Chuck D

4.6:1 or 5.4:1 for cranking and slow rolling spinnerbaits; this reel ratio is the best for deep cranking and keeping fatigue down on you 6.4:1 for most everything else (the most versatile gear ratio there is and what to have if you are only going to have one) 7.1:1 or higher for flipping, pitching, & topwaters such as buzzbaits or for burning spinnerbaits All of my spinning stuff is in the 5.x:1 gear ratio I use all Abu Garcia stuff; Revo STX mostly. Love em.

That's great. Love the tree too. Maybe consider keeping a landing net handy when light lining; prevents broken hearts and keeps the blood pressure regulated. Nice job!

Very cool to see others sharing working patterns here on the site. Hats off to you for sharing info. Nice job and keep after em!

That is spectacular. What a day!!!

Thanks, great to hear from you on this. Oddly enough after throwing the proverbial "kitchen sink" at them I realized the two baits that I did not throw that day were crank baits and lipless crank baits as I typically don't throw cranks unless I can hit the bottom and deflect them off of something and the bluff walls in this impoundment are so steep that you can be 15' off of the bank and your boat is in 30' of water making hitting the bottom with a plug basically not possible. What I tried to do facing that was run blades, swim baits, chatter baits, etc through the mudline hoping to displace enough water to entice a bite as well as threw several topwater offerings across the open areas or saddles of the points but to no avail. Thinking back on the day perhaps a lipless bait ripped or yo-yo'd may have created some reaction bites but I almost think that these fish are in shock much like FL strain LM can get when a cold front comes in except that in this case they just had literally hundreds of millions of gallons of water fall & flood the lake, raise it 10+' in a matter of days, turn it in to red clay soup, then the power company pulled the plug on the dam and let it run out which stirred up their normally peaceful little ecosystem and it might have just shut em down or freaked em out?? I'm going back in for round 2 on Saturday and hoping to see very clear water or clearer anyway and hopefully be able to mark some fish on my graphs and present to them vertically with d-shots, nail weighted senko's, etc if they won't chase but I'll be going for the reaction bite first of course. Thanks for the insight and if you other guys have thoughts on this I'd love to hear them. I am by no means a decent small mouth angler as they don't live where I normally fish so I'm traveling to them and learning about that species as I go. Spots and LM are pretty easy, these however are a bit more finicky it seems as the LM's were eating like crazy in a foot of water and I smoked em on a swim jig when I'd take a break from not getting bit by smallies that day. Thanks for participating in the discussion guys, I hope to learn from you on these brown fish.

Spots are sight feeders so baits have to look natural. They like deep clear water with cover which is why Lanier is so full of brush piles. Also, Lanier is full of submerged timber which is ideal. The spots there are big and they will bite all day long. The top lures there day in and day out are a shakey head worm and a fish head spin with a 4-5" swimbait behind it. Go by Hammonds tackle and get some pointers too but here's a great way to approach that awesome fishery. For your shakey head set up you can go bait caster or spinning rod. 8lb floro is good for spinning or 12lb for bait caster. Don't go heavy as those fish are line sensitive so go as small as you can and still boat the fish. I personally use 7lb Sunline Sniper FC floro on my spinning rig as a leader with 12# braid as my main line and it works great. M action rod with a fast tip is ideal. Baits are simple; straight tail worms such as a zoom trick worm or robo worm 6-7" in length are ideal. Spotsticker jigs are made down there and they make a fine longer shank shakey head. I like 3/16 or 1/4 for deeper fishing as those fish live in deeper water during the daylight hours regularly. Colors are easy too; green pumpkin, watermelon, red dawn, purple/blue are top producers day in and day out. Throw it out, let it sink, let it sit, and shake it on a slack line and hold on. They'll hammer it; it mezmerizes them regularly and they can't handle it being in their area. Fish head spin is great on 14# floro and with a bait caster. 1/2oz size with a 5" Yamamoto swim bait in pearl or white is fool proof. Just throw it out over the cover you find on your graphs and slowly wind it in while it makes contact with the bottom cover. Location, look in deep water pockets and coves that are near the main lake and use your electronics to look for submerged timber or get a map and find the sunken/underwater wood that way. There's a ton of info on Lanier out on the web. If there has ever been a lake suited for down scan, this is it. You will be amazed at what's under the water there. Fish deep and fish throughly when you locate that kind of cover as there will be bass there. They are more bank oriented in the AM and early PM and you can get on them with top water baits and spinner baits as well as crank baits in natural and lighter colors. Their primary food is crawfish and blue back herring so pick your colors appropriately. You can fill a limit with those 2 baits day in and day out. It's what most of the guides down there use for their clients because they produce. If you like to do more things, consider a drop shot, slow rolling a deep spinner bait, or nail rig a senko and let it fall wacky in to the depths and twitch it back up to you. Hope it helps.

We have a couple of lakes in this area (highland impoundments) that have smallies in them and our rivers & lakes have been CRUSHED with massive flooding this year. It's weeks later and the water that is usually gin clear is still very colored which tells me it's been mixed up from the bottom to the top of the water column and has not settled yet. I fished for them Saturday all day without a bite and then gave up and went to catching LM's that were shallow on bream just to save the day which went fine and I boated plenty of green fish. I was trying to call them up with topwater via Spooks & Gunfish, bounced the bottom with jigs, big/heavy swim baits, spinner baits of various colors & sizes, drop shots, etc but I was thinking that they can't see the d-shot worm very well since this water is so dirty and it's normally ultra clear. Wondering if you guys who chase them regularly have any thoughts other than just wait for the water to clear up on how you'd go at this kind of situation or if there is a predominant post spawn/early summer pattern that I may want to consider? The water has not been moved here on the Catawba River like this in decades and it was really bad flooding, just wondering if when it gets dirty if they go shallow and live with the LM's or if you think they just suspend until it gets normal again and deal with it and eat at night? Thanks for any info.