Randall

I looked at the colors when I was there but don't know the name for them. So, I like this color and I guess Mike likes it too. ;D My partner fishes one with no paint on it. It's just plain white and it catches a bunch of fish so the paint might not matter much.

Yep. Excellent baits. Better get one before they are gone. As soon as word gets out they have them they will sell fast.

Nope didn't get that either. Those aren't Owners. ;D

Anyway, from what I've seen on the 'net, they seem fairly well regarded.

I had a guy tell me once after we caught a bunch of big bass that his trip to Maine was still his favorite fishing trip since he prefered numbers over size. Said he went out with a guide in a jonboat on a small river and caught over 100 smallmouth from three to five pounds and never saw another boat. I never thought of Maine as a good place to fish but he says for two months during the summer he goes to Maine just for the fishing and no other reason since he retired.

Georgia!!! Not because I live here but because of the variety of species and size. If you live in West Central GA where I do you can drive a few hours and get to more types of fishing than anywhere else that I know of. First the fact that GA has shoal bass almost makes it the best place alone. A six pound shoal bass is the hardest fighting bass there is on the face of the earth pound for pound. A smallmouth or spot is no match at all for a shoal bass. We don't have many left but we do have some great smallmouth lakes in north GA where you can catch five smallmouths that go over twenty pounds. And if you want you can drive to north to Alabama and Tennessee in a couple of hours for the more well know lakes. Drive an hour or two to the North and I can be on the two best Spotted bass lakes in the world. Lanier is the best for numbers of quality fish and they bite like crazy at times on swimbaits and topwaters. It just don't get much more fun than watching big spots hit on the surface. Lake Burton is in North GA but will break the WR for spotted bass in the next two years. There are already plenty of eight pound spots being caught there and a non certified fish that looked by appearance to be a spot that was just under 10lbs. The fish have both stocked trout and BB herring to feed on. I almost even hate to say it since it the kind of thing most don't know about but Burton is full of ten pound plus LM that are trout eaters that will hit a swimbait. I can get to all the lakes in East Alabama to from where I live. Guntersville is close enough as well as the Coosa chain so I don't need to live in Alabama to fish there. Last an my personal favorite is all the small lake fishing in GA. Most of the trophy LM fishing in GA has been destroyed on the big lakes by hybrids and spotted bass. But the small lakes are still great places to catch all species but with LM being the species on most lakes. We have Lake Varner which is a great big bass fishery. It has always been a great winter and spring lake for big bass but it now has hydrilla which in the summer and fall makes it an incredible lake for topwater and frog fishing. One guy described it to me last last fall after fishing at Guntersville for over a month as "Guntersville on Steroids" after seeing multiple giant fish hit his topwater frogs and swimbaits in one day. We also have new lakes opening this year which haven't been fished as well as a bunch of more lakes due to open in the following years. Big bass, peace and quiet, and no jet skis = happiness. ;D For just one species I might go somewhere else. For all of them I will stay in GA.

I have done this also at times. Saves me on gas, getting the boat ready and having to tow a boat through Atlanta. Sometimes I just sit in the back and coach the person on what to do and look for while they fish. Good idea but we still do better as far as catching when using my boat under my control. I have found out many peoples biggest weakness is boat control. But, if it's just a class then it works out pretty well after you teach them how to use the trolling motor. ;D Sometimes I just have to end up running the motor.

That would be what most of what I do with my guide service and seminars. Many of my lakes don't have much of a topo map that helps but I teach what to look for on the depth finder and give them a picture of what the structure looks like and what to look for. Most guys who go out with me want to learn and I am probably a much better teacher than just a guide since that's what I enjoy doing. I don't hold anything back and provide all the information I can. We do catch some fish too though. I do have some clients that over time don't need me as much anymore. I ran in to one yesterday while on the lake that had just caught a nine pounder on structure. One big plus to teaching people something while we fish is that if the fishing is slow at least they learn something they can take and apply later.

Bass will eat below them but after a couple of feet the bladder of the bass will begin to compress and the bass will "feel" this since the bladder is closely conected with the equilibrium system of the bass. Most bass in shallow water will not go down more then a couple of feet to feed since they resist this compression and loss of bouancy. Deepwater fish have a much greater range down and smallmouth and spots seem to have a larger range than largemouth. But If the fish goes too far down the bladder will compress to the point the fish loses it's floatation and sinks to the bottom and is stuck there unless it wants to swim constantly until the bladder can adjust to the new depth. That is one of the reasons suspended fish prefer to feed upward and fish suspended several feet off the bottom often will not go down to hit a bait. Whether the attractor is there or not will not really matter if the fish is suspended or not. Most fish are suspended anyway and not on the bottom. The attractor just gives suspended fish something to relate to and attracts bait. It's just my opinion but one attractor is not enough to get a fish to adjust it bouancy to another depth higher in the water. I often build attractors several feet in height to place off dropoffs in deeper water so that the top of the attractor is the same depth as the the bottom before the dropoff. The fish has it bouancy adjusted to allow it to feed in the shallower water and my attractor just holds the fish better when it moves deeper. This allows me to better target suspended fish that will not go down to the bottom to hit a bait after they move to deeper water to suspend high off the bottom I can slowly swim a bait and hit the top of the attractor and catch a fish that might other wise be tough to locate and catch. To answer your question, fish have no problem going down two feet.

I am 5'8" and have no problem with eight foot rods. My daughter is 4 foot something and used a seven foot rod as a ten year old. She don't like it when I get extra casting distance with longer rods and she can't with shorter rods so she prefers a seven foot rod. Looks funny but she can use it.

Stone Mountain is good but just a few miles farther out is Tribble Mill Park which is much better for big fish. Are you fishing from a boat or bank? If you have a canoe, kayak, or boat with an electric motor there are plenty of great options.

If you want the best Owner Hyperwire splitrings.

Nothing but Owners on most of my big baits. I have used Gamakatsu and straighted out way too many hooks reeling in fish. Thats why most swimbaiters use Owners.

I haven't used a senko and caught spots but I have used a zoom fluke and caught them that way.

Great fish Paul! Not just a great fish but I like the way you tell a story. Hope you get many more in '09.

The ninjas here have a paddle tail type tail. So they swim more like good paddle tail type baits. They also swim with the nose way down at slow speeds and not level like a ROF 5 Hudds. They are very durable for a soft bait though. They are made from a very durable floating plastic. Not saying they are bad baits either but the bait is different from the one T-Rig has. If you are on a budget I would get a Reaction Strike shad bait in either the four inch or five inch instead of the Spro. They don't have the greatest finishes but they are better shad baits for less money if you ask me. I don't really care for most Reaction Strike stuff since most of them are just copies of others baits and they make some stuff that either don't work , falls apart, or just isn't made properly but I don't use my Spro baits since getting the Reaction Strike baits. The Reaction Strike bait is just better designed and performs better. Just got to give them some credit for making a better bait this time. As for the TT bait the little Reaction Strike bluegill bait also swims much better than the TT bait if you want a tiny swimbait. I do find it funny though that Reaction Strike claims that it's the best bed bait ever. ;D It swims nice but I can't believe they even put that on their website. But once again I have to give them credit for making a good tiny swimbait for swimming near the surface.

Dinks and spots belong on the same board anyway they are both the same size. Just call it the spot/dink board. ;D I will admit to fishing for spots sometimes but thats just because GA is about to break the WR for spotted bass and I wouldn't mind having a WR. A 10 pound spot is the only one worth catching.

Here is a good review by Paul. http://www.bassresource.com/bass_fishing_forums/YaBB.pl?num=1223086973/0 It may just be my favorite swimbait since its a toss up between his hard and soft bluegill. My best day so far on the Hard Bluegill was twin seven pounders caught on it fishing over grass beds last Fall. I can't wait to fish it the next couple of months. It will be a killer bait for me in March and April.

This is the hottest technique going right now on the North GA lakes. It's outfishing everything else and winning tournaments. There are a bunch of guys here who said the same kind of things I am reading here and said they wouldn't fish it and they could catch them other ways and many of them got tired of donating their money to the F&F guys and now they have F&F rods in their boat. I grew up in North Carolina, not far from the Tennesee border, and haven't really seen it used much outside of that area until this year. I have some buddies who have been going to lake Blue Ridge, which is one of the last lakes in GA to hold a decent SM population, and having a float and fly tournament. They have allowed other techniques but the F&F wins every time so they call it a F&F tournament. Here is the kind of fish they have been catching on it. It been taking from 18 to over twenty pounds to win. They even have me convinced to try it more on some of the largemouth lakes I fish. Triton Mike has been catching some nice spots on it also and just put this article on his website. http://www.tritonmike.com/floatandfly

I do it on my TT Shad baits. Short shank number 4s are no problem. If you go with a 2 just use the front hook. Upsizing the hooks keeps the bait down better and there is not a big difference in action.

I have been on some good fish for a few weeks at Varner. The water is starting to warm up and is in the fifties all over the lake. The numbers of fish caught wasn't way up there when the water was colder a couple of weeks ago but most of what I have been catching have been quality fish in the three to six pound range. The best five have been around 15 to 25 pounds most days. Just a lot of good quality fish being caught with no real giants to speak of. My biggest have been a couple of eight pounders. The past few days we have caught over twenty fish a day. There have also been a couple slow days. Last Friday was tough. We caught one good three or four pound fish and had just a few bites all day. But the fish are biting most days and late Feburary has always been one of the best times of the year to get numbers of quality fish. There are really two differnet bites going on right now for me. The active shallow fish can be tough to find but once you find them you can often get more than one fish from a small spot. On the flats and points we have been using jerkbaits and rattletrap type baits. If you catch one work the area again and you usually get a few more since the fish are bunched up this time of year. The fish aren't scattered out much and seem to be just using the sweet spots near deeper water to feed. At times a jerkbait with long pauses can also be used to catch inactive fish suspended in deeper water near the flats and points. My best bite right now for larger fish is in 10-20 foot range. These schools of fish are often huge with a lot of fish in them and you can see them bunched up on your depth finder. My best three baits for these fish have been a big deep diving crankbait, shakey head and a jig. Alot of times I am finding the active fish with the crankbait and then slowing down with the jig and worm to catch all I can out of the school. If you find a big active school you should be able to sit in one spot and load the boat with fish for the next couple of weeks. Last Sunday we caught twelve fish up to five pounds out of a good school in about an hour from one small spot. I am just glad to see some warm weather. Nice to be able to fish and feel my hands and toes all day. :)I didn't take many photos this past week but Clipper took this one. The photo here is Bass Resource member Clipper's son and a couple nice fish from our trip last Saturday.

Best bet for big bass in GA is lake Varner which is near Covington between Augusta and Atlanta. You have a very realistic shot at a eight to ten pound fish with a chance at one over ten pounds. My biggest bass was 15lbs 12oz and was caught in April on Lake Varner. I also caught my biggest five fish limit ever in April at Varner. It was 47.4 lbs for five fish. Fish will be spawning at that time and sight fishing and swimbaits are the best ways to catch the larger fish. Senkos and lightly weighted trickworms work well also. There is no campground but you can find one nearby. Only downside is the lake is electric only and you may want an extra trolling motor and a few extra batteries and leave the gas motor and tank at home. If you really want the kind of fishing you only read about in magazines this would be the place. There are also a few lakes that allow ten hp motors that have good fishing and campgrounds but don't come close to Varner for big fish near Atlanta. Stone Mtn Park just outside Atlanta allows 10hp on the lake inside the park. It has a good population of four and five pound fish and it took 18-22 pounds a day last year to win tournaments in April. Hard Labor Creek State Park is east of Atlanta and is usually a stained water shallow water cover type lake at that time of year. They allow a 10hp and I believe they have a campground. Another choice in the same area is Charlie Elliot. They have a bunch of small lakes and ponds in one place and you could fish some from a boat and some from shore. They have a campground but the lakes will be all electric.

You don't need the larger 6500. Go with the smaller reel for those baits. Unless you plan on throwing them on 25lb+ test the 5600 will hold plenty of line. That rod will work also.

Not saying that you didn't get bad service. But, I got a bad shad swimbait and a sales guy from TT heard from someone else that my bait was bad and he went out of his way to get my phone # and make sure my bait was replaced and that I was happy. I wasn't all that worried about it but I was impressed with the fact that he called me to replace the bait and find out what went wrong with it. Could be that he just thought I could hurt his sales because of my relationship with many of the tackle store owners around here but I was still impressed with the service. Just out of curiosity what was your problem with TT.

Soft plastic swimbaits could mean a lot of things and could be anything from a light paddle tail type bait to a heavy trout type bait. Be more specific in which baits you will or might be using and it will be easier to give you some help.