MIbassyaker

Not even lure color preferences?

"Cutting" does not mean no movement or no vibration. As the bait is retrieved, water presses on the blades and they cut sideways to rotate, as that's the path of least resistance. But "least resistance" is not "no resistance", and blades also move water as they go forward. The pressure on the blades moving forward is converted through rotation into pressure waves that travel outward from the blade and can possibly be picked up by the ear or lateral line (depending on the frequency). So yes they cut. And they move water. And they create vibrations.

Weightless: 5" GYCB Senko Weighted: 7" Berkley Power worm.

Fishing from a kayak with rods standing behind me, I cast mostly side-arm. I'm pretty accurate most of the time, but I sometimes go through a couple casts of "recalibration" after switching from one rod to another, especially if they are of different power or action, or with baits of different weights. But I don't generally experience different accuracy between spinning and casting. @gimruis is right -- floating a small river will absolutely test how accurate your casting is!

Yup. Just get a lefty if you are weirded out by this.

Very well said.

I love Ike. I understand why he wears thin for many people, and I cringe at the really over-the-top stuff too... but I find his intensity and enthusiasm absolutely infectious -- nobody else radiates pure joy for fishing like he does.

A curly-tail grub on a round jighead was the first artificial lure I ever learned how to use. Yellow was what I think I started with, but quickly learned fish would eat pretty much any color.

You're making an assumption that's not necessarily true. Conditions behind a dam are not really "clearly" better for producing big smallmouth than even a small creek below the dam. This can be the case, but it's not the case everywhere. One small river near me has two dams that I have fished above, below and floated between numerous times. The lakes behind both dams are silted in and have a lot of dead water, and the smallmouth are definitely fewer and smaller compared to the free-running sections. Abundant water does not always mean abundant forage. The shallow, rocky riffles you find in free-running sections are major food-producing areas, and smallies are well-adapted to exploiting these areas.

Oh, no doubt!

This morning I returned to a 50-acre lake I had been to only once before. The previous trip was at the end of May last year -- I caught a lot of bass, but all were around 11"-13"; not one keeper-sized fish. I was torn between writing the lake off as a dink factory, or coming back another time in the year in case the first trip was just bad timing around the spawn. I came back to find it is still a dink factory, but as it turns out, not just a dink factory... In the first couple hours, I found some 12"-14" takers on the weed-lined drop from about 2' to 20'+ that rings the lake (a representative fish below): It was clear after trying a few different baits that these bass had a serious favorite: a texas-rigged Rage Tail Space Monkey in the "Hard Candy" color. So after the first hour, I just fished the Space Monkey exclusively, casting shallow, and working it down the drop, as I went around the lake.... ....and then this happened: At 21" length, and weighing in at 5.50lb, this bass ties my PB exactly (but I never got any pics of the previous one). That big fish ended up being the best of 16 in about 4 hours. So maybe this lake is worth coming back to! In other news, I'm out of Space Monkeys. Time to re-stock.

Um, I think you just did...

Buzzbait.

Pretty sure I've got that pink one from the Blue Fox kit. Sometimes I feel like they should change the name to "Instant Rock Bass." Like, literally throw it in the water and a rock bass comes out.

Messed around for a couple hours Thursday evening in the backwaters of a small dam, with a 4" senko. Caught 15; mostly dinks. Here's a 14"-er:

Can't help you there! Reeds is a good frog/flipping lake with all the shallow weedgrowth from lawn runoff. The waterfront park on the northeast end has some walkways and fishing piers. Home to giants, but lots of pressure and way too busy for my tastes. Tournaments pull up sixes with some frequency. Versluis I don't really know much about. I seem to remember there is a fee at the park to get access to it.

According to Prof. Jimmy Liao of Fish Code Studios, one thing that makes bladed jigs so deadly is they vibrate around 30hz, which is within the lateral line's sensitivity range:

Ah, I missed this last week -- are you still in the area? I saw your fish pic on the Reports page, which looks bigger than anything I've caught in about a month. I would have suggested the park at Reeds Lake, the Milennium Park pits, or the Grand River. Where did you end up going?

I have a non-vivid striker 7sv I'm using this year on a kayak. I'm mostly just looking for weedlines and the occasional tree, but feel like I've been seeing them OK, at least well enough to identify. I don't believe I changed any of the defaults on sidevu other than fiddling with colors and ranges -- I've been running it on blue with a 50ft range. After reading this, I had to check the other settings I've been using -- auto-med gain, 75% contrast (I must have changed this from default, which was around 50) and 455khz. I'm sure I haven't changed the frequency, so it looks like the in the Vivid they may have changed the default.

This time of year the small rivers and streams near me are teeming with life, all the way up and down the food chain, and the resident smallmouth seem to be fired up all day long. So my favorite lures are for enticing these river and stream bass: Tiny Torpedo and Pop-R, the smaller whopper ploppers, rebel craw crankbait, and all manner of 4" worms and grubs.

Quite often, when i'm fishing a weightless plastic, I'll reel it back quickly in order to re-cast, not intending to make any kind of presentation, but a bass will blow up on it. This a cue to fish faster!

Another river float today... Water was low, even for this time of year. I had a get out and walk the kayak past a few spots too shallow to paddle. Was hoping to have one or more 3+ smallies to show off, but that didn't happen. Around two dozen bass (and a very naughty pike) showed up, although continuing my trend this year, the best were around 2lb. All fish came on either a 4" Green Pumpkin Senko, a Perch Whopper Plopper 65 cast to a shady spots, or a 4" Pumpkin-green Hula Grub hopped on the bottom in deeper areas. Two of the better specimens of the Bronze variety: ...and a Green: At one point, the Whopper Plopper goes down in a splash, and as I pull back, the weight is much bigger than I expected. As I get the fish close, in rapid succession I see two things: (1) the profile of a pike, around 26-28 inches, and (2) gripped sideways in its jaws, a smallmouth that looks a bit too big to swallow. The smallie has the plopper, the pike has the smallie. After a brief struggle the pike gives up and lets go, and I'm able to land the bass, which goes 14", but doesn't seem any worse for wear, and was able to release normally. Lucky fish!

Depends on specific conditions where you fish. If I'm going to be touching cover, I want a buzzbait. If I want to do a start-stop retrieve with pauses, then the plopper. I find myself reaching for the buzzbait in natural lakes and backwaters where there is vegetation up to the surface, and the plopper in rivers, where I can cast upriver of the spots I want to cover, and let the current float it into position before I start the retrieve. That's just what works for me; there aren't any "rules", so do what works for you. 3/8oz Megastrike Cavitron with a black blade, black skirt. They're well-made, can be fished pretty slow, and have a bend in the wire that makes the head/hook/skirt ride lower in the water, helps with hook-ups.

Wood and weeds. The Whopper Plopper trebles catch on every stray stem, leaf or twig they touch because the hooks have multiple points in multiple positions. Buzzbaits have one hook, pointing upward (or two, if you have a trailer hook on), so your chance of snagging is much lower. It's a matter of degree, not an all-or-nothing thing...neither is "weedless", and both will have the problem with the blades getting fouled by vegetation wrapped around it. But Buzzbaits will just come through stuff more often without getting snagged.

As long as you can cover the top, middle and bottom of the water column, I think you're good. For river and stream floats I bring 3 rods with a (1) topwater, a (2) a swimbait/stickbait/crankbait to swim or jerk, and (3) tube/grub/creature/worm to hop or drag on the bottom. And then I have with me a few backups and alternates to sub in for each rod.