Bluebasser86

Lots of guys use the mid sized round Abus for a starter swimbait reel, they do a very reasonable job of it.

1oz will be fine but you’re overdoing it with anything much over that.

No they don’t. I left one rigged for several days on a jig to test it and nothing happened.

I caught this 7 1/4lb fish twice in three weeks, her weight only changed a few ounces and she only moved about 50 yards. Blind in her left eye and missing a chunk from the top of her tail. First time on a shakyhead and mag finesse worm, first week of January '21 Second time the 3rd week of January '21 on a crankbait.

One of the power plant lakes here got LMBV, which mainly kills off the larger bass. Use to be a lot of largemouth and smallmouth, but the population crashed because a majority of the fish in the lake were larger, adults. Now, it's difficult to get bites most days on the lake. The upside is the fish that survive are supposedly resistant to the virus and will pass those genes onto their offspring and hopefully prevent it from happening again in the future.

It has one of the highest population densities in the state according to surveys, so there’s lots of fish in there and it’s still one of the toughest fisheries to get bit at. A lot of guys throw shad baits, but I rarely do for the exact reason you mentioned, why would they eat a shad bait with millions upon millions of the real thing available? So I catch them on Neds and craws and cranks in crazy colors.

It’s mostly this lake. Power plant lake and it has shad so thick you can walk on them.

IMO, weigh in tournaments should be a thing of the past. The delayed mortality loses a lot of weight when you’re not bringing them in, but guys have to be able to show them to you when they catch one so they aren’t going away I suppose. We aren’t keeping enough bass as a whole. I wish I liked to eat them, I’d keep them all the time, but they taste awful. Keeping a limit of small fish is never going to hurt the population of the lake.

Got out extra early yesterday to beat the crowd on what was supposed to be a super nice day. Parked my kayak on the bank in the dark and put some cat rods out and wasn't there 5 minutes when one took off and I had a nice blue on the bank. Nothing else after that so I started chasing bass. Same spot as last week, about a 100 yard wide point that I just worked back and forth across. They must not be generating much because the water temps had dropped from 53 last weekend to 47 this weekend, not good for power plant fish. I was still picking one off every now and then and avoiding the circus of boats I could see across the lake on the bluff walls. I even managed to pick off another nice one on my Ned, just a touch over 5 pounds. Unfortunately, one of the clowns from the circus decided I was having too much fun and put an end to that. They rolled up and started driving back and forth across my shallow point, scanning and pointing around. They had spider rod holders on the back so I assumed they were catfishermen that were going to hopefully anchor out a little bit and give me a little space. Nope, they drove right over the top of my point and beached it, then started throwing what looked like handfulls of brown gravel all over into the water?? I was fuming, but just kept fishing because unfortunately, they had done nothing actually wrong. Then the lines started flying, to each side of me, way out into the water, on fairly light and long spinning rods? I thought maybe channel cat fishing until they got their first bite and landed the fish. They were carp fishing. There's a carp every square foot in this lake, and they decided to do it right on top of where I was trying to fish. I thought about dragging a big jig through their lines. I thought about grinding a deep crank through their lines, thought about tossing my throw net all around the point, but instead, I fished a little bit longer and left. The saying "2 wrongs don't make a right", kept going through my head and I decided not to let them win by making me get down on their level. Instead, I loaded up and drove to a different lake to check on the ice, only to find out it was completely thawed. I spent the last 2.5 hours of my day catching 30 more bass, all small, but it felt like a reward for keeping my composure. The hole jumpers sitting on top of my footprints from the morning. I got bit on the back of their transom while they were rigging their rods.

Got out extra early to beat everyone to my spot on what was supposed to be an extra nice day (didn't end up mattering, still got ran off). Brought the cat rods and caught a healthy blue before the sun even got up.

I use a 300e Curado on one of my swimbait setups, one of the only Shimanos I own. I used the old 200Bs for years, along with some 200BSFs, 100B, and old Chronarchs and Calcuttas. Once Shimano started messing with them every year I switched to Daiwa and haven’t looked back.

Fished the power plant lake with my buddy today in our yaks. Weather wasn’t bad but pretty chilly, 21 at launch and 37 at take out but winds were pretty light so it made it more tolerable. The normal rock was was very unproductive, and Stony wanted to fish some different places we normally couldn’t get to, but I wanted to fish my flat point first, so we went there. We were immediately on fish, both fishing a Ned rig. I caught a football of a 17” fish that weighed 3.60. But I hadn’t even released mine when Stony hooked up with a tank that went 6.25. We caught several more small fish before it slowed down a little. I was slowly dragging my Ned rig on 10lb Seaguar TacX and 8lb Seaguar Pounce leader when my bait just disappeared. When I caught up set the hook, the fish bulldogged for deeper water and then under the kayak before sliding into the net. Not quite as heavy as most fish with a fish this size, but still a 4.73lb fish. We caught a few more little ones before we decided to go fish some other areas of the lake. I hung around a little longer than Stony and started to notice what looked like schooling activity to me and caught a few fish before I left and caught up with Stony, but I kept thinking about those fish. A couple hours later, I had one small fish and lost a big one on a crankbait. I told Stony I was going to spend my last couple hours on the flat point and he thought that was a good idea. They were biting again right away and the schooling activities had ramped up. They were chasing shad on the point and into the shallow pocket next to it. I caught several small ones off the point, but the fish in the pocket looked bigger. I caught one on a 2tap that was a little bigger and called Stony over and told him what was happening. He took that information and immediately stuck a good one. I don’t think he weighed it but it was another 4-5 pound fish. I rotated through several baits trying to find something different. I took off the 2tap and put on an Ima Suspending lipless. First cast I pulled it down and paused and got thumped. I knew it was a good one, but the mini blimp that surfaced was bigger than I expected, and it liked what I was throwing. I though she might go 7 but not quite long enough, still a little over 6.5lbs, biggest of the year so far. We made a few more cast but both had to get on the road. A great winter day on the water.

I have exactly 1 payment left on my boat, I couldn’t imagine the payment on one of those.

The only one’s you should need to plug in that boat is any in the floor of the boat. The live well plugs should just drain the wells and only fill to water level if you pull the plug on the water.

Those in the pictures are all older models. If youre buying them in stores right now, they should all be newer models. They’re one of my favorite jerkbaits but they’re just another tool, not the magic bullet.

Well my boy's BB game got canceled Saturday, so a buddy and I went to the power plant lake to try to find a few. The wind was way stronger than it was supposed to be, with white caps rolling most of the day on the main lake, and the 18* air temp at the ramp didn't feel good with the 15-20mph wind. Plus there was probably 20 groups of duck hunters scattered around the small lake, it sounded like a war zone out there. The bite was slow, my buddy only had 1 fish all day, I got on them a little better but it was still a grind, all of them were on slow moving baits. I caught a majority of them off a shallow point that has a creek channel swing on the end of it and lots of rocks and a few stumps scattered around it. It's a normal spot for me in the winter that is usually productive. This day the south wind was pushing the warm water from the outlet straight into it, which is a big deal on power plant lakes. I could see the gulls diving from across the lake, so I knew there was bait there. What was confusing to me, was it looked like there was a bunch of big logs on the bottom that had never been there on my sidescan. Well I was dragging my Ned rig through about 3' of water when one of those "logs", thumped my bait. I thought it was going to be a drum from the initial bite, but the hookset was so solid, and then it was just and unstoppable force as it headed out for deeper water. I tried to stay spotlocked, but I knew there was several stumps and actual logs, I was afraid it would get me wrapped and be gone, so I had to follow it. I was only armed with a 7' ML spinning rod with a 2000 size reel, 10lb Seguar Tactx to an 8lb Seaguar Grand Max leader tied to a homemade 1/16oz Ned head with a #2 hook, but we played Tug-O-War for over 20 minutes before the monster finally surfaced. I've never tried to put someone like that into the kayak, it wasn't easy. I got her head in the net and struggled for a minute or two, almost flipped the kayak towards her lifting over the side and then to the other side once we both slide back into the kayak. I've seen a lot of big catfish, I've never seen a fish like this one. My 50lb scale wasn't nearly big enough. I've caught several 50lb class fish, I've never struggled to lift one like I did with this fish. My gut says 70-75lbs, but I'll never know for sure.

I use braid quite a bit in the cold. Coating it with chapstick makes it a lot more manageable. I will rub it on the bigger guides and kind of let the line carry it through the smaller guides, but putting it on the braid helps the most because it sticks to it well and keeps the water from sticking to the braid and carrying back through the guides as much.

Mostly any rod with braid and more importantly, the braid. Easy to do in the garage before the trip. Pull out a long cast of line and then coat the line with a thin layer of chapstick while reeling it back in. I don’t worry about it as much with flouro or mono, just dip the rod in the water as needed.

Chapstick

I fish all winter long and rarely catch one deeper than 5-7 feet of water. Last Saturday it was 34 fish and none deeper than 5’.

I had some good catches this year including my heaviest at 6.02lbs. My longest of 21.75" After a 10 year hiatus, I took a muskie trip and put 3 in the boat in a couple days. And I put some really nice big uglies on the bank too. Some of the best ones weren't big though. Almost catching a limit with my good buddy on one of the hardest lakes around in a weeknight tournament. We giggled like little kids all night. My oldest son fishing his first kayak tournament and coming up 1 fish short of a limit, beating over half the field. Putting a good friend who hadn't catfished in many years on a good one. And every time my boys would go walk the creek bank with me.

It's not supposed to make it above freezing here anytime in the next 10 days according to the long ranger. My oldest son has his first BB game of the year Saturday and we're finally getting both boys birthday parties in on Sunday, so no fishing this weekend, and I'm not real upset about it 🥶 It was -2 on my way in to work this morning and not supposed to warm up much today. All the local lakes are locked up.

I love catching spots, but they don't get very big here. Our state record is 4.44, and it's stood for over 50 years. I've never seen a picture of it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually a largemouth, since spotted bass were first found in Kansas just 10 years before that record was caught, they weren't in very many lakes here (still aren't), and the first ones would have just been reaching full potential at that point. I've had a couple that were getting close to the state record. My biggest one just nibbled a buzzbait like one of the hundreds of sunfish had done that morning, almost didn't even lean on it.

LiveTarget baits. They look so good and I've been fooled by them more than once. Coincidentally, I've been fooled by them more times than I've managed to fool the fish with them. I know their frogs are good, but of course that's one of their baits I've never tried.