Randall

I have found that there are plenty of writers that can write an article off of info he or she gets from other people or articles they read. It's a whole different story to be able to put the information to good use and go catch fish. I find that the author doesn't have much better of a reputation in NC where he spends his summers among the local fishermen there. I have also personally seen and heard much of the same things they talk about with my own eyes when fishing the lakes there in summer. I always wondered why the Stickmarsh Guides seemed to have problems with each other until I ran into Jim once or twice and read a few of his reports.

I use them mostly for fish in deep water schools. I drop them like a spoon to fish I can see on my depthfinder and swim them through suspended fish in open water. I have caught a bunch of bass and hybrids this way. In fall when bass are chasing shad on flats I cast them to breaking fish

Today was my first day fishing Matt's new hard bait . I didn't fish it long since we were out looking for non swimbait fish. But, I can tell you this will be the new king of hard bluegill baits. It has no match. I caught a fish in my first few casts with it and then had to force myself to put it down to go look for some deeper fish. Has great action at fast and very slow speeds, perfect size, best paint job there is on a bluegill bait. Matt now makes both the best soft and hard bluegill swimbait.

I had some given to me to try and didn't like them. They didn't have much action in the legs and it just kind of skipped along the surface. They were poured by a local guy and it could have also been that his plastic was poured too hard for the legs to kick. They were very tough and lasted a long time but no action or kick in the legs.

Nice to see your back. Now go get us some big fish photos to look at.

Thanks for posting. I always enjoy reading about your fishing trips.

Here is the big one.

Tuesday I was guiding on Varner when I came across Glenn in the boat with Doghouse. Fishing was slow compared to the days before when we were catching over twenty fish over three pounds each. I think we had caught somewhere between five and ten fish and they had caught three. Got to meet Glenn and say hello as we went by. Would have liked to stopped and talk longer but we weren't catching what I had expected so I was trying to figure the fish out. We caught a couple more and my client decided to leave a little early so I called Doghouse to see where the Bass Resource group was at. Glenn had left already so I went to meet up with Doghouse to see if we could find some big ones. The fish finally started feeding and out came the swimbaits. Ended the day with a bunch of quality fish and a 10lb 7oz fish. As I am weighing the big fish I get a call from one of my regular clients and he is just up the lake from me with a 10lb 8oz fish caught on one of the spots I just left. Just goes to show you never know when they will decide to eat since it went from real slow to real good in a hurry. Here are some pics of a few of the fish from Tuesday. Scroll the pics down to see all four pics.

I have some. Had to go through a bunch of baits to find some good ones but the good ones catch fish. Some were impossible to tune to run right. There is a tackle shop/distributor here in GA that has hundreds of reject RC-1 baits with little things wrong with them. They sell them for $1.00 each.

The best way I have found is to drill a hole and use a tungsten sinker or bead which gives more weight in a smaller space. Fill around the sinker and close off the hole with Water Weld or or any other two part epoxy putty like plumbers use. Its easy to sand off the putty flush with the wood.

My biggest five weighed was 47.4. I have had another time that might have beat it but I didn't weigh the three smaller fish before releasing them so I can't give the exact weight. Both times my two biggest fish were ten and twelve pounds and the others were eight to nine pounders.

With light line all the fun and rush is in fighting the fish after the strike. With a swimbait you get the chance to see the strike sometimes if the bait is high in the water collum and that is the best part of swimbait fishing. I have caught a 13lb bass on 6lb line and a 15lb 12oz fish on heavy braid. With the light line fish I can remember best the fish jumping multiple times, diving under the boat, and pushing the line to it's limit praying it would hold to wear down the fish. With the swimbait fish I can best remember the strike which seemed to come out of nowhere five feet from the boat, putting the reel in freespool as the fish dove under the boat so the hook wouldn't tear out after I set the hook and the first and last jump where I realized just how big the fish was before I pulled her across the surface. I am not complaining about either way I caught these two fish but they weren't the best as far as having fun fishing. If you like the thrill of topwater fishing you haven't really seen anything until you have seen a ten pound plus fish come up follow and hit a swimbait on or just under the surface. For probably about the next month I should have great conditions at Varner for big fish to hit swimbaits on top or high in the water. Every day right now when I leave the lake I can't wait to get back because I know that there is a huge strike from a big fish just waiting to happen. It might not weigh fifteen pounds but I will take a ten pounder hitting a topwater bait over any other type of fishing. I guess it all depends on whether you like the strike or the fight but my vote is for the strike from a huge fish at the surface.

They sold new for $13 dollars at Kmart between five and ten years ago. They made a spinning combo that sold for around $40. Lots of people including myself thought they were worth much more and had a collection of them. I still have one left but at one time I owned around twenty of them. The best low price rod ever made.

The fish has lymphocystis disease. Here is a big one I caught a few years back that had it. The virus can be spread to other fish when those growths burst so it's probably good to remove the fish in most cases. You can do a search on the web and get good info on it.

I hook up more often with the Boze Frog. They also make one that is clear with gold glitter that is my favorite color in clear water on a bright sunny day.

Paul, First living close to Spro here just outside of Atlanta I have just seen some things and heard some things that made me question the company's way of doing things. Then I saw the bluegill bait and how it was made and it made it clear to me that some of the things I had heard were true. Then I feel that both BS and another Spro employee have lied about the way the bait was made. It's not so much for me that they copied the bait since many company's do. It's the fact that I feel like they try to pass off others hard work as their own and were not honest about it. I have made some baits myself that were copies of others for my own use but I don't go around saying it is all my original design since I copied a bait.

I will get the TT bait when it comes out but not the Spro. I have just seen and heard enough from Spro that I can't buy or use their baits anymore. I just sold all my Spro baits for cheap to a guy in Florida.

Good structure is relative to what else is in the area or lake. If there is a flat that is 6 feet deep on almost all of the flat that is a mile long and 500 yards out from the bank I can find a drop to seven or eight feet over ten yards or so that is good structure in that lake. It can hold as many fish as a big drop from 10 to 20 feet in a highland type lake. Good structure is relative to what other structure can be found in the same area and lake. Doesn't have to be a big drop or rise just different when compared to what else is around it.

The face shape on the Spro bait tells the story for me. No real bluegill has the face/head shape cut into it like Matt's original bluegill. That's why the Spro bait shouldn't have the same shape cut into the face/head either if a real bluegill doesn't. Look at the shape of the head in the area circled. I took these off BBZ site where Bill is trying to show the differences in the baits. I don't see any way they can argue that they didn't copy Matt's bait and then make changes. Real bluegills aren't shaped that way in that area and others like the Baitsmith bluegill don't have that shape. Looks like they used Matt's bait to shortcut instead of making their own. That why I will wait on the Tru-Tungsten shad.

Doghouse has been MIA for a while from this site. My only guess as to why is that he hasn't been throwing big enough baits to catch fish worth showing off. ;D He decided to go fish some of the big lakes in GA for a while where a three pounder is a big fish and and you can catch those little spotted bass. : Well, I told him he had better get used to catching some big fish and get some practice in since we have two championship tournaments coming up where he might have to bring his swimbait rod and heavy line. I have been on a good swimbait bite on all the lakes I have been fishing so we went to Lake Varner with the plans to throw swimbaits and nothing else. I do admit to throwing a buzzbait for a few casts but I didn't bring a spinning rod. Had to take it out of the boat just incase Doghouse wanted to use it. When I called Doghouse the night before he was having to change out and put heavy line on his rods and he said something about not having his swimbait rod at his house. :-? Well the next day came and we had pretty good conditions but not exactly what we had hoped for. The sun was out early when we wanted clouds. We did get some 20+ mph winds though so the fish did bite. We ended the day with around twenty fish all on swimbaits. Adam caught the most and biggest fish of the day with the fish in the photo so I guess he still has the ability to throw a swimbait but should really do it more often. Now we will have to wait and see if he still remembers his password here so he can post something.

If the fish are feeding on shad they are great around cover. I throw them over grass beds in the fall and the fish will come out of the grass and kill them. Some of the most fun I have fishing all year. If you reel it near the surface its like a hard topwater strike when they hit it.

Nice post Paul. Is that a custom paint job on the TT bait? Looks like a bass pattern. I just hacked the tail off a little shorter on mine. Tail just looks too long on the bait and it bothered me a little so I started hacking on my $50 bait. Works great with the shorter tail and looks more like a real bluegill.

Here is the way I look at swimbaits in GA. You need to match the profile and action of the bait as close as possible but color don't have to be exact just close in most cases. The two main types of forage are gizzard shad and bluegill. We also have some trout, perch, and herring in some lakes. So, try to match the forage in the lakes you fish with a swimbait. All lakes and ponds in GA have bluegill so Matt's bluegill is a must have. My second choice is a hard jointed bait to match a bluegill and I personally like the Tru-Tungsten bluegill since I can change out the weights to get differrent fall rates. The second forage you probably have where you are fishing is a gizzard shad. I sent you a PM to tell you the one I use that is soft plastic. The hard baits that are good gizzard shad imitations are double jointed baits. Some good ones are some of the Rago baits, Tripple Trouts, Sebile baits, and the Mattlures Woody in the trout pattern since the fish just sees the bottom and the action and I have been wearing out big fish on it this spring and summer. I also just noticed that Tru-Tungsten makes a hard saltwater bait that might be a good gizzard shad imitation with the different sink rates. I also have the three BBZ baits in the photo that I will sell you for cheap. Nothing wrong with them and two are like new and haven't been used. I just decided not to use Spro products and use other brands so I am getting rid of them cheap. You can get the whole set shipped to you minus the hooks with the fast sink , slow sink , and floater for $60. If you want them send me a PM.

For me when it's tough I use the lightest weight I can which is usually 1/32 oz. I fish 1/32 down to around fifteen feet if the wind allows me to.

Lake Varner, Lake Horton, Stone Mountain, and Tribble Mill are good big bass lakes. There have been big fish caught at Lathem Reservoir , Lake Acworth and Fort Yargo this year too. Lots of choices all around Atlanta.