cajun_flipper

I didn't even see the dates. It was on the second page in this forum....? lol

I agree. Same applies to a canoe or sit on top kayak.

Watermelon red has produced fish for me on every single body of water I have fished. No other color has that kind of track record for me.

I used to be known as Brian_Reeves as well as Ain't_Texan. I'm back as whatever this screenname is . I've been gone since 08 due to work and other obligations, but I'm back in action now!

Get a pair of fins, goggles, and a snorkel. If that's not an option, follow Roadwarrior's advice. He's got a good plan. After all these years, I'm still not a senko fan, so I'd say try a fluke in the same color and a little bit faster retrieve. But he's definitely the man with the plan and his tips are rock solid

Another tip is to resist the urge to stand close to the water's edge. On your initial approach to the lake/pond, stay back a good 20 feet and make your first casts to probe the shallows immediately adjacent to the bank. Then move up to about 10 feet to get a bit further out. From there, fan-cast an area before walking to a new spot. Think of it like you are using a trolling motor and fishing an area before your boat gets there. Save up a little change and pick up a used canoe, kayak, or plastic pontoon boat. It's not incredibly difficult to find one for a really good price...like 100 or less. Pick up a life jacket to combat the no swimming thing and you're set. I do about 75% of my fishing from a canoe even though I have a bass boat. Until you get something that floats (if you even want to) then be stealthy on the banks. Wear darker colors and walk quietly. Keep the talking to a minimum. Seems extreme, but its hard to catch a fish that is running for its life from you. I used to do A LOT of bank fishing and it can be really tough, but is a blast. Topwaters are your friend in the summer time here. Pop-R's and shallow crankbaits are go-to's along with swimming grubs and burning small spinner baits.

If it's a light rain then try a buzz bait in the shallows. Thats always my first choice. Other producers have been flukes worked aggressively weightless and spinnerbaits near the surface. If its a torrential downpour, start looking at cover. Fish don't like to get wet, so punch into overhangs like docks or low branches with texas rigged plastics. As far as barometer, a high pressure front (cold front) will typically make them stubborn. As the pressure is rising before the front hits, they light up usually. After it passes, its tough.

With the rivers here, the current is really too strong to properly work a jig and top waters act ridiculous. Well...buzz baits do fine but poppers and whatnot are just stupid looking to me under these conditions. Makes me not have faith in them. The grub is an awesome and underrated bait! ESPECIALLY in small waters. I'm not a smallie fisher, since there aren't any within 8 hours of me in any direction, but usually grubs and small mouth bass are used in the same sentences. They work for spots and bucket mouths too!

Thanks! I think there is a Dick's on the other side of Baton Rouge. I'll have to check it out when I'm brave enough to take my chances on the 18 wheelers flipping over left and right here. Traffic is terrible between that side and mine. I'm unfortunately in need of a trip to the mall out of all god forsaken places, so I'll pick up a tube of megastrike as salvation from shopping with the sheeple

The information in here keeps repeating. Sounds like good advice to me!! The real tricks to worm fishing are typically fishing it as slow as you can stand and watch the heck out of your line. Sometimes they will kill it, leaving you no doubt as to what is going on. Other times the line will just start moving around. Still sometimes, you'll go to pick up your worm and it will feel...mushy? Is that the right word? It's impossible to describe. When you identify it, you'll never forget it. Hook sets are free. When in doubt, swing for the fences! As far as colors, I like blues, blacks, and junebug for turbid water or over cast days. On clear days in clear water, I like watermelons and pumpkins. Brands of choice are the Rage Tail Anaconda for more aggressive fish and the Berkley Power Worm for when all else fails. The Anaconda gets the job done fine on most days, so I rarely reach for the Berkley's anymore. A blue fleck power worm remains a confidence lure for me due to it pulling me through on many bad days over the years, but it takes a back seat as an emergency lure only.

Spawn is what mommy fish and daddy fish don't want to have to explain to their teenager fish. It occurs in the spring when the water's about 60 degrees or so? I'm not a bed fisher, so I don't really keep up with it. As far as predicting what a bass will do on any given day on any given season, brother if you can figure that out to a science, you'll make millions. Bass are wildly unpredictable critters. Their preferences and locations can change drastically in a matter of hours. As far as seasonal stuff goes, I like fishing current breaks in rivers year round, shallow or deep. In lakes and big rivers, I like vegetation and wood. Spring and fall, check feeder creeks and backwaters for bait fish activity. Summer and winter, points and structure hold big bass, but you can find GOOD activity in the shady shallows in the summer. Winter bass are stubborn...I go deer hunting

I use a custom rod that was built for me by the members of this site in 08 as part of the MOJO event. It's a 7ft MH rod with spiral wrapped eyes. VERY nice!! Flechero made it for me. My other is a G. Loomis 7ft department store rod...also MH with a fast tip. Line is Vicious 10lb FC on one and 8lb Trilene Mono on the other. Both reels are Quantum PT Energy. I can't throw a spinning outfit to save my life, so I rely on baitcasters exclusively. One would probably do better than me if he/she were to use lighter weights on a spin cast reel. One of these days I'm going to buy a good one and learn how to operate it better than a 6 year old. Terminal tackle all consists of good quality jig heads along with Gamakatsu hooks.

I have a guy that makes soft plastics. I buy them from him and can get custom colors, more softener, more salt...etc. I'm getting into making my own hula grubs, which is one of my staple lures. While I'm at it, I'm going to pick up a mold for single tail grubs just so I can play with them as well. I fish grubs more than anything else and I'm not 100% happy with anything on the market, so that's what I'm planning on doing it for. Grubs are the forgotten lure, so there isn't a bunch of attention paid to them by the big boys and there isn't enough demand for smaller shops to fool with them. Therefore, I'll be starting up right before summertime. I MAY get a senko style mold too, but I doubt it since they are so available and I really don't throw them enough. I burn through some grubs though! Like the other guys have said, I don't see a way to get into it for less than 300 bucks. I didn't even think about a respirator...good call. I don't need anything else adding to my cancer profile. I tie my own skirts for jigs and spinner baits. I can attest that it is much cheaper to buy the jig heads in bulk, painted or unpainted, and tie your skirts that way. Melting lead is a pain and I really didn't enjoy it. I've sold all of my molds. I mainly use poison tail jig heads, which you can purchase direct from many different tackle stores or guys online. I only have about 20 jigs that I've built, and those see less and less action with the amount of canoe fishing that I do these days. Pitching jigs from a canoe is an art that I can't master for some reason.

Thanks guys. I found my old screen name fluke. It was Brian_Reeves. If y'all could get that worked out, then that would be great. If not, I'll be happy with my new one. Either way is fine, don't get a migraine trying to figure it all out

I'll take you up on that. I had a bunch of posts in my post count. I look like a big time rookie lol Good to see you fluke! Glad to see some familiar faces from back in the day. It's only been 4 years

Fishing out of a canoe with no depthfinder, no trolling motor, and no room for a decent net is tough. The current can be your ally or it can be a nightmare. Carry anchors and extra rope for tying off. If the rivers or streams you fish are fast moving, gin clear water like mine, then you'll want to tie off or anchor up at the bends of the river. Always keep your vessel near the point, traversing the shallowest water possible. Personally, I like to beach my boat before a bend and walk the bank to the other side to prevent spooking these little spotted bass. The reason I fish the bends is simple. The outside edges where the river sharply turns will be substantially deeper than on the inside edge of the bend. Many times, I'm dealing with a subtle drop from 0" of water to around 6ft in depth. The bass pack up in these pockets and wait for baits to come zooming overhead with the current. This is where walking the bank and heading down river from the bend comes in. Once at the apex of the point, I start casting upriver and reel with the current. Both the small profiled humdinger and the subtle, forgotten grub are perfect lure to mimic a bait fish frantically seeking cover from the current in the depths of these pockets. The hula grub is a smaller profile, subtle little bait which i use to mimic a little crawfish bumping around in the calmer water among the rocks and sticks. I don't bother with using weed guards or weedless lures as all of these are cheap and easy to retrieve. Most of the time, I don't get hung up. If I do, typically I can see what I get hung up on. I'll break the line off, tie on a new lure, fish the spot until I'm done. Then I swim over, dive down, get my bait and go back to the canoe. I don't recommend doing this in the winter for obvious reasons. This is my summer time hobby. Anytime you're fishing small water, you have GOT to think small. The fish are smaller. The forage is smaller. Little river bass aren't accustomed to hammering blue gill or sun fish. They eat minnows, bugs, and craws. Any large baits may get some reactionary strikes, but you'll do far better with little lures like my little list of canoe favorites. They are cheap lures...save the big bucks for the big fish. Of course, you can apply these techniques and lures to any body of water and more than likely, you'll be successful. If a guy is burning a spinnerbait, follow up with a white grub with a chartruse dyed tail. Might discover something "new."

I have recently fell in love with kayak/canoe fishing. I've personally found that fishing small rivers is better for me with a canoe and I reserve my Ocean Kayak for the ocean and lakes. It tends to handle wake and waves MUCH better than the old canoe. When river fishing for bass out of a canoe or kayak, I'm typically in shallow, faster moving, clear water. Presented with these conditions along with the very remote possibility of landing anything greater than 5lbs, I've learned (through trial and error...mostly error) that there is A LOT to be said for downsizing baits. Typically I'm targeting sporadic large mouth, but mainly spotted bass. After paddling about 8 miles in one day without a bite on the upper Amite, I decided that it was time to try something else. The weather and water was right and I was throwing some of my all time confidence lures such as Booyah Spinnerbaits, 1/4 ox home made jigs, and big craws. Not one strike. Not even a nibble. Therefore I turned to some really old lures... Next time I hit the water several days later, I broke out some white, smoke, and clear plastic single tail grubs, a pack of watermelon red hula grubs, and some old fashioned Humdinger Spinner baits. At first I wanted to use the grubs as a trailer for the spinner bait and go hawg hunting. I resisted the urge and on a 3/16th round painted jighead and threaded a white 4" single tail grub. 2nd cast, keeper sized spot! Much better than day one. I caught several more fish, releasing each one and decided to shift gears. Swimming the grub on the jighead was producing violent strikes. I even changed colors a few times and that didn't seem to matter. I think the clear with silver flakes brought in the most fish. We're talking GOOD fishing!! I know, I know...flame me if you want, but I put the grub down. Dropping of the pattern intentionally seems like craziness, but I wanted to experiment while I knew the fish were biting. Humdinger time. The lure is a white/greenish chartrusey color. I have no idea what the weight of the head is. One gold willow blade and one silver colorado. Instantly started catching fish on it. Once again, about an hour and a dozen fish later, I changed lures. The hula grub was fished on an exposed hook with a matching 1/4 oz jighead. I hopped it along the bottom and was getting strikes and catching fish. 8 miles of paddling down river catching fish is not as hard as paddling down river for 8 miles biteless. The trip ended way too soon. Story time is over, now onto the tips in the next post.

The Xcalibur Spittin' Image is my go to bait for speckled trout. Also it is responsible for one of the largest bass I've ever caught when I lived in Texas. Its a great topwater. I can't testify on their other products, but I keep Spittin Images in several colors.

My thoughts are that it depends on where I am fishing. On smaller fisheries that could easily be damaged by taking fish out, I definitely practice CPR... Catch Photo Release. On larger rivers and lakes, I CFF... Catch, Filet, Fry. I never keep fish over 5lbs regardless of where I'm at in order to give them another shot at spreading their genes around and I NEVER fish the spawn. I look at it similar to deer hunting. I don't catch and release them. With proper management, the herd is healthier with selective harvesting. It reduces competition for food, reduces disease spreading from over population, and is better for breeding (bass are cannibals after all). But I never, ever keep more than I can eat.

What were you using? In that situation, I'd throw my trusty hula grub on an open jig head against the bluffs and hop it down as slowly as possible. If that failed, then I'd try a C-Rigged Senko. I don't know where you're at, but if that rain was followed by a cold front, then the fishing will be tough. That's a big temperature difference on the surface and will surely freak the fish out for a few days. You could try a big, multi bladed spinner bait and look for a reaction...that's never worked for me but others swear by it. But on days like you're describing, I try to get small, non threatening, and subtle with my lure selection. If the water was muddy, then that makes it even tougher. Add a rattle to whatever soft plastic you're using and shake the heck out of it, on top of working it slow and dead sticking it in high potential areas. The bass more than likely moved off of spawning grounds and retreated for a few days looking for nicer weather to move up. So slow and deep....

I tip all of my soft plastics with chartruse JJ's. To me, it's not really about the scent as much as it is the color. I figure the garlic can't hurt though. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that having a proven scent of whatever type on a lure has to help...seeing as how cheap soft plastics that smell like a tupperware container have never caught a fish for me...anywhere. Maybe its confidence, maybe its science...either way it works. I've used the sprays and never had any luck with them. Megastrike is good stuff, but I rarely carry it anymore...mainly because I don't order online often.

Rage Craw rigged on a keel weighted hook Hula Grub (custom) Texas rigged 3" Curl tail grub (custom) on darter style jighead Those three baits pretty much see 90% of the action on the ends of my lines. All depends on what the fish are telling me on the little rivers I fish. The Rage Craw and Hula Grub have been favorites of mine for years. The 3" white grub has virtually replaced crankbaits and spinner baits in my box. I rarely reach for them anymore.

Hey y'all. I've been gone for a long time. Lost the email and old user name stuff. I'm the infamous "Ain't Texan," aka Brian Reeves. Little update for y'all. I've moved back home to Louisiana. I still have the "Pass the Mojo" picture you guys got for me and still fish with the custom built rod. I sincerely appreciate that and I still can't thank y'all enough from way back when. I've long since quit the tournament scene and now fish small rivers in Louisiana exclusively. Most of the time I'm in a canoe or kayak, though sometimes I take the gas powered rig out. I'm still a fan of flipping soft plastics and pitching jigs and look forward to rejoining this community. This has always been a great site. I haven't had much to contribute for the last few years since I've fished about 3 times, but things are changing with the new job and all. I'm able to get out on the water A LOT. Look forward to diving back in on the scene here and contributing once again. Sorry for my LOOOONG absence. Hopefully some of my old time friends are still around.