Fishinthefish

The only time on the water I have the number of fish I've caught burned into my mind is zero.

I've been hitting everywhere I can reach from the bank for a couple mile stretch, over the past couple of days. Lost plenty of jerkbaits and haven't gotten a single bite yet. I've started fishing weedless rigged flukes like jerkbaits at this point to stop losing some more.

Purple with a red or gold fleck in it.

I'm going to spend all day tomorrow fishing for small mouth, roughly 8 hours over a few locations along the fox river. We've had three days of 60 degree weather, the ice has been thawed for four weeks and tomorrows the fourth day in the sixties so I'm hoping we have had enough of a warm up to make the fish start moving, specifically the small mouth. I'll most likely be faced with a mild river current, stained water, with three feet of visibility. My question is what would you guys spend your time throwing in these conditions? And how would you fish what you throw?

It's a tight rope walk. Too many eggs spawn. The bass population gets too large, and bam. Fish start having issues with food. Not enough eggs spawn and your bass population dwindles thanks to bucket heads. All in all you just have to do what you feel is morally acceptable and hope for the best.

I drive by a ton of development ponds, business park ponds etc on a regular basis. How do you know if theres fish, other than the tried and true going fishing method? If I could add a couple close ponds to my hour or so time wise outtings it'd probably make my fishing life more enjoyable. Does anyone have any tips?

Never throw soft plastics in the water, pollution is not cool man.

Salty scales has an amazing non brand specific bass shirt that I own one of. It's also 50 uv protection for those long days in the sun.

It's basically a soft plastics and really lightly weighted soft plastics rod. I wouldn't put anythingover 3/8ths of an ounce sinker wise on that rod. Phenomenal rod though, I used to have one.

Almost every company has some sort of a fishing jersey for sale on their respective websites.

I'm about to throw it right now for the next three hours exclusively lol. It's my first year fishing chatterbaits.

I just dropped 70 on keitech swimmers, now I'll have to buy a few of these to compare

Do you fish it like a craw or like a grub?

I grew up in that area. I heavily fished otisco lake for years. Good shore fishing but a bit of a drive.

St croix legend tournament, medium extra fast, 12 flouro, biospawn worm

Everything written above me, plus winning the lottery.

I don't usually snap, jerk or even twitch the bait with the rod tip during 55 and below water tempatures. I usually give it a jerk just by my reeling technique and pausing, that way I never have too much slack in the line and the movement of the bait is a lot less irratic

Pre spawn can be tricky, hour to hour the retreive they want can change. Usually what I start with is a two turn, pause and let it sink retreive method. I turn it just fast enough for the blades to start vibrating during my two handle turns. From there I start to speed up the retreive if I'm not getting any hits. I use single tail grubs, or flukes as trailers on my spinnerbaits.

That kind of a budget is quite tough to get a good variety so I'm going to advise bang for your buck. This way instead of spending six dollars on a single square bill you will inevitably lose, you can spend six dollars on a pack of 8x worms or something along those lines as far as quantity goes. With that said you will need at least two bait styles that are hard baits you will lose to have a decent variety of moving, and slow baits. Go out and buy yourself 3x packs of worms. Research where you will be fishing, the colors depend on water clarity, and times of day/conditions you'll be fishing. A safe bet is a dark pack that is or near black, a natural middle area color, peanutbutter or greens, and a light color, whites, charteuses things like that or slightly darker. Due to your budget I would recommend going with gulp products for your worms specifically to save on cost of attractants. Next I would go with some type of swimbait, personally I use Keitech but it is more on the expensive side for soft swim baits at roughly 8 dollars per pack. Keeping your budget in mind and you're just starting out I would start with zoom super flukes. Three packs of these as well, with the same color scheme for the same reasons as the worms. By this point you're at roughly 42-43 dollar range. A pack of single tail grubs, in white. These can be used on a small hook texas rigged, they can be used on your spinnerbaits as trailers. They're just so versatile and one of the origional techniques. Next up would be two spinnerbaits. Personally I heavily use 3/8ths of an ounce Terminator Golden Shiner, and White double willow blade spinnerbaits. I would look into Booyah for a decently priced decent quality spinnerbait in roughly those colors again depending on your water. This puts your total in the sixty dollar range. Now what comes next is entirely based off your situation. You at this point have covered basic late spring, summer, and early fall baits. You have 40 dollars left, and have two choices. If you will be able to expend more money in the relatively close future on your fishing tackle I would start buying rattle traps, square bills, and jerk baits. Maybe one of each, and spend 20 on basic terminal tackle. However if you plan on this budget covering many outings over a longer period of time you're going to need the majority of your 40 dollars to go to terminal tackle. You'll need EWG off set shank hooks for texas rigging, you'll need either bullet weights or split shots, you'll want a pack of swimbait hooks to swim your flukes. If you have any money left after buying this, I would invest everything left into creature baits, craws, beavers. Stuff like that, soft plastics will get chewed up, buy some crazy glue and glue the head of your baits in place. It isn't perminate and you'll be able to twist them off with ease but it will increase their durability. Using that simple trick and focusing on soft plastics will be the cheapest route to the most verstile arsenal you can get and easily master. Good luck.

I throw a heavy jig that will sit onthe bottom without being moved by the current usually up river so the current gives my trailer some action. Then I mind numbingly slowly drag it back towards me with occasional tip shakes.

I broke down and bought one, going to go throw it tomorrow. It's too early in the year to truly test whether or not it'll get any bites but I'll at least get to play with the action.

Terminator spinnerbaits, research the conditions of the water you fish. You'll probably want two double colorod bladed spinners one in silver blades, one in gold blades. And two double willows in gold, and silver as well. With that said, flukes I generally fish are emerald shiner, white, white ice, golden shiner, and a darker color like a junebug or something. Green pumpkin also works well but I'm not nearly as big a fan of the color as most other fluke users are.

St croix legend bass tournament, in your medium with a fast or xfast and a revo stx in the appropriate size.

Guys I'm dying for my first fish of the year. I can't wait for La Salle to be open.

I definitely do, I've fished this river hundreds of times in the past year. Sometimes the river is dynamite sometimes it isn't. I like tubes up to 5 inches, usually in darker colors. Other than that I don't have a favorite color. Though the advice I can give you is to look at gold shiners, golden shiners. Those colors are the exact colors of the baitfish in that river.