Turtle135

My opinion is that a scent like Megastrike (which is what I use) can make a bass hold onto your jig, worm or soft plastic longer (which gives me more time to detect the bite and set the hook). I do not feel that scent gets me more "bites" from bass.

clearly that smallie was involved in some ill conceived hot dog eating contest!

you may want to double check all the guides on that rod with the q-tip as well, perhaps one of the rod guides has a slight nick and those damaged threads are just collecting at the line guide?

I get mine from Jann's Netcraft

yes, that is 9 cents you will never see again, not to mention the bit of rubber you are adding to the global trash heap that will take 50 to 80 years to decompose!

Depending on the size of the stop and your line diameter I have successfully transferred them to another section of line. However it can be hard to get them over that doubled up line. I too have just left them on the line ahead of other lures with no issues. As a bonus where a typical knot might try to collect some weed debris that bobber stop in front of the knot helps keep the presentation clean.

That sounds diametrically opposite to the type of water I was on yesterday. The only thing I fish that sounds close to that is heavily weeded sections of the Tidal Potomac River. With the water temperatures down in the 50 degree range I would be dealing with a lot of dead weeds that would be removing oxygen from the water due to decay. When that happens the bass move away and will gang up on hard cover items. I would be pitching black and blue jigs into and around that cover.

My first attempt to get to those bass was with a football jig but with the crazy wind we had this weekend (and fishing from a kayak) that was not a good option, I needed something to knife down to these fish quickly before the wind accelerated me right off the spot. My solution was a 5" soft plastic stick bait on a pegged 3/16th ounce brass bullet sinker. As I mentioned, the water is extremely clear in this lake so this is a visual sight only target for the bass. No built in vibration to help the bass find the worm. On the other hand this lake does get a lot of fishing pressure and this presentation has zero "negative clues" to it. I would allow the stick worm to fall all the way to the bottom then I would swim it along allowing it to frequently drop back to bottom. I believe It worked for two reasons. First, even if a gust of wind would blow me ten feet backwards that worm gliding along the bottom still represented an easy meal to those bass. Second, they were in an aggressive mood. Probably a lot of lures put in front of their face would get bit.

congrats on the double PB! that is a rare accomplishment (I would also guess around 3 pounds for the largemouth, pushing towards 2 pounds on the smallie)

It's that magical time in the fall where I paddle around in my kayak watching my fish finder intently. Most of the year I am looking for conditions that ought to hold bass. This time of year it seems the best bet is to keep looking until you start marking fish. Acres of nothing, no marks, no bait, no bass. Then you find that one spot where they are completely ganged up and you can see the mayhem going on below. From my local reservoir on Sunday. The water is pretty clear and around 25 feet deep seemed to be the right depth.

I throw everything with the same 7' MH graphite baitcasting rod and reel. There are some drawbacks to doing this. I will probably lose a bass or two on crankbaits as a softer more forgiving rod would likely keep some of those bass buttoned up. The advantages for me are: 1. I know what a good hookset feels like with this rod. If I do not attain that feel on the initial hookset I will lean into that bass some more to get the point to penetrate. 2. I am a much more accurate caster by using the same rod and reel all the time. 3. I have developed a much greater sense of feel which helps with those light pressure bites. I am also much more in tune with my presentation through feel, which generates more bites. It works for me and is something for a lot of anglers to consider rather than having multiple setups with very different feels to them.

There is a lake I fish frequently here in Maryland. Great largemouth lake with a balanced population. The maximum size my friends and I see every year is 21" - 22", These bass are generally heavy for their length and a lot of them are built like this: What we have noticed is that the 18" to 20" bass do outfight the bigger ones. They will dog towards the bottom where the larger ones will wallow on the surface and shake their head in an attempt to dislodge what is stuck in their throat. Since the 21" - 22" are older fish we have speculated the the 18" - 20" may be in the prime of their life and therefore fight harder. Or it may be, with the larger bass, that they have had a big bluegill or two stuck in their throat before and their reaction is to spend their energy trying to dislodge that item, leading to a poorer fight.

Awesome largemouth, congrats! The huge head and mouth on that one are built for eating trout! question: Does the lake you caught that one on get stocked with trout? I feel a "swimbait" phase is coming for me sometime in the near future. I am curious if that trout profile if only a good option when trout are a forage option for the bass

If hypothermia is possible (anytime the combination of the air temperature plus the water temperature is 120 degrees or below) it is drysuit time. So I wear a drysuit with wader boots. I layer up underneath to match the conditions as I fish straight through the winter.

A 5" stickbait soft plastic (NetBait Salt Lick in Black Blue Flake) texas rigged with a pegged 3/16th ounce sinker. It was "video game" fishing as I could see the bass near bottom in 27 - 28 feet of water on my Humminbird. I needed something to get down to the bottom quick as the wind was a blowing and I was fishing from my kayak. The presentation, despite the light weight, knifes down very well. I would bounce it up and down off the bottom and I was one hand paddling to slow my drift through the area they were holding.

If I am throwing spinnerbaits on the Tidal Potomac I usually use a Terminator (with the titanium wire frames). They hold up to the inevitable Northern Snakehead or Blue Catfish that twist other spinnerbaits into pretzels.

A couple of "Moon" bass. Nothing huge for me but the bass were actively chasing bait. I did see one werewolf with a chinese menu in his hand.

I will be, and I will be on tidal water with a strong wind out of the east, everything will be flooded at high tide!

To remove some of the variables at play, let's just discuss a 3/8th or 1/2 ounce spinnerbait for example. In this case, no your braid will not prevent a lure from sinking as fast. In fact due to the small diameter of braid you can actually fish that same spinnerbait deeper compared to using a really thick monofilament line. The "diameter" of your line plays a large role in how high in the water column a spinnerbait will run. The inherent buoyancy of your braid in this instance will be pretty much negated by the weight of the spinnerbait. All things being equal, same line, same spinnerbait, the slower you retrieve that lure the deeper it will run.

A texas rigged soft plastic with a pegged weight. I had to do a double take because up here in Maryland it is no longer the heat of summer. Cooler water for me indicates jig, hottest water of the season makes me reach for a soft plastic first. Good luck!

For the mats I have been fishing late summer I find I can get away with a 1/2 to 3/4 ounce tungsten pegged bullet weight sinker for beaver baits. Those will punch through and come back out the punch hole with hardly any salad. If I go to a jig I have better luck using at least one ounce. There is just much more resistance with the jig profile than a texas rigged soft plastic with nothing sticking out to catch in the mat. So I largely have scrapped using a flipping jig for that type of punching application, particularly from a kayak.

I had a grass carp around 40" grab a spinnerbait. The hook was in the mouth so I have no doubt that on occasion they will try to eat a lure. That fish smoked drag like nothing I have ever hooked in freshwater. Just a straight line run for about half the spool.

I buy jigheads and I wire tie them myself. I use rubber skirt material pretty much exclusively. Cost per jig is less than a buck each.

I take a photo of any decent fish I catch. It is for personal historical data (where, when, caught on what, etc). Then I let the bass go in the same place that I caught it. Transporting bass far away from where they were caught or making another hole in their mouth with a culling device. Those factors will increase the delayed mortality rate.

do you mean you want to change the "split ring"?