Randall

I have been real busy lately and have been fishing from daylight to dark most days . I haven't had much time to post here and I usually get pretty tired after fishing almost everyday for long days during March and April. I know everybody wants to be a guide because its a dream job and I shouldn't complain. ::)Well a couple weeks ago I had one of those things happen that make all the long days seem worth it. Here is the story. I got a call from Ben Smith who is a frustrated beginner at bass fishing and has only been fishing for a few months. Well, we went out fishing and I showed him how to catch a couple small fish off beds to get him warmed up for a bigger one. After just a few minutes I find a big one on a bed about nine pounds. Ben says his biggest bass ever is about three pounds. After I finally get the fish figured out I tell Ben what to do to catch it. He makes just a few more casts and hooks into the fish and starts fighting it. Now at this point most people make mistakes and lose their mind which in turn causes them to lose the fish. But, Ben listens to what I am saying as he fights the fish perfectly and he gets the fish to the net finally. We weigh it and it weighs nine pounds. So, now Ben has a choice to go catch some smaller fish or go look until we find another big one. While still shaking form catching the big fish he decides to go get another big one and leave the little ones alone. I have now created a monster who is addicted to Trophy size fish. The little ones don't matter as much anymore. ;D After about an hour of looking he gets a shot another big one and loses the fish on the way to the boat. Now the trip is over so he ends up booking four Tuesdays in a row with me. To make a long story short in four weeks we only fish for five or six big fish. He loses another fish over ten pounds on another trip. We fished for a teen fish but never got it to bite > :'(but he got an eight and nine pound fish when his previous best was a three pounder. We spent two of the four days looking and hardly made a cast since we didn't find any big ones. The cool part is after catching that one big fish he is a changed person with a new outlook on bass fishing. It's funny what one big fish will do to a person. Last I heard from Ben he was looking to get some Mattlure's bluegills. Here is Ben's nine pounder.

I have just been real busy. Just now getting some time to post again.

I have been fishing a bunch of lakes over the past few weeks looking for the best bite and finding spots for trips later this spring/summer. The best lake right now by far as far as producing both size and numbers is the lake at Stone Mountain Park. I have fished it a few times over the past few weeks and it has produced 20-30 fish a trip and best five limits between 13-25 pounds. The lake has been good all spring and has had some big tournament weights. The lake is full of shad and grass and there is just a bunch of three to five pound fish being caught. I have also seen two fat bass over ten pounds caught out of the lake this spring by bank fishermen so they are some big ones in there. My biggest so far out of Stone Mountain this year is the seven pounder in the photo caught on a Tru-Tungsten swimbait last week. It was part of a five fish limit weighing over twenty pounds. I have also had two best five limits of all four to six pound fish on swimbaits that went around 25 lbs. I have been getting most of my fish on topwaters, swimbaits, and plastics. There are a few big fish still on beds as well but those should be finishing up in the next week or so and the late spring/early summer fish should continue to bite well thru mid June. Fishing at Varner right now is very location specific. If you are in the right place you can catch fish and load the boat if you are not in exactly the right places at the right times you will swear there are no fish in the lake. LOL. The grass carp are having an effect on the lake by taking out much of the shallow grass (pond weed) that many of the post spawn bass and fry have used for years as cover. At the same time many areas of the lake are really lacking in shad. I am guessing this was caused by a combination of a winter shad kill when the lake was down last winter and the fact that there are a bunch of hybrids that have grown to three pounds plus that were stocked by the DNR a few years ago that are really eating on whats left of the shad right now. I have even seen hybrids real shallow in parts of the lake with very little shad eating on small bass, bream, and crappie on beds all spring. Without getting into what I think of the grass carp and hybrids being in Georgia's best public big bass lake I will say if you like to fish shallow you will most likely have to change the way you fish on Varner this time of year. I am not saying the fishing is bad right now but it is different from years past. The fish have already started showing up in deeper water early this year. I had two buddy's that weighed in over 22lbs last Saturday on Varner in a tournament that caught them off channel ledges and offshore structure and I have been catching the bigger fish offshore in the same area on plastics for about two weeks already. This is the way I like to fish anyway and how I catch most of my bigger fish so until the hydrilla gets up later this summer there should be even more fish bunched up on offshore structure making the next couple months great for fishing deeper water. Also, on the plus side of the shallow grass being gone there is a real specific bite in shallow water. With the shallow grass gone the shellcrackers and bluegill have no place to hide as they move shallow to spawn. Some bass are taking advantage of this midday when they can see and stalk the bedding panfish. I have seen packs of ten to twenty big bass moving into areas where these fish are bedding and feeding on them. It's a very tough bite to get with all the real shellcrackers there but these fish will hit a swimbait like a Mattlures bluegill fished through and around the beds if it's done perfectly without spooking the bass. The last lake I have fished that is fishing well right now is JW Smith. It has a bunch of late spawners on the deeper end of the lake right now and it has a pretty good postspawn bite in the shallow end of the lake. I won the JBA tournament without a partner last weekend and took advantage of fish bedding on offshore structure like long points, underwater pond dam, and humps near deep water and weighed in over eighteen pounds of fish with a big fish that also won the big fish pot that weighed over six pounds. All my fish were caught sight fishing with jigs except for one swimbait fish (Mattlures Woody)and a couple of smaller fish caught on worms early.

Nice fish Matt!!!! Don't feel bad. Randall has a few haters out there too. ;D Every time you stick your head up above the crowd expect someone in the crowd to try to cut it off. ;)Nice to see you got some time to catch some big ones.

You can't worry about price too much when buying swimbaits since a giant fish is priceless. Best swimbaits that are reasonably priced though are the Mattlures baits at mattlures.com. My advice is if you want a big fish bait go with quality made baits with a good reputation since there are a lot of baits that are not well made.

I started fishing swimbaits years ago and have probably fished them as long as many of the California guys have. Problem is for years I only fished them during the spawn and prespawn due to my lack of knowledge and limited thinking. I thought here on the east cost they were limited to working during those times. I hate to think how many more big fish I could have caught with them if I had been using them year round. :'( Now I use them year round and have found different ways to fish them under different conditions. Now my favorite time to fish them may be during the summer when fish are in deeper water. As far as tournament fishing my partner and myself won a few tournaments last year on all swimbait fish. We had a guy tell us that we could only do that on a lake with lots of big fish and that he wanted a chance to win his money back on another lake where the fish wouldn't bite swimbaits. We let him pick the lake and went the next week to that lake and nearly doubled the second place weight with once again all swimbait fish. I am not saying this to brag but to tell you that you can win tournaments with swimbait fish no matter what the lake is as long as there is a swimbait bite at that time and its the best choice of lure to fish. It may be a swimbait but it may also be a tiny finesse worm also. Those paddle tail baits are not really trophy hunting swimbaits anyway and usually get no bigger fish than a jig, spinnerbait or crankbait will. They are way overrated for catching big fish.

Great fish Matt. If you are ever anywhere near Atlanta and want to give Varner a try let me know.

My big bait swimbait rod is a light and tough for 6 to 10 inch baits. Some don't like it and think its way to much rod for swimbaits and is better used for saltwater fishing. : Its an extra heavy action rod with a very fast tip. Its a broomstick when compared to many other swimbait rods but will flex a little on big fish. I personally love it because its a very tough durable rod and I can ski a fish over ten pounds across the surface and never give it a chance. I have lifted a nine pounder right into the boat with it and never really worried about breaking the rod. I don't like parabolic type rods for big baits and big fish or any rod that give the fish an inch after its hooked so it fits my style of fishing. I did find the rod tip heavy so I balanced it with a weight system from BPS as I do all my rods . I do find it to be way too much rod for most lighter swimbaits like Mattlures and maybe even the six inch Hudd as well but its great for heavier baits three ounces and up. For the lighter smaller baits like you are using the Okuma would be a better choice. I would like to see the rod Diawa has for 8 inch and up baits gone and replaced with a better rod for smaller baits since I can use the rod I have for most of the biggest baits out there.

Here is a photo of me holding Dan's big fish and my big fish from today.

Today I took Lightninrod out to Varner looking to catch him a big one. He said from the start he just wanted to fish for big ones and nothing else so that's what we did. We started out looking for bedding fish but couldn't find anything eight pounds or over although we passed plenty of four and five pounders and a six pounder or two. Since it didn't look like we were going to find a big fish on the bed we started fishing stageing areas outside of spawning areas where I knew the big fish were. We got one small fish :(and after a couple hours of sitting on one small spot trying to force feed a big one with a jighead and worm Dan was starting to wonder just how long I was going to keep us there without another bite. ;D But I knew the fish were there and one of us was going to get a big bite sooner or later. Well finally one bit and I didn't get a good hookset and the fish came off quick. I cast back to the same spot again and set the hook on a big fish. Dan did a great job of netting the fish and we brought it in. We didn't weigh it but it looked over eight pounds. We stayed a while longer and finally moved on to a few other spots that were like this one. Like the first spot we sat in one spot and made repeated casts to the same small spot with worms on jigheads. Dan's was a wacky jighead and mine was a shakey head. After a couple more small fish here and there Dan finally hooked into a good one. Its the fish in the photo and I can't remember exactly what it weighed but it was between five and six pounds. I Didn't get Dan a ten plus pounder like he wanted but still not a bad day with two good ones and three small ones in a half day of fishing.

1. I will when fun fishing sometimes go after smaller fish but 90% of the time I am after a big one over eight pounds. 2. An eight pounder will start to get me excited but it really takes one over ten to really get me excited and that's usually my goal each day. I want fish over ten pounds. 3. I have always been a pretty paitent person. 4. Last year I felt I had four or five good chances at a fifteen pounder and I caught one. Once the spawn is over I do much better at targeting big fish. They are easier to target and more predictable and I do best in fall. I know where they live in all seasons and target big fish year round. 5. I got tired of catching smaller fish. I wanted a new challenge that wasn't easy and something most people can't do so I started targeting big fish.

I am going to assume that you are talking about guiding for bass. This topic came up a few days ago in my boat in a conversation. I had never thought about it before but it was pointed out to me that there are only two full time bass guides in the northern half of Georgia. I am one of them and Ryan Coleman who guides on Lanier is the other. All of the others are part time and make most of their income doing something else. There might be someone I or the other guys with me didn't know about but I doubt it. Thats two full time guides in a good fishing state with a major metro area with millions of people. I even got a parttime job after last years drought closed the lake I guide on most of the time. I am now guiding full time and still have a parttime job a couple days a week until I am sure this drought is over. If it was easy to be a guide there would be lots more full time bass guides. I would almost be willing to bet there are no full time bass guides in eastern NC. Now on the other hand I wouldn't trade what I do for anything else. I love what I do and that makes the long days I work worth it. I rarely ever have an eight hour day and most are twelve to fifteen hours since there is lots more to it than what you would think. If I would have started when I was eighteen as an intelligent hard working young man who showed a lot of promise in life and a better than average 18 year old fisherman then I would have went out and started a guide service and failed. Like George said I would go get an education first. Learn the things that will help you in one of the toughest most competive jobs you could have. In your spare time keep your goals in mind of what you want to do and work toward getting the fishing, people and work skills you will need to make it.

I would say the fact that he has won awards given by The Sportman's Channel for being the favorite host and having the favorite show for a start. I was on the show and can tell you Mike is a great guy and not a bad fishermen either. On the show I was on Mike did a show on a day that reached over 100 degrees in the middle of summer. How many other shows are going to show real fishing that way? Mike, Shannon and the other guys at Lunkerville do a real show the way it happens not a faked show with big fish that have been saved up for a week or more in a tank to make it look like big fish are being caught on every cast.

I went fishing Tuesday with Clipper and his son at Lake Varner. Went to some prespawn spots and Clipper got a hybrid on a jerkbait and I got a small bass on a jerkbait. Not really what we were looking for. I guessed the fish had moved up so we went looking for spawners. We caught some decent fish on beds between three and four pounds each. Still not what we were looking for. We found a spawning area with some more males up on beds where I know exactly where the big females stage at before getting on beds. So, I suggested we back out deeper in the staging area before fishing for the spawners. A few casts later Clipper hooks into the fish in the photo and since you see the photo you know he caught it. Got it on a splitshot rig with a trickworm on eight pound line. Slower day than what I expected with clouds and some wind most of the day but the quality of the fish wasn't bad.

I can't say they all do but some do. There is a fish in the left hand of the guys in both photos below. It is the same fish since the lateral line markings are the same (see the photo on the bottom) and no two fish have the same markings. The fish was caught in exactly the same spot. The photo on the left was taken a year before the photo on the right at a tournament where the fish was released at a boat ramp around two miles away from where it was caught. One year later the guy on the right caught the fish in exactly the same spot where the guys on the left caught it. The fish left the ramp made a right turn up a creek arm and swam back to be caught again. I have caught this fish eight times always on the same spot except once when it was spawning. First time I noticed that I caught the fish it was five pounds now it is huge. I also have had buddys like the ones in the photos who have caught the same fish on the same spot but released it each time. The fish lives there and knows how to get back home.

Welcome, I will not be there so I will say use a JIG , JIG and a JIG.

what bait was it? He was using the Reaction Strike Bull Bream designed by Mike Bucca (aka Triton Mike)

For the past few weeks I have been fishing a numbers area on Varner because of the large number of three to seven pound bass there and the fact that on most days you could catch 20 to 40 fish there since they were stacked up there with big schools of shad. Most days the best five was 15lbs to 25lbs but there is almost zero chance at a fish over seven pounds in this area. So the last two days I decided to go fish for bigger fish since a cold front or two had slowed the fishing in that area. Friday I fished with Adam (aka Doghouse) and Saturday I fished Ryan (aka Senko77). Friday we only caught two fish. A two pounder and a nine pounder. Adam got the nine pounder on a new hard swimbait we were trying out to see if it would catch us some fish. The fish hit on the second cast with the new bait. Today Ryan only wanted to fish for big ones so we decided not to catch a two pounder and only caught a nine pounder. We didn't catch a bunch but it felt good to hit some big bass spots and catch a couple big ones. There is a larger photo of Ryan's fish in a post he made.

This question in different ways has been covered on this site a bunch. So . I am going to try to answer it a different way. If myself, being a guy who throws swimbaits almost every day of the year on a big fish lake in the South , came to Wisconsin to swimbait fish for big bass here is what I would do. I would have five to eight inch baits with me but would start with a five or six inch bait. I would most likely start with either a Mattlures Perch or a Mattlures bluegill (www.mattlures.com) depending on which forage I felt the fish were most likely to be feeding on. From time to time during the day I would also mix in the eight inch bait that matches the larger forage in the lake when I was confident that I was in a big fish area and the big ones were active or I wanted to catch a big musky or pike. The reason I say these baits will work up there is because I know a guy in Wisconsin that uses these baits and catches bass weighing anywhere from two to six pounds on them as well as big musky and pike. He has some baits destroyed by the toothy fish but is willing to pay the price to catch the larger bass. For the eight inch bait he uses a BBZ and a Triple Trout with extra clearcoats added to the paint since they stand up pretty well to the musky and pike. If he gets into a bunch of musky or pike on the smaller Mattlures baits he switches to a 6 inch Storm Kickin' Minnow since it costs less. He has thrown ten and twelve inch swimbaits but says he doesn't seem to get any bass on them but the Musky and Pike love them. A two pound bass has no problem eating a six inch bait if it wants it. He catches some big bass on musky glide baits as well.

I used them for years then many of the small shops here where I bought baits closed and I had a hard time getting more. Found them on the web a few months back while searching for some baits I had ran out of. I plan to use them again this year now that I have found the new website. I like the longer needle worms which are now called Pork Pins or something like that.

Let me also add that it's really nice to see that Bass Pro is aware the add for the rod and reel is wrong since you will not get a medium action rod with it. But still hasn't changed the add. Tells me BPS doesn't care if the add is right or wrong.

One of the guys I fish tournaments with got one for his son. Instead of the medium action rod that BPS had listed he got a light action rod with it. He conatacted BPS and they told him that the combo had been changed to allow young anglers to throw lighter lures. He wasn't happy with the rod but BPS acted like they were doing him a favor by changing what he ordered to what the company thought would be better for his son. Bottom line is they didn't want to lose money on taking it back. After many emails they finally agreed to send him a $20 gift card. BPS gave a guy who spends thousands there each year bad customer service and made him put way too much effort into fixing their problem. Looking back at it now the reel on the combo is the same reel you can get at Dick's called the Escalade at Dick's Sporting Goods with fewer bearings. Nothing special about the reel for kids. It's really too big for most kids hands. He ended up finding a smaller size rod that was a much better rod for his son than either of the ones that he would have got with the combo. Bottom line is they are a gimmick geared toward people seeing the rods and thinking they are something special for kids to help them cast etc. He would have been better off just getting a smaller size baitcaster to fit his sons hands and getting the rod seperate.

X3 on the Rouge. My best colors in dirty water are most of the ones with black bars on the sides. My favorite is the Menedez signature clown color with black bars on the sides.

It's been my experience that shape has much to do with the type of food source and abundance of it but here in GA our larger northern strain bass are more football shaped while our intergrades are more torpeedo shaped as George said. What limits a northern strain bass weight here is length not girth. It is also growth rate with our intergrades reaching the same lengths faster. Also, at some point north of me I am sure the Northen bass will outgrow the Florida bass in the same lake. I have no problem with two records but just looking at my two best fish from Ga they aren't too far apart I have a 13.8 northern strain and a 15lb 12oz intergrade. My northern strain was a football shaped bass nearly six inches shorter than my torpeedo shaped intergrade bass. Freak football shaped Florida intergrade bass pretty much only happen in Texas and California so why not just make a seperate California and Texas record as well or say the record don't count if it comes from California or Texas. :-? Note: for those in Texas or California I am just being sarcastic so don't get upset. ;D