Fishin Dad

I pray for the rain to hit here as well. Many of our lakes are very low water right now. The smoke from the wild fires in Canada is a little disheartening, but cooler temps, less humidity, and a little rain is awesome!! Good luck out there.

Caught mine at age 49. 6 lb. 10 oz. on a chatter bait. I was just getting more serious about Bass. Had chased the state fish (walleye) and panfish forever.

With jigs, I am using 15-20 lb. fluoro or 30-50lb. Braid on a MH or heavy rod. I reel down, set the hook hard, and start reeling as fast as I can. I agree with Catt, getting em coming your way. Losing fish that jump or wrap you up is part of the game though. It happens. Many times there is nothing you can do about it. Do as much as you can correctly and just enjoy the game! Hopefully you win more than you lose.

You got it!

Other than a grass jig, I really like a Texas rig with a punch skirt on it. Looks like a jig with the skirt flaring out, but you texpose your hook point and it comes through weeds awesome.

Yes, that looks all too familiar. That was a nice pike at least. Too many of the pike I catch are like 3 pounds. Then all of a sudden you hit a 36" and it is game on. I actually like catching big pike when I target them. On the Mississippi River, we have days when you can catch 15 pike over 36". Those days are a blast.

I am catching pike on everything on a couple lakes, one in particular. Getting really sick of them. But I agree, pike like cranks.............A LOT. They also like to steal them leaving angry and shopping too often.

Absolutely. I usually have 12-15 rods in the boat. For moving baits I always have a chatterbait (used to have 2 rods with different chatters tied up), swimjig, spinnerbait ( I like it because it goes through wood better without rolling and snagging ), and now a crankbait. I also have a frog and buzzbait for moving baits. On certain lakes I will also use a fluke or swimbait.

I have just started to figure out how productive crank baits can be in these weedy northern waters. I do only throw them in sparse vegetation so far however. They have started to produce better than the chatter bait for me in some lakes. I think fish here have seen too many chatterbaits. I am going to give this a try to give it more action. Thanks.

That rig would be fine. In Minnesota, we call that a jig worm. It catches a lot of fish. Color coordination is not necessary and actually contrasting colors often work better. Hold the worm next to he hook with the head of the worm touching bottom of the jig head. Mark where the hook bend touches the worm, insert the hook through the head of the worm and thread it straight through and pop it out where you marked it. It will be on straight. Cast it out, let it hit bottom, leave it there for a few seconds, lift it and drag it a little, let it rest again, and repeat. It will catch you fish if they are there. Good luck!

I have seen this before and never tried them. Are they strong enough to hold up to a bass shaking hard? I think I am going to give these a try. Trying to hook between o-rings can be a pain sometimes, although they do make a senko last a longer time for sure.

There are boy and girl frogs ya know. Everyone needs a little lovin!!!

I even use the Rapala scale to check my 5 bass limit while pre fishing or just for fun while out for the day. It is just so easy and when weighing in at tournaments, my scale is always really close to my final weight.

I really like the Rapala tournament scale for culling in tournaments. I have found it accurate and being able to see 8 bins (fish weights) on the screen at the same time is a real plus for culling. Mine is 4 years old and going strong. Most of my buddies have them too and they are also going strong.

I have looked at that and the ratings at Cabelas were so poor I skipped it. I may have to take another look. I had made my own, but it has flaws. I hope others chime in with opinions. It seems like you guys really like it. I trust Bass Resource waaaaaaaaay more than Cabelas for info.

I wish these pike would follow that trend. They are not slowing down. We had a 15 boat derby there the other night. I guarantee with the talk in the parking lot, that over 150 were caught over the 3 hour derb!!

Waiting for my favorite line from the powers that be, “ And scene!” I don’t know why I like that one so much.

This does seem like the year of the pike in some of the lakes I fish. It is not uncommon to catch 15-20 pike in an outing on one lake we fish a lot. Just a few years ago on that same lake you might catch 1-2. There must have been the perfect storm of pike spawning 3-4 years ago. Other buddies have seen similar things on other lakes this year. They cost us a lot of money. I am always happy when a pike misses my bait.

That stuff doesn’t happen in the Midwest.

Where in the world do you live?

Wow. The weeds here have been obnoxious. A lot of them are curly leaf pond weed and will die off soon. I have a tourney on a lake Sunday that is horrible. Weeds and dead carp by the 1000’s. Check it out. Some parts of the lake are not navigable. Bringing the push pole in case.

The frog bite is definitely going. With the insane abundance of weeds in the lakes here this year, frogs have been solid. Find shade and weeds and hang on!

If you are culling fish a lot, I really love my Rapala tournament scale. You can see all the bins for 8 fish and their weights which correlate to the tag numbers. A bunch of my buddies have them as well. They are accurate and have lasted 4 years so far. They come with the numbered cull tags for like $50.

My new theory, and I think it has some merit, is with all the fishing pressure these days, I am really trying new lures Bass might not have seen to get more bites. At least that is my excuse to keep trying new tackle.

If you can fish with someone who catches fish on artificial baits, it will move you in leaps and bounds forward. It is all about confidence. Seeing someone catch fish and knowing you are doing it correctly significantly shortens the learning curve. Even watching someone you don’t know where you fish who is catching some. I agree that you can’t catch a fish with anything if they are not there. Watch people around you, if they are catching fish there, you at least know you are in the a spot with fish potential.