Bluebasser86

One of the lakes I fish often they fight extremely hard. It helps that they're usually really fat and dense fish and have quite a bit of cover to get into also. Makes landing the big ones even more challenging.

All good suggestions above. Another I would add to the list is Shawnee State Lake north of Silver Lake a few miles. Also a smaller lake with a lower density but good average size. Last time I went there in late October I was there for 4 hours and had a limit over 20 pounds all on a black and blue bladed jig and sapphire blue brush jig.

Nope, I have a 1,200 sqft shop right outside I park my truck and boat in. No seasons here either.

We have open water year round thanks to the 2 power plant lakes. There was snow on the grounds and maybe 10 degrees when I caught my biggest bass of the year in January with a 7.43. The other one has a wide variety of species with largemouth, smallmouth, white bass, and wipers make up a majority of the catch there. Both are less than an hour drive for me.

Drone flooding pics from the river near my house . Normally small enough to cast across (the narrow straight part in between the trees in the first picture), but has lots of creeks running into it so it floods extremely fast. They found a car with a woman who had been missing for a couple days inside it yesterday at a low water crossing. Turn around, don't drown isn't a joke.

Never seen them but I've heard they're a sign of a healthy ecosystem.

Just drive down and jump in the boat with me

I felt the same way. I was unsure from the pictures and videos but after actually getting my hands on one, it was much nicer than I expected and very smooth. Handles fish nicely too

I just tie a Uni knot with mono to the spool for backing. I don't get too hung up on the type of knot I'm tying to the spool, I figure if a fish ever gets me that far, my spool knot probably isn't going to matter.

I started buying expensive rods several years ago but have stopped in the last few years. I'll keep my higher end rods for feel baits, but baits like topwater, spinnerbaits, traps, cranks, frogs, really don't need a high end rod imo.

Fluorocarbon by nature, is supposed to be clear, I think that's where you're going to run into your issue. You can get blue braid, or clear-blue mono or copoly though.

I like fishing big swimbaits but had very little success with the Gantarel or Spro 50. Bluegill baits in general have not been productive for me and I have no idea why because our bass eat tons of bluegills, just never when I'm fishing a fake one I have much better luck on shad glides like a Shine Glide for subsurface and a Slammer for topwater. Paralleling weed edges and docks, running across points, and fishing any likely ambush area (high percentage spots), are my best technique.

I've had enough big bass try to eat little bass while reeling them in to give me reason to fish the color.

I've tried the LiveTarget and like everything else from them I've tried, it was a dud.

Great job guys! I agree you're right in the ballpark on both your fish's weights.

Great fish and good call on the replica. Now you and others have a shot at getting her again when she's even bigger, which she almost certainly will get bigger being your location.

Generally there's always more effective baits in our lakes. An abundance of muck, algae, and zebra mussels tends to make fishing a crankbait difficult. They just don't seem to work that great very often here either. It's been years since I've had someone in the boat with me that was doing better with a crankbait than I was with other baits. Then there's the fact that I just don't enjoy fishing them, squarebills in particular. I don't mind mid to deep running baits as much. There's a lot of days through a fishing season that I don't even have a cranking rod on the deck.

Powder paint gun and being really careful not to overheat the blade. If it gets too hot, too much paint sticks to it and ruins the action the blade. Usually about 4-6 seconds over the heat gun will do the trick.

Welcome!

Welcome!

The little tournament circuit I fish in has our end of the year fish off next week, so of course we've had unseasonably cold weather and up to a foot of rain in areas this past week. The lake was already up 4' from flooding a month ago, but now it's up to 8' high and will likely rise a few more inches between now and Thursday when we get there. To throw an even bigger wrench in the deal, it's primarily a smallmouth lake. I have fished it a few times, so I have a game plan still, just curious how other guys approach the situation. https://ksoutdoors.com/Fishing/Where-to-Fish-in-Kansas/Fishing-Locations-Public-Waters/Northeast-Region/Milford-Reservoir

Our water temps have dropped 10 degrees in a week with heavy cold rains causing flash floods and night time temps nearing the 30s. Bladed jig and squarebill were both working yesterday.

A lot of the lakes I fish don't have 30' of water in them. They also lack any kind d of offshore structure to hold fish or bass populations to have a need to move offshore. For those reasons, I don't catch many bass deeper than 10' all year.

Gunfish is more of a walker like a spook while the SB is more of a hybrid popper/walker. The SB doesn't move far with each twitch because of the face cup and weight back design, it really will sit in one spot and cut side to side, great for annoying fish. I imagine you could probably really work it hard to make it move a little further, but I've never tried fishing it like that.

I've been really happy with my KK Assassin. 2 years of heavy use and going strong and still one of the furthest casting reels in my boat.