blckshirt98

When it comes down to it lets be honest, bass are kind of dumb and when they're hungry will eat almost anything. I think a lot of this is people feeling good about getting the fish to bite what they picked out personally. Look at the top 10 baits from any BASS or FLW tournament and you rarely find 2 baits that are the same in terms of color/size/presentation.

Braid/fluoro wasn't around or popular until fairly recent. Millions of fish have been caught, and still get caught, on good ol' mono. You should be fine if that's what you choose!

$230 delivered is an awesome price for a custom rod. I might have to kick the tires on a swimbait rod

1) It has to be on sale. 2) It has to have a good warranty. 3) It has to have good word of mouth/reviews. Lots of rods are hard to find locally to feel in hand or at least for me not worth the effort to seek out to feel, but I'll buy rods if I see enough positive things online about them.

+1 to the Rat-L-Trap and Strike King Red Eye Shad! The LuckyCraft LV series are also awesome but pricey.

It's still in their Bargain Bin last time I checked! I'd spend it on a CI4 Stradic and a Legend Elite or a Phenix rod!

One of guides up here uses 7" senkos and doesn't touch the 5" and smaller. He says the 1-2 pounders eat the 7" senko just fine. I don't fish senkos a whole lot anymore but I'd probably go 5" just because they can thrown on almost any rod/reel/hook/line.

That Cumara is such a nice rod, great find!

I use mono backing on all my spinning reels, but on my baitcasting reels I just go straight braid with tape on the spool to prevent slipping.

Back in high school I saw Ugly Sticks as the best rods out there! I always saw the ads/commericals where the pitchman would bend the rod tip down to the handle and be amazed. Fish don't know the difference between a $40 Ugly Stick and a $500 Loomis, and remember every rod brand out there has caught their share of pigs. Buy what you can afford and have fun with it!

Margarita Mutilator and Bold Bluegill FAT are two of the more popular colors around here. When I fished a lot of Roboworms on dropshot the FX series straight tail in Summer Shad or the FX series sculpin in Baby Bass worked the best for me.

One way the local shop here differentiates themselves is by carrying a lot of the smaller brands that the big box stores don't carry. They have lots of 6th Sense stuff (they won 6th Sense's 2015 Store Of the Year), local/regional jigs, and a lot of swimbaits (stuff hard to find online too - Roman Made, Trap Bass, JSJ, Black Dog, etc).

I support my local tackle shop(Coyote Bait and Tackle) and try to spend about hundred bucks there each month, even if it's stuff I may never use. Sure you can find cheaper online but they have a frequent buyer program where for every $50 bucks you spend you get a card stamp, and once you get 10 stamps the card will get you $50 in free stuff. That more than makes up for any 30-50 cent discount I might save from a big box store. Yes I still buy my share of stuff from sales when i see 20-50% off, but the local BPS that just opened up last year has only seen me for some of the Strike King KVD silent cranks and rattling squarebills because both of those are exclusive to BPS. One thing my local tackle shop has really emphasized is customer service. Everyone from the owner down to every employee they hire is focused on customer service and some of the friendliest and most helpful people I've seen in any retail environment. It's like the fishing tackle shop version of Cheers when regulars(and non-regulars) walk in. Local shop owners that don't recognize this as a way to differentiate themselves from the big box stores, and are cranky and don't hire friendly staff, will find themselves out of business very quickly. As for the dude complaining about 30 cents, some people are just like that. My mother worked in food service her whole life and would mention those one or two people asking for a 10 cent discount on a $4 sandwich. The monetary value is insignificant, some people just like to ***** about little things. I understand times are tough and people need to save money where they can but the OP mentioned the guy rolled up in $100k+ worth of truck and boat, so complaining about 30 cents on a pack of plastics has less to do with his financial situation and more about the type of person he is.

If paying a little extra gives you that confidence to be patient and fish the lure properly, by all means it's worth the extra money. I've fished 10 cent bargain plastics and given up quickly thinking "cheap bait, won't catch anything", and have fished $1+ Japanese plastics and fished it longer and slower with much more confidence because I thought "imported and expensive, this has to work!". Whether or not one is more effective than the other, some days fish will prefer one or the other, but having that extra confidence makes a big difference on the quality of your time on the water.

I tear off a tiny piece of masking tape and write down the # and type with a fine tip sharpie, then put it on the reel foot that's facing the rod. So if I take a reel off I'll see "15 PP" or "20 InvisX" etc. Also, I keep track of rod/reel pairings on a spreadsheet.

For weight go 1/8 oz. For plastics I'd go with a 3.5" Molix Sator Worm, 4" Yamamoto Kut Tail, and a 4" Jackall Crosstail Shad. If you're on a budget the Yum Sharpshooters (4.5")/Warning Shots/Kill Shots are amazing. The Dream Shots are also very nice, but expect to get a lot of tails bitten off.

Nice haul! Is this from back in January or is your DSG giving 50% off clearance right now?

Kind of a dumb question but one of the places I fish I can get usually 3-5 fish an outing, but there's a small two week window in the Spring where it just blows up and I can catch like 25-30 fish where they'll bite anything. And then for a short widow before that blow up, I get better than average numbers and the fish are larger than usual, they look like fat belly females. Is that 25-30 fish window considered the "spawn" period where males are aggressively defending nests and will attack anything nearby, and is the period before that the "pre-spawn" where females are fattening up?

When I dropshot I use it in mainly shallower water so I look at it as going after two kinds of bass - the ones sitting relatively still in a spot looking out towards the shore waiting for something crawl into the water or swim by it's face, or, the ones cruising up and down the shoreline looking for something to eat. The ones sitting still that are nearby will be drawn to the splash and will hit the dropshot fast if they like what they see. The ones cruising the shallows might take some time to get to your lure. So it kind of depends on how patient you are/want to be. If you want to find a quick bite you can fan cast and cover a lot of water and look for the fish sitting still, or, if you leave your bait out there long enough one of the fish cruising the shallows will eventually swim by.

I'd agree with the three points/coves on the south side. When bass start to move into the shallows to spawn though in early spring, maybe fish more away from the dam where there will be more shallow stretches and I'm assuming a non-rocky bottom.

" A wave struck the 70-year-old kayaker and the boat capsized. " 70 years old and kayaking solo!? Either he's very fit or crazy!

I catch and release because with the exception of trout I only like to eat saltwater fish. Even if I did eat bass I wouldn't keep out here in Cali because the waters are heavily pressured and too many people keep them to eat as it is. Someone did say walleye was the best tasting fish out there, so if I'm ever fortunate enough to be in some walleye waters, I'd be inclined to keep a legal walleye to try it myself.

Holy smokes that's a lot of jigs. Be sure to check for any jigs with rubber/silicone skirt bands for rot! (I had a few Terminator and Revenge jigs I got on clearance have pretty bad band rot!)

The Rage Blades are solid, you won't be disappointed.

I'm guessing most retailers already have shipments in, but are told not to put them out for sale until a certain date.