Hellbenderman

...that at sixty three, I am still kicking bass...

That picture above is what happens to your tackle boxes after fifty years of sleeping with the lure monkey. We've got so close, I add bananas to my Bass Pro Shops order. I know there are a couple Bagleys in there that are 30+. Stuff just adds up over time. I have a 500 lb. monkey. I'm sick, but I'm doing everything I can to stay that way. I'm hoping many more people will show us just how big their monkey is. Those customs above are very nice. Show us your monkey...

WINTER IS SO BORING! SHOW US SOMETHINGS FROM YOUR TACKLE BOX!

Are you guys sure about this? I always thought the upper end of the lake was where the rich people fished and the lower end was where I fished.

YUM stuff is great! The Craw Papi is great, and so is the Wooly Hawg Craw and the Wooly Hawgtail. I fish them with weighted wide gap hooks. Also great for C rigs. You really can't go wrong with any of these. That said, I am having a close personal and intimate relationship with some Yum Crawbugs. I know, it's sick for a man my age to be carrying on this way, but I can't resist. The 3.5 inch is just spectacular on an Evolution Jig. The jigs rocks forward after touch down, and those arms rise up waving in defiance. It is absolutely killer. They used to make a 4" Crawbug, but no more, I think though you can still find the 4" on Ebay sometimes...if you can outbid me. Just kidding. Got mine. They are durable as well. I think they are the best craw fish imitator going. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go fondle a 4" watermelon red flake.

I just love it when people start talking about this stuff because there are so many answers, but I didn't want this to be a debate on shallow vs. deep. Everything depends on our own individual situation and experience. I spent the late 60s, early 70s fishing shallow ponds, ten feet was deep, in Delaware. Then I moved to Alabama and my bass life changed over night. Two of my freshmen students took me under their wing really taught me to fish for bass. I thought I knew something...sheeeesh. I didn't know anything, but I learned quickly. After May, we never fished shallow. I'm sure that in the right place there are some bass in shallow, but in the middle of August, we were much more likely to find them on a creek bend in 30 feet than in shallow. I have found the same to be true in Maryland. By the end of May, bass at my lake have pulled back from the shallows and can be found in ten feet, but by late June, they are down to twenty feet plus. If I want to go fishing July through September on my lake and consistently catch fish, I have to fish deep. It's not a preference. I love shallow water fishing. Is there anything more spooky than dog walking a spook? Gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it, but I could throw that thing all day in August in the same place I killed them in April, and I'd wear myself out without catching anything. In summer, in my lake, I find I have much more success fishing deep. I just feel like I'm following the fish in my lake...spawning is over I'm taking the kids and going home...hahaha. Late evening, I find them in ten to twenty. This is my situation, it may not be yours. I catch most of them on deep running cranks, 15-20+. It is more difficult. It requires obtaining info from sources other than sight and solving a puzzle. A couple things I have found to be true for deep fishing. Dissect the area you are fishing methodically, you are looking for the "point on the point", that rock pile or bush or whatever that is attracting and holding fish. Remember big bass are ambushers. They want something to hide behind. That is what you are looking for on that point in twenty feet. When you find it, beat it to death. 75% of my fish come after crashing into a stump or limb or ticking a weed bed. Make contact! So, keep talking about it. There are people who want to learn. You never know when what you say may be someone else's EUREKA moment. I'm sorry, I just get the run ons in winter...can't fish...writing about it is a fix...just hate winter...must go fish.

Just before dark, find a tree, stump field, rock pile, whatever, in 15-20 feet and fish a lipless as slowly as you can, really slowly, so slowly you can't feel it wobble much. This has worked for me any number of times down state in Chambers County Lake in Feb and March...if you just have to do it!

The two best articles I've found about fronts, pressure, etc. They may cause you to re-think these issues. another site http://www.jimporter...article16.shtml

This looks exactly like a favorite point on my local lake and I would agree with positioning yourself so you can cast across the point at an angle, from both the front casting in across the point and also take a position on either side from the inside and cast out across the point. You also have that very nice slough going back on the left side. You have to fish that slough carefully as well, all the way back. It looks like a great place in the spring the way that slough goes back in there and opens up on that flat to the right. I caught my first fish last spring in an identical looking slough, a nice fat 6.5 pounder. Also, try and find the "point on the point." Somewhere on that point is a boulder a log, a gravel bed, a weed bed, a something that holds and attracts fish. On my lake it is a row of bushes in 17 feet.

What was your best EUREKA moment? When did some great moment of insight occur as in " at that moment, I knew I could do this" or "that was when I discovered the spinner bait", etc.

It was great to hear from so many people with decades of experience from the last post. It seems that most of us started the same way, walking around the edge of a pond or river with a relative. The trouble started when we got our first boat, and then just kept banging the shore line because that's where we came from, and, hey, you caught a bunch up on the bank last April. Last summer, June, July, and August, was the best big bass summer I had in decades. Most of this happened on my little local lake. I dropped in here one day to see if anyone else was having a good year, and found nothing but complaints. Admittedly, the shoreline on this lake is spectacular; fallen and standing timber everywhere. It's like a magnet. I came to discover that I was the only one fishing in 15 - 30 feet and ignoring the shoreline. I can remember a ways back when anything over ten feet was just not a consideration. I had no idea what was happening out there! I couldn't "SEE" anything! What was I supposed to cast at?!?! Fortunately, I had great teachers who started me down the right path, and it is a path. I think it takes some years to become proficient at deep water fishing because there is a lot to take into account when you can't "SEE" your quarry or the places your quarry hides. It's an educated guess and it takes a while to get an education. I'm going to assume that somewhere along the way everyone who has been at this as a passion for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years, has acquired a good deal of knowledge about deep water bass fishing, so I thought it might be fun to hear about how you became deep water educated and a few tips you might have we can all learn from. Youngsters are welcome. Knowledge is age blind. My first piece of advice is to learn about the life cycle of the bass and his food. This will help convince you the bass are down there and give you confidence you are not wasting your time. It will help you to "be the bass". Second, time on the water X 10. Take the time each trip to spend trying to implement a deep water attack, life cycle considered, even if unsuccessful. Go fishing by yourself if necessary. Time on the water X 10. Eventually, it will all come together. So, tell us what you will about how you came to be deep water savvy!

Hard to imagine what those little fishies do when the water rises 20 feet and is filled with muck. Must be very uncomfortable for them, but after it's over, they are still there! The Monocacy will surely flood, as usual.

Everyone in Maryland is hibernating. Keeps us safe from the polar bears, much less the man eating muskies. I wonder what effect all this snow will have on fishing? Not much I guess, it's just water, but when all this melts...

Hey Tritz....1186 + 14 = 1200 so 1200 + 53 = 1253 1253

I started bass fishing in 1956 with a fly rod in a local farmers pond. I was ten. By the time I hit 16 I was crazed. My primary weapons were a Rapala Minnow, a squirrel tail Mepps spinner, and a Creme Wiggler with a weedless Eagle Claw hook, no weight. My, my, my, how things have changed, not that any of the afore mentioned lures won't still catch fish, but I was wondering if some of you who have been at this for a few decades, might reflect, good or bad, on how things have changed since dirt was rocks. Do you remember the fuss over the introduction of the Bagley Balsa B?

It's a long run to anything consistent. On the other hand, a short drive up the river and onto a ramp a ways up the river and you are in business. If you wanted to take the wife for really nice side trip, you could trailer up to DC and see the sights from the river...hey, and why not fish while you are there! Gas availability is spotty so be prepared, and on another hand, there is no reason you couldn't go striper fishing and maybe some grey trout right there at Point Lookout. I don't fish that far down the bay, but I'm sure there are some fish worth going after, even if not bass, because it's going to drive you crazy being near all that water and not fishing...hehehe.

Spinner Baits, the bigger and gurglier the better, and don't forget the trailer hook cause they aren't biting because they are hungry. They just want to get whatever out of their nest and they can spit it out lickity split! That trailer hook makes all the difference sometimes.

On the south side of the bridge there is a parking lot above a cove, and on the other side of that cove is a big dead tree. There is often two eagles sitting in that tree. Last year we watched them hunting for ducks. It was right out of Walt Disney. The chase went on for about two minutes with most of it no more than a hundred yards away. We could hear the eagle's wing beats. The duck, a bufflehead, got away by flying under the bridge. There has been a nesting pair of eagles out there for a decade or so. Very cool to watch them fish. Talk about sight fishing. Anyway, they sit in that tree quite a bit.

Went to Black Hills last Saturday to count ducks and eagles and such, and of course, I had to take a rod. Did you know you can cast a DT10 about a hundred yards on the ice....it goes on forever. Never-the -less, a 7 lb. bass did not crash through the ice and slam my plug...or a muskie for that matter. Go figure. That said, a seagull was mildly interested and I got him to follow it for about 50 feet before he tried to nab it and I had to jerk it away as seagull season doesn't start until after Festivus. Hate winter.

Fish Deeper Longer Drink Less Beer Don't Eat Porkrinds

I live in Frederick Maryland, about an hour to DC or Baltimore. I know there are times when some of you may have business in one of these cities, or perhaps was subpoenaed by a Senate Sub-Committee, and may have to stay in the area for a week or more at a time. That usually means you aren't even getting the opportunity to stop by the local pond on the way home from work, much less your usual Saturday morning on the river or lake. Are we just gonna sit here and let these poor scoundrels suffer? Of course not! I would be happy to take some one out, if schedules could be arranged, and I think a lot of you would also. I don't think it has to be fancy either. I'd be happy bank fishing with a bobber rather than sitting in motel room watching "Jumper" for the tenth time. This is also an opportunity to learn about other fisheries while displaying your own. I don't know a thing about Erie, but I'd like to go after some of those nice smallies some day. So, I'd be happy to take a Lake Erie guy out for a day...not so sure about that Lake Champlain crowd, they're so...zany! To make this happen, you must let people know when you are going to be some place for a while and ask someone to have pity on you. You have to speak up. Grovel. You may not hook up all the time, but I'll bet you hook up a lot. So, let people know when you're going to be in Pittsburgh for a week!

Just the kind of info I was lookin for. Thanks guys.

Last year I bought a CBR 843, 7' Medium, great great rod. However, I found wanting a little when using larger deeper running cranks with a lot of resistance. I throw a lot of these cranks and wanted to match the big cranks with the right rod. I would consider a Rapala DT16 as a larger crank. Casts a mile. The CBR 845 is also 7' but a med/heavy. The CBR 903 is 7.5' a medium. The CBR 906 is 7.5' a med/heavy. I'm thinking the 845 7' Med/Heavy is a sure solution, but if I can gain a few yards by stepping up to a 7.5', why not? If so, which one? Is the 903 going to be just a little longer version of my 843 or will it have a little more backbone to handle larger cranks, or should I just get the 906 7.5' Med/Heavy and be done with it? Great rods. Really pleased with the 843. So, any one using any of the above?

If a construction company dug out the pond, there is a roadway, exit , rutted track or something left behind made by dozers and trucks. Walk around the pond and see if you can't find where equipment was driven into the hole from the terrain around the edge. I can guarantee you that no construction company took the time to "smooth" out the bottom. Roadways for trucks are just future roadways for fish!

Here's a little knowledge about Black Hills. My son graduated from The U. of Miami last spring and one of the things he learned while there and not studying school work, was spear fishing. So, last August, sun high over head, when no one was around or watching, we did a little underwater exploration. We went to the second cove on the left under the bridge. The one with standing trees from front to back. We started in the back of the cove. The first thing we noticed was that while the water looked crystal clear from the surface, it was not. Don't get me wrong, the water was clear, but it was filled with tiny dust and detritus specks that will never fall to sediment. If you were in the shade, this had little effect on visibility, however, when you crossed the boundary between the sun and shady areas, each one of those little particles reflected the sun light and the light became diffused and lowered visibility. How to explain this....I expected that because the water appeared to be so clear from the surface, that when I looked up while underwater, I would basically see the sun as a bright dot, but the reality was that while I could easily identify the sun, the light was much more diffused and bright and visibility was knocked way down. (NOTE: the wind was dead calm, not a ripple on the surface. How might the light have changed if there had been a 5 mph wind and a ripple on the surface?) There is a real boundary between sun and shade. It's like a line drawn in the water. It is definitely...structure! As for the fish, we started in the back of the cove in 4 feet or so and saw just a few little sunnys and some bass fry in the shady shore lined areas. We pushed around in the weeds to see if anything was hiding and found nothing, but some little stuff. We started to work our way towards the mouth of the cove. Over the length of the cove, we didn't see any catch worthy bass until we hit an area 15 feet deep. There may have been some there, as we had limited visibility when in the sun, and even in the shade you only have about 15 feet clear sight, and below say 12 feet, it was kind of murky, so there may have been some we missed for sure. In general, it was more difficult to see than I expected. We spent most of the time in the shade straddling the sun but when we hit deeper water, about 15 feet in shade, on the right going out of the cove, we saw a couple groups of 3 or 4 two pounders that seemed to be focused on shad schools. I'm sure along the way, we probably scared some too...hahaha. We went out to the trees and saw a couple and one nice one about 3, hanging out in limbs about 10 feet down, and yes, it was cool water down there. Started to get cooler at about 5 feet down. I got two things out of this: one, there are no bass in the back of those coves at 2:00 pm in the middle of August, and more importantly, that the boundary between sun and shade is a real piece of structure, and that it is not just one side is sunny and the other shady, the nature of the light changes completely on the sunny side, the water almost glows and it becomes difficult to see, and I believe they must use this boundary as a place of safety and place of ambush, like they would use a log. Darting from the sun into the shade and back again. So, I'm going to suggest that next August, try fishing the boundary between the sun and shade in 10 foot plus. Any thoughts?