway down, Jon lifted on a fish with his Ned rig that wasn't doing anything impressive at first, then it jumped and I was scrambling for the net. It came to the boat pretty fast and I was ready to prevent an extended fight. Another fish just over 3 culled us up to 16.32lbs, and that would be our total for the day. At weigh in, there were some nice fish showing up, and I got even more nervous than I was, especially when I heard that one other boat had 3 keepers over 18". I knew it would be close, but in the end we took it by about a pound. Unfortunately, my big smallmouth was just a shad shy of big bass, that went to a 4.98lb largemouth. It was a lot of fun and it always makes me miss tournament fishing, but maybe again some day.

Haven't been to the power plant lake in over a month since everything warmed up and figured it was time to check it out again. I'd heard it was fishing tough, but it usually is. Tried to fish my normal stuff close to the ramp at the start of the morning but got followed by 2 different boats so scraped that idea real quick and headed down the lake. Crappie were spawning everywhere and I couldn't keep a bait away from them. Caught some real nice ones and actually put some bigger ones in the livewell but ended up tossing them back at the end of the day when I changed my mind about having to clean fish. It was super calm out early in the morning so I was fishing a 10,000 Fish Sukoshi Bug on a Ned rig real slowly through the rocks when it just disappeared. About 30 minutes into my morning and I had one a hair under 5 in the boat. The crappie bite stayed strong, but the bass were really slow. Caught a couple more small ones, one a little bigger on a chrome Strike King 300 jerkbait that had a small drum in it's throat. Then I started getting harassed by green sunfish almost every cast on the Ned rig. I was about to give up hope when I saw a fish chase a couple baitfish near the rocks. Flipped my bait and missed it the first cast. Flipped back and it didn't eat immediately, thinking that one was gone, but another one grabbed it and when I lifted on it she just about felt like I hooked a rock. One of the more intense fights I've had with a largemouth in a while. She jumped completely out of the water twice and tried a couple more times before I got her in the net. 6.76lbs, just .03lbs short of my biggest of they year, also on a Ned rig from the same lake.

It won't reproduce in the pond and isn't going to eat everything in it. Enjoy the bonus fish.

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome!