smalljaw67

What is wrong is that the fish have become stunted. Too many panfish that eat the majority of forage and then the bass feed on mostly insects. After a few years the bass grow smaller in order to survive, large fish would struggle to get enough food to sustain themselves for very long.

High water temps mean lower oxygen levels in the water. That is the reason you are picking up fish in heavy current, those areas are more oxygenated than slower moving or still water. If you are getting dinks then you are close, the dinks will be in the heavier flow and they will be the first to hit the bait. The larger fish are usually in a pool immediately after a fast water section. So what you want to look for is the shallow riffles, that is where the most oxygenated water is going to be. Fish the "push water" first, that is the area right above a riffle where the water is just starting to pick up speed. Bigger fish will sometimes move there to feed, if that fails to produce then fish the pool immediately after the riffle.

Go with a small popper, the smaller profile might make a difference. You might be hearing bass hitting bluegill that are coming up after the insects.

I have the new versions as well as the old and I don't see much difference in performance. There are a lot of people that get hung up on the fact the hardware isn't brass like the old version but it makes no difference. The B2 hunts and is super buoyant and catches fish like my old B2s. I was down to my last 2 original B2s and decided to try the new version and I'm really happy, they catch fish. In fact I like most of what Bagley is offering now, the rattling kill'r B square bill is a really good bait that does well in rocks without getting beat up as bad as balsa. The sunny B is right up there with a Rapala DT-6 which is one of my favorite cranks and the balsa shad is as good as the Rapala shad rap, no other bait came close until that one.

When my river is muddy there is one presentation that has worked extremely well for me. The single Colorado blade spinnerbait, and there are 2 weights and blade sizes that I use. If the water is high and muddy I use a 1/2oz bait with a single #5 Colorado blade. If the water is normal flow and just muddy I'll go with the 3/8oz bait with a single #4 Colorado blade. I use black, black and purple, black and chartreuse, black and orange, and black and red for head and skirt color with a black nickel blade most of the time. They all work to some degree but black and purple and black and chartreuse seem to out produce the others including plain black but it could be just a coincidence. Fish the bait as slow as you can in eddies, current breaks or slack water spots. You want it close to the bottom occasionally ticking it, i've never been skunked using that presentation in muddy conditions.

I use the normal 4" fluke as a trailer on my small underspins. It doesn't have much action, if any, but when fish aren't active it really does the trick. For me it is normally a fall bait when the water temp dips below 60 degrees but it works well on suspended fish in the summer. You can also get a small scrounger head and rig the fluke on that, what you will end up with is a fish catching machine!!!!

The baby 1 minus is better than the footloose. That's not to say the footloose is bad, it isn't. I have both and I can't tell you the last time I threw the footloose because the baby 1 minus is just that good.

Like a lot of others have said, I mainly stick with 1/8oz. I will jump to 3/16oz and even 1/4oz if there is a good bit of wind. The only time I jump up to 3/8oz is when we fish 10" power worms on deep structure.

The Phenom worm is really good, it makes me wonder why they aren't more popular.

Chris, those heads Siebert Outdoors has would work!!! The dredge model in 1/4oz or 3/8oz I think would be the ticket for what you need. I fish 10" Berkley Power worms on 5/16oz and 3/8oz shaky heads with a 5/0 hook.

I love that style jig and I make my own. I fish them on shallow rock flats and around docks with sparse cover.

I really like wake cranks and I have a bunch but there is 1 that is the best of all. The discontinued Mann's Waker Elite, it is big and loud and you can burn it and not only doesn't it blow out but it wakes. Most wake cranks will dive 1' to 2' deep on a fast retrieve or they blow out, the Mann's will dive 3" and that is it. I like the Storm Arashi wake crank but it needs to be reeled slow and the Yo-Zuri 3DB is really good but it will dive too deep. The Deps Buzzjet is the same way, too fast and it will be too deep to wake. For fishing slow I really like the Rapala DT Fat 1, that has good action and produces fish when reeled at slow speeds. I use wake cranks when the fish are swirling at topwaters but won't commit, funny how they just look at a bait on top but 3" under the water and they smoke it!!

I switch from suspending jerkbaits to floating models. It is amazing how well they work over shallow grass flats and over deadfalls. My favorite for years has been a 1-2 punch, Smithwick Rattlin' Rogue and the Bagley Bang-O-Lure. The Rogue is a river smallmouth killer in summer when they want it fast. The Bang-O-Lure is incredible at getting largemouth to eat it when they don't react to anything else.

Yep...LOL!!!!!! I saw wooly bugger marabou and thought nooooooooo!!! A long time ago I purchased it not knowing what it was, I expected long, thick feathers and you can imagine my surprise when I got the package and opened it up. Sorry for the confusion, I just read through it too fast and wanted to make sure nobody made the same mistake I did.

That isn't wooly bugger marabou on a Feider fly. Wooly bugger marabou doesn't have long enough fibers for that type of jig. They are probably select plumes and if you look at the marabou jigs on TW you'll notice the Feider Fly looks different, the collar is heavier and the feather is fuller and more uniform.

Are you talking about the Feider fly or the chicken jig? If you are talking about the chicken jig what kind of price are you looking for? Most hair jigs are going to cost more because they are labor intensive to produce but the chicken jig is a different animal. Most of the "preacher style" jigs are going to be over $10 because the amount of material and the labor involved, if you are looking to get one on the cheap you may find some clearance jigs somewhere but there won't be many.

Based on the info it may not have been the hooks or equipment at all. There is a good possibility they weren't engulfing the bait, we call it lipping. They aren't sucking or inhaling it, instead they are going down and picking the bait up so it is just across their lips. Switching out to a larger hook when they do that really doesn't help, we found downsizing the bait with lighter weights gives a little better hook up percentage. In my waters you can tell when they get like that because the bite isn't hard and sometimes it is just the line moving. When fishing a T rigged sweet beaver you either miss the hook set or you "skin" hook the fish, just barely on. Once you get a few bites like that we will switch to a smallie beaver or a 6" straight tail worm and if they hit it they usually get hooked, not 100% but much better. The only problem is they don't always take the smaller offerings when they get like that so it isn't foolproof.

The sprue is what is left over, the area in which the sprue comes out of is called the gate. Your mold won't work because there is no way for the plastic to get to the bait cavity. If you are doing a single cavity like that just make the gate from the back of the bait to the top of the mold and hand pour it. Also, trying to make a gate for an injector when you don't have an injector probably isn't going to work out so well, the injector needs to fit in the gate properly.

I'm going to echo the guys that already mentioned the SK Bitsy Bug. The main reason is because of bites, the hardest thing with jig fishing is learning what a bite feels like. Sometimes they will thump it hard, sometimes it is just a subtle tap, tap, and other times it feels like wet leaves or paper on your line. The smaller Bitsy bug jig will allow you to fish a jig but in a smaller profile and even smaller fish aren't deterred for hitting it. The larger jigs catch fish really well but when you are just learning I think you should start small and get a lot of bites then move up when you are comfortable.

Totally get what you are saying but I know full grown men who gave up this hobby trying to melt lead on a Coleman stove and just didn't have the time. I think a teenager wanting to do this for fun probably wouldn't think of it as fun when encountering issue after issue. I've taught a lot of teens how to tie jigs and cast lead, and in a group of 37 kids not a single one is still doing it. Why? "It takes too long to learn" was the number one answer and when I asked what would make you want to try it again guess what the response was? "If it was easier to do" and "if it didn't take so long", it is why I stopped doing tackle classes for my former Bass club. I agree with you about letting them be creative and deal with frustration but having never made a lure I think it would be much better and safer to learn with proper pouring equipment. Perhaps I'm a little too cynical but the kids I was teaching were all enthusiastic as most of them fish the Jr. Bassmaster circuit as well as in high school clubs and they wanted to do this. I know it is wrong to gauge every teen by the small sample size, I have taught roughly 6 groups ranging from 8 kids in the smallest group to 37 in the largest and the other 4 groups had 13 or 14 kids. I'm also not saying that the OP wouldn't be one to learn on his own and figure it out but I think he would have a better chance at having this as a lifelong hobby that he could build on if he learns the basics with things that make it easier to produce a lure than to struggle with trying to make something work when not even knowing if he is going about it the right way. This is just my opinion based on experience with trying to teach todays youth about making tackle.

My advice to you would be to wait until you have a job and can do this the right way. Trying to make good baits on the cheap can be frustrating and may cause you to give up a hobby that might have enjoyed had you done it the right way. That isn't to say it can't be done but there is a learning curve and doing it on the cheap makes it take that much longer. The cheapest way is to either make your own molds from plaster of Paris or RTV silicone or to buy already made silicone molds. A lot of silicone molds run in the $10 - $15 range then a hot plate and pour pot can be used to cook your plastisol. However even on the cheap route you are going to spend around $100 to start depending on how much plastisol, colorant, glitter along with other supplies.

Eco Pro Tungsten Swing Shad 3.8. I use those for swim jig trailers and the only knock on them is the limited colors. They are pretty durable with good action which I thought was surprising as tougher baits don't normally have great action.

Are you talking about an Eaker Shaker? https://www.ebay.com/c/1738336595

Smells like fish is correct. Bomber makes the B13a which is a 2.5" long jerkbait in the Long A series. I don't think they make them anymore but you can probably find some old stock. https://www.fishermanscentral.com/bomber-long-a-b13a.html

Bottom is a Lucky Craft Pointer in shrimp brown, the top one I have no clue.