Turkey sandwich

I prefer a slip sinker rig to a bobber when bottom fishing. Any kind of simple live bait works, but nightcrawler and leaches are as good a start as any. This is also a pretty good time to use circle hooks. A gut hooked sucker is going to be a pain in the ass.

ooh. I like this. I'd imagine that would probably also be a great option for stripers chasing shad/bunker, etc

I've seen a few pictures/videos of monster walleye, but haven't heard much of anything about smallies or water temp. I'm hoping to be able to get the kayak out in late April.

Any of you guys make it out on the river yet this spring? Any word on water temperatures?

I've been wearing Keen (Newport Hydro, I believe) water shoes for years and they've been fantastic. They drain fast, get reasonably good traction wet wading, and tend to not smell horrible after a day on the water.

I was hoping this thread would turn to rival the Sasquatch thread. I'm sorely disappointed

Learning to pitch took me a while to get comfortable with because I was rarely pitching off of a raised deck. What frustrated me was the idea that I had to really swing the jig with my rod, versus allow the tip to lightly load and pull line on it's own on the up-swing. It's also important to be very comfortable using your thumb as a brake because you're going to want to get comfortable rolling back the brakes in favor of being able to use your thumb through the entire process. Especially with pitching and close roll-casting, your thumb is going to help a lot to control distance, accuracy, and how hard your bait hits the water. Also, learning to finish by raising or lowering your rod tip can help here to keep the line out/loose line on the spool in check.

Nice! I'm yet to get out for bass. Hopefully by the end of April, I'll be on the water for bass. Cheers, fellas!

No. The same reel in different gear ratios with the same brake settings should cast almost identically.

I'll change things up based on where I'm finding fish and how active they should/seem to be. When they should be really aggressive, I'll alternate between fast retrieves with very few pauses and very staccato retrieves, fishing opposite ends of the spectrum and working back and forth towards the middle in terms of pause/retrieve speeds until I figure out what the fish are liking the most. During slower periods, I generally take the same approach only beginning slow and steady with few pauses and alternating to slow with regular, long pauses and working towards the middle. I've found that this allows me to be pretty systematic. Conditions also determine flat, tight wobbling baits, or fatter wider wobbling baits and whether I prefer a fast or slow rise on the pause. Rules are general, and far from absolute, but they serve me well and I catch a lot of fish on crankbaits. In colder water or post frontal conditions, I'm probably going to prefer tighter wobbling and slower rising baits. Once the water warms, and especially if I have good reason to believe fish should be very active, I'm probably going to fish much wider wobbling baits with a faster rise. I also like using crankbaits to cover open water, especially flats for roaming fish, and this is where I vary things a lot in the cadence of my retrieve, but also a lot with lure action. For flats, I'll generally switch a lot based on how wide I can get baits to kick out. This is probably the only time I throw lures like Scatter Raps with confidence.

I dig it, but my only concern is also the hook size. Can you maybe find a finesse football head to roll that around on? The ones I've seen at least generally have larger hooks.

Depending upon my mood, my musical taste is all over the place from Paco de Lucia to John Coltrane to the Wu-Tang Clan. What I cannot listen to, however, is pop country. Listening to something like Florida-Georgia Line makes me want to choke people with terrible taste in music. That said, Chet Atkins, the classic outlaws, Hank III, Sturgill Simpson, Shooter, and everything that kinda rebelled against Nashville pop has become some of my favorite music. If you haven't heard Sturgill's old band Sunday Valley, listen to them immediately.

Lefty Kreh passed away this week, and I feel like it's impossible to have an influence/inspiration thread without mentioning him. Not everyone on here is big on fly fishing, but Lefty did more to grow fly fishing and conservation in both freshwater and the salt than almost anyone. Also, even into his 90's, his casting instruction remained awesome and incredibly matter-of-fact. Listening to him catch people off guard by cursing like a sailor as a tiny old dude is also pretty hilarious.

Welcome to the forum! The closer the water gets to 50, the closer you're going to see fish moving towards the spawn. Without knowing more about the lake you're fishing, I'm limited in how much I can help you with specifics, but generally you're going to be looking for any transitions from deep wintering areas to shallower spawning areas. The more info you can provide, the better responses you'll get on here. Also, check out the forum's search function. There are tons of threads about pre-spawn transitions.

In visibility under 3', I wouldn't rush to fish drop shots, and adding any sort of spinning or blade element, to me, sounds like a pretty high risk of tangling every cast. If anyone has a way to do this without the mess, I'd be very curious and interested in hearing about it. Personally, I feel like under most conditions, changing baits and slowing downs going to lead to a lot more frustration than success. Have you considered that your issue might be primarily locating the fish? Generally in those conditions, I want something big and loud that I can search with. A heavy spinnerbait or chatter bait I can slow roll at any depth is probably my first choice. I've never fished an A-rig for anything other than stripers, but I wouldn't be opposed to throwing it. Larger crankbaits that can get deep fast are probably also top of my list. Smallmouth are primarily sight feeders, and in my experience they get exponentially more frustrating the worse water clarity gets. Smallmouth are also frustrating in that they can move. A lot. What kind of lake are you fishing? How big is it? Have you mapped the structure adjacent to the spawning flats that you're finding them on in the spring?

I'm going to go a little against the grain here. I fish tubes and grubs quite a bit, and they're excellent numbers baits for me. They're both great producers in both lakes and rivers. Sometimes, smallies just want something drug across the bottom or something that I can work fast vertically, and jigs are the best option. If I need to pitch into small current breaks in fast current, into lay downs along banks, etc I'm almost definitely using an arky jig of some sort. Similarly, If I want to keep good bottom contact and swing something down and across or worked slowly across a run with small to medium sized rocks (not boulders) football heads are the only option and this is something I do quite a bit. Sometimes in or along faster current a reaction bit is the ticket. Other times, I've noticed that slower presentations worked along the tails of islands, weed edges, etc immediately adjacent to fast current can be money for larger fish. The only way I know to do this well without a whole lot of frustration is a 3/8-3/4oz football jig. I pretty much always keep all of the above tied up on a river and let the fish, the conditions, and what presents best where they're holding be what determine which options I favor. On lakes, I'll use where fish are holding to determine which I'm going to throw first, but if I'm fishing for smallmouth, barring chocolate milk conditions, this is rarely ever a time when I don't have a tube and a jig rod on deck from March thru December. Tubes catch lots of fish. Jigs catch mostly big fish.

This would also be my solution. PA has a ton of restricted waters that are otherwise great, unique places to fish. Getting around on Erie, Kinzua, Raystown, Wallenpaupack, etc would be a nightmare for a pontoon boat with a small engine and there are way too many smaller reservoirs with restrictions that have fantastic fishing.

I fish 15-20lb PP Slick in Hi-Vis yellow on my spinning gear and it can make all the difference. Even when the line fades (they all fade some) I still have no problem watching it. It can make a big difference when you have to fish finesse on lakes, or while watching your drift on a river in a current. Generally, I'll fish either Hybrid or FC leaders and will say that it's absolutely allowed me to catch fish that I otherwise would have never known took my bait.

That color looks phenomenal. I have no idea how picky the bass are going to be, but I can imagine I'll end up buying a pack or two for finicky smallmouth. I feel like anything that I can bounce, jiggle, or drag-free drift about the bottom that looks like a hellgrammite will produce. I do dig that they seem a little larger than the ZMan stuff.

Most of the waters that I fish for smallmouth here in PA have pretty healthy perch populations and pretty much everything loves them. In relatively clear water, it's one of my favorites to mimic. DT4s - DT10s, Shad Rap, Husky Jerks, and X-Raps in perch have been go-to hard baits for me in PA for quite some time. More recently, I've even started tying articulated perch streamers. Here's a toothy critter that was all about a DT6 in perch this past fall. Here's what's been dubbed the "Disco Gypsy": And Mayfly hatches on the Susquehanna's North Branch have been so dense that they shut down traffic. If you time them well, you can catch literally anything by throwing a size 12-18 white fly (depending on the hatch). Generally, I like throwing a popper (often perch colored) if I'm targeting larger fish, but for numbers of EVERYTHING, it's tough to beat throwing a white mayfly pattern at anything that rises.

Anytime I hear one of these stories, I think of this monster. This is a small reservoir that I fished a ton growing up and where I caught my first musky. This was caught around the opening of trout season. Obviously, this is not a hatchery brown trout. I believe the fish measured nearly 50'. Lots to talk about re: handling a massive prespawn musky, but that conversation aside, there is no way any of these guys expected this thing taking a wax worm, and absolutely no way they could expect to land that on ultra light trout gear and 6lb mono. I have no idea what line class records exist for musky, but that's one hell of a feat on cheap ultralight spinning gear, that line, and likely a size 12 bait holder hook.

Anything on the fly rod is fun. I fish mostly for trout and smallies with fly tackle. I haven't really ventured into using them much for largemouth since I target them less often. I have a few; Orvis Recon 9' 8wt With a Cheeky Boost that I'll spool with either Orvis Smallmouth taper floating line, or Bank Shot sink tip. (big streamers, mouse patterns, poppers, etc) Sage VXP 9' 6wt with a Cabelas RLS+ spooled either with Sage forward taper floating line, or a fast full sinking line (It's a really versatile rod. I can do everything from fish dries, to nymph or fish medium sized streamers) Fenwick Aetos 4wt with an inexpensive Cabela's reel generally spooled with Rio Gold floating line (good for smaller streams and protects lighter tippets pretty well for a really fast action rod. It gets used for the stealthier stuff, but can throw a size 8 wooly bugger than you'd think) Once you get the feel for casting them, big streamers can be the most way you'll ever fish.

I saw this, too. It's up to Excellon to clear the debris as part of their contract for the dam. That said, Excellon is also responsible for upgrading the dam to deal with the massive silt problems it's created along Conowingo and the upper bay...

Mines really destroyed massive stretches of PA. The Lackawanna River, a class A trout stream in it's headwaters, can't even support aquatic life in it's lower 3rd because of mine drainage and waste. The Lackawanna River enters the Susquehanna along the same stretch effected by the Knox Disaster. To avoid talking politics, I'll let you assume how I feel about mines, pipelines, etc.

It's a good stretch of river that I don't fish very often.