MIbassyaker

If you get hits that don't hook up, downsize. If you don't get hits, try something else. As for t-rig vs. wacky, I go by presentation style: Do I want to be moving it more vertically, or horizontally? If V> H, I go wacky. If H > V, I go to a t-rig.

How many I catch depends on how many hours per year I fish, which can vary a lot. Rather than raw numbers, I think it's more interesting to keep track of the following, both overall and per body of water: -Average length or weight. -greatest (pb) length or weight. -Total number of bass caught per hour. -Number of keeper-sized bass per hour. -bag size (weight of largest 5) per trip over 3 hours. -ratio of bass to other species caught

Nice work if you can get it.

6 Must-have lures. Hmm.... Stickworm Ribbontail worm Finesse worm Buzzbait Popper Spinnerbait

Definitely more popular in the south and less popular in the north, but I'm not so sure that's really about effectiveness; I think that's more perception than reality, but people up here do have that belief -- we up here may have a prejudice against red! I maintain that red can be as good in, say, Michigan, as anywhere, at least situationally.

Red has been an excellent color for me almost any time I have given it good-faith chance. I don't often think to tie on something red, but have not been disappointed when I did. I can think of some advantages red may have, situationally: (1) Bass see red well and distinguish it easily from other colors, especially green. This may make red contrast well against the background of many environments, such as greenish, weedy areas. (2) Red light penetrates really muddy water better than most other colors -- notice how popular reds are in many lower river systems. (3) Where local forage species have some reddish on them, because of it's high visibility and contrast, it may act as a reliable food signal. I think variations of Red/Black especially deserve much more attention than they get in jigs, spinnerbaits, chatterbaits, and worms/craws/creatures

Isn't that crazy? I used to assume this too without really realizing it. Or that they roam around aimlessly, so you can keep casting to same spot for an hour, and maybe one will happen by....

I have had this experience too. It wasn't strictly the first fish i caught on a T-Rig, but when I started using it regularly. I have always kind of felt that the Texas Rig is the foundational presentation of bass fishing. Once you learn how to fish a t-rig, everything else comes easier because it trains so many basic skills, perceptual and motor, as well as problem-solving and mindset. It teaches you about location and depth, how to identify and cast to targets, as well as fearlessness about heavy cover, patience & concentration as you learn to feel the bottom and other objects, see and feel strikes, deliver proper hooksets...and bass looooooooove plastics anywhere, any time, so some version/weight/size of a texas rig can produce wherever or whenever you are. I would take the IN-fisherman approach and identify three "next level" factors, based on the nature of the fish (F), location (L), and Presentation (P): F: Learning about seasonal behavior patterns L: Internalizing that location takes precedence over lure choice. P: Learning to fish the texas rig!

On an underspin. Yes. hopping a nose-rigged fluke on a weighted wacky hook along the bottom? is that what you're saying, James? This is the sort of creativity I come here for.

Seems OK. I suppose 28" is about the IPT I have on my jerkbait setup too. The real question is, do YOU think 28" is too short or too long? Nobody can answer that for you: Only you can.

This sort of thing is infuriating. I'm good for $30 to help get the Amoebas back on the water.

Yeah, I remember seeing this too.

I don't have anything sophisticated to say about this, but the classic look and feel of cork seems just right to me. Even when it's not high-quality, I prefer it over other materials.

I only had the Choppo out once last season, but had about 50% hookup rate per strike, which is lower than I've had with either the 90 or 75 WP. I even switched to a Wp75 and my hookups went up... Do any of you think the hooks on the Choppo may be too small? I will say, I did not see a difference in number of strikes between the two...

I just did an order a couple weeks ago, but this is haunting my dreams... please keep this pattern in stock!

Wow, incredible work...and timely given jerkbait season (for most of us) is underway, upon us, or nearly so. I had never really heard much about the RCs, but TBH, I would not be surprised if you found similar variability in other brands of jerkbait on the, shall we say, more affordable side. Let's say I buy three of the Luck E Strike RCs -- That's about the cost of a single Vision 110. What are the chances I get the right performance out of one of those three? That's the question.

My high Value/Cost hitlist agrees with many already mentioned: Daiwa Taluta 100 baitcaster Pflueger President, Supreme, & Supreme XT spinning reels Berkely Big Game mono Izorline XXX copoly Berkeley Rods Fenwick Rods GYCB Senko, Hula Grub Strike King KVD squarebills, KVD jerkbait, KVD perfect plastics Booyah Pad Crasher, Spinnerbaits, Boss Pop 6th sense crankbaits Most Yo-Zuri topwaters Heddon Torpedo Rapala floating minnow &Husky Jerk Mister Twister Curly Tail grubs, Phenom Worm, and Super Lizard Almost anything by Zoom For poor value/cost: Almost every kayak accessory in existence, beyond a paddle and PFD.

It's going to happen. Try to avoid it, do the best you can...if nothing else, harvest or just let it return to the bottom of the food chain. Plenty of critters will make use of a free meal. If killing a fish here and there weighs on your conscience -- and that's OK...it means you are fundamentally a good person -- then compensate for what you've taken by giving something back: Make a small contribution to the conservation fund of your choice.

A gold/black back F07 was one of the first artificial lures of any kind I ever learned to successfully catch fish with as a kid (along with a #3 mepps aglia and a 3" Mister Twister curly tail). I still have it, and it's still (occasionally) in service.

Siebert Outdoors is pretty much disappointment-proof. Good quality hardware, exceptional craftsmanship, and unbeatable price. He even has a "swim jig package" 5-pack for under $4 per jig.

I have been keeping a detailed log for a number of years on everything I catch. However, I think it's important to have a clear understanding what this information is more likely to be good for and what it's less likely to be good for. Humans are natural experts at pattern recognition. We detect patterns from limited data quickly and intuitively. This permits us to make generalizations, theorize, and make predictions about future circumstances. But we are so good at this that it comes at a cost: we also readily see patterns that aren't actually there, especially when we don't have very many data points. And herein lies the trap of the detailed fishing log - the more information you record, the more patterns you will think you see, regardless of whether they are real. You will "discover" all sorts of regularities about the bass in your waters that are not actually true, and do not generalize. You will discover, for instance, that red plastics work best between 9am and 10am, but only around the south lily pads, and only on Wednesdays in June during a new moon. With some creativity, you will come up with a plausible theory of why this is the case and you will pat yourself on the back for mastering the bass in your lake....and then that "pattern" will never re-occur, leaving you frustrated and confused. The challenge is to be realistic about what the log will be able to tell you. I find the most useful information is about two kinds: (1) my own performance, in terms of: what decisions did I make, where did I go, what did I try, how did I adjust, did I go shallow, go deep, downsize, upsize, speed up, slow down, etc. Importantly, my failures are just as important as my catches. From this information I can re-evaluate offline what I should have done and spend some time thinking about how I would do it better next time. you can use catch rates and sizes to track improvement over time. For instance, I know from my log how my average number of bass caught per hour, as well as average size, has increased over the last few years. I also know which waterbodies in my area are better for numbers, better for sizes, good for both, or bad for both....and it turns out some of the better places are not common knowledge. (2) observations about the environmental and ecological conditions, and floral and faunal activity, of the waterbody itself -- what kinds of bait and forage do I see in evidence at various places, times of day, and times of year? Where and when do I catch competitor species like Pike and Bowfin? How fast does the water clear after a good rain? How does clarity change generally throughout the year? Which places get algae blooms, and how severe? Where do the herons and otters tend to hang out? What species of vegetation do I find in various places, how deep does it grow, and how does weedgrowth progress throughout the season? How does water temp vary in the spring from place to place? And of course: when are the times of greater vs. least fishing pressure. This information is as predictive of success, or more so, than many of the more obvious things people like to keep track of.

Awesome! Young Jedi on the left has got something of a superhero pose, which seems appropriate.

Get some of the Compact Spinnerbaits from Siebert Outdoors, with your choice of skirt and go for wire-tie option. Excellent quality for price and perfect for ponds.

It's not my experience that st. croix is actions are slower generally, but the premier does seem a little more parabolic. Maybe it's the SCII blank, which the Bass X also uses, while the Avid x has the SCIII. St. croix rods do generally seem to have pretty soft tips though, regardless of action.

A few years ago, I could have given that as an answer. But I started using them more on occasions where I thought they could be a solution to a problem, and they proved their worth. Like needing a moving bait in moderately-thick, early-growth prespawn vegetation iwhere a chatterbait or spinnerbait would hang too much....the solution was a 4" fat bodied paddle-tail rigged weedless on a weighted EWG. Or wanting an action-tailed plastic of some kind to put on an 1/8-1/4 oz jighead that could both swim and bounce the bottom on the same retrieve, and discovering no grubs had made it into my bag when I left the house. In the north, we have the tradition of the "jigworm", which is any worm around 4"-7" on a jighead, often used to probe weedlines vertically. When I first heard of a shaky head, I thought, "that's just a jigworm, isn't it?" Turns out, not quite -- shaking on the bottom is a different technique than dropping and hopping along a weededge.... but the baits and tackle are practically the same, which made shakyheads easy for me to understand, and pretty much effortless to adopt and be successful with.