MIbassyaker

Here is something for river smallies that seems to work for me well in clear water in the summer, but I don't hear recommended very often: a 4 inch worm rigged weedless on a Slider Head or an Owner Bullet Ultrahead. I use Berkley power worms in black and pumpkinseed color and a 1/8 oz size head. I look for deeper pools to drop it into and hop it along the bottom with the current.

I wish I had some big bass to show off like everybody else. But I don't, so I'll show off the best of my recent little bass instead. At a new lake one morning around 8:30, two old guys sitting on a porch see me paddle up to some pads and start taking about me, kind of loudly: "Look at that! He's fishing out of a kayak! it's got rod holders and everything! If he gets a big one it will drag him all over the lake, haha!" Kayak Fishing: Still kind of exotic, it seems! First cast to the pads, right in front of them, with a weightless t-rigged senko...2lbs even. I should have gotten the old guys in the picture. And I believe these may be my first two buzzbait fish ever, on a Cavitron yesterday morning: Under 2lb but both keepers. A third one that seemed bigger came unbuttoned kayakside, unfortunately. And there were a few more strikes I couldn't hook up with. I have had buzzbaits for years and used them off and on, but i don't remember ever getting one to produce before yesterday morning.

I don't know where you're fishing, but I can assure you, there is definitely no shortage of "bucket fisherman" who are "white guys"

Now that's worth pinning for future reference. (kidding. but only a little)

I fish out of a kayak too so I only bring a fraction of what I have each time I go out. I still bring way, way more than I ever use. I have gotten a lot of my plastics from grab bags and random bargain buckets, and most of those have gone straight into worm binders after sorting. When I buy plastics in a package, I keep them in the package, and just toss them in a backpack if I want to bring them with me. I've decided I actually prefer the "loose packs in a backpack" approach, and have been phasing out the worm binders. I still bring the binders with me, but now if I ever repackage plastics, I just use clear laminated bags ordered from Do-It Molds, and leave them loose to throw in the backpack with everything else.

I bet all the cool kids were wondering, "what does that kayak guy know that I don't??"

You will go crazy trying to figure out optimum colors for every possible bait without trying them first. Start simple, see what works in your waters, then complexify, as needed. Blacks, greens, and browns are pretty universally useful for worms and jigs. Forage patterns: what do the bass eat in your waters? craws, shad, bluegill, perch, etc. Bright colors are good for visibility in stained or murky water -- chartreuse, bright reds and oranges, bubblegum, etc. Firetiger-like patterns cover a few of these at once and thus can be a good stained water catch-all. However, I don't load up on the the "brights" until I have clear sense of where I will use them. But if a color or pattern has caught your eye and is haunting you, just get it. It will continue to haunt you anyway until you buy it, which will happen sooner or later. Who knows, it might even work. Bullet weight color? Now that's really splitting hairs. Recently, like you, I was also unsure of what to get from Siebert Outdoors. So I ordered a "random jig pack" and was really happy with it -- I got an excellent variety of sizes, head styles and skirt colors to try out. I figured as long as I was uncertain about what I wanted, I may as well take SO's random judgment in place of my own random judgment.

Good call on the silver minnow -- I always forget about those. Sounds similar to a few of the little lakes I fish. These lakes sometimes have a few different well-defined weedlines where each type of vegetation tends to give way to others as you go deeper, pads or reeds, to coontail to cabbage, for instance. But the pads always seem like "low hanging fruit" to me; i'll start there, and move deeper only if/when it gets slow. (although I expect in this case you'd find the smallmouth deeper if the lake has both LM and SM). I'll rig something to run across the top and fall between the pads, something to run fairly shallow along the edge of the pads and over the next type of vegetation down, and something I can work more slowly in deeper water.

......grape.....raspberry.....plum....candy..... (I don't even know if you can buy senkos in those colors, but maybe you should be able to...) No doubt there is a marketing lesson here, somewhere....

There are so many "old" baits I've never gotten around to buying, let alone trying, but the new Zman baits are right up my alley, especially the tube.

Yup! The only way to learn how to feel is to spend some time feeling.

We've been having a cool summer up here -- hasn't hit 90 repeatedly yet. We may get over 90 this week, but not for long. Yet, the fishing has been slower than usual almost every time I've been out. Most successful presentations over the last couple weeks have been slow-falling baits fished early in and around fairly shallow emergent vegetation (pads, mostly) -- specifically, weightless t-rigged flukes and senkos and a Zero Gravity Jig. I have even gotten some strikes on my long-time nemesis, a buzzbait! (why is it my nemesis? I have puzzled over this myself -- everybody loves them, and there is virtually no disagreement, anywhere, over how and when to fish them; they have just never produced for me for some reason.). Still trying to get the hang of hooking up, though. Usually this time of year, on a couple clear-water lakes I fish, there is a good deep bite around submerged cabbage beds, 15' down. It's T-rigged worms/craws/creatures all month. But that has not produced consistently this summer. This is making something hit home that I "know", but clearly have not been putting into practice: Fish the current conditions, not history.

Believe it or not, there is an entire academic literature in applied ethics on the question of whether the choice to engage in catch and release fishing at all is ethically justifiable. The argument against boils down to what you say here: If I do it, I cause unnecessary harm and distress to fish and I risk mortality, whereas all I gain is personal enjoyment. That is, the net benefits do not outweigh the costs. Catch and keep fishing, however, like hunting, result in a harvest in which the benefits can outweigh the mortality cost (presumably, if you harvest for food, that means there is something else you are not eating instead, which is saved). Ergo, hunting and catch and keep fishing are actually more ethically justifiable than catch and release fishing. Note, it's not an argument about what should be legal, just an argument about whether one, at the moment of decision, is ethically justified in choosing to do it, compared to not doing it, or to doing something else. There are many possible responses to this, some of which are good and some of which are bad. But my response is simply to shrug and point out that the range of alternative activities I could do for leisure instead would impose worse costs, without any greater benefit, simply by moving around more, using up more energy, and taking up more space, potentially creating more waste, and creating more lucrative markets for resource extraction and exploitation. In the face of all the myriad things humans do natural environments and creatures within them every day, even If I accept their argument, I'm quite sure my own catch and release fishing is nowhere near the most ethically problematic thing either I or they do every day.

braid works just fine for crankbaits. But bring a plug knocker along with you. In addition to getting the lure back, If you get hung up and can't get it free, you won't have to cut off a long section of line.

I'm not sure why, but a lot of people seem to think if you throw it back you're "wasting" it, sort of like like throwing a rotisserie chicken in the garbage. It makes me wonder if they comprehend that fish are wild animals that go on back to their home habitat once released.

Yeah, my father-in-law has that. He doesn't grasp the notion of trying to catch something you won't eat. He also doesn't understand slot limits, which on at least one occasion lead to much disgruntlement about a walleye we made him throw back. There is also mentality (not even a mentality -- just an unquestioned impulse) that, "I caught it, I'm gonna keep it" irrespective of whether you'll actually eat the thing. Honestly, though: Please, go ahead and bug me about catch and release any time. It gives me a nice opening to explain the principle and it's purpose, and why I do it, and maybe they'll go home and think about it.

A lot of ribbontailed worms are like this, e.g., culprit, zoom. I have heard people say you should rig the tail pointing up or down, regardless of which side is flat. The reasons given are that the action is better, or it hangs up less, or it reduces line twist. I have also heard people say they fall slower if you rig with the flat side down. I personally have never noticed a difference in any of those things, or in strike/catch rates, when rigging them up, down, sideways, diagonal, whatever.

New shroomz heads coming out with wire weedguards. Which I need badly. I have gone through a few TRDs this summer only becuse of hang-ups that cost me the head as well. Is there is any other way you can actually "use up" a TRD, aside from having it melt or dissove from contact with some other plastics or chemical? .

if you don't mind, wolfie, I'll follow up on how my morning went, since I said I was going to a lake that seemed a similar situation to what you're asking: The fishing overall was slow (this lake has been uncharacteristically slow all year), but it was saved by working the top few feet of the water column early, over the top of some light weeds in about 5-10' of water with the Zero Gravity Jig (not a traditional jig; it's very slow-sinking, so it fishes more like a weightless plastic; I jerked and swam it in short bursts to just under the surface, then paused to let it fall a few feet in between); the bite was near the top to a couple feet down at dawn, and nothing deeper than that ever turned on before I had to leave. There are almost always fish that can be caught deep in the cabbage at this lake -- and that's where I've caught most of my larger fish out of this lake-- but they were not having any of it today! So: in my case, ww2farmer and RoLo had the right Idea, and I might have been skunked if I had gone right to the t-rig instead of starting near the top and shallower with something else.

I'm doing exactly that tomorrow morning In a lake that doesn't have a lot of quality shallow cover, but lots of cabbage 10'-20'; down, and about 10 feet of visibility. Right now I have rigged ready to go: -Texas rig: 9.5" green pumpkin Zoom Mag II worm on a 3/16 bullet weight; 50lb suffix braid, 12lb XT mono leader (probably don't need the leader). Might upsize or downsize the hook/worm on this depending on the bite, or switch to a craw. -Drop shot: 4" pumkinseed berkley power worm with 1/8 weight 10lb XL mono -Topwater(-ish) wildcard:. a white/silver Custom Lures Unlimited Zero Gravity Jig (color pattern is a rough crappie approximation). I'm going to experiment with it as a sort of a jerk/wake bait along the top early. I have this on a snap tied directly to 20lb power pro braid. The line choices are not so much "choices" as they are just what I had on the rods already. I only use braid and mono and only spinning gear.

Looks like a straightforward decison would be: weighted spring lock hooks like the Moaner for the rage toad (i.e., rage rig) and the swimbait. Texas or carolina/mojo rig for the three worms.

Avoid the bait monkey? What is this I don't even

I've always understood shaky head as being a specific, or narrowly-defined type of jigworm fishing, involving specific kinds of heads, baits and technique (in particular, shaking a straight-tailed worm, standing up), whereas jigwormin' would include shaky head, but also a wider variety of heads, baits and techniques (hopping, dragging, swimming,). Is that how other people understand it? I fish worms on shaky heads and other jig heads all the time to great effect, but I don't do the "shaking" part much; rather, I do it much more the way the article describes.

Or just skip all the unnecessary middle steps and 3D print the fish.

In current, bass often try to position themselves near current to ambush anything coming by, but they avoid spending time directly in high current areas when if possible. Look for anything that breaks up the current, and fish the edge of the current break. Eddies, as mentioned,where current breaks around some obstruction, and flows backward behind it. Also look for deep holes and undercut banks. Tubes, grubs on jigheads, flukes, and crankbaits, worked along current breaks with the current (rather than against); Topwaters like poppers and torpedos will work fished around logjams and laydowns. Don't overlook a 4 inch worm on a slider head hopped into a hole or along a current breaks. Bring anchor system so you can work likely spots longer.