MIbassyaker

Oh! Did not know that.

In-Fisherman Largemouth & Smallmouth Handbooks: https://www.amazon.com/Largemouth-Bass-Fisherman-handbook-Strategies/dp/0929384113 https://www.amazon.com/Smallmouth-Bass-Fisherman-Handbook-Strategies/dp/0960525432 A little old, but still rock-solid on the fundamentals. In Fisherman did a more recent update for largemouth with the Critical Concepts series, but it seems those are getting hard to find for a good price: https://www.amazon.com/Fisherman-Critical-Concepts-Largemouth-Fundamentals/dp/189294734X https://www.amazon.com/Fisherman-Critical-Concepts-Largemouth-Location/dp/1892947706 https://www.amazon.com/Fisherman-Critical-Concepts-Largemouth-Presentation/dp/1934622850

OK, you try it first and let us know how it works...

I was about 15, fishing a little distance below a spillway on the local river where I grew up. We fished mostly live bait -- nightcrawlers under a bobber, or on the bottom for walleye and catfish, or frogs for pike. i would occasionally catch a walleye, rock bass or pike on an in-line spinner or curly tail grub, but live bait was usualy the ticket. On the afternoon in question, I was fishing nightcrawlers. I had a decent channel cat on the stringer already, and was casting the crawler under a bobber ahead of fallen trees, letting it float past as close as I dared... I remember it vividly: my bobber went down, and I thought it was snagged on a tree at first....but then I saw it was moving against the current. Excitedly I begain hauling the fish in, and found it pulled harder than I expected....and then it jumped! Like 3 times! WHen I got it to shore, I saw it wasn't quite as big as it felt -- about 14 inches and brownish...I recognized it as a smallmouth bass, which I had seen on TV and in magazines, but never in person. We didn't even know there were any bass in the river. After that point, I tried to target smallies specifically, but wasn't successful. I ended up catching my first largemouth at a lake the next year (I think?). But I never caught another smallmouth after that first one, and a few years later I left for college. I was able to fish for largemouth off and on in the various places I lived after that point. But I didn't catch my second smallmouth until I moved to Michigan about 10 years ago. Today, that spillway on the river back where I grew up has been removed, and there is no longer any public access to that area long the bank. But I hear smallies have, in the 2 decades or so since, colonized those stretches of the river pretty well and are now much more common than they once were. One of these days I'm going to get back there and catch a few more. Maybe do a float. It feels like unfinished business.

The person you were talking to probably was thinking that a left-hander would use a right-handed reel, and would benefit from a long-handled rod because they would be casting with their non-dominant (right) arm, with their dominant (left) arm on the handle for leverage. But why would a left-handed person do this? They could simply choose to cast with their dominant hand, just as right-handers cast with their dominant hands. They could do this whether they used right-handed reels or left-handed reels. Denny Brauer, for instance, is left-handed and uses right-handed reels -- he just casts with his left hand and doesn't switch hands to reel. I, on the other hand, am a right hander who uses left-handed reels, doing all rod-work with my dominant right hand, including casting, while retrieving with my left. And I prefer shorter handles rather than longer handles.

Good question -- I have wanted to check out some Dobyns rods in person myself. Ah, good to know! I didn't see any the last time I was in there, but I wasn't looking too closely. Also good to know -- only an hour south of me, but I have never actually been in there.

Here's what I don't understand: A whopper plopper is a propbait. It is a floating topwater with a propeller. There is no clear definition of "propbait" that wouldn't include a whopper plopper. It is certainly more a propbait than it is a buzzbait.. Yet nobody ever calls it a propbait. Why is this?

Yes, I have some of each. I use the poc'it phenoms the same way as the regular phenoms, as a jigworm. The Poc'it craws are a little like a Berkley Chigger Craw, only longer-lasting and not made out of power bait. I haven't really been able to tell whether the "bubble" effect of the pockets does anything.

Looking forward to the new doc, whenever it hatches!

Speaking of accelerations and pauses, got any new TNF installments on the horizon?

Working a floating topwater, I'll do an aggressive series of pops or twitches followed by a longer than usual pause...and then a tiny single twitch. Doesn't always work but there are times when almost nothing else will. Do the same with fluke-style baits.

Big Game 12lb or 15lb.

Like everything else, I'll let you all try it out and report back before I get too excited.

This was exactly my experience -- learning how to fish a worm trained critical skills I now use for everything else, and I don't think I could have learned nearly as well without it: concentration, patience, precision casting and presentation, feeling the bottom and cover, line watching, detecting strikes, proper hook-setting... I don't think it's a stretch to call worm fishing THE foundational skill in all bass fishing.

1/4 oz would probably be good, 3/8 do-able but pushing it, and 1/2oz probably too heavy to use effectively given the extra weight of the blades, hook, skirt, and any trailer. Weight first of all permits the bait to be cast by the rod. A total weight within the lure range will cast easier and farther than one too heavy or too light. Second, sink rate: heavier weights sink faster than lighter weights. This is important for horizontally retrieved baits like spinnerbaits and chatterbaits, because they tend to rise on the retrieve, and rise more the faster you retrieve them. So heavier baits will stay down at desired depths better when retrieved faster compared to lighter baits, and conversely, lighter baits can be retrieved slower without sinking too far down.

lure ratings on the rod indicate the total weight, which would include lead, hook, plastic, blade, skirt, and any other hardware components, which will add up. The listed weight on a lure is usually only the weight of the lead. Plastic baits, especially when salted, weigh more than people usually think they do. A Senko alone is about 3/8oz. You can go a little over the max weight rating for the rod, but usually rods fish best somewhere in the middle of the range.

They will all catch fish, but I like the Tiny the best too. Any color. I use them mostly for river smallmouth, and the Tiny hooks up a little better than the larger ones. Although, even small fish will attack the big ones. You're going to need a hook sharpener, though, because the hooks it comes with get dull pretty quickly.

Another vote for a Medium power, Fast action. It will be perfect for senkos and light or weightless texas rigs. And it should be able to handle lighter spinnerbaits and chatterbaits -- look for 1/4oz size.

Me too, and I'm starting to question whether there is any good reason to treat them differently. This spring (whenever that is...) I'm going to be experimenting with trailers on both.

I use this rod (the spinning model) almost exclusively for weightless plastics, and with a size 30 pflueger reel (about the same size as what other companies call 2500). I have been using 15lb or higher power pro braid, sometimes with a leader and sometimes without. But I'm fishing around vegetation most of the time. If I were fishing more open water, I'd use a 6-8 lb co-polymer like Izorline XXX or Yo-Zuri hybrid (I don't use fluoro).

Haven't tried the Zero, but I didn't like the Zinkerz much at all -- they seem to get "spongy" and lose their sink rate really fast. But the Ocho, now that's a winner. It has a good shimmy when weightless that rivals the senko, and they hold up a little better than the senko and are cheaper. The 4" fished weightless is my best-producing small river/stream stickworm for smallies.

^^^ yup, that's the one I have.

Jigs and chatterbaits you can slide the head into the same vertical slot the spinnerbait head goes in. Buzzbaits require a different kind of rack, but the 3707 box comes in two versions: one with 3 spinnerbait racks, and one with 2 spinnerbait racks and a buzzbait rack.

As most places I fish have subsurface vegetation, I do the same thing almost every time I throw a crankbait. It requires a little concentration and patience, but very rewarding, as you discovered!

Very, very hard to bet against any of these. But if I had to, I would seriously consider Wesley Strader.