Bluebasser86

I do it with live shad during the winter to get them down in the current, mainly targeting wipers but I catch plenty of largemouth doing it, along with everything else in the lake.

I'm torn on the whole net issue. It's great when it works, but I've lost some really nice fish to poor net jobs when the hooks got stuck in the net.

If it's fluoro coated does it also sink? Could have other good uses but frogging wouldn't be one of them if that was the case.

Bass will eat an A-rig with 5 thick wire arms, snap-swivels, tied to thick braided line, and it's most effective in fairly clear water. If they're such a spooky, line shy little fish then this bait should send every fish in the lake running and hiding. Are there occasions when line visibility matters? Probably. Of the things that effect how many fish I put in the boat, I don't feel line visibility is even in the top 10 on an average day.

I was pheasant hunting in western KS with a couple buddies and we had just walked a corn stubble field that had a thick tree line with tall grass on the other side of it. When we were walking back I was watching the ground for signs of birds when there plain as day were big cat tracks that followed right along side of where one of us had walked. Followed it back a ways and found they had come from the tree line, followed along for about 20 yards, then gone back to the tree line. I was pretty much done bird hunting at that point and we were watching over our shoulders the whole way back to the trucks. We told the guy who owned the property and he said he'd seen a young cougar around, which are some of the most dangerous ones.

I think he means he made a 2 pound cull (gained 2 pounds), before gaining another 1.5 pounds with the next cull. Congrats on the win OP. It doesn't sound like luck to me at all. If you fish enough tournaments, those kinds of days happen to everyone. I've had several wins that started out poorly but I stuck with it and ground out decent bags on what turned out to be really tough days for everyone.

Those a very pretty bass, they're all largemouth though, just small versions of them Congrats on solving the mystery though!

Update, these hooks are a great option for the Whopper Plopper 90. They hooked and held a vast majority of the strikes I had.

Welcome!

Shape and bait density both come into play as will hook size and placement in the case of a wacky rig. The Ocho is a great bait for wacky rigging that doesn't get talked about a lot. The Havoc Flat Dawg is another great wacky rig bait (although fragile), that doesn't get talked about much.

Great looking fish, congrats!

I like them in clear water when I want to kill the flash (usually white blades), and muddy water when I want extra color (chartreuse, orange, or red). It can be very effective.

Yes, I use white and other lighter colors when the moon is brighter and have better success than using the typical dark colors.

Mend-it for repairs, Loctite Gel for anchoring baits.

I've never had much luck around the huge schools of shad. Little schools yes, but not the massive, fill up the depthfinder screen schools. One of the power plant lakes I fish gets bad during the winter sometimes.

It only matters when it matters. My BIL kicked my butt out of the back of my boat this summer. We were both fishing black and blue beaver type baits, mine was a YUM and his was a Big Bite Bait. They wanted his and wouldn't touch mine. Sometimes they don't care about brand, color, or presentation, just put it in front of them. If you want to stick to one brand for everything you can get away with doing that no problems, but it will cost you some fish occasionally. As long as you aren't fishing with someone else who is whacking them, you'll never know though.

My Speed Spool was pretty worn out after a couple years of regular use. Meanwhile, I have 200B Curados older than some members on the forum that I've never done anything to but clean and they use to be my only couple baitcasters I had so they did all the work. Lews makes a very nice reel and I'd have no issues owning another one. This "A vs B" reel argument is so subjective there's not really a way to determine which is actually "best". Someone could pick up the most expensive, lightest, fastest reel out there, but if it doesn't feel right or isn't comfortable to that person, then it's obviously not going to be the best. I can't fish Abu baitcaster because they don't fit my hands right, same thing with the 50 size Shimanos. Find what works for you and fish it, but trying to tell someone on the internet what the best baitcasting reel is works about as well as a good online political debate, it doesn't.

You'll need to register it in your name with the state.

This past week every clump of grass we went by was packed with inch long bluegills, and coincidentally, the smallies were cruising the grass edges. Several of them spit up bluegill as we were fighting them.

I swapped the hooks on mine because they were getting bent up from trying to horse smallies out of the grass on braid. I went to Gamakatsu 2X EWG short shanks in a #6. I'm hoping they will hold up and hold the fish better as I was losing a lot of them during the fight. The shorter hooks will hopefully not catch quite as much grass either.

I do that with a regular life jacket to float around when it gets hot out. I've even fished while floating like that. It's not the most comfortable thing. I'd take an inflatable way before I'd wear that thing.

It's a killer smallmouthand white bass bait for me.

@Bassboy98 if you're in a tournament, I would seriously consider targeting largemouth in the bushes if they haven't dropped the water. Flip something like a lightly weighted baby brush hog and you can always hit a bonus smallie cruising the edges too. Largemouth are much easier to get a quality bite on that lake when it's up.

I wish I hadn't read this. I'd almost convinced myself I didn't need that rod up until then.

This is why I went with the T1000, for the shad color with a little splash of chartreuse on the chest and the blade. The smallmouth really seem to like it.