Randall

I would say per acre Lake Varner may be the most heavily bed fished lake in the Southeast. It's nothing to see 10 or more boats in a line going down a bank looking for bedding fish in one area during April. It also produces more big fish per acre than any public Lake in GA. I personally think that all the bed fishing pressure and fishing pressure in general helps the lake produce more big fish by limiting the spawn some. Most that have the ability to catch the bigger fish release the big fish there as well. I have also learned by fishing with hundreds of different people during the spring that there is a very, very small number of people that have the knowledge and ability to catch many if any big fish off the bed. There not as vunerable as most people think they are. Good article with a few good tips that most people don't know.

Went out there on Sat and froze my hind parts off. Cruised around for a while to the left of the ramp and we found no depth, no structure, no dying rass, and most importantly, no fish. However I did run into stump full bore and popped my transom mount motor up When we finally went towards the rip rap, that's when the cold set in and we called it a day. Figures, as that's where I finally found some structure. I was out there Saturday for about four hours freezing as well. Took about an hour to thaw my hands out after we finished but we had fun. My buddy eight year old Jake had a great day despite the cold and wind. He got about ten fish with a couple of good ones on jighead with a trickworm. Here is his pic with his dad holding some of his fish and him with his biggest fish of the day. I caught a couple and his dad caught a few as well. The lake is really almost like one big shallow flat and hard to find very many big depth changes in it. Alot of the better structure is in the deeper half of the lake toward the dam.

;DThat explains it. I thought flippin bug was flippin out for a minute. Nope, never fished a machine.

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Here is a bottom view of the weighted hook inside the bait. The weight is barely visable when viewed from the side of the bait and the tip of the hook comes out at the dorsal fin of the bait making the bait weedless. A few of the pics are a little blurry but I hope this makes sense. I was trying to explain how I was putting the jighead in weedless without pics before and nobody could understand so maybe this will help. Also in another post it seemed like the concept of a weighted hook in the bait might have confused some people.

Here is a top view of the bait after the jighead is inserted in the bait the eye of the hook is just behind the eyes and the tip of the hook comes out at the front of the dorsal fin. The bait is now weedless with a jighead inside. When you set the hook the hook comes up out of the top of the bait and hooks the fish.

Here is a photo of a bottom view of the bait rigged on the Lucky Strike jighead. I just stick the eye of the jighead through the slit in the bottom and out the top of the bait just behind the eyes in the front part of the slit.

I had a couple people ask how I am rigging Matt's new minnow so I took some photos with both ways I have been rigging it. Here is a photo of the bait with a Lucky Strike jighead I buy at my local Walmart and an 4/0 Owner rig'n hook with a crimped on weight. These weights are hard to find and I bought all a local tackle shop had a few years ago but you can get the weighted Falcon hooks that have the weight already on the hook at a bunch of places online and rig it the same way. I like to add the weight myself since I can vary the weight myself without carrying so many hooks since I use the Owner hooks anyway. I use 1/8 oz and 3/16 oz crimp on weights.

Throw it on a heavy rod as long as it has some bend in the top 1/3 of the rod. You don't want a crankbait type of rod when throwing swimbaits or trying to catch big fish. You have to think differently when throwing swimbaits and catching big fish than you do with small fish and crankbaits. First you have to have a rod with enough backbone to move the bait in the mouth of a fish after it has clamped down hard on a big bait. Second the goal when you have fish hooked on a larger swimbait is to bring the fish to the boat before it can throw the bait. You never want to give the fish a chance to throw the bait while playing it and trying to wear it down. The trebles on swimbaits are big enough to bring the fish straight to the boat. If the hooks tear out (sometimes they will) then the fish just didn't get hooked well enough and I just forget about it and go on to catch the next one. If it isn't hooked well then it most likely will throw the bait anyway no matter which rod you use since the bait is heavy and easy for the fish to throw due to the weight of the bait.

When it breaks or wears out I replace it. The rod I catch most of my fish on is a BPS Bionic Blade that is 7-10 years old. I have repaired or replaced every guide on it. I also have a reel made from parts of three different reels that is probably just as old. I spend all my money on new baits.

You could but its not going to swim straight. It would be kicking along the top on its side with no weight.

I have only fished them for two days over the top of hydrilla where bass were feeding on shad but I probably caught over thirty fish with most being four and five pounders. I fished them on an Owner rig'n hook with a crimp on weight. I also tried them on a Lucky Strike jighead from Walmart that is made for tubes which worked pretty well also. It let the bait run just a little deeper while all the weight stayed inside the slit in the body hidden. I can't wait to try them on tough to catch bedding fish in the spring. Looks just like a shad in the water.

I confirmed today that Acworth is at full pool. Most likely where I will be this weekend.

I have had the same problem when my paint was not completely dry when I applied the clearcoat. It was dry to touch but not all the way dry. Clear coat didn't seem to stick to the paint and my clear coat and paint flaked off. Something in the wet paint must keep the epoxy from sticking. Now I let the paint dry for 24 hours then put on the clear coat and let it cure for a couple of days before fishing. Hard for me to do since after getting the bait done I want to fish it ASAP but I havent had any more flaking issues. I am not an expert at painting or clearcoating but it fixed my issues.

Funniest thing I have seen on the water was a guy who for got to tighten down a 82lb thrust trolling motor on the transom of a jonboat. Motor was running and making big jumps out of the water and back into the water in a circle as his other transom motor also an 82lb thrust was still running taking him down the lake. Nothing was holding the motor except the wires attached to the batteries. He knew he needed to get the wires on the loose motor pulled free from the batteries to stop it but the motor with a spinning prop going crazy wouldn't let him get close enough without taking a chance on getting his head took off. I think he was also afraid of losing an expensive motor. After around five minutes the prop busted and the motor stopped and he pulled it in. I know one other guy who told me he had it happen to.

Fourbizzle after reading what I wrote I could see it could be confusing so I just deleted it. Its hard to explain without photos or showing someone as they are looking at the screen as it happens. The article with photos explains it way better than I did.

Here is a good article on spooning but the info is good for all lures in deep open water since it talks about what to look for on the graph to find suspended fish that will feed. I have just started using a swimbait more often than a spoon. http://heartlandtackleservice.com/spooning.stm

The bait will be a line running up and down as you move the bait up and down. It looks just like someone is drawing a line on the screen as the bait falls down.

My depthfinder is an Eagle Cuda 168. I turn my sensitivity up to 97% in cooler water this time of year and thats all I do. Shows the bait perfectly. Its more suited for shallow water and I like others better for deep water but it still should show the bait and fish.

I have used Mattlures new shad baits verticaly to catch deep suspended bass. I have yet to see a depthfinder made in the past ten years that will not show a bait on the screen. The catch is knowing how to use the settings on the depthfinder. Turn off the fish symbols and turn up the sensitivity and almost every depthfinder will work. Also you have to be able to know which fish are active and which are not active by looking at the depthfinder to be able to decide how catchable the fish are. Fishing for inactive suspended fish is usually a waste of time. Do what WRB says but sub a swimbait for a spoon. Supermats technique will work also but its a little tougher for most people to do and its easier for most people to keep the bait in the strike zone when they can see it on the depth finder. I catch fish doing it both ways. Trolling a swimbait will work as well but I like casting more than trolling

I change all my hooks that are made that way. Add a split ring and new hook.

I carry propane and one of the little screw on heaters that screw on the bottle of propane incase I fall in so I can warm up in the boat. I also have a waterproof box with matches and a lighter. I used to have a rope attached to the rear and front of the boat with a loop for my foot tied in it to help me get back in the boat but this year I am getting a rope ladder that attaches to the side of the boat.

Hudds will work but I have done much better with baits that are a better match for the forage that are in the lake. I try to match the appearance ,size and swimming action of the forage that I feel the bigger bass are targeting most at the time and location I am fishing. For example if I see bass feeding on bluegill I have been able to get more strikes on a bluegill bait like a Mattlures bluegill than a Hudd. During the spring many of the lakes I fish have spawning gizzard shad which swim with a wide eratic swimming motion while spawning. I have thrown Hudds, and a bunch of other baits that swim with a tight action where the head of the bait stays still and the bait swims with the tail and the bass will not touch it. Switch to something with action like a Triple Trout which swims more like a spawning gizzard shad and I almost always catch more fish with it than a Hudd type bait. Sometimes I see gizzard shad swimming more like a Hudd when feeding along the bottom this time of year and I do a little better with baits that swim with more tail than body action bumping them along on the bottom. I am always trying to match the forage as close as possible when I fish with swimbaits just to increase my chances although they may also hit one that isn't anything like any baitfish in the lake as well.

We have filamentous algae on Varner every year from April thru June in the shallows. I fish it at mid day when it is producing oxygen but don't fish it early and late. I can remember fishing a tournament a few years back with a guy I had never fished with. I told him fishing was slow but I knew a spot where we could catch around twenty fish in about a foot of water at mid day. When I showed him the spot he thought I was crazy because it was algae about a foot thick growing on weeds from the bottom all the way to the surface. We caught over twenty fish all from the algae with wacky rigged senkos and trickworms that we fished on an open hook in the thickest algae we could find. We just put the bait in the algae and shook it until a bass a bass would strike at the movement in the algae. There was no way the fish could have even seen the bait the algae was so thick. We caught over twenty fish out of the algae and the second place team only had three fish and everybody else out of twenty to thirty boats had one or no fish. This type of algae will hold fish just like weeds and its best at mid day when it is producing the most oxygen. At night I have done better fishing just outside of the algae and think the fish get out of it at night and move back into it during the day. Now on the other hand I have seen algae blooms in the late summer early fall at Lake Lanier that stain the whole lake and turn most of the lake a greenish color. In this case its not clumps or strings of algae that you see growing on objects but just a water color change. The fishing gets tough and the fish are not very active in shallow or deep water. I have done well in this situation by treating the lake like it is turning over and fishing very shallow or in the back of creeks or up rivers. I am not sure of the exact type of algae that produces this problem but when I thought it was an algae bloom once before I had it confirmed by a biologist on the lake and was told that this type of algae bloom would have an effect on the fish. So , it just depends on the type of algae and in the case of filamentous algae time of day.

Here is the best one of that style I have tried for senkos. I think it is called a Shake Up jig from Strike Zone Lures. It comes through cover better and is the only spring type jig that I have found that has a high hook up precentage. I has a beefy hook, stand up football head and comes through weeds, rock and wood better than others due to the unique design. I havent been able to find it on the web but can get you a phone number if you want some.