Brian_Reeves

The_Natural has a great response. Personally, I've been going to the football jig anytime that the lack of vegitation or snaggy submerged brush allows me to. When the cover is really anti-football jig (which isn't hard to accomplish) then I reach for the carolina rig 9 times out of 10.

I'm 25 years old and I've been addicted to fishing for 22 years ;D. What I've learned is that if it works, keep doing it until it doesn't work anymore. Then find something else that does. Those articles that RW talked about are a great place to start digging for more information. Check those out. Highly recommended.

dude, that almost made me cry lol

If you are getting short strikes, I'd say slow down the retrieve, but raise the rod tip up. You should be able to play with it and get near the exact same amout of action at a little slower speed. Another thing to take into consideration. You should be using at least 4/0 EWG hook. I've used both 4/0 and 5/0 hooks and both work fine for me. Last thing I can think of is let the fish take the lure. Just like fishing a topwater frog, you should feel the fish before you set the hook. Of course, Big O is right. Maybe we should start playing with trailer hooks just in case lol ;D

I don't know of any. To get that design, you might have to get a custom mold built around a Mustad flateye 60 degree hook. http://www.shawncollinscustoms.com/ If you can't find one on the market already, talk to him and he might be able to hook you up.

The clams are definitely a plus, but you should be fine with the ones you bought. With the other products for rage tail, my favorite part about the clams is that they fit into my pocket. Having whatever color/style of bait that is working right there, but out of the way is very nice and makes re-rigging much easier.

I say eat all the trout before they eat all of the plastic. That ban may actually make sense in places that aren't heavily dependent on bass populations. Fishing down here in the south revolves around bass, so that ban would be very, very hard to push through. I wouldn't worry about it. If it does go through, use foodsource or GULP baits. I'd rather not fish, personally.

I do one of 3 things with a football jig. Drag them, barely hop them, or stroke them. I use them as a casting bait to structure only. If there is any kind of cover or vegitation, I consider other options.

My question is where do I get a bertam palm plant??

The release date is unknown, but thought to be around October. My advice, until then, is to get the first line of rage tail baits. Yeah the new ones are cool, but the 'old ones' work great. The craws are my #1 producer this year.

I really don't throw them anymore. When I was all crazy about them, I liked to pound shallow cover and stucture with either shallow or medium diving crankbaits. I don't like deep divers at all. Personally, I'd rather swim soft plastics in the same areas that people beat to death with cranks. But crankbaits do have their place and time. That time, for me, is the fall. I'll break them out in a few months and go crazy with them again.

Most of the water that I fish allows me to get away with the exposed hook. I rarely texas rig them, so I can't tell you which hook I use. Just whichever one fits. Something to look into is the title shot jighead from www.jigfish.com (FinTech lures). This is a GREAT tool for fishing heavy tackle weedlessly in heavy cover. But as I've said a bunch, when the grass gets thick, I generally turn to a flordia rig over any kind of jig.

They are great for anywhere that you would normally fish a buzzbait...and in places that you wouldn't dare fish one. I use them pretty much exclusively for buzzbait style fishing now. One of the big things to experiment with is the angle of your rod on the retrieve. Different angles will give you more or less action. Sometimes holding your rod tip down is the key. I have a bad habit about not trying all available options with them sometimes, so I say this a lot to help me remember lol.

I am almost out of ***. I am going to order a ton more before springtime though. During the fall, I don't use them as much as I do in spring and summer. Just something weird that I do. A drop of glue would help. Normally I just change baits. If you rig them on a EWG hook with a pegged bullet weight, that works well to hold them as well. I think I use a 2/0 or 3/0. Normally I fish them on an exposed hook jighead around sparse cover. If the cover is really snaggy, I generally fish with a traditional jig.

I use the big bite hooks in whatever sizes academy carries. I really don't have a preference, but I'd say that they are a 3/0 or 4/0 EWG hook with a 1/8 or 3/16 weight. I'm thinking about getting a mold made to pour some larger sizes. That's later on down the road though. Those hooks you ordered should be just fine. I prefer keel weighted hooks for all of my toad fishing. I like regular hooks for rage shads. Just a preference of mine.

Its not just the toads. Most rage tail baits have tear tabs on them. All they do is keep the appendages from getting messed up during shipping. They are meant to be separated, like ron said, as soon as you start fishing them. I'm sure you can leave them attached to change the action, but I really don't see a reason for it. Some of the toads will flip over. Just kill it and rip it or use a keel weighted hook. For all toads, I use keel weighted hooks 100% of the time. Also using a heavy wire 5/0 or 6/0 hook usually will have enough to pull it upright.

That's the good thing about Big-O and his baits. He gets something in his mind and plays with it and tweaks it until its right. And when its right, its game on. The entire new line up from Rage Tail are high action baits that will get attention from bass, aggressive or not. Even on a keel weighted hook, the anacondas and other flipping baits have action on the fall. It is so slow and so wild that its unresistable. Try a craw on a keel weighted hook and flip it to shallow to mid depth cover. If there is a fish there and you put it in the right spot, they will hit it. This rig never lets me down. In fact, it has almost completely replaced senkos and light jigs in my box.

When fall gets here, I'm going to be hunting down big pockets of shad in the backs of coves. I'm going to be using the rage tail shad with a pegged bullet weight 12 inches in front of a keel weighted hook. Big-O showed me this rig and explained it to me. This is going to be KILLER in fall.

You named your baits after strippers. That rocks! Big-O knows a bunch about patents. He has went through the whole process with rage tail lures, so he can probably help you out a lot. He's a heck of a businessman. Shoot him a PM and see.

The space monkey is an evil flipping bait. If you laugh now, you'll definitely laugh when you pull that big fish out of heavy cover with that monkey beating it in the face all the way back to the boat.

I've caught most of my bigger fish (biggest one on scales is 9.1lbs) on a 1/4oz jig with a small profile, action trailer. But I've been more consistant with 5lb+ bass on bigger lures such as full sized brush hogs, 10inch worms, 1/2oz big football jigs with full sized trailers, and big craws.

lol. if that's the case, then I won't fish worms at all until they are ;D. Them craws work good. So that's my favorite lol

I used it to get a better topographical idea of what was going on in some of my SUPER SECRET spots in Louisiana. It helped me find a few points and waterflows that have produced redfish in the marsh and bass in the swamps. Those spots are where I'm going to put my kids on their first big gamefish, so they have to stay a secret until then.

Start off using the same soft baits that you normally do. See if that gets it. If not, then yeah, go with spinnerbaits. Stained water rocks for that.

10 inch rage tail anaconda in watermelon w/red & black on a 3/8oz tungsten texas rig on braided line. I won't buy another worm other than Anacondas (both sizes, various colors) ever again. I'm sold.