Snakehead Whisperer

No prob.

I use these. http://www.harborfreight.com/5-piece-airbrush-cleaning-brushes-68155.html

Healthy looking fish. I'm jealous.

I'm with slonezp on the bass. Bake it... better for your health and taste buds. For the snakeheads I'd grill them. For a special treat I highly recommend grilling the snakehead jaw much like you would a salmon jaw (for a long time over low heat, like 18" above the coals.)

It's a whole lot faster than it used to be though. Great post Glenn!

Hope the work picks up for you (after you get some quality fishing in, of course ) I like to go with tubes on a split shot rig, slider heads with 3" senko, bucktails, and the old jig/grub. Rapala broken backs and crankbaits have been taking good fish here on the Potomac as of late. My friend just caught a 5lber. on a Kastmaster in gold/perch this evening. Spooks and buzzbaits worked in mid river riffles can also be really productive, even in mid-day.

x2 on the inches per turn as opposed to gear ratio. Only 2 rules of thumb that I really abide by when choosing reel speed. -Faster retrieve for fishing heavy slop/cover with heavy line so I can pull fish out before they get tangled up. -Slow retrieve for deep cranking, as it will save your arms and present baits slower. Other than that it's really what I feel most comfortable with.

I don't particularly like large reels, but I do like round reels for most fishing. My go to is an Abu C3 or C4. On second thought many would probably consider that a large reel, so yeah I'm with you on this. For faster gear ratios I usually go with low profile reels. I fish a lefty too, so choices are a bit more limited for me. Welcome to the site. You should start a thread in the introductions forum.

Great tips, especially the part I highlighted in red. This isn't really true. While paying somebody to get your site visible to search engines will help if you're totally clueless and unwilling to do the homework, the same results can be achieved for free if you familiarize yourself with the way that Google and other search engines crawl and rank sites then organize yours accordingly. Site ranking is done almost entirely on relevance. Having other sites link to yours will make it more relevant, but even this is negligible. Including meta tags in the source code of your site will have the largest impact, as well as having a domain name that relates to your site/business (e.g. if you register chuckyfish.com it will be less relevant than chuckyfishlures.com.) If you pay somebody for this service, they will ensure that you have all of your ducks in a row and not much more (unless you want to pay to have ads included in search, but does anybody click those? I don't.) If your time is more valuable than the cost of their service then perhaps it's best to hire somebody. The downside of hiring somebody to do this is that you will remain clueless as to how it works and dependent on these people as long as you're online. See this... http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=70897&topic=2370570&ctx=topic

Are you closing the bail on your reel by hand when you cast, or letting the bail close when you start your retrieve? Simply closing the bail by hand right before the lure hits the water will eliminate most of the line woes that people experience with spinning gear. If it were my reel, I'd spool it with one of the following... -15lb. Power Pro braid w/8lb. Seaguar Fluorocarbon leader (15lb. braid is approximately the same OD as 4lb. mono.) -6, 8, or 10lb. P-Line Copoly -Straight monofilament up to 14lb. For bass fishing I usually use a size 2000 spinning reel, so I normally don't go higher than 8lb. test with mono. You didn't mention what size reel you have or what size line you're using. You said you like to use 8-10lb. line, but if you're using that size fireline it could be one cause of your knotting. The reason I use 15lb. braid is mostly because it minimizes knotting, and not because I want the added strength (if I remember correctly fireline crystal is ever so slightly larger than equivalent braid.) Truth be told I prefer 8 or 10lb. braid, but wind knots become a problem for me when I go down that small.

Not sure where you live, but these guys are pretty common around here and much of the eastern states.

Read this thread... http://www.tackleunderground.com/community/index.php?/topic/24473-how-do-i-sell-my-baits-in-a-tackle-shop/ Wish you the best. Let us know how it goes for you.

Not sure if this has been mentioned in this thread, but I've heard rumors that Dick's is planning open an outdoor retail chain under the "Field and Stream" name to compete with BPS, Gander Mtn. and Cabela's.

Check the needle chucking nut and don't tighten it more than hand tight.

Having a good run with it so far. I've got some of the more normal looking Zeal lures, but I've wanted this guy for a while. I'm hoping it will be a snakehead slayer.

What do you thin with? I mix 1 quart of water with a drop of dish soap personally, then thin as needed with that. The opaque white Createx requires the most thinning in my experience, where as the transparent colors and the pearls sometimes require very little. Thinning seems to help atomize the paint better, regardless.

Won't kill the hook up ratio as much as a wad of salad hanging from trebles But seriously, fish attack wakebaits with great ferocity... the hook up ratio with upward facing hooks will be fine. In Japan it's common to put upward facing frog hooks on wakebaits and crankbaits. They work fine. FYI, I mod crankbaits like this often. I usually remove the front hook and only put a frog hook on the rear when I do. That thing looks like it'll catch fish for sure. The tail on the painted lure looks better than the one in the first pics.

Looks great. I think you should keep the frog hooks though, but turn them the other way so that they tuck up into the body. I fish wakebaits with that set up all the time and crank them over spatterdock/pads, and they are pretty much completely weedless. Are you going to paint it?

Really beautiful place to fish. Thanks for sharing the vid. Welcome to the site.

While I'm with you on this don't sleep on baby bass or houdini, especially the latter.

This. Some of the best fish come from negligible looking cover.

Simply put, no. Yes bass are creatures of habit, but all bodies of water are different. Deep water in one body of water might be 5' or 10', while elsewhere it may be well over 30'. Most lakes stratify during the warmer months which means that the water below the thermocline will not circulate with the warmer water above it. The water below the thermocline becomes depleted of oxygen quickly as fish and other organisms consume the oxygen in the water, rendering it uninhabitable to bass and other fish until the fall turnover. Bass in the heat of summer will tend to move toward deeper water, but they will not inhabit the areas below the thermocline once the oxygen there is depleted. Not all lakes stratify but many do, and of those that do the thermocline may be at any depth (even very shallow water which stratifies before deeper water, also see thermal bar.) On the other hand some of my biggest fish to date were caught in 3' of water or less in August when the water temp was in the high 80's or low 90's, though these are exceptional and not the norm. My friend Edwin caught a 14lb'er in Virginia in less than 3' of water during December when the water temp was about 38 degrees, which is also very exceptional. You never know where big bass lurk until you start prodding around looking for them. If you have a fish finder you can see the thermocline usually, as it will give a faint sonar return.

Don't usually have a problem with mosquitoes or flying bugs, but it seems that ticks and spiders are attracted to me for some reason. Because of that I only use the 100% (actually 98% if I remember correctly) deet spray. I've never noticed a difference in my fishing because of it. I have noticed that the sun feels hotter and I get dehydrated/fatigued faster after using the spray.

Welcome to the site. There are too many variables to give you a simple answer to this. I'd start by reading the seasonal articles on this site to get an idea of bass behavior. http://www.bassresource.com/seasonal-fishing-articles/ On most bodies of water you will find some bass in the shallows year round (here the water is in the low 30's in winter and the 90's in summer, and there will always be a few fish near the shore.) To find bigger fish consistently, you'll need to do some serious reading and lots of hours on the water. Not trying to discourage you at all, but there are so many skill levels in bass fishing that it can be overwhelming. Start by learning the basics and work your way up when you're ready. If you are dedicated, you will seek out the knowledge and pick it up quickly. The nice thing about fishing is the learning curve gets sharper the better you get, making it easy for beginners to start out (and frustrating for experienced anglers trying level up )

If you're going for snakeheads (or other invasive species,) then have at it. One thing that I find really disappointing is the shooting of common carp and especially gar by bowfishermen. It would be one thing if they harvested the carp or gar, but they are usual thrown on the bank. I think it is wasteful and disrespectful to the animals. While I'm sure bowfishing is fun, it never seems like a very sporting way to catch fish. The way that fish react when the bright lights hit them is to freeze and play dead, leaving you with a non-moving target at about 10 feet from the boat. Good archers should be able to hit a something the size of a carp from 30 meters or more. Maybe there's something that I'm missing. I am not personally attracted to bowfishing, but then again I am too addicted to rod/reel fishing with artificials to think of doing anything else. To each their own. It's legal in MD, so get out there and try it if you want to.