MIbassyaker

Sweet -- Coincidentally, yesterday morning I pulled out a jitterbug for the first time in a few years and used it for 20 minutes before sunrise as the sky was starting to lighten...Water smooth as glass --plop, ploopity-plop, plop...Splash! Just a dink, but nice to know they still do the job!

Alone. Most of the rest of my life requires me to be social. Fishing is the best way I have found to get away from people for awhile.

Whoa -- I had to Google "Choupique"! Bowfin! Natives up here call them "dogfish" (when I moved here, I had to Google that too!). I catch them on in-line spinners and crankbaits sometimes. Tough buggers with attitude.

Could be worse -- at least a strike and brief hookup is something. But, man, are they ever escape artists. River smallies have been skunked me this summer too, although I haven't been after them much. If I'm starting in the morning, I go top-middle-bottom in that order. I start with a tiny torpedo or try a buzzbait around wood or current breaks and edges of eddies if I can find them. Then I try crankbaits or flukes along the same kinds of edges. Then tubes or curly-tail grubs, or a 4" worm on a slider head, hopped along the bottom in the shade or into deeper holes.

Number of bass caught in my last 10 trips (3-4 hours each, over the last month): 5, 0, 1, 2, 3, 7, 4, 1, 2, 8 (not counting "bonus" pike and crappie) I'm happy if I catch one bass, and real happy if it's keeper-sized at all. Actually, technically, I'm happy regardless of what I catch, or whether I catch anything at all, as long as I got out of the house.

Really interesting thread, although I have no ambition -- an no interest, really -- in catching a record of any kind. I almost always fish solo, I have no livewell, and I will not ever keep a trophy bass, so I'm unlikely to ever have a fish certified for any reason, much less a world (or state, or whatever) record. But I am rooting for the rest of y'all.

This GenX-er narrowly avoided the urge to post something on this thread with nearly identical substance but less wit. And now I don't have to. Cheers.

That's a nice way to put it -- definitely the most important and consequential rig/lure I've learned.

Top/Shallow --> Mid --> Deep. And often (but not always) Faster --> Slower. The specific lure I use and how long i stick with it if I don't get bit depends on season, time of day, type of cover, water clarity, forage, prior experience with the body of water, confidence, whim....but I almost always start on top or very shallow, no matter where I am.

After 6 pages of this over 2 weeks, you really must share with us what you decided after all to order.

Glenn's videos on the Texas rig and the Mojo rig are a good place to start: http://www.bassresource.com/bass-fishing-videos/texas-rig-how-tips.html http://www.bassresource.com/bass-fishing-videos/splitshot-mojo-rigs.html

A couple mornings ago, I hit up a lake I had only been to once before. Last time I was there it was end of June. Back then, I caught fish around the edges of a big field of lily pads on a hollow-bodied frog and weightless fluke. The most recent morning i brought 4 rigs in the kayak with me: a cavitron buzzbait, a KVD 1.5 squarebill crankbait, a slip-shot/mojo-rigged 7" worm, and a texas rigged, pegged Havoc Pit boss. I started at 6am with the buzzbait. around the pads. Nothing. Then I went a little deeper with the crankbait. Nothing. I ran the pit boss over and down into the pads a little bit -- nothing. Then I went down around 10feet with the worm -- 2lber on the second cast. I stayed with that for the next couple hours at 10-15 feet deep, and caught several more before I had to get back home. Finding the right depth was key.

Meh. I used to watch a lot of fishing shows when I was a kid too, but on Youtube nowadays there is collectively more thorough instruction and much greater concentration of useful information per minute by DIY-ers than by any TV fishing show I've seen, then and now.

Bingo.

I tried a strike king KVD frog for the first time this year and had a lot of trouble with it. I think I hooked up only once. About half the time on the retrieve, I would find the rattle had gotten stuck back by the hooks preventing it from collapsing all the way. I tried bending the hooks up and out a bit and ended up breaking one of the hooks. Enough of that, I say.

I was throwing a 3/8oz bladed jig with a trailer on a medium Pfleuger Trion combo for awhile monday, and it felt OK (although I didn't catch anything on it). 3/8 is about as high as I usually go on that rod, but I've used it for crankbaits up to 5/8oz, which is fairly heavy for it, but doable.

I haven't lived here long enough to know how exactly how the rules have changed, but I think drop shot used to be illegal in MI. It's still not legal everywhere. IIRC, it's based on a concern about salmon being snagged. From http://www.eregulations.com/michigan/fishing/lawful-methods/ : Drop-shotting: The practice of having a weight suspended below a hook that is tied directly to the main fishing line is lawful on inland lakes, Great Lakes and Great Lakes Connecting Waters only. This gear may not be used on rivers, streams or drowned river mouth lakes. Further clarification about the history of this rule from native Michiganders needed!

But...you're negative in the first place BECAUSE they're already avoiding your lure, no? What I mean is, you're negative because you're getting skunked. If you're already getting skunked, you're already doing something wrong. Unless you figure out what it is that you're doing wrong, you're probably not going to fix it. So you're going to keep getting skunked. In that case the attitude is not the cause; it's an effect that gives the illusion of being a cause because you don't know what the real cause is (if you knew, you'd just fix it!). The real cause is some aspect of location or presentation you haven't figured out.

OK, those work fine for me in lakes too, and for both largemouth and smallmouth. I also use only spinning, in both lakes and rivers. I use heavier or lighter mono or braid, depending on the situation, but I'm very confident I could get by almost anywhere I fish with just the two I mentioned. I don't bother with fluoro at all.

Well, sounds like I need to find a new excuse.

We have a 6'6" MH ugly stik GX2 at our house, and I would recommend against it. It's awkward even for an adult, unless you're fishing something stationary like live bait under a bobber. And the reel that comes with the typical combo is very poor quality. It does not crank very easily or smoothly, and online reviews show a lot of people complaining about them breaking under very minor stress. The Daiwa you say you got for yourself seems alright -- is there a smaller version, (under 6', and a 2500 size reel or smaller)?

You said you use spinning only, and you are fishing a river for smallmouth. Is that right? For that I use 8lb Trilene XT mono or 30lb Power Pro braid (8lb diameter mono equivalent).

Shrug. I'm sure it's not for everyone.

I like ribbontails more (I think they look cool), but straight tails are more versatile. So straight tail if I could just choose one.

Hey, anything over keeper size up here is a quality fish, as far as I'm concerned! And I don't actually mind a day of dinks, either. But numbers and sizes have both been lower than usual for me this summer.