smalljaw67

https://www.ebay.com/itm/DUEL-YO-ZURI-FUZE-BANANA-BOAT-NEW-YA87/362688876561?hash=item5471f11011:g:ymIAAOSw0NNdFZ~S

I have a bunch of these, it is a Yo-Zuri Banana Boat. That color is the Japanese version made by Duel called the Fuze Banana Boat. These are killer topwater baits, similar to a Sammy but thinner with a different walking action. I use them for smallmouth when the water is calm and they will flat out catch fish. When they were being discontinued I bought 2 dozen to make sure I'd always have them and at $1.99 each how could I not buy that many?

"Scent"

A finesse swimbait is one of my river smallmouth staples. I like the River Rock Custom Baits RR Striker, 3.75", that bait is similar to a Keitech Easy Shiner. My second favorite is the Keitech Swing Impact Fat 3.8, it is a similar size but the action is a little different. The River Rock bait is better in cold water and when the fish aren't in full chase mode as the bait has a wider tail kick with a good amount of body roll. The Keitech has less of a tail swing but it is much faster with less body roll, that is perfect for fishing fast and getting reaction strikes.

The heat shrink electrical wrap is the best way I'd say. However there is something else you can do, 5 min. epoxy and it would be easy. Take some masking tape and tape a bunch of hooks to something to keep them upright. Mix the epoxy and then use a toothpick to place a small amount in the hook gap and let dry, that will seal the gap.

Yes, I'm the same person as on YouTube. I think you misunderstood, you are correct and I'm in 100% agreement with your assessment. I'm assuming the OP is wading based on his post and finding a transition area might not be an easy feat but a riffle is visible. I was just making the point that riffles are a high percentage area during the "dog days" and the fish don't have to be fighting current for long periods as they hold in the slow moving pools behind the riffle. So I wasn't trying to contradict your advice, I simply though the riffle would be a better place to find fish based on my assumption that the OP is wading.

What kind of clothes pin? I only know of wooden ones unless you mean like a small knitting needle. I'm asking because I may learn something new and that is because I only have ever saw wooden clothes pins. And by clothes pin I mean what we use to hang clothes from the clothes line to dry.

Riffles don't mean fish have to fight heavy current for hours on end, at least in the rivers I fish. Riffles are made up of 3 spots, the "push water", which is the flat area above the riffle when the water begins to get shallower and the current picks up. The riffle itself, which is a shallow area with rocks mixed which makes the faster current really turbulent, think of it like driving on a road littered with potholes while doing 60MPH. Then you have the pool, the area behind the riffle where the water becomes deeper and the current slows down, this is the staging area where fish move up to the riffle to feed and then back down to the pool to hold.

Are you dipping the jigs right in the jar of powder? If so you may want to purchase a fluid bed. What happened is there was a lot of paint around the hook eye and when you cured the jig the extra powder sagged down and clogged the eye back up. A fluid bed makes it easy to get a thin even coat of paint on the jig so that doesn't happen. You can try to be a little faster with dipping the jig in the powder and/or try using a little less heat, that too will help.

I fish similar waters in PA and the spinnerbait has been my favorite lure for years. I refined my presentations so much that in the late 90s I started making my own which I continue to this day. As you will hear from others, white, chartreuse, and white and chartreuse combos all work well for body and skirt colors. You are just learning that bait so keep it simple, silver blades in the sun, gold blades for overcast and low light presentations. Get yourself War Eagle Mike McClelland finesse spinnerbaits and get them in the 5/16oz size. The two patterns you want are Blue Herring for the sunshine and Pond Scum Perch for overcast. The size works well to mimic the forage in the waters you are fishing and they use mag willow and Colorado configuration. That blade combo is really nice because it has good thump for times when the water gets dirty but still produces good flash when you have a little more visibility in the water. Those two patterns will work well in all types of water clarity as well, from dirty to clear and everywhere in between.

I have the same experience as Bluebasser86. A brown or black trailer on a PB&J colored jig is killer for me as is a brown and purple hair jig but not so much for a soft plastic.

I have the River2Sea Dragonfly and it is a killer bait when bass are after dragonflies. The issue is fishing it around cover, it is very light and uses a single size #10 Daiichi treble hook so it is best used with a medium power rod with no heavier than 10lb line. Casting it is tough, the wings will catch air and it will actually glide so accuracy and distance will be problematic. We used it for river smallmouths, when there was a large amount of Damsel flies around the smallmouth would key on them and totally ignore everything else. So my buddy found the River2Sea bait back in 2006 and we got them just to try and we found they worked great. The action is like a jitterbug but no noise, but 99% of the time you didn't need to move it at all and when you did it was only a few inches before it got crushed.

I love the crank style wake baits and there are 2 that I really like. The first is discontinued and has now become hard to get but I have a stash as I was on the bait early. The bait I'm talking about is the Mann's Waker and Waker Elite, they are similar to a 1 Minus but they will only dive 3" unless you plunge the rod under the waters surface. The other is one I seldom talk about, the Rapala DT Fat 1, It is a balsa bait so the floatation is really high so you can reel a normal pace without the bait diving too deep. My honorable mentions are the Storm Arashi wake crank, I really like that bait and it is a favorite but it tends to blow out unless you keep the pace on the slower side. The Yo-Zuri 3DB Wake crank is a good one but tends to dive too deep with anything over a slow retrieve speed. and The 2.5" size BPS The Egg, it is heavy and doesn't blow out but will dive a little too deep if you go past a slow retrieve.

I like Rapala baits as I've been having success with them for a long time. If I was narrowing down 1 jerkbait from that brand to use it would be an X-Rap. I love the Shadow Rap and Shadow Rap Shad and the Rip Stop has been great but the X-Rap works in a lot more situations. The X-Rap is the only suspending jerkbait I use in warm water, it is really erratic when worked fast but it works just as well in cold water when you are working it much slower. When it comes to colors, either glass ghost or silver, both of the colors have been really good for me when the bite has been tough.

I have never caught a bass when hooks grab that "snot grass" even when the action isn't impaired. I have managed to catch them on Texas rigged worms that had some grass on the weight but I don't know if the grass was on the weight before the fish bit or if it ended up on there while fighting the fish.

As others have said, look for riffles, the ones with swift current that produces white caps are the best. The riffles have oxygen rich water which is why you'll find smallmouth there. I usually fish those spots with 2 different baits, a shallow running crank or a fluke but the crank is the first bait I try.

The reason the Z-Man head is tilted further back than others isn't the bend coming out of the head. If anything, the bend is probably keeping it from tilting even further back. WRB isn't lying to you, they all run that way, you just can't tell when looking straight on or when the bait is 10' away from you. If you had a camera in a pool and made a 20' cast and started reeling, you'd get to see the side view of the bait running and you'd see the tilt. Look at all the spinnerbaits on TW and you'll notice the wires all have slightly different lengths and different angles coming out of the head, it is done to keep a bait from tilting or from leaning. Leaning is the bait laying over to one side or the other, the most common cause of that is blade size combined with speed, reel a bait too fast with larger blades and the torque from those blades will cause the bait to lean to the side. Tilt will always be there because of the fluid dynamics but wire angle and placement plays a roll in how much a bait will tilt. The Z-Man spinnerbaits has an issue with wire placement not the bend. I make some baits with a bend like that, it is there to create a little more durability, they use a shallow angle coming out of the head so they can put that bend in it, it keeps the wire from bending at the nose of the bait when you catch a good fish. The wire placement on that bait is positioned right at the top of the head rather than coming out of the middle, this was probably done to increase the stability by giving the bait a low center of gravity and when combined with the channel really makes it almost impossible to roll or lean to the side but the trade off is that the bait has an exaggerated tilt back. Most spinnerbaits will tilt until the wire with the blades on is facing straight back but if you look at the Z-Man bait it actually tilts to the point that the blade arm is facing slightly down. I believe they wanted a stable bait at all speeds and were not concerned with the tilt as much because it really doesn't hurt the bait that much. I apologize for the long post but I just wanted to make clear that spinnerbaits all have that tilt and you really can't tell unless you can see it from a side view.

Yes, every spinnerbait runs like but the Z-Man has a channel to keep the bait from rolling over which also makes it lean back a little more. They use regular silicone skirting, nothing different than other manufacturers use.

I fish a lot of jigs and to be honest I don't want them to have a ton of action. The reason for trailers are to add profile and control fall rate, action is probably the least important with the exception of swim jigs and bladed jigs. Chunk trailers are my favorite but most of the time I thread them on my jigs so I have that classic crawfish profile while keeping the jig compact. I have some Zoom Swimmin' chunks and those I just hang on the hook, they are ok for jigs you are going to actively hop. The action is nice but subtle, the legs swim almost lifelike when the jig is hopped up off the bottom and continues as it falls.

I guess the 3/4oz weight is sold separately....LOL!!!!!

THIS^^^^^^!!!!! I have some Basstrix Locomotion worms, they look awesome in the water and stand straight up. I've caught fish on them but in all honesty non floating worms have produced better results. For finesse worms I use a River Rock Custom Baits SM Killer, deadly on a shaky head anytime the bite is tough. For regular worms on a shaky head I have done well with the Berkley Powerbait Bottom Hopper 6.25" and the Mann's Jelly worm 6". And for large worm shaky head fishing the Berkley 10" Power Worm has been better than the others I've tried. An honorable mention goes to the Mister Twister Tri-Alive 6.5" Nightcrawler, that works as well as the others but I've only used it for a short time but so far it is really good.

Missile baits mini flip jig is more compact. There aren't a lot and that is why I make my own. I make a 1/4oz Arky style and a Brush jig with a heavy wire 2/0 hooks to keep them more compact.

I'm a fan of balsa, Rapala and Bagley make up the bulk of my collection but I also have others.

He is using one of these https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/Z-Man_Finesse_Bulletz_Weedless_Jigheads_3pk/descpage-ZMFB.html . This is a type of weighted hook that allows you to move a bait on the bottom in bodies of water with extremely rocky substrate. These are used a lot by river smallmouth anglers because it doesn't get hung as much as a traditional jig head. Most use the Confidences Baits Draggin heads or River Rock Baits Crawler heads as the finesse bulletz only came out a year ago.