Bluebasser86

Mainly a discontinued sapphire blue pitboss or Devil's Spear but a Sapphire blue Menace works great as well.

That feeling when it's 22* outside and there's an ice storm warning.

It's that hard for you to see with your eyes in a picture, imagine how hard it is for a bass to tell the difference under water.

Welcome!

I reuse old worms and the color always changes a bit when I melt them down. They still catch fish though, that's all that matters.

Black and blue is my first option for most ponds. If the water is clear, I'll go with bluegill or chartreuse and white.

I don't have any Mettles anymore, just 1 Manic is the only H2O reel I still have.

I think that @Russ E has one of their cranking rods. I have 3 of the Speed Demon Pros but not the cranking rods.

It was 42 degree water that I was catching them out of last Friday with a homemade 5/8oz white with double copper Colorado blades. They were slack lining it and choking the bait. It was in the low 40's when Jason Christie almost won the Bassmasters Classic on Grand with a 1oz single Colorado bladed Booyah spinnerbait.

They catch bigger than average fish for me, but also produce good numbers of fish. They're great in stained to dirty water and really seem to excel around vegetation. I haven't caught any giants with them but just uncountable numbers of fish in the 4-6 pound range. I use my homemade ones and black and blue and a color I call Ivy are my best big fish producers.

It's nice because it allows me to reach not only down, but out at baits stuck on the bank/rocks, or up in the trees. I have probably a 95% recovery ratio with it. If I can reach it, I can almost always get it back.

Telescoping 18' Frabill is what I use and it reaches everything I need it to.

Deep water/offshore fishing would be my weak point. I think that's largely due to the fact our lakes don't fish well offshore because if I go somewhere with an offshore population of fish like Table Rock or Bull Shoals, I can usually catch them.

I've used both but I prefer baitcasting, mainly because it seems like I have better success and landing ratio with 15-17lb mono or copolymer which obviously handles better on casting gear.

Finally found some magnum Shine Glides for sale online. I got extremely lucky to get the one I got a couple months ago, but in about the last color I wanted. Now I've got one in Bone and one in Hitch hopefully in my possession soon.

@Tim Kelly did a beautiful build on a little boat recently. I did a very function only build on mine. It's not pretty and still a work in progress as funds tightened up significantly, but it gets me to the places I don't want to or can't take my bass boat.

I'm pretty sure I have a small injector at home I'll likely never use I could get you for cheap. It will do a single lure mold fine as long as it's not an overly large bait. I'm assuming that's a regular size Rage bug mold, which it should handle fine. I believe it's the 45 ml one from Bugmolds.

A small snap, okay. Snap swivel, only if fishing a bait that fully rotates and can cause line twist like a jigging/casting spoon, or inline spinner. I'm not a fan of snaps because they make me complacent about retying and it's just a matter of time before they cost me a fish and a bait.

I personally do not like topwaters after dark. I've been lucky enough to dodge too many baits I couldn't see to fish them often at night. However, if I get a nice calm, muggy night and the surface activity is too much for me to handle, I will throw a topwater crawler like a Jitterbug, Crazy Crawler, or most recently the Savage Gear 3D Bat. I can make an exception for crawlers because I fish them on braid and when I hear a strike I can just reel faster and lean into them, no hookset required and no risk of a bait flying back at me. I had one really fun night this past year tossing a black bat around docks.

My main colors I use are red, chartreuse, candy purple, and pink. Those are also the main colors I sell every year in Ned rig heads. I think a lot of it is the same issue a lot of bass guys have with Midwest Finesse in general where they're almost scared to use the bright colors and the light weight with the little hook because a guy can't possibly outsmart a wary bass with anything but the most natural looking colors.

I also switch to split rings and round bends or EWG trebles. I like a lighter wire hook because you're going to snag with them if you're fishing them right. The lighter hook lets you at least recover them occasionally and since it's a cold water bait you can back the drag off a bit and play a big fish out without worrying about bending the hooks on a big fish.

A very general breakdown of how I chose them, obviously exceptions to these guidelines that I use, but maybe they'll help simplify things for you. Buzzbait/toadbuzz-Covering water around moderate to heavy cover/w stained to dirty water. White if there's lots of shad, black the rest of the time. Popping frog-Vegetation, any water clarity, for fishing slower around more isolated patches and edges of grass. White/brown/black/red Standard frog-Vegetation, any water clarity, for covering water quickly over larger mats of grass. Same colors. Toad-Subsurface vegetation that clogs a buzzbait. Any visibility/ black or white with white being my first option. Popper-Fishing targets, any clarity, shad and bluegill Plopper-open to moderate cover, any clarity, covering large flats and points or drawing fish out of subsurface weeds, bone, shad, black. Walkers-open to moderate cover, clear to stained, covering water where fish are feeding on roaming baitfish like shad, translucent, bone, shad. Prop baits-Fishing targets, good for pulling fish out from under docks or out of vegetation, good around spawning gills, shad and bluegill Wake bait-covering water, open to moderate cover, any clarity, good for when fish won't commit to a bait on the surface, shad. Floating worm-Target fishing, clear to stained water, great for sight fishing and during the spawn/postspawn, white, pink, merthiolate.

February is the last month historically that winter has a death grip on our local lakes. Some point in March we'll be open and I'll have more than 2 options to fish again. I'd ice fish but our ice is rarely thick enough, usually stuck in that in between of being too thin to walk on and too thick to break with a boat.

That old saying "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is", it's still holding true today.

I don't know if it has the same effect on Florida strain fish as it does Northern strain. There's been discussion by some that maybe the lake already has it because it's been so difficult in the past few years. I've been fishing the lake for almost 2 decades and I guess I didn't know there was a point recently when the lake wasn't difficult. Clearly the big fish are still there, and that's one of the biggest telling factors in a lake with LMBV. Gardner was a great lake for big fish, and when it got it a 2 pound fish was suddenly a huge one (around 07-08). Then in 2015 it was like someone turned the lights back on and there was quality fish starting to show up again. We had a couple 3 pound fish caught in our weeknight tournaments, then a 4, and last year one over 5 and a few others over 5 by guys in the group fun fishing the lake. So I guess the silver lining is that it's not a death sentence for a lake, but it sure can knock it down for several years.