Cgolf

Yes, I think a 1/4 ounce or 3/16 ounce slider rigged soft bait that pivots on the snap and falls more vertical is more natural than that bait falling mostly horizontal that drifts away from the target. For me I get more bites. Also when fishing vertical structure I go with the snap and a spinning rod since a spinning reel lets the line off the spool more freely. During frontal conditions if the bait pendulums away from the cover the fish won’t move to get it. This has worked for me for years and I have dialed in a pretty good vertical cover system. Honestly though if someone has a system that works for them there is no reason to change.

So I did put a Colorado blade in the lead on one, a size 3, and it worked great. The Willow size 3 in front of the size 4 pink also worked well. The bait that had the lead whiptail blade didn’t spin at all, so I replaced it with a size 2 Colorado and downsized the trail blade. Didn’t test that one but it should be good. Thanks for the help and I will take more thoughts if you have them. One weird thing happened as I was testing these in the trout creek. I had gotten zero hits and never moved a fish on the in-line spin I normally used. While reeling a spin back a trout darted out, so next few casts when tight to the bank and while I didn’t hookup I got a solid thunk. Who knew lol. Filing this one away and may try some of the 1/8 ounce spins I have for trout.

Wow I really goofed up. I read the Jann's Netcraft spinnerbait guide and I must have gotten the 1/8 ounce and 1/4 ounce rows mixed up or looked at the colorado column instead. Unfortunately I only bought the pink blades in size 2 and 4. Making some new today and will post pics later. Going with a size 2 lead colorado on one and a size 3 nickel willow on the second. Where do you find 0.028" wire frames? I got 0.035" from Barlows, would really like the smaller ID frames.

This yea4 I started making spinnerbaits and double willows are my favorite. The thing I am struggling with is getting the lead blade to spin in some cases or more in others. The pink bait size 2 and size 4 blades the lead blade turns super slow and tight to the frame. The bait with the size 4 wide willow trail blade originally had a size 2 lead blade but it didn’t spin at all, but upping it to a size 3 helped. The wide willow must have some impact on the lead blade. I have noticed war eagles do use a pretty large lead blade. Any thoughts on what I either am doing wrong or could do better?

SK 1.5 and 2.5 KVD SB. These things just don’t catch fish for me, maybe 2 bass total and I have tossed it a lot. The 1.0 KVD SB on the other hand has produced well for me. No idea why those 2 are zeros for me.

The 3 that I hate that I still try are topwaters, swim jigs and chatterbait style lures. Spinnerbaits are my number one bait right now, 2 rods on deck, so you would think swim jigs and chatterbaits would suit me, nope. Topwaters I can never figure out the timing, I just need to work with them more, but I have been saying that for 10+ years.

Agreed good to go. I have kept braid on a reel for multiple years, embarrassed to say how long on some reels, and only change it once it gets too short from cutting off bad sections due to wear and tear.

98 percent of the time on a Slider Pro spider head and the other 2 percent on a swing head. The swing head works, but doesn’t seem to generate as many bites as the slider and the baits seem to tear up more. Only reason I use them is if I need a heavier weight than I can get in a slider.

I will join the spinnerbait and lipless club. Both allow me to cover a lot of water with varying weed conditions. This is important for me because we usually spend only a couple of hours on the water so we can be off the lake when the recreational boaters take over. Lipless I used to be a RES guy but have had good luck recently with the 6th sense family of lipless baits.

What’s a worm? If it had to be a worm it would be a water jelly NetBait finesse worm. I own a lot of worms but they rarely see the water anymore. Also is a Senko a worm or a stick bait? I personally don’t consider them worms.

Feeding my new tackle addiction, making spinnerbaits. A solid Barlows order to get me through the summer. Since the first couple of spinnerbaits I made worked well, I decided I would go a little more all in;) Other than picking up some of the jig head paint and random small store purchases I hope this is my last order of the year. Edited to add the 1/4 ounce smallie spinnerbait I already put together.

WI Largemouth a sandpiper ISG dream tube on a slider spider head 4 years ago and last fall my PB smallie was on a 1/4 ounce double willow purple Shad War Eagle spinnerbait. Before that my PB was on a Ned with a big bite drop shot worm, so a huge sunfish;) What I believe to be my biggest largemouth was in Florida 34 ish years ago in my teens was on a 2” yellow grub. No idea how big it was but I do remember it put up quite a fight.

I have with a jig like the fireball, but have found mushroom heads to snag up less in the rocks, or at least that is what my brain is telling me. Also the quality of the hooks on the mushroom heads I use are fare superior to the hooks on the 1/16 oz standard ball jigs I own for walleye fishing.

Are the sickle hooks below the Lil Nasty hook? I picked up 40 each of these in 1/8 and 3/32. https://jadesjigs.com/collections/frontpage/products/1-8-oz-sickle-hook-size-2 Did you happen to get the weedless ones? Those on the site are listed as VMC. Looks like he uses a mix of brands but states the brand in the listing. I did just confirm the brands currently listed on the site are correct. Since I have only been using them for the last year not sure if they change at all.

The Sickle and standard 90:degree bend are Eagle Claw. They have worked great for me and even held up to a 20” river smallie. The beauty is that they can be bent back, similar to the handful of gopher jigs I have left. The one that caught the 20 was bent back more than once after snagging up on a rock. https://jadesjigs.com/collections/jades-dynamic-ned-jigs/products/jades-dynamic-ned-jigs They do offer a 1/16 ounce size jig with a #2 gamakatsu hook. Due to the non lead materials the jigs run a little lighter. https://jadesjigs.com/collections/tournament-series/products/tournament-series Just a note for all as I have had a lot of posts about these jigs over the last year. I am not sponsored by them I just like their jigs a lot and the fact they are lead free. They also have worked with me on custom orders to get some jigs as unpainted that aren’t already listed with that as an option on the site.

One jig I really like is a 1/16 fireball. It has a super short shank and really wide gap. It sticks em good and really allows the bait to work. These are walleye live bait jigs. I found Jades jigs through eBay, thanks to BR members suggesting to look there, and over the last year probably have picked up 300 jigs from them. So I am set for a while. My point was the general angler that shops BPS, TW, etc doesn’t have a lot of smaller hooked, reasonable options. Of course reasonable is a relative term right now.

Once gopher tackle closed up shop it became very difficult to find economical Ned head with a hook sized #2 or smaller. Zman has some but the prices are more than I would like to pay, fish a rocky river and regularly lose jigs, and I have heard bad things about their hooks as well. For a while Siebert offered a mini morel with a size #2 hook, but I haven't seen those for a while and the standard morel has a #1 hook. The Berkley half head jig is a nice little jig but also has a #1 hook. More recently I have been using Jades Jigs and they have some options with a #2 hook. The bummer for many is that most jigs sold on the major websites for Ned presentations have a size #1 hook or larger. Who has given up on finding the smaller hooks and just gone with what is readily available at a good price? I know I have over the last few years, but with the new source I have been moving back to proper size hooks. One other thing where I will be fishing Ned baits is using heavier heads this year to target vetical cover in heavy wind and waves where the lighter heads would be blown 5 feet off the target by the time they reach bottom. The small baits catch fish, sometimes you just need more weight to get the bait to them. I know this isn't a Ned rig, its just a small plastic catching fish. Have others been doing the same? I hope to try them around docks as well, just being careful not to snag up on anything. It just seems strange that with all the rage the Ned rig is that the many of the jigs now made for it disqaulify the setup from being a Ned rig.

Choppy water or overcast skies water red rules the day. Calm water smoke purple or smoke red work best for me. Only thing I can figure is bluegill look different with sun shining vs overcast. Reason I think choppy water leans towards water red is the chop likely alters how the light hits the fish. That is my theory on when and why those colors work in clear water. Probably wrong but it never fails for me. And to the question, green pumpkin is a big zero for me. Green pumpkin purple gold is a good river color so I am not totally against GP.

That should put the line shy debate to bed, and they all use snaps right? Never fished one due to WI laws so no clue how the work. Have caught fish on the yum double up with 2 plastics rigged, heavy wire and snaps on that one.

I find I catch more fish with small snaps than without for the reasons I mentioned above. If I used a typical worm weight and worm hook obviously I would tie direct, but I haven't used a worm weight in 15 years, been all sliders for me. That said I don't need to punch through dense vegetation where I live and fish. The unnatural argument bother me, because a hook on a soft plastic is the most unnatural part of the whole package, a small duo loc snap doesn't add much. Fish whatever works for you, but saying we are lazy and not catching a lot of fish isn't the case. I have spent a lot of time dialing in my vertical structure game. To the OP, I only use a swivel with inline spins for trout.

I use snaps for crank baits and with my slider head and shakey head presentations. I feel the snap allows the plastic to pivot to a vertical drop position much easier, because it can swing on the snap vs needing to also pull the line down when tied which makes it pendulum away from your target. Most days that doesn't make a difference, but when you are on your 2 or 3 cold front of the week the fish need the bait right at the base of the cover so it needs to fall vertically and preferably slowly, which is where the snap shines for me. Started as a lazy thing to a must do thing presentation wise.

I got rid of a bunch of plastics to get a coworker’s kid setup. Fast forward some time I was looking for those baits to fish with. Honestly a few of those baits I still think about. To the OP I am there and made the mistake of taking inventory of my plastics and crank baits. I need to use up a fair amount of each and not buy more. Thankfully we have a Galapagos trip a couple of years down the road so the bait monkey will take a backseat to the camera monkey for awhile. Lenses make tackle look like a bargain.

An almost storm story. Was out fishing reed beds on a windy day with the wind coming out of the end I was on so it was doable. Saw some storm clouds and no lightning or thunder. All of a sudden the wind drops to nothing and the sky for real turned a shade of green. I saw no funnel clouds and within a minute or so the sky returned to a normal color and the wind started blowing again but in the opposite direction as before and with it having the full lake to blow down I headed out knowing it would be too windy. Scary at the time, and I should have head in as soon as the sky turned green, but no tornado by the lake but were really strong storms a little north of us. Lesson learned and thankfully the easy way. Only other time in the boat would be in 3-4 ft waves the problem is they were spaced 4-5 feet apart, it was a very rough and nail biting ride. The vaca lake for some reason has tighly packed waves and can be a beast to run when windy, nothing like the pictures you see in fishing magazines where it looks like people are standing on water.

I got a lightly used an well cared for swiss made Black Max 3600 for 10$ at an estate sale last year, person knew how to treat reels as it was stored with drag backed off. It quickly became my number 1 reel. It is a little heavy, but the comfort factor makes up for the weight. It also outcasts my more expensive low profile BCs and I think I backlashed it once and not a major one. Will have to replace the rubber paddes at some point because they stick a little, but right now a little oil solves that. I want more of these gems!

I usually work it a bit off of the cover/structure and then reel back fast. I have learned however to watch the lure instead of looking for the next casting target after missing a shot at a 50+ musky that had followed the lure back to the boat and sat there and I swear stared me down after I pulled the lure out of the water. I have also had smaller musky and pike jump out of the water to try and grab a RES as I was lifting it out of the water. But I do routinely catch some fish when reeling back fast to recast.