MIbassyaker

In all seriousness, random chance is pretty hard to rule out most of the time, for most things that happen! But midcolumn bass forage with shades of orange isn't exotic. I mentioned yellow perch, but there's also several sunfish: Pumpkinseed: orangespotted sunfish: Green Sunfish: Warmouth: .... Just sayin'...

Some theories: 1. Visibility: Orange contrasts well against green vegetation and algae stain, which are common in late summer. 2. Forage: Yellow Perch -- open water prey in the northern part of native range, have some orange on them. 3. Random chance: You rolled the dice, they came up sixes. No other reason.

I catch a few of these guys every year. Just like pike, they'll eat anything, but they seem to love topwaters and flashy/noisy lures.

I also learned to fish on spinning and used it exclusively for a long time, for everything (even spinnerbaits, jigs and frogs), before trying a baitcaster. My baitcast to spinning ratio is 50/50 now and rarely go anywhere without both. I use casters for heavier lures, most "horizontal" crank-and-wind presentations, and for fishing in cover where I need more than about 10lb line. I use spinning for lighter lures, more vertical presentations (especially when I want a "vertical drop at a distance"), and open water or sparse-cover situations. I still have no problem using light (say, 1/8-1/4oz) crankbaits and spinnerbaits on spinning gear, but more often it's either (1) light plastics, like a senko, shakyhead, grub, or ned rig, (2) small topwaters like a torpedo or pop-r, or (3) small jerkbaits.

Admittedly I haven't checked in the last couple years, but in the past when I needed Pflueger parts, I was able to find them at eReplacementParts.com. I've always liked Pflueger for the price, and own (and still happily use) several-years-old models of the President, Supreme, Supreme XT, and Patriarch. I haven't used any of the more recent ones though, so it's disappointing to hear they aren't what they used to be, if that's the case.

I'll do it sometimes around Potamogeton, eelgrass or non-invasive milfoil. It can't be too thick, and has to top out at the right depth. Very much a situational thing, and a May-June thing where I fish. Not gonna happen most places at this point in summer.

I'm not sure I have ever successfully ripped a crankbait totally free of weeds in my life. I do like to make them briefly catch vegetation with the bill, and then give a slight pause to let them float up and back out, and then continue cranking over.

Try junebug or something with chartreuse in it (or both)

Megabass Pop Max Or the similar and more budget-friendly River2Sea Bubble Walker 80. I think a big popper ought to walk well and easily, and these do.

Your best bet is probably just to go up the river. Lots of good largemouth spots on the Lower Grand River system, including the bayous and Spring Lake.

8-hour float on a stretch of a local river I hadn't done before. 10 minutes in, this coupla-pounder hit the Whopper Plopper, and I'm thinking "A topwater bite -- lets do this!" ....and proceeded to catch nothing on topwater the rest of the trip. Along with the WP I tried a Pop-R and a Tiny Torpedo.... I mean, if they won't hit one of those... In the end, I managed a three more (undersized) smallies on a hula grub, 4" power worm, and rebel craw crankbait, a couple of little largemouth on the hula grub, a couple of little pike on a spinnerbait, and one undersized walleye, and one rock bass on the worm. Not entirely a bust, but not quite what I was hoping for out of this part of the river.

I have never understood the argument that casting gear is inherently "more accurate" than spinning or vice-versa for that matter. Individual anglers are more accurate with one or the other, but I am not convinced there is anything going on here other than level of skill and comfort borne of familiarity and practice.

Heh, You should read Ned Kehde's In-Fisherman article on @Team9nine from 2011: https://www.in-fisherman.com/editorial/a-summary-of-bass-fishing-in-central-indiana-in-2011-from-the-perspective-of-brian-waldman/156561 "His e-mail also included a statistical summation of his entire year, which noted that he fished for bass 82 times and for a total of 260 hours. The average length of each trip was three hours, 10 minutes. He caught 2,305 bass, which is an average 8.86 bass per hour or one bass every six minutes and 46 seconds."

I'm having a hard time thinking of anything a smallmouth cares less about than the color of a jighead.

Unfortunately, longer than usual with no AOY Championship. I landed at 16th in the group this year, 90.6% overall. This is always more fun than it seems like it has any right to be. With the "Drain the Lake" game I finished at 98.2%, 260th overall...not too shabby! I like the format, but it's going to be much harder next year with a whole season's worth of events to distribute anglers amongst.

Yeah, that's exactly what thermocline looks like on my Garmin too. 15-20 feet seems pretty typical in the natural lakes around here. Find where it intersects a weedline, and drop a jig down there!

Yeah, the good one I caught was 18.5". As long as I know there are some in there like that, I'll come back. It's an attractive lake, I was just hoping for a little more size. I'll probably try again fall or spring some time.

How does Big Lake usually fish? I went down there for the first time one morning last week (it's about at the limit of how far away I like to go). I got thoroughly "dinked" -- caught 30 in 6 hours....and exactly one was keeper-sized --a 3 1/2 pounder. Is that typical?

Markers or waypoints are the most obvious. I'm new to side-scanning this year, but I'm discovering weedlines show up reasonably well from the outside -- I can see when I'm getting close and when I'm about to cross it.

A. Palaniuk B. Ito C. Schlapper D. DiPalma E. DeMarion DTL: Chris Johnston, Cory Johnston, Gussy, Shryock, Mueller, Lehew, Micah Frazier, Pipkins. My regular fantasy season has been pretty mediocre, but for DTL I'm 99% and ranked 145th going into the final event.

D&R doesn't have them?

Usually just weightless, but there are lots of ways to rig and fish these. Check out the advice from Steve Parks, the Rage Tail designer:

A. Feider B. Mullins C. Schmitt D. Mueller E. Paquette DTL: Feider, Palaniuk, Hackney, Hartman, Felix, Ito, Schmitt, Martin Forgot to set my weight. Guess I have to root for a 0-0 winning bag...

While Eurasian milfoil may improve fishing in some places it can be a big problem in other places. The Dowagiac millpond is about 120 acres, with 14 feet max depth. The situation is not really comparable to big, deep reservoirs like Guntersville. Eurasian milfoil grows fast and early, and spreads like wildfire. It can take over a small area entirely, displacing native plants, blocking sunlight, choking out other subsurface plant growth, disrupting the local food chains that depend on native plant species (including native Northern Milfoil), and reducing dissolved oxygen levels (even as it produces oxygen) on balance. In small shallow waters, it can become so dense as to eliminate practical water access for boating or fishing at all.

I don't fish black and blue much -- not because it's ineffective, but because I feel there's usually a better option....junebug, for instance, which is one of my most productive colors. Yes, even in clear water (I use chartreuse tails mostly in dark water). That lake in the pic is not the clearest water I fish -- it has about 4-6 feet of visibility and somewhat algae-stained. It's also heavily vegetated as you can see -- thus there is a lot of dark cover, and much of the bass habitat is well-shaded. I think this is the sort of situation where junebug shines up here, regardless of overall clarity. I am convinced the green flake is the key -- the environment in these weedy, algae-stanined lakes is distinctly greenish, and thus much of what bass eat here are also kind of greenish, as critters tend to take on some of the tints and hues that surround them in the environment as camouflage. A junebug bait slinking through the weed-stalks and pad stems is a dark silhouette that flashes green brightly as it catches stray, dappled rays of light shining through, and I think this green flash sometimes acts as an added trigger. Is any of that true? I don't know. Seems as good an explanation as any. It's definitely true that junebug is productive for me though...at least for Largemouth in weedy natural lakes.