Bluebasser86

I had a really light jonboat that was 12' and narrow, not much more stable than a canoe really.

Welcome!

Welcome back!

Welcome!

I was using 4lb with a swimming grub at Beaver lake this past weekend with 20+ feet of visibility. Even with a fine and very sharp 1/0 open hook I had a couple bass that I landed without ever getting the hook past the barb. I wouldn't feel confident trying to T rig a plastic with 4lb test but if you do, look at the sharpest, fine wire hooks you can find and keep them small. The smaller the hook, the easier it's going to penetrate.

You're not going to be able to get much other than a really small, entry level aluminum boat for even 15K, but you can get a really nice used boat for that much. I bought my 2012 Stratos 189VLO with a 150 Pro XS for just a little more than that.

Sure bass will eat them. I agree that they're designed to be fished on a swimbait jighead, not on a belly weighted swimbait hook though. You could rig one on it's side with a screwlock hook though, otherwise it's going to be extremely difficult to rig them right with a swimbait hook.

It's a dark color, but also kind of a natural hue. There really isn't a bad time to fish that color.

I started with a Curado 200B, probably one of the easiest reels to setup and use that I've ever owned.

St Croix Avid in that price range would be an excellent choice.

I managed to keep from getting very red too, which is a victory for someone who burns if the moon is too bright. My pictures from the trip.

Jon and I caught a ton but they were mostly smaller but that's pretty typical of Beaver. I caught 3 stripers up to 11.5lbs the first hour and those were or only stripers of the trip.

White bass have a line below the lateral line but it is faint and not really a complete line. I catch hundreds of them every year, they're easy to tell apart once you've seen a bunch and know what to look for.

I promise I'll never move to So Cal.

I couldn't catch 64 walleye, let alone keepers, in an entire season. I can almost guarantee that none of them would be as big as even the smallest fish on that stringer picture either. Good luck at Oahe. Never been there but I've heard it's a tremendous fishery.

I have one, the one in the picture I posted above in fact. It's one of the warts from when they first reintroduced them. I've about ground the bill off that thing on the zebra mussel covered rocks trying to catch a fish with it, not even a bite. The new, new warts that are supposed to be more like the originals are solid baits though.

No, it's seeing fish in real time. In the picture, the purple streaks are the disturbance left behind as the fish (the two marks), swim towards the bottom (at least that is my understanding of it). Garmin has side imaging as well, and this is what it looks like when you find the mother of all shad schools.

Real Prey makes a good one.

Ned rig

Swimbaits is a lot of trial and error man. There's times I throw them and I'm braced every cast because everything seems perfect, and nothing ever happens. Then I get days like yesterday when I'm fishing a lake with mostly small, heavily pressured fish while the sun is high and the wind is calm, and I catch fish. I prefer there to be fairly good visibility for most of my swimbaits, but other than that it's just a matter of getting yourself to actually commit to throwing them.

Got to Olathe for a couple hours after work yesterday. Bass and shad spawning everywhere, figured there'd be some bigger fish eating those big shad so I decided to fish a 175 Slide Swimmer a little, and I got a couple to cooperate

She's pretty much grown up in a boat. She loves sleeping out in the sun on days like yesterday when it's warm and sunny and she stays so calm and relaxed that she's really easy to have in the boat with me. Plus there isn't anything Cassidee loves much more than fast boat rides and splashing around in the water before the boat is launched and after I take it back out of the water.

It's pretty much a yearly tradition for me to go fishing on my birthday. So when I got off work yesterday and it was nice out, I decided to keep that tradition going Opted to hit one of the local lakes despite the fact that I knew I was pretty much ruling out the chance at a big fish, it's still my favorite close lake. Lots of fish on beds, shad spawning everywhere in the newly growing water willows, and the water was clearer than I've ever seen it before had me concerned. Took me about 30 minutes before I started to figure them about a little, catching a few on a shakyhead and some on a wacky rig. I had a 175 Slide Swimmer tied on and with all the big shad on the banks, I figured there had to be someone up there eating them. I was right, and actually found 2 that were up there eating them, both much bigger than anything else I caught all day. Thankfully I brought my Garmin Virb Elite and got both fish on it, you can even sort of see the blow up from one of them as she ate it almost immediately after it hit the water at the end of a fallen tree.

Had there been a couple big fish in the mix it would have been much better. Numbers wise, north of 30 is pretty much what I call a good day most days I go out and I don't think I got there.

My 100 Sammys do not have split rings on the line tie and that's how I fish them.