Randall

I don't fish a lot of swimbaits. I have some small hard swim baits, though. What specifically are you using? I mostly use smaller sebile magic swimmers 95 and 82 and my own High Power Herring. The 3:16 freestyle baits are used by a lot of people in the same situation as well. The reason for the bait choices is that these baits burn as fast as you can reel very well on or near the surface without rolling over or blowing out of the water and can also be slowed down or twitched over productive areas still staying out of the grass below. This makes it possible to cover a ton of water to find active fish in miles of grass. Often after you find an area holding active fish by burning the swimbaits you can slow the baits down to a crawl for a few casts or change to other slower moving baits (tubes, worms and senkos for me) to catch more fish. If the grass is to close to the surface for treble hooked swimbaits I switch over to a Lake Fork Tackle swimbait rigged weedless. Just cover water and look for thinner growing grass or grass with holes that the fish can hold in and get your baits over as many of those spots as possible.

I move out to where it is just below the surface and fish a swimbait over the grass. It's what I do if the conditions are right June through October. Most fun I have fishing all year. If you ever figure the bite out you will start to hate the cooler months of the year and wish the grass was still there.

Much different than shad. In general they will move the bite deeper and give the lake more of a run and gun type bite since they roam open water more. They also give the lakes a good topwater bite often over deep water. My experience is that bright sunny days are better on herring lakes than cloudy overcast days. They spawn shallow in May and stay suspended over deep water most of the rest of the year.

My favorite rod for hard swimbaits is an Okuma Reflexions rated for 1/4 to 1oz. I throw 2oz baits on it all the time.

One thing that will help is to remember that fish depth is limited by it's air bladder. A fish caught shallow or deep will generally not move more than a couple feet from the depth it was at unless it made a quick movement up or down to just to feed. When I say quick I am talking seconds not minutes. Fish generally don't move shallower or deeper so look for it where it was hooked or nearby at the same depth.

Matt's gills are the best. Not only do they look like the real thing but they swim like bluegills as well.

Storm.

Buy the stamp and keep the trout for dinner to offset the cost of the stamp. He did you a favor.

Just from what I have seen there going to a five fish limit may hurt the lake more than it helps. The guys fishing for meat may be doing a service to all that fish that lake for all I know. I don't think it's good for someone to take a 10 fish between four and eight pounds from the lake. But most fishermen taking fish probably aren't doing that and removing the small fish may be what has helped make that lake what it is. I think tournaments hurt the population of larger fish on most lakes and may do way more damage than anyone fishing for meat. Enforcement is a big problem also. Here in GA I fished way over 250 days last year on around fifteen different lakes and saw a game warden only once. My buddies say it's much the same way in Alabama.

I was reading the post about the catch and release line class record in Colorado and it reminded me of my favoite line class record I had ever heard of. It was caught in Florida and first said to be caught on a paddletail bait. Then it was reported to be caught on a Castaic Catch 22. Well I guess you can mess up and mis identifiy a swimbait. But how would you set the hook on the bait with four pound line? Well at that point I called BS on it and angered a whole group of this guys buddys on another forum. Then another problem came up and when this guy was fishing in a tournament I was fishing in and something just didn't seem right to me with this fish and where it was reported to be caught at. The guy who runs the tournament made a ruling and the guy was following the rules in this case according to the director and that was good with me but the guys got mad at me again and the attacks flew from his buddys. Well this is why I put no credibility into IGFA line class records. http://www.bountyfishing.com/thread/new-igfa-lmb-florida-state-line-record Look down the thread and read where he says he is sending photos to his SWIMBAIT company. At this time an article was written and the bait was a Mann's paddletail bait if I remember what was told to me about it but it sure wasn't a Castaic bait. http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/sep/24/bigbass/ ;D Well a little time goes by and all of the sudden Castaic has claim to the line class record as well. The fish was caught in September but the bait it was caught on wasn't released until November. : But nobody from Castaic would confirm he was on the prostaff and even had the baits in September. : another site reported on it and listed the bait as a Catch 22. Well here I am today looking for the info online to send to Paul Roberts to read and lookie what I find. ;D http://zoombait.com/2009/12/zoom_horny-toad-state-record-bass-in-florida/ Yep that's right looks like old Drew done got one over on Zoom it seems as well. Bet he got a 100 packs of toads for that one. Now the question is how many bait companys have been told that there bait caught the record? ;D Well if the guy will do all this and you have to just go on his and his buddy's word that the fish was caught on four pound line and it weighed 13lbs then what do the CR records mean anyway. They don't mean nothing to me because too many people can lie about them with a buddy as a witness. Well now I got to go send an email to Zoom and send them a link to the articles and tell them they have been had. ;D Just incase you missed it here is my favorite quote from Drew. the best thing for me is i push the news out to every manufacturer for the equip i use. Star Rods (plasma) will send me a new rod upon seeing a copy of the cert. my swimbait company will send me a box of lures, ande will send me tons of line, dont know what heritae kayaks will do but i will ask for something. as i am a bit of a lure addict my wife just talked to me about getting some of the garage space back, as my stuff is all over every wall of the garage categorized by company and lure design. poles everywhere it is an obsession.. as i am sure you know!!!!!

That second fish isn't bad at all for the first time. Bad thing is now she will expect you to put her on those size fish everytime.

Exactly BS. They aren't the aggressive eating machine they are advertised to be either. Meanmouth bass, Tiger Bass, Gorilla Bass, etc. all just terms designed by hatcheries and others in the fishing world with the intention of getting your money.

Okuma Reflexions 7'10" inch model. It's rated for baits up to one ounce and has a long handle like a swimbait rod to help with casting distance and control. I use it for all my smaller hard treble hook swimbaits up to 1 1/2 oz. Also works great for big crankbaits.

Big baits work in SC. What area are you in? I may be able to suggest a few lakes they work real well in. I took a musky fisherman from Wisconsin fishing a few years ago on a lake here in GA. Probably one of the best swimbait fisherman I ever fished with. He taught me some musky tricks that have put a few big ones in the boat for me.

Dock Master, The bait he is using is a slow sink that is six inches long. It sinks very slow and weighs just slightly over one ounce.

Congrats on the big bass. Nice photos as well. Thanks for posting. Sent you a PM.

In pad stems a Lake Fork Magic Shad swimbait slow rolled on the weighted hook is deadly. Just rig it on heavy braid and reel it slow through the stems. Get the bait down in them and just bang it through. A swim jig is a good choice as well. Same way just bang it through the stems.

I called around to a few people today and nobody who had heard about it could confirm it and nobody here has either so I am calling it just another rumor for now. I really wanted to see a 12 pound spot though.

Have Kentucky bass and Coosa River Spots been classified as seperate species? Yes they are different species now. I don't know for sure but I have always assumed that Burton spots were Kentucky Spots which makes the bass there even more impressive. They act and fight more like Kentuckys to me. The lake was full of Blueback herring for years when these spots were young so they grew quickly. When I say full of them I am talking about it used to look like you could get out of your boat and walk across the herring. Now they stock the lake with trout so they are trout fed spots much like what you would see in California. I do know for sure there were two fish just under ten pounds caught and released there last year that appeared to be true spotted bass. if they weren't spots they were hybrid LargemouthXSpot.

I am hearing that a 12lb spot was caught out of Lake Burton in GA. Haven't confirmed it yet but it seems legit. Could be just a rumor as well but my source said the DNR has the fish. I have been trying for a while to catch a WR from Burton and can tell you there is no doubt a spot over ten in there. But at twelve pounds that would really set the bar high. It will have to have testing to insure it's not a hybrid betwen a LM and spot which is real possible. It will give GA another WR. If anyone has heard any more about it let us know.

The kina of bloom you are talking about not only will not hurt the spawn but where I fish it usually becomes the preferred nesting area. They get right in the thickest stuff and clean out a spot. In the lakes I fish they only put the copper sulfate out near the intakes. I avoid those areas and fish the rest of the lake.

13lb bass on six pound line. Trickworm on a splitshot rig.

I think it was called a bump and go spinnerbait or something like that. I still have a couple somewhere.

When anchoring in strong winds I always have a sharp knife with me just incase. You can always cut the rope off at the boat and come back and try to free the anchor later. Better to lose an anchor than go swimming.

Last year during the spawn I caught more bass on the hard gill than the soft gill. Most were on the floater casting past the beds and swimming it up to the bed and deadsticking it until the bass got close then twitching and swimming it like it was trying to get away. The floater worked better because I could leave it in place longer over the weeds where most of the beds were. In spots without weeds I just let the sinker sink to the bottom and started a retreive as the bass got close. Many of my strikes were from bass away from the bed or bass that were just swimming down the shoreline looking for spots to bed. I kept a soft gill tied on for bass that were locked on better . Females spend more time away from the bed than on it so I ended up using the hard gill much more to catch the fish that are tougher to catch.