Brian_Reeves

Usually I won't use a half ounce weight unless I'm fishing deeper than 10 or 15 ft or if I want to maintain bottem contact. There are a few other exceptions, but I tend to try to go as light as I can given the situation and then get heavier if I need to. This isn't counting all kinds of techniques like popping or punching, but for most applications, I start out with a 1/4oz and then move up to 3/8 or 1/2 if need be.

I really don't play any bass that is hooked up on a good, stout hook. Only time I do is when treble hooks or light wire hooks are involved. Seems like solid advice, Matt. You'd be the man to know, since you designed the bait and all lol. Thanks man. And you gotta remember, that baby bass is huge and weighs a ton compared to those tube minnows I've been slinging around

Cheap hot dog wieners were always a favorite lure when I was a kid. Other than that, night crawlers, chicken livers, and cutbait have worked good for me. It seems to vary from one area to another though, so I dunno.

Brian, for God 's sake, there 's no "best", have you actually tried to fish them rigged in another fashion than impaled jighead and exposed hook ? there are tons of ways to rig a soft plastic bait, I dropshot double tail skirted grubs and they also work, impale the bait on a standup jig weedless and they are deadly, wacky rig them along the mid line and insert a jighead without the hook on the skirted side to wight them and they also deadly. Umm...I'm really not sure how to take that seeing as how I just described 3 different ways to fish them other than "impaled jighead and exposed hook. I guess I should have added "IMO" behind best or something...my god man. I've fished them with just about every rig there is, just like I do all of my soft plastics and a jighead of one variety or another seems to produce the best for me. 1/4oz weight, now that I check my notes. So yeah...my mistake...I guess :-? :-?

I use watermelonseed and watermelonred...that's about it.

I use braid for texas rigs, carolina rigs, topwaters, and jigs. If it's open, clear water, I'll uni-to-uni splice some mono or flourocarbon on there as a leader, but that's only about 2 ft long. I prefer braid because I can fish it aggressively and I don't have to worry about stretch, water logging or abrasion. I will agree that it's risky to use around chunk rocks, but in any other situation, it's the best you can get, providing you can get away with it due to water clarity.

Yeah, I rig it skirt up, tail down. This allows the skirt to parachute on the fall, slowing the bait down tremendously. The skirt will collapse when you're swimming it and poof out when you stop it. It looks interesting in the water which is why fish hit it. I think that most strikes are curiousity strikes. "Can I eat it or not? What the heck is it?"....MUNCH!

Anytime. *** are one of my confidence baits. I actually need to order more if I can get a break with these stupid bills. I keep several different types of skirted double tailed grubs. I always have *** on hand. Right now I have green pumpkin purple, I think it's called. I'm going to get watermelonseed next time. I also have black and blue. The other type of double tailed skirted grubs I have are watermelonseed and cinnamon purple Bass Pro XPS double tail grubs. I keep these on hand because they have a smaller profile. They are a finesse presentation for me. Most of my * fishing is swimming the lure around structure or over shallow-mid grass. If that pattern dies off or if the bite is tough on a general day and they are willing to take the bulkier *, sometimes the XPS grubs will pull through. All in all I like the larger *** better because they draw a little better quality. I think that's everything I know without going into too much details that I think you already know.

My favorite funny shirt that I own says "You had me at Get Lost!" That kid's shirt that you're talking about rocks. I want one lol

A member of this site sent me one a mattlures baby bass for free. I was totally stoked and still can't thank him enough. I don't wanna add his name because I don't know if he wanted the public attention or just kept quiet, but you know who are are man! Anyway, I've thrown the bass a lot, but the lake is too choked up with hydrilla to properly fish. I'm hitting a different lake next weekend and am going to throw it almost exclusively. I'm hellbent on catching a fish on one of these big swimbaits. What was your presentation on the baby bass that worked so well for you?

Yeah we lost count at about 12 or 13. I'd be willing to bet we boated about 18 keeper-sized. All were released. I'd trade all of those little ones for one like that one in your avatar though, hawg caller. Big fish have eluded me this year. It doesn't help that on any given day, most of these small ponds have about 15-20 people fish them. So that might be what has them tight lipped. Who knows. It's all fun though

Oh, and one more thing. If you wanna keep using the 4/0 hook, you're going to have to make sure the hook pierces straight through the plastic. Hook the front like you normally would and feed it up to the hook eye, just like starting any texas rig. Then when you re-insert the hook point in the lower half of the body, make sure that the hook goes STRAIGHT through the plastic. That will help out a little bit.

The * (and just about every other DT skirted grub) is best fished on a jighead with the hook exposed. The fiberguard is a great choice. That's how I generally fish them. But you have a couple of options. You can try the www.jigfish.com TitleShot jighead found on that site. That's a GREAT jighead for any soft plastic. I really need to place another order. Anyway, it's not super "weedless" but it will get the job done in a lot of cases. The other option is downsizing your hook. A 4/0 hook is pretty big for a *. When I T-Rig them, I go with a 2/0 or 3/0 EWG Gamakatsu or Owner hook. A pegged/flordia rigged weight in 1/8-1/4 is a good choice for weights. Same goes for jighead weights. The * will fall much slower than most soft plastics, even with a little weight to it. I've never tried them weightless. As far as fishing them goes, I just slow roll them most of the time, but they work GREAT as a flipping/pitching lure or crawled on the botten with a football head. Hope this helps.

I really don't know about the whole thermocline thing. I'd say that down deeper, where the water is cooler, I'd go with slower baits...which I do anyway to maintain bottem contact. Carolina rigs and heavy jigs. For shallow, hotter water, I'm burning spinnerbaits, jerking crankbaits, and swimming rage tails and ***, and flipping jigs. Those are all faster. So I guess I don't really pay it any mind.

5-10mph wind, sunny skies, maybe a cloud here and there. Winds out of the west, southwest early in the morning. Night temperatures around 60-70 degrees, highs in the high 80's to low 90's during the day. Month would have to be April-July. I prefer fishing the A.M. after a New Moon. If it's full, I like fishing the afternoon instead. Water slightly stained-clear with an abundance of shallow grass and open main lake structure. When everything stacks up like this, I'm gonna put 10-20 fish in the boat before I have to switch to mid-day tactics. Thats almost a guarentee.

Yeah it's my favorite lake here on ft hood. It's called engineer lake. It's only about 5 acres or so. I've caught a few 8lb bass out of here, but they are few and far between. Today we caught a dozen or more bass in about 2 and a half hours. Pretty good trip. Much better than the last ones.

Trick Stick Fish! These things almost always work Another trick stick fish.

Rage Tail Craws in the summer craw color and * watermelonseed trick sticks gave me and my buddy our best trip this year. Fish weren't big, but they were in abundance. Here's some pics from this trip. The awesome canoe!! This is the only fish that took a bait that wasn't made by rage tail or *. Pop-R's rock! First fish caught on a rage tail craw

On those three sites, do any of them let you add logos as you pick up sponsors/endorsements or are you stuck with what you got? I'm thinking of ordering one when I get my rebate check so I can start advertising for a few businesses, but if I pick up any additional sponsorship, I'd like to add them as opposed to getting an entirely new shirt.

I've played around with it and for the most part, it's true. Big bass are top predators and they are pretty darned lazy from what I understand. They are big because they are efficient. Why waste your energy running to lunch to eat a french fry when you can have a T-bone delivered to you?? Big bass see it the same way, I think. I think this is why most of my bigger fish come on 10 inch worms, full skirted (60 strands or more) with bulky trailers, and large spinnerbaits. Of course, the theory doesn't always hold true. Two of my top three bass came off of small lures. One is a baby 1minus mann's crankbait and the other is a 1/4oz finesse jig with a zoom lil critter craw trailer. But overall, I think big baits give you better odds at big fish. 2 of the top 3 might be from small baits, but 8 out of the top 10 came off of large lures. That's just my take on it. I don't fish for size or quantity...I just fish and enjoy catching.

Which lake? That little tidbit can mean a lot sometimes EDIT::: Scratch that up above For early summer fishing on smaller lakes, I like to start the day with poppers, buzzbaits, and shallow crankbaits. As the day wears on, I'll gradually move towards either deep structure (humps, points, depressions, creek beds, etc) or shallow shade near deep water or transition areas. I'll target those areas with jigs and soft plastics, preferring action tailed lures such as curl tail worms or curly tail craws like the rage tail. Deeper crankbaits and heavy spinnerbaits are also dynaminte this time of year. I'd say 90% of my summer fishing is done quickly with nearly all of my lures weighing at least 1/4oz, but more often than not, above that.

I didn't get in on the freebies, but I use shakey style jigheads with a _______ in ________ to give me the ability to fish _____________. Normally it works when fish are aggressive or not, deep or shallow, thick cover or open water. Shame I can't share because y'all gotta come up with your own rig. I will be trying out a pack of Shak-E2's when I can get some. I will be putting a ________ on them like always and fish them with ____________ around ___________. Good times ;D

Yeah, if gas doesn't start going down, the 09 Roadtrip might get turned into the 09 Video Conference on Yahoo IM ;D

I use a search bait to figure out what fish are relating to, their depth, and their prefrences. Once that is established, I'll either stay with that search lure or move to a saturation lure. It all depends.

I'm going to try some of these home versions, but I am already getting the itch for a mold. I got a quote from shawn collins already and am seriously considering starting the "I don't need it but I want it" fund back up. But for the time being, I'm gonna just use some of these ideas. Thanks guys!!