Slade House

Some of the best fishermen at my lake fish from the banks

When i first started fishing the lake I fish now, I literally went 38 days without catching a single fish, while other guys were catching 10-20 a day. Now if i get 5 a day, thats a great day for me , but most of my friends get double or triple that on a good day. I don't usually count the number of fish , i usually calculate how much my bag of 5 is (when i get one). That being said, I haven't caught a fish under 3 lbs in the past 2 months.

That is very similar to the design of the tube i have in my aquarium that they love. I would also recommend looking at using corrugated pipe. If you had large diameter corrugated pipe and then just cut some holes in it, and then laid a 3 inch layer of concrete inside on the bottom of it Christmas trees aren't good , period. If you look at the photo ive attached the one with the black corrugated pipe was the most successful.

We deployed four different types of fish attractors — three that were constructed from synthetic materials and one from natural materials — into Lake Townsend in Greensboro and Lake Cammack in Burlington. We selected these lakes because of their abundance of sport fish,similarity in size, and lack of underwater structures. Using GPS coordinates, we dropped two porcupine attractors, two attractors constructed of PVC pipe and corrugated plastic pipe, two attractors constructed of PVC pipes and halved plastic barrels, and two attractors constructed out of Chri

http://www.ncwildlife.org/News/Blogs/NCWRCBlog/tabid/715/EntryId/126/Artificial-Beats-Natural-in-Fish-Attractor-Study.aspx IDuring the first two years, all four types of structures were holding more fish than the control sites, and all were holding about the same amount of fish. However, by the third year, all three artificial structures held more fish than the Christmas trees, which by this time, had lost all of their needles and were nothing more than trunks and a few major branches. We also found that by the third year of the study, the “Georgia” attractor, a structure composed of PVC pipes and corrugated plastic pipes, was holding more fish than any of the other three structures. Artificial structures attracted a wide variety of fish species — from bait fish, such as shad, to game fishes like large mouth bass, bluegill and crappie. The PVC pipe barrel structures held the largest fish — mostly catfish — and the three attractors made of synthetic materials had higher odds of having schools of bait fish present. We are not sure why the “Georgia” attractor held more fish than the other artificial structures in the third year, but we were not surprised by the Christmas trees’ decrease in performance over time because they decompose so quickly.

So for the past year I've been running a 80lb terrova iPilot trolling motor on my 2005 bass tracker pro team 175. Ive probably used it about 5 times a week for the past year. I have had more problems and issues with it than i can't count (at least one a week). I am getting it reparied and selling it and buying the motorguide Xi5. also I'm selling the humminbird 998Si i just bought on ebay and getting the HDS-7 Gen 2. · The motor that steers the terrova makes so much noise that you cringe every time the motor turns. I know for a fact that the noise from that has spooked the fish. Its loud, really loud. The worst thing is that at iCast 2014, Minn Kota had their new version of the same motor the "Ulterra" that had some cool features : automatic store and deploy , spot lock on the foot pedal, etc. BUT the d**n thing still made so much noise. I played with the thing for a long time and even the engineer made a comment that in their board room executives were commenting on the noise. so it doesn't look like they're going to fix the problem anytime soon. Sometimes I think people are in denial that they spent a good chunk of money on a product with poor product quality that might actually be hurting their chances catching fish. · For it to shut off when you stow it , there are 2 little magnets (tiny ones) that need to be aligned on the side of the handle release , otherwise it stays powered on. within like 4 months I couldn't get the magnets aligned so i would have to push the handle releasein just a little bit, or i would really have to pull hard against the arm release to get the thing to power off . well that must have weakened something else, because then i had the metal bolt break that connects the arm release to the side plate and when i was pulling my boat out of the water onto my trailer the entire shaft fell forward and deployed , dropping like a rock (cause its so d**n heavy) and In the process breaking a chunk of plastic off both the depth collar and the motor cradle · · then there have been the ghosts in the machine i call them. The one day the thing just randomly started turning left and kept spinning left over and over again for now reason. i had to cut the wires to the battery just to get it to stop before it destoryed itself. randomly jumping to full speed when its on spot lock for no reason. · The spot lock does an ok job , its less of a spot lock and will swing way too hard in this direction, so you then swing back hard in the opposite direction , then back the other way. really only when their is a good steady wind does it work good. if the wind is variable or its dead calm it sucks. · for 35% o the time ive had it The Ipilot remote itself does this thing where it will just turn off (even with new batteries) and to get it to turn back on I have to bang it against my leg 7 times or i have to rotate the batteries in it. This is really awesome when you turn the propellor on and then 20 seconds later you can't turn it off with the remote and you have turn it off on the foot pedal or bang the remote till it turns back on. It will do this 20 times a day or more. (it did it again today) · Do you need to put a transducer on your trolling motor ? forget about it, you can , but the problems you will incur are so frustrating that you might just blow a fuse yourself. The speaker for my hydrowave mounted on it became a daily chore of having to resplice it every day · So now i have a trolling motor that i have to manually disconnect it from the battery if i want to power it off at the end of the day, the depth collar and motor cradle are cracked so the shaft and motor and the electric housing don't lock fully together (there is about 1 inch the electric motor will go before the d**n thing will actually turn. when i want to stow it , i have such a long process of getting the thing up and out of the water that its maddening. Out of all the things that really sizzles my bacon the most , it’s the remote constantly having issues staying on. So many times that’s caused extreme headaches for me. But the noise made when that thing turns just sucks , period, there is no denying it. ·

i bought an used 998 off ebay recently for $875, highly considering selling it because of issues with the screen not being bright enough

2 new observations from this weekened after feeding them lump live nightcrawlers for the first time. If this is old news to you, no problem, but it was an "a-ha" moment to me.. -a night crawler as it falls downward underwater does so in the style of a weightless wacky rigged worm, each one bends in the middle on the way down and as it wiggles it resembles one too. -out of all the live fish (goldfish and minnows) and blood worms, nothing fattened these bass up quicker or bigger than a few nightcrawlers. a crayfish slicing up a nightcrawler is horrifyingly awesome to watch.

I am going to start another thread on the issue

dude buy one ebay, period.

could wild largemouth be trained to eat pellets? what are the disadvantages and advantages to pellet feeding. i know that pond king makes a pellet feeding system

I have the sellus worm and jig model and i have used it alot for t-rigging and shaky head fishing. I now only use it for drop shot because i use more casting rods

I met some guy at the dock yesterday who was skipping work to fish from shore and i ended up taking him out on my boat for 4 hours and we killed it. I was thinking about this post the entire time

How often? I fish lake casitas, and here are the days or afternoons i fished and how big they were . Pretty much if i don't catch a 5lb once a week then that's uncommon. That explains why having 19lbs or even 20lbs for a day tournament won't usually even get you in the top 5 at my lake. 9/8 - monday - 5.43, 6.24, 3.77 9/9 -tuesday 5.56, 5.38, 5.41, 5.03 (all in the last 2 hours of the day, that day I watched my friend lose a 10-11lber when it bent the hooks on his zara spook and jumped out of the water just afterwards.) 9/11 3.83, 3.34, 5.22 I didn't fish the rest of the week or the weekend. Yesterday i had 3.88, 3.98, 4.88 And historically my lake is having the least number of 10+lb fish caught , they're used to be around 65 10+lb caught from March to June

They don't require us in california to wear PFDs on fresh water. we just have to have them on board. Im lucky in that the lake i fish daily (Lake Casitas) they do not allow jet skis, water skiing, wake boarding . They don't allow people to swim in the lake either , though they do have the filtration system to handle body contact. Add on top of that , if you want to launch your boat in the lake you have to go through the strictest quagga mussel inspection, once you pass inspection , you then have a tamper proof cable lock put on your boat , and then you have to wait 35 days after passing inspection to launch your boat. Yeah it sucks that you can't really fish at other lakes, but its awesome because having one of the world's best big bass lakes pretty much all to yourself (on a saturday in the summer there is never more than 30 boats at the most on the lake).

I agree with Tom (yet again) . it's the hail mary play. I usually don't pull it out till after the morning bite has stopped or never started and its really tough fishing. I think prespawn and spawn are the best drop shot times in my book, and sometimes in august. That being said, lately when i've seen shad being chased by bass on the surface ive thrown a drop shot right into the mix, BUT they never seem bite hard enough for me to set the hook. They're are guys at the lake i fish at who will day in day out catch 10 or more nice fish from the shore drop shotting a roboworm margarita mutilator. every single time they go out. Here are some of the best drop shot baits i think out there. The Reins Co. Bubbling Shaker in the new Morning dawn Missle bait fuse craw 4.4 in green pumpkin purple or green pumkin red both of these baits i consider big bass drop shot baits. and Roboworm Hologram shad , aarons pro magic (best during spawn), oxblood red flake , in the 4 inch and 6inch regular and many more colors are sick Here are two drop shot baits that people rave about and i think are complete garbage Jackall Crosstail shad (doesn't work period) jackall clone fry on that I fish it with braid to 6lb fluorcarbon leader using a fast action 6-6 spinning rod preferablly on a smaller spool spinning reel. I typically take the bait im using and go one and a half bait lengths from the hook to the weight (which use tungsten or don't but use the clynder style weights.

i prefer missle bait d bombs over biffle bugs period, and if you like the biffle head, look at the one that eco pro tungsten makes.

I just ordered these 2 new megabass baits , I will update on their effectiveness when i try them out. the first is the "Chugy-X" its a walking bait with popper combined. the second is their new buzz bait the megabass renegade. that has a paddle tail swim bait beneath the blade. saw this at Icast and defintiley looks amazing, will see how it works in real life.

I know what i'm doing isn't legal, fully aware of that. that being said , it is perfectly legal to order a pack of 3 small largemouth bass from this webiste (they also sell blue catfish and bluegill) . 3 of them for 25 bucks http://www.carolina.com/game-fish/largemouth-bass-living-pack-of-3/145400.pr?catId=10507&mCat=10476&sCat=10477&ssCat=10504&question=#

I grew up in the DC area, and I don't live there anymore. I know a pond where ive caught 90 bass in 2 hours. many different times. I won't straight out tell you that its in fairfax county, and its close to the potomac river, one more hint, The name of the street in english is "lake view" but its not an english named street. Park where you see this guardrail in this mini cul de sac, walk down to the left and fish after the 3 trees overhanging the pond. do not fish around the wooden dock, that guy is an ass. Best thing to use was always 1/4 oz chartreuse rooster tails.

True very true. I kind of killed 2 birds with one stone. I took some of my extra student loan money from gettting my master's in Accounting , and bought my bass boat.

Hi Nick, thanks for coming , keep coming back

reminds me of how blessed I am to fish where i fish

megastrike shaky head , on fluro. i prefer a bait caster with a megastrike shakey head.

about 4 or 5 months ago I brought home 5 baby bass (florida strain) from the lake and put them in a 75 gallon aquarium. 3 of the 5 died (2 died from the severe beating and starvation from the dominant one preventing them from eating) and 1 had no chance. A Friend of mine brought home 10 and 7 died. , and here are some observations from the last 4 months . These are just objective observations I've made without bringing prior knowledge into it. conclude from it what you will. They will not eat any dead prey , period. They love to suspend vertically in tall grass at night , (head down, tail up) . They love to hang out on the other side of cover from where their prey is. When they feed the like to push their prey up against the glass. They love a tube they can swim through much more than anything with leaves or limbs. (A perfect bass habitat would be big black corrugated pipe with holes along the sides they can swim in and out of over a tree). If they didn't see it on the fall , they won't notice it on the bottom for a while, and won't come to investigate it just sitting on the bottom. When they eat fish , they will sometimes have 2 or 3 at a time inside their mouth. Also when they eat fish many times they eat it and then spit it back out and seem to only consume it again if its still alive. So if they swallow a fish and spit it back out and its dead , they tend to just leave it alone. The dominant fish will nip at smaller fish to keep them from feeding (even if they're not actively feeding). when they're feeding , they're feeding. and when they're not they won't eat anything even if it dances on their head. alot of times they rest motionless on the bottom when they're full. Crawish will move , then freeze, then move , then pause. especially if they fall from the top of the water to the bottom, when they hit the bottom, they freeze. When they move without pausing its usually when the bass are actively feeding or just finished actively feeding. They also don't like the daylight and tend to only come out at night. They find one spot inside cover and tend to stay in the same cover spot and not move around. crawfish are lighter on the bottom than the top , so if you have a 2 color crawfish bait, go lighter color on the bottom. They match the color of the water around them They're behavior and physical appearance match the behavior and physical appearance of the bass at my lake as the moon phases and seasons change. that's all i can think of right now, i wish i had a webcam to just keep on the tank 24 hours a day because its really peaceful to watch them.