CoBass

I watched it on the Outdoor Channel yesterday during the day, and it will be on again tomorrow evening. I like the new fish handling rules. Two minute penalty if the fish touches the carpet of the boat, and two minutes if the fish is thrown back into the water from above the gunnel. Good to see them promoting healthy release techniques.

The original Senko is a great bait and some people swear they catch more fish than any other brand of stick bait. I've used them as well as several other brands and I've actually had better luck with Yum Dingers. They're cheaper and they have more per package. I just looked on the Bass Pro website and the five inch Yum Dingers are on clearance for $1.97 for a 12 pack. Can't go wrong at that price.

My son loved legos when he was little, I absolutely hated those things. The easiest way to find lost legos is to walk barefooted around the house. Man those things hurt.

Bummer for the seagull. Reminds me of a time I was driving along and a prairie dog ran out in the middle of the road. I moved over a little so he would be between the tires and not get squashed. Right as I got to him, he stood up on his hind legs and caught the license plate right in the face.

I've done the same thing with a wacky rigged senko. You can alter the appearance and fall rate of the bait by splitting one or both ends. Lengthening or shortening the splits will also change the appearance/fall rate.

It's been pretty darn cold around here lately too and it's already driving me crazy. It got into the upper forties today so I went to a local pond that is fed by a ground water spring and usually has some open water around the inlet. There was a spot of open water about fifty yards wide and maybe seventy five yards from the shore to the ice. It wasn't much but it was enough to get one decent fish and four little dinks. I tried several larger presentations but didn't hook up until I downsized to a three inch grub worked really slow along the bottom. Sure felt good to get that one decent fish.

Saw this on another forum and thought it was funny.

Crankbaits for me too. I can't seem to buy a bite on any crank that has a lip on it. I catch plenty on lipless cranks but for some reason, if it has a lip on it, I can't get them to bite.

I have one small pond near my house that has ground water pumped into it year round. It creates a nice, fishable area of open water throughout the Winter since the water being pumped in is a constant fifty degrees. When it gets really cold, the area of open water shrinks quite a bit but there is always some open water there. It ain't much, but it gets me my bass fix through the Winter until ice off. I have also done a little bassin through the ice with limited success but fishing through a little hole in the ice isn't really my style.

One of the ponds I fish has a large population of small bass along with some larger fish up to about 4 lbs. One of the larger fish learned that the little struggling fish being pulled to the shore were easy pickings. He would hang out behind a small rock pile about 10 feet off the shore and attack any of the smaller fish that got hooked. He got pretty good at ripping them off the hook without getting caught. That same fish got at least 10 dinks from me before he finally made a mistake and I got him. He was a pretty smart fish. After the first time he hit, I threw every baby bass colored bait I had at that rock pile and he never hit one of them but it was almost impossible to get a live, hooked fish past him without him getting a hold of it.

They stock them in some of the reservoirs around here but not in large numbers so they're not easy to locate. Best time for us to get a shot at them is when the stock truck shows up and dumps a load of trout. It's like ringing the dinner bell, every wiper in the lake shows up for the feast. Throwing trout colored lures into the schools of hybrids can produce some fast and furious action.

Are you sure you're breaking the line and not coming undone at your knot? I was having a similar problem and it stopped when I started re-tying more often.

Deep diving, suspending jerk bait. Rapala makes a deeper diving husky jerk that can get down to that 15-20 foot range. Long cast past the fish, reel down to max depth, then slow twitches and pauses through the area where the fish are suspending. Use a color that matches the forage of the lake and experiment with the twitches and length of pauses until you get hit. I'm sure others will have different suggestions but that's what I would start with under those conditions.

Well done. Congrats on the new pb.

I sometimes wonder if bass are as inactive as we think they are in cold water. Last Winter some friends and I went to a small pond (2-3 acres) to see if we could catch bass through the ice. This pond has a max depth of about 8 feet and we started off drilling about 20 holes all around the pond from the shallow areas to the deepest parts with a power auger. After we drilled the last set of holes, we went back to the first holes we drilled and started catching fish. We caught fish at all depths and wound up pulling a dozen or so out in about 3 hrs. What really got me wondering about how inactive these cold water fish are was that I hooked one jigging a small grub off of the bottom on one end of the pond and he broke me off. Less than a hour later my friend caught the same fish with my grub still in his mouth on the opposite side of the pond on a live shiner. In less than one hour, he tried to eat, got hooked, moved about 2 1/2 acres to the other side of the pond and ate again. We were also able to mark fish on a sonar unit as they moved into and out of the areas we were fishing. The fish weren't holding in one area, they were on the move throughout the day. These were northern strain so they are more tolerant of the cold but I was still surprised at how much movement and activity we were seeing under the ice.

I have been fishing a small pond lately with water temps in the upper 30's to lower 40's and have been having success casting a 1/4 oz blade bait to deeper water and hopping it off the bottom like a spoon. Most hits have been on the fall. I like the blade because it creates a lot of vibration and flash when it is ripped off the bottom and it has a good fluttering action on the fall. I use the same technique in the Spring right between ice off and pre-spawn when the water is cold and the fish are still a little sluggish.

My suggestion is to pick 1-2 types of lures so that you can focus on the necessary techniques to be successful. A crankbait can keep your interest and there's also active action with jigs and spinnerbaits. If you've got the patience, plastic worms are great lures for bass but you've got to fish them SLOWLY. Good luck and have fun! This is some great advice. When I first started bass fishing I started off throwing two different baits, lipless cranks and spinnerbaits. I could cover a lot of water and they were easy to fish. They also taught me where fish were more likely to be holding so that when I moved onto other presentations I was able to eliminate the less productive areas. Concentrating on a few baits at a time also forced me to put in the time to get better at each one instead of just throwing a bunch of different baits that I didn't have confidence in and hoping for the best. I'm sure others have had different experiences but this is what worked for me.

Nice brown. The belly up thing is why I don't really care for trout fishing. You will have a better survival rate if you can avoid handling them or taking them out of the water unless absolutely necessary. Whenever possible, I leave them in the water and remove the hook with a pair of pliers or forceps without touching the fish. The warmer the water, the more important it is to keep them in the water and handle them as little as possible.

Power bait is more of a dough bait than a gel. It comes in a bunch of different colors and just like with lures, many times one color will be the hot color for a given day. Like Bluebasser said, set up a slip sinker rig, put a gob of power bait on the hook, throw it out and wait. It does float so set your slip sinker according to how far off the bottom you want the bait to float. It's not a good bait to use if you want to C&R because you will gut hook a lot of fish if you're not quick with your hook set. It will definitely catch trout and if you're looking to keep a limit it's an easy way to do it.

Excellent advice. When I first started bass fishing I was using heavy gear because that's what I read and saw people on tv using. Where I live, a bass over 4 lbs is considered a really nice fish. I got bored dragging 2 lb fish in across the top of the water with the heavy gear and started going more with light and even ultralite set-ups. Made fishing a lot more fun actually having to fight a fish. I still have heavier gear that I use when I know there is a decent chance of catching 3+ lb fish but when I hit my local ponds for those 1-2 pounders I pretty much stick to the lighter tackle.

x2. I bought several in different colors and none of them swam true right out of the package. Never even got so much as a hit or a follow on them either.

The Hostess plant here in Denver closed today. 160 people out of a job. I'd rather take a pay cut and look for another job than be unemployed and need to find another job. Unemployment will be considerably less than the pay cut and their aren't any medical or other benefits when you're collecting unemployment.

Welcome JW, lots of good info and a good bunch of guys here. Congrats on the top four finishes in your tourneys.

I don't mind sharing an area if the other party is polite and asks if it's okay. It's the guys who just roll up and act like they own the lake that get on my nerves, and I will say something to them when that happens. Jet skiers are another story all together. We had several this Summer that stopped right by our marker buoys and tried to pick them up. One of the guys acted like he didn't hear us yelling at him until I bounced a blade bait off the front of his ski. The guy I was fishing with said nice cast. I told him it wasn't that nice, I was aiming for the rider, not the jet ski.