Bluebasser86

I have quite a few poppers, and baits that hard hybrid poppers/walkers. The small sized Zell Pop is my overall favorite. River2Sea Bubble Walker 80 is my favorite larger popper. I hate to even mention it, but check out the Norman Top Dollar for bait that gets no love and catches fish like crazy. I prefer softer twitches with my baits, more like a baitfish on the surface just giving it's last kicks before it expires.

I've caught fish on mine. I have the middle size grey bat. If you like the Pompadour, you'll like the bat. It's actually not as noisy as I expected, but it gets their attention.

Having been down that road before, don't go too crazy on colors. I used to have all kinds of colors with just slight variations and realized after several years that it was mostly a waste. Not only did those slight variations seem to not make much difference, but I found myself using the same 5-10 productive colors all the time anyways. I do like a few strands of chartreuse in my jigs at times, so you might add that. A couple of my favorite recipes; 1 tab brown, 1 tab green pumpkin, 5-6 strands of blue 1 tab brown, 1 tab green pumpkin, 3-5 strands of orange, 3-5 strands of chartreuse

I'd guess when I can't see them but most of the lakes I fish are too dirty to see fish very often so I don't have a very big sample size there.

I've made quite a few out of them so far and no signs of wearing out yet. They're pretty easy to make though.

Yes

I've never fished Clinton for wipers. Olathe is a city lake, about 180 acres. La Cygne is my favorite for big ones, Wolf for numbers.

Clinton is bigger than La Cygne and Wolf both by quite a bit. One of the better small wiper lakes in KC area is Olathe. Jeffery Energy Center lakes have tons of wiper too but they close during waterfowl season I believe.

You can do it, but it's not ideal. You'll want to fill the spool a good portion of the way with some other line before splicing the 2lb in or you'll be wasting a ton of line. You can get a good ultralite spinning reel for pretty cheap, that would be the route I'd go.

This, Accounted for all 5 of our keepers tonight, including these, Rigged on one of these in 1/8oz and drug painfully slow, like a small craw would move through the rocks.

It's been a consistently inconsistent year for me. Several baits have had their moments. Only one that really has been pretty stable is my trusty homemade bladed jigs.

Well now that I looked, I actually have the Zillion, not the Tatula, sorry for the mix up there. It does skip better than any reel I've ever owned though.

It's more just a growing frustration I've been feeling towards Shimano constantly changing their reels. I've sold all my newer Shimano reels. I didn't like the tiny handles and it was getting noisy like the 200 sizes did.

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I wish they got bigger in Wolf. Tons of 4-6 pound fish, but rarely see any bigger than 6 and never seen one over 8. Milford has monsters in it though. I've seen them up to 15 out there. One of the little, local lakes has some big ones in it. I caught my biggest out of La Cygne this spring though. Not sure how long because my board only goes to 18", but it was 11.2 pounds. This was my 3rd largest every at 9lb 1oz, also from a small lake.

Wolf and La Cygne are the main lakes I fish for them in the winter. I don't fish lipped cranks for them hardly every. I do well ripping a Redeye Shad and letting it drop though. I was catching them in 12-15 feet at Wolf doing that a couple days last winter.

I've had big green sunfish and warmouth eat full sized frogs well enough to get the hooks. They'd eat everything in the lake if they got to 10 pounds.

I've had both, still own the Daiwa, sold the Shimano.

Never heard of someone replacing just an insert? I've replaced many tip tops because of lost or damaged inserts, it's really simple.

I throw a 7" glide bait for smallies here, most of them are under 3 pounds. It wasn't the size of your bait that was the problem. A Plopper is one of my favorite baits for guide trips because it's so easy for people to fish and catch fish on even if they have very little experience. Biggest issue I see is people fishing them too fast. Day in and day out, the best retrieve for me has been to reel it just fast enough to get it plopping. Maybe they just didn't want to break the surface for it. A buzzbait's body rides just below the surface while the 110 sits on top of the water. Sometimes little things like that can make a big difference.

I've never heard anyone wish their boat had a smaller motor on it.

Location is numero uno most important thing, you're right. Don't matter what you put down there, if they ain't there, you ain't catching them!

Welcome!

I live less than an hour from the 2 power plant lakes, so I mainly target them in shallow water, but the cold water lakes I fish they'll usually be 15-30 feet down. It seems like when I find them in 18-24 feet they're the easiest to catch for whatever reason. Number one thing to look for is bait, number 2 for the deep fish is that they're positioned withing a couple feet of the bottom, suspended fish are tough customers unless they're under bait. I mainly cast but I'll vertical jig with spoons as well, my 150 doesn't like to troll.