redboat

I had that same problem, could NEVER get a hook set no matter how hard I tried! I finally decided to try a trailer hook, a small Owner weedless. Used a small swivel and split ring to attach it to the main hook. Now I hook up almost every time, and always on the trailer. The small weedless Owner doesn't hang up or inhibit the frog's action too much (I throw mainly Ribbits).

Truer words never spoken! Most of my fishing is on DFW area lakes, and on a really good day I may land a couple of one pounders. I csught a 4 pounder on a lake I've fished regularly for 20 years last year. I took a picture, for that lake it was a monster. On the other hand, the wife and I fished Amistad spring before last, and the SMALLEST bass we landed went about 3 pounds. Caught a lot of 4 pounders and a couple of 5's.

Interesting topic. I was breaking off regularly, on the knot every time (standard Palomar) using 12 lb flouro (won't say the brand). Someone suggested I switch to PLine flouro. I did and that seemed to solve the problem - no more knot breakoffs in three years. The largest bass I've ever had in the boat was two years ago when my wife landed a 10-4 largemouth using 6 lb PLine flouro on a 5'6" spinning rig. This was in heavy hydrilla, and as some in the thread have noted, the drag being set properly prevented the line from breaking when I was trying to net her (the fish not my wife) and she kept running under the boat.

Interesting topic. I was breaking off regularly, on the knot every time (standard Palomar) using 12 lb flouro (won't say the brand). Someone suggested I switch to PLine flouro. I did and that seemed to solve the problem - no more knot breakoffs in three years. The largest bass I've ever had in the boat was two years ago when my wife landed a 10-4 largemouth using 6 lb PLine flouro on a 5'6" spinning rig. This was in heavy hydrilla, and as some in the thread have noted, the drag being set properly prevented the line from breaking when I was trying to net her (the fish not my wife) and she kept running under the boat.

Interesting topic. I was breaking off regularly, on the knot every time (standard Palomar) using 12 lb flouro (won't say the brand). Someone suggested I switch to PLine flouro. I did and that seemed to solve the problem - no more knot breakoffs in three years. The largest bass I've ever had in the boat was two years ago when my wife landed a 10-4 largemouth using 6 lb PLine flouro on a 5'6" spinning rig. This was in heavy hydrilla, and as some in the thread have noted, the drag being set properly prevented the line from breaking when I was trying to net her (the fish not my wife) and she kept running under the boat.

Interesting. I wish there were more articles or books on how to use sonar units; so far I've only been able to locate a couple. One DVD was interesting, had a pro and a Lowrance engineer explaining Lowrance fish finders. Right at the end the Lowrance engineer said, "We get a lot of these units back because people don't realize that most of the "fish arches" they see are actually not made by fish at all but are underwater gas bubbles." I have a Lowrance 322C main and Lowrance 125 front on my boat for four seasons now. Before that I had various Eagle and Lowrance products for sevral years. I've seen a ton of "fish arches" just like in the demo, but have never caught one of these elusive "fish". I think what you're describing here is a better approach - use the sonar to map out the features that attract bass rather than trying to locate actual bass with it. If anyone knows of articles or other literature describing how to use sonar I'd appreciate references.

Hey, thats some pretty good cyperin' Mr Wizard! I think when my welfare check comes in I'll let you balance my checkbook. Lets break it down another way: I'm 58 years old, have been fishin' since I was about 5. Didn't start throwin' spinners until I was 12 or 13, though; still my Wally World calculator says thats just about 45 years. Now, 69.4 hours over 45 years is less than 2 hours a year throwin' spinners. And don't forget I lived on a lake for 15 of those years. Well, yeah - IF you were buying all 500 at Bass Pro today. In the sixties - when gas was 20 cents a gallon - spinners didn't cost $2.75. And you can get 'em at Academy for less than 2 bucks a pop as someone pointed out a few posts back (guess you didn't READ that one). I've probably spent about $500 over the years on spinners, which isn't much when you factor in the $40,000 bass boat I just bought - 8 fish so far which works out to about $5000 each. Partly because I was young and stupid. Partly because spinners are a lotta fun to throw, even though they don't produce for me. Anyways, you never answered the original question - have YOU ever caught anything on a spinner? Or are you saying you haven't thrown 'em 10,000 times yet? As for the rest of you naysayers - I suggest you READ the posts in this thread. There are folks other than me who haven't gotten spinners to produce, as well as others who have. To those people who offerred advice I sincerely thank you, I'll try some of your suggestions. To the people with pithcers of fish they've caught on spinners I say, nice fish! To the rest I say...Well, lets just let that'n go...

I think PETAs efforts would be better directed to the plight of the nauga. I don't know if any of you guys have ever visited a nauga ranch in West Texas. Those cute lil' naugas are raised in deplorable conditions, then when they're old enough are slaughtered for their hides which are then used to make furniture. PETA activists, unite! Save the nauga!!! :'(

I was the one who, in another thread, said not to put the battery on the garage (or other concrete) floor. Has nothing to do with discharging it: The floor's cold, will conduct same to the battery.

I read about somebody - Berkeley? - testing a new plastic bait, was supposed to resemble a crawfish. They found it worked best with no claws or tail, resembling nothing but a plastic blob. They put the claws and tail back on when they marketed it, though - they said nobody'd buy a crawfish lure that didn't have claws and a tail like a real crawfish. Baits are designed to catch fishemen.

Wife and I were fishing Toledo Bend summer before last. We saw a large white gar in one cove, could see him clearly in the water. He came right up to Wife's wacky worm, bumped it with his nose - I swear he was sniffin' the dang thing! I suppose it didn't smell right, after a few seconds he backed off. We've been using hunter's soap on our hands and scent on our baits ever since. I found some stuff called "Lunker Sauce" which seems to work; it's thick and is in a dauber bottle so it doesn't get all over the boat.

Honestly I don't know whether they do or not, which is why I started this thread. Seems like a lotta folks think they don't, others say they do. Since some of the folks who say spinners catch fish have pitchers (Being from Texas, 'pitchers' are fellas who throw baseballs, what you put the sweet tea in, and them foldy things that come outta Walgreens after you drop off your film) of bass they've caught on spinners its hard to dispute the fact that some people catch fish on spinner baits. I will say this: Go down to Bass Pro, look around. 90% of the baits you see there won't catch a fish, but they'll catch a fisherman. And I'm not just talkin' about spinners

Ok, well, I promised I'd tell y'all how the Sam Rayburn trip and resulting spinner bait experiment went. Wife an I drove down early Saturday moning, stayed at Twin Dykes campground near the dam. Nice place, never did find out about those sisters it was named after but its nice to know gay people can get campsites named after 'em someplace other than California. Saturday we launched around 2 PM. I rigged three lures: A small chartruse spinner, a stickbait, and a red Rat-L-Trap. My intent was to alternate between all three, see which worked. Wife fished her usual pumpkin wacky worm. I personally find pumpkin wacky worms boring - throw 'em in the water, set the hook, pull the fish in the boat, repeat. Over and over all day long. Man that is a honkin' big lake! The new boat ran just fine, all the electronics worked well. Water was about 62 degrees, 64 in places. Seemed like a lotta wind but it was so open down at the South end it probably seemed windier than it was. After about two hours the wife had hooked a couple of 1 pounders, I felt a hit on the spinner, set the hook - it was a good sized (13") striper. I'd hooked him in the left gill. At first I thought I'd snagged him then I realized he musta struck the colorado and willow leaf spinners. When I set the hook I pulled it into his gill, so I guess that counts. So now it's like, 10,214 spinner casts, 1 bass. I was "slow rolling" the spinner along the bottom at the time, thanks to the fella who suggested I try that. Nothing else happened that day, the stick and Rat-L-Trap came up empty. Sunday we slept in until probably 8:30, courtesy of the guys in the next campsite who liked Alice Cooper up really loud at 1 AM. Went back to the spot I caught the striper and Wife caught her black bass. This time I had a Pop-R, watermellon Zellamander, and a red french fry I picked up on the 99 cent bargain table at Bass Pro. I had my plastics texas rigged. Well, long story short, in about an hour we hooked several more nice black bass, wife and I both. The Pop-R didn't produce but we were a little late for that. Zellamander and red french fry both worked about equally well although I hadda keep replacing the french fry; the zellamander didn't wear out or tear the whole time. Wind was beating us up pretty well by then so we cruised over to the lee side of the cove. I was tired of catching fish anyway so I switched to a white tube. After a bit of this we put the rods up and cruised over several coves, mapped out some structure and other promising spots. Headed in at noon, packed up and drove home. I think Chris mentioned spinners aren't good in clear water; the water was as clear as any I'd ever seen in any Texas lake. We could see the bottom in 5 feet of water. Probably not a good test, and I DID in fact hook one fish with the spinner. Not as productive as plastics, but all in all probably not a good spinner bait day. All of the fish we caught on plastics were in 2 to 4 feet , on the windy side of the cove. Those were all caught within about an hour of each other. The spinner fish I hooked in 15 feet, right at a drop off about 50 feet off shore. Wife's wacky worm worked in both places. Overall I'd say I'm not ready to dump my spinners in the lake just yet, although I don't believe they're nearly as productive as plastics. Sam Rayburn is a great lake, really pretty down there. Hopefully some of y'all will go; let me know how you do, what worked, what didn't. And if anybody finds out about them two twin sisters let me know that too, I'm really curious now!

Is there anything else on that circuit which could be causing the interference? For example, does he have a marine radio on it? He should try to eliminate all the possible sources of interference in the power circuit or on the boat itself. Once he's done that I couldn't tell him where to go next - maybe a good shop could help or maybe somebody else here may have another idea.

Ok - Is it wired to the TM battery or the cranking battery?

Does he leave the console FF on while the TM one's on?

Have you tried Garmin's website? They'll probably have the manual for your unit online there.

Maybe initially - but a typical diesel will outlast a gas engine three to one or better; also the maintenance costs are somewhat lower, so over the life of the truck the diesel will cost less. Also the resale value of a diesel is higher than a gas engine. Also even though diesel fuel is more expensive (this week) the increased economy usually offsets that. Diesels have three main advantages over gas: Since its a more efficient engine a diesel will get better mileage; they have much higher torque (about twice what a comparable gas engine has); and since they turn slower and have fewer parts they last longer. The downsides are the higher initial cost, increased strain on other components (trannie, drivetrain) from the higher torque, plus they just plain stink. The newer engines aren't noisy like the earlier ones were.

So can we bring 'em to the weigh in? Would they count as a bass?

Ok, looks like the responses have been sorta like this: 1) I don't believe you've thrown spinnerbaits 10,000 times and not caught a fish, you must be kiddin'!!! Believe it, that parts serious. And don't forget the 20,000 times I've seen other people throw spinners - when you add that to the 10,000 I've personally thrown that means around 28,000 times a spinner didn't work. 2) Go read the articles, go buy the latest KVD video, etc. Been there, done that. I've read all the articles on this site and many others; I even bought the "fishing tips" advertised here. This is a neat site, lotsa good articles. And I wouldn't have started this thread before reading the articles. But the articles tend to be generic - explaining all the different retrieves, colors, blade types, etc. when what would be more helpful would be specifically what worked at a given time under certain conditions. One author even began by saying a lot of anglers had given up on spinner baits; he couldn't understand why. The reason's simple: They didn't catch anything on 'em! 3) Must not be any fish in that lake I fish Fork a lot, I've heard there's bass in it. Even caught a few myself. 4) Try <some specific tip> Thanks, thats what I was looking for. The tips about retrieves I think were most helpful; I'll try the bottom bumping and up and down retrieves, see if I have any luck with them. Now for a question: Nobody mentioned trailer hooks. Does anybody use 'em? What about pork rinds? Or worm trailers? Anyway, thanks for the helpful tips and I hope I didn't hurt anybody's feelings (too much) being sarcastic. I'm heading for Sam Rayburn this weekend, I'll let you all know how I make out.

So I'm assuming if I get a buncha them robo-fish and run 'em around all the other guys' boats in the tournament it'd be frowned upon?

Yeah, I was wonderin' howcum nobody was posting answers in this thread...

KVD was at the Bass Pro school I mentioned. Did a whole hour on spinner baits. Nice guy. I tried everything he suggested - no luck.

Sorry basscat, I got caught up in the response to the guy who says I don't speak his language. Didn't mean to be rude! I primarily fish shallows, drop offs just out from the banks, submerged timber. I've had good results with cranks and plastics, not so good with carolina rigs. I've fished a spinner on one rig, crank on one, plastic on one. The cranks and plastics produce, nothing on the spinners - although I've just about stopped using them. Banging cranks against structure works, I'll try that with spinners next time out. Thanks for the suggestions.

I swore AT 'em for a long time. Last year I went to the two day class Bass Pro put on, Woo Daves was there. I did what he said, it actually worked! I took a friend and his son to Fork last June. The whole way there he was telling me about how he'd never caught a bass. I showed him how to texas rig a worm, how to work it like Woo said...Well after about an hour he hooked a really nice bass, measured 23 1/2 inches so we had to put it back as it was in the slot. His son caught a nice three pounder that same day. I hooked a couple. He was using a red french fry I'd picked up on the bargain table for 99 cents a package. Hey, thanks for the helpful comments, guys. I suspect the problem as a couple of you pointed out, is in my retrieve. I'll try the "slow bumping on the bottom" and "up and down" retrieves, see what happens. Going to Sam Rayburn this weekend, I'll let you know how I make out.