Bluebasser86

The cold weather months are always fun because everyone gets bunched up in the same areas and you never know what is going to bite next!

Nice! I can't get myself motivated to do much hunting this year. It's been too warm and the fish are still biting too good!

Welcome Lincoln! I went back to Shawnee this past Monday and picked up right where I'd left off last week.

We have powerplant lakes in KS you can fish all winter long. One is more a big fish lake, the other produces 50-100 fish most days all winter long. I'm less than an hour from both so I could help you out if you're interested.

I use hi vis pink KastKing Super Power on almost all my spinning rods. Clear or dirty water doesn't matter, I catch fish with it.

I'd use brass for the smaller sizes, and tungsten from about 1/4oz up.

I bought a bunch of blanks from Barlow's Tackle and put my own together. I haven't figured out how to fish one effectively yet, the only fish I've caught on them has been white bass and one massive drum.

A lot of older lures that were sold in large chain stores don't carry a lot of value because they were mass produced. In some cases, certain colors might have more value than others. I'm assuming since they came from a store that a lot of them might still be in the package? You should be able to use that information to do a little searching online and see if you can find any others for sale to get an idea of what they're going for. Things like this are hard to determine a value because they're only worth as much as a collector is willing to pay. I know there used to be a section in the back of Bassmaster magazine dedicated to helping people find the value of old fishing equipment but not sure it still exist.

I like to burn them for smallmouth over shallow rock flats. Also caught a bunch of big white bass and wipers, but have yet to catch a largemouth on one.

I think you'll like them just fine. I haven't used a #1 size but the #2 I normally use isn't that much smaller and they've worked great.

One day, one day... Looks like you guys had yet another awesome trip!

Welcome!

The Shine Glide is one of my top 3 favorite swimbaits. I reach for it over my Deps 175 anymore, just outproduces them and swims better imo. I have a bone colored Shine Glide that is all chewed up from all the largemouth, smallmouth, and wipers it's caught. Get the bigger size, a lot of allure of swimbaits to the fish is the large profile. The Savage Gear 3D bluegill 5" floater is a good bait for me over grass. A Spro rat 40 or 50 would be another one I'd add to the list. The R2S S-Waver is a popular bait but having owned both, the Shine Glide was a much better bait for me.

Even simple things like jigs take way more time and effort than most could ever imagine. I used to think it would be cool to have my own bait company for a living. Now I would only consider that as long as someone else was doing all the work.

Pond bass in the ponds I fish love to sulk around cover close to deeper water during the winter months. Others will hang out in the deepest portion and move up shallower during warming trends. A couple warm days during winter months makes them pretty active in my experience.

High 40s is when I put them away, but I've caught them down to 45 on a twitched Rapala minnow. We were catching them on Whopper Ploppers and a Buzzjet in 51 degree water this weekend.

Oh yeah, for overall big fish, that area is hard to beat. Just in reference to the OP's post of chasing them with big streamers. The White is well known for big streamer eating browns. I like throwing jerkbaits at them, I even catch one every once in awhile.

My dad, my little sister, and I with a days worth of channel cats caught on punch bait from a creek near where I grew up. Playing and fishing in the creeks is a large part of what got me hooked at such a young age.

Welcome!

Welcome!

Welcome!

You should make a trip to the White River in Arkansas to do that sometime. I'm not much of a flyfisherman, but we throw 5" jerkbaits at big browns, it's a blast. Seems like someone catches one over 30 pounds there every year. It's a blast watching those big browns eat when they're that aggressive.

Great fish! It's funny because I was just telling my BIL this weekend I've seen some big walleye taken shallow on spinnerbaits this time of year.

SMP and Lexington are both good lakes. Heritage I wouldn't waste my time with. Kill Creek is another one that the JOCO permit gets you on and is another good, small lake for kayaks (less than 30 acres). Lexington is very small, about 20 acres, with tons of lily pads. I've been there once and did pretty well in the 2 hours I had to fish. I don't fish SMP as much as I should. It's been fishing very well the last couple times I've been.

I carry 1/16oz with a #2 hook, that's it. Doesn't matter if it's calm or windy, 1' or 20' deep, I use 1/16oz. As @Weedwhacker observed, just because it's windy, doesn't mean you need a heavier head, you just have to adapt. I fish the same size in heavy current below hot water outlets in the winter time. It's almost like flyfishing for trout in that situation. You have to gauge how far upstream you need to cast to get your bait on target. Most bites are detected when my line stops moving with the current.