Kevin22

Those look awesome. Top quality jigs for sure.

Are you guys still finding cheap (free) lead with the ammo shortage? IMPOSSIBLE to find lead for less than $2/lb here locally, the bullet casters are buying it all up to reload since they cannot buy ammo. Even cheap lead on ebay went from $1.25/lb to $1.75+/lb+. I respectfully disagree with the post about any lead will do, it very well may do for most bass molds but there are several that simply will not work with hard lead. The buzzbait mold is one that really sticks out. You have to ladle pour soft lead or you will get voids every time. Several of my walleye molds require softer lead to get 90%+ perfect jig pours.

Be aware that now ebay usually has increments for bidding on listings. So instead of using the $0.03 trick it makes you bid in set increments. So if you have it set for $20.03 as your max bet it will bid you to $20.00 and that is it. Sometimes it is $0.25 sometimes it is $0.10, sometimes it is $0.50, all depends on the current price of the item. Rarely do they allow you to bid in oddball increments like $13.73. Most people put in $10, $20, $25, etc so putting a little extra in is key.

Yes! Black Magic or something like that? Green and black packaging. I used the 5" GP and black a few years ago for smallies and they worked very well, held up pretty good. They were a little heavy though IMO, they sank like rocks... I like a slower fall with a little glide.

That is called "hard lead" and can be difficult for some molds. For most bass jig molds it will work fine. I would not pay more than $1/lb for it... and that is only if you cannot find a source for softer lead for the same price. Make sure the bars are 1lb and not 8oz.

Just throw a 5" green pumpkin senko on 10-14lb line. If you dont catch a bass on that then there are no bass in that pond.

With buzz frogs I watch my line. After the fish hits I let him run about a foot and then nail him on semi-slack line. A 7:*:1 reel is necessary because once you set the hook on semi-slack line you have about a half a second to get tight on him before he hits the surface and spits it. I get much better hooksets with semi-slack than with tight line on buzzers. Another thing, make sure you have the correct hook. It has to have enough gap and be rigged so the hook will pop out and get him with little effort. A lot of my hook-ups on buzzfrogs are not in the corner of the mouth. Most are in the top, throat, or bottom. This comes from popping the hook fully though the frog and then lightly skin hooking it. That fish will take the frog in all sorts of ways and it is important to be able to hook him however the frog is positioned in his mouth.

Fan cast around with a big football jig on braided line.

Curious to what type of pond you have with no minnows? Private concrete pond? Here in Iowa all ponds have minnows of some type, be it stocked fatheads, shiners, dace, or other small bottom dwelling minnows... mostly because when stocked by the DNR they introduce fathead minnows to the pond as a first food source to the fish. They will breed and be in the pond/lakes forever. I have never seen any body of water that did not have minnows, from creeks small enough to step over to huge lakes. Been that way throughout time, even natural small ponds that have never been touched by humans have some type of small minnow species living in them... that is how nature works. It may not be shad and minnows that the bass are after, but they are NOT after the spawning bluegill. Too much work for them to chase down a ticked off bluegill defending its bed. Bass will always take the easiest food source, they are opportunistic hunters. It could be small bluegills, shad, minnows, crawdads, big water beetles, aquatic lizards/salamanders, and many other animals that come to feast on the eggs. Those are all easy meals when they are feeding vs chasing down a spawned bluegill that will be fighting back. I could see a small wore out female bluegill being eaten as she is moving off the bed after spawning, but even then there will be plenty of fired up males around to chase the bass off.

First, what type of frog are you fishing? I'll tell you how I do it. When the fish takes it I let him have it for 2-3 seconds while reeling down on him, when I feel him on the end I drive the hooks home. 9 times out of 10 they will grab the frog short and take it under, then suck it in once they turn their heads under the weeds. If the fish just arent taking the frog all the way, even after you are waiting, then you need to switch lures. Maybe a smaller frog, a different profile frog, a different color frog.. something is wrong. Or maybe your fish are just too small for the frog.

I visit this site on my phone, works great and is very easy to navigate.

Also remember to let your sticks cure, being perfectly straight, for at lest 3-5 days before bagging them. You don't want your stick bent.

Yamamoto products contain silica sand as well as salt. This makes them VERY difficult to re-pour and get a good stick. They will not come out like the original sticks so don't be disappointed when they are not like the real deal. However, they will still catch fish.... I have not seen a stick bait yet, be it hand poured or store bought, that did not catch fish.

Anywhere superglue touches the worm will make it hard as a rock. The last thing I want is a hard stick while fishing........

I grew up stream/creek fishing for smallies! A couple lures really shined above the rest, but anything that will catch a largemouth will catch a smallmouth. If he can fit it in his mouth he will attack it. I have caught quite a few in those creeks on topwater frogs even. For rod, I suggest a 6', or 6'6 if you can get away with it, Med power, Fast action spinning rod. 8lb clear mono or fluoro if it is a gin clear stream. Most people think stream and think tiny fish and UL or L rods, that was not the case for me. My average fish was about 14" and the last thing I want to do is fight 30-40 a day with an UL rod. For lures, my all time best producer is a 4" finesse worm on a 1/16 ounce jig head with a #2 hook. Not the little tiny crappie jig heads, these are "walleye" jig heads with a bigger hook. Just thread on the worm like you would a grub. That rig has caught me thousands of fish in those creeks, from 8" up to 20". I have tried the same rig with a shakey head and produced very few fish, the jig head is the way to go. Second was a zoom fluke jr, in the smoke shad color, 1/0 hook and no weight. Jerk it like crazy just under the surface, smallies cant resist it. For color, black with chart tail, green pumpkin, green pumpkin chart tail, and pumpkinseed were the best. One huge suggestion I have is to not let people fool you into throwing tiny rooster tails or 2" grubs. Chances are there are some BIG fish in there, go for them. The small ones will still hit a bigger lure. Fish them like they are largemouth. Good luck and have fun, its a riot!

We have that all over the place here. Takes a long time to figure out how to fish bluegill beds, but once you do it is very easy to catch those lurking bass. Bluegill will chase anything from around their beds, I have seen them chase a 30-40lb carp away before. The bass are NOT there to eat those bluegill. They could not care less about those fish as you could see. THEY ARE THERE TO EAT THE SHAD AND MINNOWS THAT FEED ON THE BLUEGILL EGGS. Try one of two things, a drop shot with a small minnow, or a shad colored jig. Fish the jig like you would imagine a shad would be acting when feeding on eggs off the bottom. Try those two things and you will catch those bass. Concentrate on the deeper edges of the beds, that is where the bigger bass will be staging.

That's it. I thought it was a secret but guess not. That is how you keep them good for a long time with a T-rig. Put it about a half inch down the worm and hook you t-rig normally. It will help a ton. Then when it starts to get tore up, just go under the o-ring and not in the nose. The only problem with going just through the o-ring is that the senko will spin on the retrieve 90% of the time giving you some terrible loops if you use a spinning rod.

Thank you for the welcomes! Sam, yes Iowa is a beautiful state. Not so great for fishing, but great scenery. Very few other places where you can stand in a cow pasture and fish a stream for smallmouth while cows are laying in it. Only fun until a cow steps on your backpack and drives it a foot into the muck though.

I second that. I personally do about 4'. Probably only need about a foot.

That is a big pumpkinseed, usually 8-9" is as big as they get. I'd say between half a pound and 3/4lb. They don't have the thickeness and width (top to bottom) as a shellcracker or big bull bluegill, so what you have there is a dandy IMO. We got into the 10" bluegill a while back and the biggest was right at a pound.

Play them at the boat a little bit longer so they arent so ticked off when you grab them. I'm not saying to take them to dead tired, but just let them get a little bit of that adrenalin out of their system before you grab on. Nothing worse than a ticked off bass with your thumb in his mouth.

Try a skinny dipper for a swimjig trailer, or any other thin long profiled swimbait. They add a sort of new action to a baitfish style swimjig vs the standard curl tail. Swim jigs are pretty popular around here on the Miss River. For trailers these are some of the standards used around here. Bluegill/shad- 4"-5" curl tail grub & 4-5" SKINNY swimbaits. Crawfish- 4" Twin tail grub, rage craw, craw worm style Frog- Buzz frog with the first 1" cut off & 4" twin tails.

Hello everybody! Checking in from Iowa. I am on a few other boards under the same name so you might have seen me before. I enjoy fishing for all species, I mostly concentrate on bass and walleye. I fish the Miss river and a few of the smaller lakes around eastern Iowa. I have been watching glenn may's youtube videos for a long time and just decided I should join this forum and see what it is like.