Bluebasser86

I have not tried the Rage Blade but the poor quality of the Zman Chatterbait is what drove me to start making my own. I've heard they've upgraded their components but I'm too happy with my own baits to have any need to try theirs again.

You're going to lose jigs in rip rap, just one of those sure things. Football jigs are best at avoiding snags, but you're still going to lose them.

Don't know how it works there but here they usually clip a fin on stocked fish so if natural reproduction does happen it's easier for them to tell.

jigs, trick worms on a shakyhead, and jerkbaits are all I need unless I'm on a warm water lake.

I catch lots of green sunfish every year for catfishing, it's always amazing to me how quickly you can fish out a small stream like that and be left with very few baitfish remaining a a section until a high water event restocks it. Check your regulations and you can give it a try if it's okay, but unless there are thousands and thousands of baitfish, you may find that you run out of supply pretty quickly.

Color matters, but it isn't the most important factor. I've seen days where I outfished the guy in the front of the boat badly because I was using the same main color but with a different color flake in it. Last time I fished Grand Lake, it had to be purple or have purple in it somewhere. We tried different colors in the same areas and caught a few, but once we went back to a bait that was purple or had purple flake in it, we started to light them up again. Then there's those days you can grab whatever color is on top and the fish are feeding aggressively and it doesn't make a bit of difference.

Which one did you get? I've got the 7.3:1, smooth little pitching reel.

I looked at the black nickel blades but they were very expensive and I like being able to paint other colors as well. The air brush gives me more color options and it keepa prices down.

That's just a small sample of the total number of baits I've found this year, many I found were unusable or in bad enough shape that I didn't want to try to sell them. Also found a nice digger anchor 20' up in a tree, a rod and reel cover, a bow fishing arrow, a zebco 808, a BPS rod and reel combo, a rain coat, 3 duck decoys, a drift sock, and I'm sure other stuff I'm forgetting.

Jerkbaits would be the main thing I'd be throwing right now.

Zoom Ol' Monster, Rage Recon and Andaconda.

Might consider trying to do that with Zman finesse worms next time I need to replace the legs of a frog. Super durable, super soft=lots of movement, plus they float.

http://www.bassresource.com/bass-fishing-forums/topic/146122-eagle-claw-lil-nasty-jig-hooks/

Zoom Trick worm or magnum finesse worm. On a shakyhead though, not a T rig.

I make a ton of them every year for the guys around here. Smallies love the Ned and I love smallies This color has been a killer all year for me and others that use them. PM sent.

That particular pond was only about 7' deep and because of a few bad apples nobody is allowed to fish it anymore. I've never had much luck with blade baits. I've caught white bass with Cicadas but very few bass with any of them.

Populations are supposed to be up this year in western KS but being up from the last few years wouldn't mean much, they couldn't have gotten much lower.

You're sensitivity will probably suffer a bit but that's not usually a big issue when trying to feel A rig strikes.

If I focus more on being super accurate it seems I trust my instincts and my body less. When I just do it without letting my brain get too involved I impress myself at times though.

And humble, did you mention humble??

Right at 5.

Yep, don't swing on them when they blow up, just crank until the rod starts to load then lean into them, like a crankbait hookset.

YUM Wooly Bug and Craw Papi are two of my favorite plastics.

I wish I liked to eat fish, there's some local lakes that could stand to lose a few hundred fish under the slot limit.

I used to do this every winter until I bought a boat and started fishing the power plant lakes. Find the deepest water in the pond and suspend a couple minnows right off the bottom or even fish them on the bottom with a slip sinker rig. It's not the most exciting fishing but you'll catch way more fish in extremely cold ponds doing that than you will on lures. A suspending jerkbait is about the only lure I'll fish in very cold ponds. Soft twitches and long pauses will get them, but you have to be very patient to do it. I took this one on the second of February a few years ago a day or two after ice out from a pond on a 78 pointer.