Bluebasser86

Bass' mouths and tooth pads turn red during the colder months, but it's not because of them eating craws. I see them with bright red mouths in ponds with no craws, but the water is cold. Then I catch them from lakes with huge populations of craws where they are the main forage 12 months out of the year, but their mouths aren't red. For that matter, there's not many craws with red or much orange on them in any of our lakes. It's not known exactly why it happens, but most likely because those areas of the fishes mouth help determine what is prey and what isn't, so the body naturally increases blood flow to the surface of those areas in colder temperatures when a fishes senses and reaction times are slowed to help with successful feeding.

Terrific looking mount! And she's still out there getting bigger

Oh they're out there. Mattlures makes a great catfish imitation swimbait. Gitzit makes a nice madtom imitation too. I believe someone on here had a good picture of a bass that had eaten a catfish right before they caught them as well.

The way that wipers slam the standard sized one, I would not be surprised.

I've been trying to perfect this thing for a couple years now. I feel like I'm starting to get close. A standard sized 3/8oz with a 6/0 hook for reference. That's a 6" Fat Impact style swimbait that I poured on the back of it.

I'll never forget one Easter when my older cousin went through the shrubs by the end of our great aunt's driveway and someone had hit a rabbit right by her mailbox. She was wailing about someone running over the Easter Bunny for what seemed like forever.

Ha! I'm Brian's fill in for weekday trips. Hopefully have a weekend day off in the next year or so and start catching his overflow trips on weekends. A guide is a huge help in a place where big fish aren't very numerous. Brian has that deep water wiper fishing down to a science though. I might go bother some of his pets this week or next if I can get my dad to go with me.

Piece of nightcrawler and a small slip sinker rig will catch both of them. The bullheads have big mouths for their bodies, so hook size is going to be dictated by the size of the suckers you're dealing with. I'd guess probably a #6 or #8 would do the trick.

Make sure to check that the drag washers are correctly installed. They had a problem with them being installed wrong for awhile, maybe it's been corrected now though. Mine weren't right and the drag was not nearly as strong as it should have been. It's an easy fix and made a huge difference for mine. How they were when I took the reel apart. How they should look. I didn't buy a Speed Demon, waiting on the new one to come out. I did buy a new Sharky III 2000 for $36.

One of the biggest problems we have is that the smaller bass are better to eat and much more plentiful, but people aren't allowed to keep those. Only in recent years has the state started to try to change that with a 13-18 inch slot limit on a lot of smaller lakes with high population densities. I wish it was more like a 15-21 inch slot to give people a little more freedom to keep smaller fish, while protecting the larger fish better, but it's a start. I really wish I liked to eat fish, I'd keep a limit of 12 inchers every time I went at a lot of the lakes I fish and it would do them a lot of good.

Right in the middle of nowhere.

Been too busy and the weather has been too bad to do much with it lately but finally got a break today. Got new transom wood installed, which was way more work than I expected. Got the new livewell pump installed, and I got the trolling motor bracket in place. Just run some wires and it will be fishable, but still needs a deck. I have some deck boards for it, but haven't decided exactly how I want to do it yet. Feel like I might need to add one cross member to the front part of the frame. I'm not a little guy and my fishing buddies are all bigger than me, might need a little more support up there.

I've used them to replace stock hooks before and they worked fine.

I use straight braid for swim jigs regardless of water clarity.

Gar will hit about anything that gets close to them. I sight cast to them with cheap hard plastic minnow baits. About impossible to hook with treble hooks but every once in awhile I'll land one. Mainly they're just fun to get that first jump or two before they throw the hooks. Natural baits, they like fish, alive or dead, but they're experts at stealing baits. You have to let them swim forever until they actually swallow the hook or you'll never land one. It takes time and practice to feel when they've swallowed the bait instead of just holding it and swimming with it. Rope baits you can just tie frayed rope onto a hook shank or jighead, with or without a hook, so it looks a bit like a minnow in the water. Doesn't have to be pretty, they'll still bite it. You just have to make sure there's enough material to hold them when they bite.

We have open water 12 months a year and as always I have an open invitation to any members that want to fish with me. Can't promise any big fish, but fish will be caught.

I imagine that eating a bluegill is about like trying to eat a cheeseburger with glass shards in it. I'm sure bass learn quickly that gills are more work to eat and digest than shad are. I doubt they'd swim past a struggling bluegill to chase down a healthy shad, but with all things being equal, I think they'd pick the shad.

I'd tell people to go somewhere else if I had a lake with fish that size close by

Welcome!

Welcome!

I landed a 50+ pound grass carp on the stock hooks with an S Waver 168, I think they'll handle a bass.

Creature baits are one of my weaknesses. I have a ton of them, and I don't seem myself stopping. I mainly try to keep colors simple to help cut down on the number of them I carry. I like the Rodent, Menace, Pitboss, Wooly Bug, B-Bug, Bad Mamma, YoMamma, brush hog, and baby brush hog.

I use the same rod for jigs and really like it.

I color my braid when I'm flipping grass sometimes, but I can't honestly tell you if it helps or not, just a confidence thing. Cut a little notch in a chisel tip Sharpie and it makes it very easy to do.

We had warm weather for awhile, now it's gone AWOL. Rain almost every day this week, struggling to get above 50, and now it's supposed to snow and barely make it above 40 on Sunday. It's been a steady cycle of the weather turning terrible every week on my days off.