Randall

Here on the smaller lakes I fish in GA I am already seeing a movement start shallower by shad and bass since the water temps are down from the high eighties and lower ninties and some of the lakes have a shallow themocline. Night temps in the sixties have started this movement. I dont call it fall but more of a late summer early fall movement. I dont think there is a temp you can go by in fall like you do in Spring that applies to all lakes. All the lakes are different that I fish since on a couple of lakes that I fish the fish stay shallow all summer and on a couple most of the fish stay deep through fall and dont move very shallow. You may want to reask the question about a specific lake since fall and the turnover period are different on different lakes and in different parts of the country.

As a guide I can tell you that at least 95% of my clients want me to fish and if I stop they usually ask me to keep fishing. They are also the ones who usually have the best results on the trip. I always tell a client to comunicate with me about what they are thinking on the trip and I will do the same with them. As for the others who state right off the bat that they do not want me to fish at all sometimes they have a good trip but sometimes they dont. Why? Because they miss the little details that make a difference between catching the fish in a location where there are fish and just casting to the fish I have put them on and not catching them. I just like George would probably no longer be guiding if I left everything in the hands of my clients. I personally don't do but one or two live bait trips a year so I cant tell you how a guide should do with live bait but with artificials in most cases you will be better off if the guide fishes some and you don't tie his hands behind his back. Now that dont mean the guide should catch all the fish in one small area after he figures out how to catch the first one or two. But if my client goes for a while without catching fish you can bet he is much better off with me figuring out what the problem is and catching one so that he can catch more. Fishing changes from day to day, hour by hour, and minute by minute and usually the guide (if he is a good one) knows best what things to try on his lake to adjust and can do it faster than the above average angler and get the client back to catching and not just casting at fish. I look at my job as a guide is to help the client catch fish not just taking him to where they are. If a client upfront tells me something like I read in Avids post I would most likely politely suggest they find another guide as well because my experience is that in most cases I can do a much better job as a guide with another client on that day or take the day to find more fish for the next days client if I don't book that day. I just like to be able to do my best at what I do without my hands tied behind my back. Now to the original question. Some guides are good teachers and others are not. There is a difference between just guiding and teaching. Good guides can do both and make the trip fit your needs as a angler but from my experience those are the hardest ones to find. I would probably also try to find a local club that has a bunch of guys that are willing to share info and techniques with others or a fishing buddy that knows more about fishing than you do now. With the price of gas seems there should be plenty of guys looking to share the price of gas on their boat for a trip.

In most cases bowl shaped pond with little cover off shore and hot weather with little rain = Big fish suspended over the deepest water in the pond. Thats why the carolina rig and jig won't work. Most small ponds have a thermocline in summer that forces most fish shallow unless they are getting a lot of rain. The bigger fish from my experience will only come near the banks to feed and the rest of the time suspend shallow in the middle of the pond. Also most feeding will be done at night . This make them tough to catch. Most of my bigger sumertime pond fish have been caught on topwaters that I can throw a mile out to where they are suspended.

What Fluke said. ;D

Let me answer this question this way. I catch plenty of 24 inch fish on five inch senkos and plenty of 12 inch fish on five inch senkos. Its a good size if you want to catch both in most lakes and ponds.

I agree a bass is a bass everywhere but also bass break the rules everywhere as well so use temps as only a guideline of what they should be doing. My general rule of thumb in clear water I wont run over any fish shallower than twenty feet deep that I want to catch.

My general rule of thumb is if no wind is blowing and the surface is slick I throw a real quiet lure first. If there is a hard wind blowing I throw a loud lure. When I talk about loud and quiet I am more worried about the splash a lure makes rather than the noise it makes working in the water. I have seen bass in clear calm water run from a lure splashing down. At times a Senko is a loud lure to me because it makes a pretty loud splash in real calm water. Instead of the Senko I will usually throw a trickworm with a 1/32 oz weight since it has less splash. I agree with George also in the fact that fish dont always follow the rules.

Take a watermelon zoom vibra craw and rig it weightless on a hook and fish it like a horny toad. Works for me almost everytime.

I fish jigs on deep weedlines by using a combination of feel and my depthfinder. I have found that most people dont have the feel I do to stay on the edge when fishing with others who have never fished this way. The feel just comes from experience. I use braid or fluro and a jig heavy enough to tell if I am in the weeds or not. I make a pitch just a short distance from the boat and lift and shake the jig feeling for weeds and a bite at the same time. I can usually tell when I am on the edge by feel and move my boat in and out as I move down the weedline adjusting to stay on the edge keeping the boat a short distance (10-15 feet) from the edge. I dont leave my jig in one spot very long but lift and shake it a time or two and then make another pitch. I use it as a search bait looking for fish that will bite. I only slow down or stop when I catch a fish. The easy place to learn to do this is on the edge of a well defined channel since the grass will often grow to the edge of the channel but not in the channel allowing you to have a better feel of where the grass ends and you can tell by looking at your depth finder if you are over the channel or not. Another way to learn this and get more strikes while learning than with a jig is to fish a four inch senko on a Spot Stalker head. I think the website is www.bassstalker.com. You will get more strikes in most cases but its the same technique.

Fish that are stacked vertical on top of each other are usually crappie in most lakes I fish. The lines you are seeing are most likely fish that are going down toward the bottom as you ride over but no way of knowing for sure. Bubbles from decomposing matter on the bottom will make a streak on the screen running from top to bottom sometimes as well. Keep in mind that most fish dont appear as arches but as dots, dashes and lines.

All I got to say is that if I send you a email next year and tell you the big ones are ready to catch you are just going to have to skip work. ;D

47.4 lbs back in April. They weighed 8.0, 8.3, 8.4, 10.8, and 11.9. The 11.9 spit out a big half digested gizzard shad that would have probably added close to a pound to that weight making it over 48 pounds. Caught at lake Varner.

With braid and the flipping stick take the fight to the fish. Thats what they are made for. I bring it as fast as I can to the boat and never give it a chance to fight.

I am guessing he meant Lunkerville since I have seen him there on the website before. TSC is The Sportmans Channel. I believe it will also be on The Water Channel or if you dont get either of these you can see it at www.lunkerville.com. Look froward to seeing it earthworm77.

Those weeds should produce a topwater bite all day long.

Fluke on a jighead. I will use a spoon in winter but this time of year I will swim a fluke on a jighead through those fish. Texas rig the fluke on a jighead like a spotsticker or spot stalker and you can work it through the brush without hanging up as well.

Most of the lakes I dropshot in have a lot of larger fish so I rarely use small baits and less than eight pound line. A trickworm is about as small as I go in most cases.

Anything I suggest is because I believe in the product and use it and most of the time pay for it. I have turned down offers from sponsers because I refuse to promote someones product just because they give me product ,pay me, or give me a patch to wear. If I suggest it its because I think its the best bait for the job period. Its more important for me to be honest and for people to know I am telling them to use a certain bait because its the best instead of thinking I am trying to sell something. I also have very little respect for companys that offer sponserships and discounts to almost anyone willing to sign up just to get people to push there product on the internet on forums like this. Most of those people arent really sponsered they are just part of a dirt cheap sales team for those companys.

Fish a Texas Rig with a lighter weight and swim it over the slime or a splitshot rig with a very light weight and a straight tailed worm. I fish a splitshot rig with a 1/32 oz weight down to ten feet in weeds and slime rigged with a trickworm. Its just enough weight to get it down without it hanging up in the weeds and slime. I also won tournament one time fishing with a guy wacky rigging a trickworm with an open hook in algae. The fish still took the worms even though it was covered in the stuff.

Fish all day then you will know you are there at the best time. All lakes are different though. On some I catch more and bigger fish early on some its later.

Sorry Bro ain't no fish worth that risk. By the way do you know how fast someone thats been thrown over board sinks to the bottom wearing waders. I don't probally because no one has lived to tell. No offense not trying to be mean or anything just hate to see you get hurt or killed You wont sink if you have on a PFD. ;)But in Feb its not sinking you worry about. Its the cold water. My boat handles 35 mph on the lakes I fish well. Theres a couple of guys on this board who have been with me in high winds and can tell you that I am not putting myself in danger with 35 mph wind. Its just hard to control the boat in the wind. Go over that and it dangerous and I am off the lake quick.

Even though I had on waders the boat was never in danger of going down. I looked back at my post and saw how it read. It should have read more like water was splashing over the front as I hit the waves. The front of my boat was hitting the waves but a whole wave never came over the front.

The fish will bite in the wind. Its just a matter of boat handling and what your boat will handle. My all electric rig will do pretty well up to about 35 mph. After that I have to stay in protected areas or its dangerous because I cant pump out the water as fast as its coming in. This past Feburary I had two days with 35 mph winds from the South and we caught five fish limits weighing over twenty five pounds both days burning rattle traps. It wasnt easy to control the boat but the fish were biting. I wore waders one of those days to keep my legs dry from the waves coming over the front of the boat. LOL. I have also seen three 14 foot jonboats sink at 30 mph.

Being someone who recently started guiding (two years ago) I have to say that there is some good advice in the previous posts. I would definately charge more. If the other guides are charging more and you are charging way less then as your potential clients shop around your prices will get you more negative feedback from other guides as well as make you look to be a less qualified person to take them out. Cheap prices could cause you to get less trips insted of more. You dont have to charge as much as they do but I would be close to their prices. I charge $150 a day for my guide service but I have far less money going out than you will. My boat is an all electric boat which all put together cost me less than $1000 dollars. It costs about $1 a day to operate and my tow vehicle is a small 1991 Dodge Colt which burns very little gas and is cheap to operate. And I probably dont charge enough. You will have a larger boat and tow vehicle and expenses to operate those add up quick. Next question is what kind of experience do you have in dealing with people and operating a business. Before being a guide I was a manager at other peoples large businesses. Without this experience I wouldnt have made it as a guide and would probably been back working a job real quick. At the time I started my guide service there were four other people who started guiding on the same lakes I did. They were all decent fishermen. They were all gone in a couple of months. And like George said they gave people a bad taste for guides on those lakes because they couldnt keep people catching fish and didnt have good people skills. All they did was tick a lot of people off. Also, there is a big difference between you catching fish and getting other people to be able to catch fish. You will have all different kinds of people of different skill levels get into your boat. All of them will not be able to cast well, feel strikes from fish, work a topwater properly, etc. You will have people get into your boat who think they know everything about fishing and will not listen to you about the lures, location and techniques you say will work. If you dont have the skills to deal with these people then you will have a very long day on the water. These ( the one who think they know everything) are also usually the ones who will bad mouth you to everyone they meet after the trip and try to ruin your reputation. Without the skills to help these people catch fish they may catch nothing for the day even though you could have caught 50. I suggest getting help and advice from someone who is already a guide there. I had a few guys, including Triton Mike from this website, who gave me a bunch of help and advice as I started my guide service. The advice they gave me was a big help in getting started and staying in business.