Randall

I had the hooks in the boat but just forgot to put them on after setting up the camera. I was aggravated at first but laughed at it after watching the video.

The standard pattern on Gville in early march has almost always been find the warmest water possible and throw a rattle trap and jerkbait.

No kidding! You might want to consider getting a CC Permit. Yep that's what I would do. I have had a few crazy experiences and found that some people often have little to lose in life and will not think twice about coming back looking for you. He may be happy he went to jail if he is homeless. He gets hot meals and a roof over his head so he might come back looking for you to go back to jail.

I decided to fish at Lake Kedron one day last week instead of Varner. I had a young man to take fishing that had little experience bass fishing so we went to the easier lake to fish. Kedron is almost always good for numbers of small fish and I wanted to be sure he caught some fish. It was slow in the AM but in the afternoon it picked up and the fish started hitting rattletraps and redfins waked on the surface. The young man had recieved a Cordell Spot from his mom for his birthday that she had decided to hide in his birthday cake with the hooks removed. He had never fished any kind of lipless crankbait before but it didn't take him long and he was catching fish on it like a Pro. We didn't take any photos and most of the fish were small but he had a great time. The gentleman that brought him fishing had all the redfin strikes and they got me to thinking about a bait I had brought with me. So, after dropping him and the guy that brought him fishing off at the ramp I decided to get out a bait that I had started making the day before and shoot some video. The bait didn't have any paint yet but that never matters too much as long as the action is good since the bait is white like a shad. After catching small fish with no big ones all day I just wish I had remembered to put some hooks on it. ;D First cast with the bait and it gets hit by a good one. Not a giant but way better than what we had caught all day. Just no hooks to get the fish. Someone posted on my last report that I always catch big bass. Sometimes I don't and sometimes I just forget to add hooks when the big one hits. ;D Here is a link to the video.

I have lost way too many fish on them in the past due to the hook bending out with the larger trebles and EWG types. I use Owners for those types of hooks. Owners are stronger and take less pressure to penatrate. If tips rolling over etc. are a big issue or problem where and how I am fishing I will sometimes use a Mustad Ultrapoint but not very often.

I use a sweep and reel set but it is a hard reel and sweep moving as much line as possible. I don't use standard crankbait rods either. The rods I use are more of a flipping stick with some flex in the tip. I have seen big bass open their mouth at the side of the boat only for the bait to come out because the hooks were never set since the bait wasn't moved in the mouth as the bass clamped down on it.

The better fish at that temp will usually not move up with the rising water but wait for more stable conditions in my experience. They will just suspend off the first breakline, secondary points or over shallow creek channels coming into spawning areas. Even in dirty water a jerkbait or swimbait will be my first choice due to the suspended nature of the fish.

If I were going to pick two weeks out of that time to fish the spawn it would be the first two weeks of April with the second week being my first choice.

A swimbait and forget the frogs and flipping.

Just to be different. If I had to pick one rig to catch a 10 lber on any lake in the country it would be a split shot rig on eight pound flurocarbon line. As far as bait I would take a seven or eight inch straight tail worm. This has been the bait and set up that has produced the most big bass for me. It works if you know where the bass are at or where they feed and just stay on those spots fishing it slow. But the big key is knowing where they are which is not only fishing the best structure but often the right spot or spots on that structure. If you are not exactly sure the big fish are there or are using a spot to feed I would chose a swimbait to cover more water and find those big fish.

None of the info I could give you would be current as it's been a long while since I fished there so I am may not be much help but this time of year usually anywhere there is moving water like in the backs of creeks and rivers usually out fish the main parts of the lake. I have done well this time of year right below lake Cherokee which is a small lake that falls into Hiawasee. Spinning rods with light line 6lb test and finesse baits always do well there. Look for sudden changes in rocks and bottom make up and fish those well. I always did pretty well there with jerkbaits in the fall. Like I said, it's been a while but if you have never been there it may give you a start.

I grew up there and still fish them a few times a year.

How did you do? My buddy Brad and his partner from Young Harris College here in GA won with over 19 lbs and got a check for $10,000. I didn't know there was that kind of money involved in these until yesterday.

The bait you posted is no longer made but the Xcaliber brand (also a Pradco brand) has made a one knock lipless bait for those who liked the one knock spot.

My personal feeling on the bait is that it looks good to humans but not good to a fish. It doesn't swim at all like a shad or herring and that's what the fish are looking for most of the time. Its just poorly designed to imitate a shad as far as swimming action and doesn't have a good built in trigger type action to get strikes. I do have a floater that I can get bites on sometimes but have to work the bait hard with lots of fast hard pops like a fast moving pop-r to get bit. If given a choice I would take a sebile size 95mm magic swimmer most times over the BBZ for a small shad imitation since it has a fast tight action like a shad running for it's life and gets bit much better. For a fast sink bait the Academy H2O swimbait works much better than the Spro way less money.

X2 I didn't like my injected punker as well as the wood ones but the paint is going to come off the wood one mas soon as you throw it in most cases. I make sure the wood ones keep some epoxy on them. I actually like a modified big magnum spook more then the punker. I move the hooks and line tie around to make it glide more like the punker and it lasts much longer.

Yes there are a bunch of dinks in Varner right now. ?The other guy in the last two photos and myself caught four or five fish that were only about six inches long on six inch senkos. The one I caught couldn't even get up to the hook and was just holding the back of the senko and came all the way in the boat that way. Everything else though was four pounnds or better since most of those dinks don't make it through the fall since they are eaten by the larger bass and hybrids.

Any green color straight tail worm between 7 and 10 inches. Mostly senkos and trickworm type worms. I just did an interview at www.ProAnglerRadio.com talking about exactly how I am catching them right now that probably would help you out also. It should be on this weeks show.

Here is a few suggestions that I use most and have caught big bass on. Any of the larger Mattlures baits that fall into you price range, Huddleston Deluxe, Storm Kickin Minnow (6 inch), and Sebile Magic Swimmer. Other than bluegill baits I would get at least a six inch bait. I personally have never caught a fish over six pounds on a Mattlures baby bass but have caught plenty that size on his Perch pattern East Coast Series. I think that little extra inch or two makes a difference.

Thanks for posting. I have been enjoying the stories and pics.

Here's a few more pics. Notice the guy with two fingers held up. I kept telling them that we weren't woried about catching the small fish as long as we got a couple of big ones. He said he just wanted to hold up two fingers to remind his son and I that he only caught two fish but they were both larger than any we caught even though we caught more than he did. ;D

The fishing at Varner has been great the past couple of weeks for big bass. Most days for best five fish has been over twenty pounds and three of the last four trips to Varner have had a best five over twenty five pounds. In the past three weeks there have been several fish in the eight pound range caught from my boat and a ton of fish in the three to five pound range. The numbers of fish caught isn't close to what it was a few weeks ago (we had caught over 100 in a day) and on some days it's tough to get ten bites in a day with a couple of people fishing but when the big ones are biting they are biting. ;D Last week I went out with Randy S and his son Justin. I showed them around the lake and took them to some spots I fish this time of year and caught a fish here and there as we moved from spot to spot. We fished soft plastics on some deeper spots and used some small swimbaits up shallow. Justin and I fished the whole day and Randy alternated resting with a little fishing since he had been working the night before. Randy also handled the chore of weighing our fish and keeping us honest about the weight of our fish. ;D From what I remember Justin's best five fish alone weighed a little over seventeen pounds and if you added one or two fish I caught while fishing with him we would have had been just over twenty pounds for the best five. After dropping them off at the ramp I decided to go back out and see what I could do working a couple more spots with more of a trophy fishing approach. We had moved on throughout the day after catching one or two fish on most spots so I thought I might hit a spot or two and work it over better with some different big fish tactics for any bigger fish that might be there. I started toward one spot and something told me to hit another spot that I had been thinking about trying for the last week. I caught three fish over 11 lbs in one week on the spot three years ago during October so it had been in the back of my mind for the last couple of weeks to check it out when I got a chance with the cooler October weather approaching. So I turned the boat around and went to that spot. When I got there I moved the boat to just the right position and made a cast with a worm. A big fish hit on the first cast as the worm was sinking and caught me off guard and broke me off. > I could tell it was a good fish though so I picked up a Mattlures Hard Bass and made a cast to see if one would come up after the swimbait. First cast with the swimbait and it gets hit by a big one and I get it in. I am guessing it weighes eight or maybe nine pounds so I snap a quick photo with the camera and put it back and get another cast out ASAP. For about the next hour I alternate between a worm and several swimbaits and catch fish after fish with maybe one or two fish under three pounds. Most of the fish were in the three to five pound range with a few larger ones mixed in. I lost one other big fish on a worm that I never saw and had one break a swimbait and take the rear half of the bait with it that looked to be nine to ten pounds. But for the most part it was a bunch of fun catching a bunch of good fish. We took some photos of some of the better fish we caught and I put some in the livewell as I was catching them good for a photo or two. I will also post a couple more photos of fish a guy caught with me on another day where he caught two good ones.

Try it all. Experiment with different retrieves to see what makes the bait look like a real crappie. Sometimes a crappie just swims along and sometimes it acts nervous and darts around more when being chased. The more realistic it looks the better for me. You can do a ton of different things with that bait to get strikes. Experiment.

They will. Tennessee has had some fish challenge for the state record that were ruled a hybrid and disqualified. I have caught a couple large fish that appeared to be huge spots but on closer inspection they looked like a hybrid. That one looks like a LM though. Also a precentage of LM have a tounge patch. So the tounge patch is not a good way to identify a spot.

Its a Gambler bait that I cut the tail on. I was throwing it over grass mats a day or two earlier and left it there incase I needed it.