Cheetahsneverprosper

I've been in that situation before, and usually they're going too fast to drag something like a carolina rig or drop shot out of the back of the boat. Any bottom contact bait, whether it's a ned rig or texas rig, is guaranteed to hang up and your boater isn't going to want to go back 100 feet to unsnag you. So you'll be doing nothing but breaking off and retying all day long. A good solution I've found is a 3.8 Keitech Fat Impact swimbait on an exposed hook like a Strike King Squadron jighead. I personally like the Owner Flashy Swimmer because it's weedless, but expect that you're going to lose a few baits to snags, so a more inexpensive jighead may be the way to go. Cast it out a good ways and run it as close to shore as you can. You'll be targeting fish hidden in the nooks and crannies that the boater may have missed. If the boat is going too fast for it to swim properly, give it some slack and let it glide for a second or two. Even click open the bail and let it go to the bottom before closing the bail and pulling it forward again. Sometimes there will be a fish on it when they hit it right as it dies. Eventually as you work it, your bait will end up so far in back of the boat that you'll need to reel in and start over. Use a longer rod, like 7'6" or so, to give you a good amount of slack to work the bait with. You'll also be fighting line stretch, so I highly recommend 20lb braid tied to a 2 or 3 foot fluorocarbon leader of 15 or 17 lbs. I wouldn't go less than 15lbs because when you do catch one, you'll be fighting the fish as well as the forward movement of the boat. As for it being called trolling, if you're holding the rod and physically working the bait, you can credibly claim that you're working the shoreline exactly like the boater is doing at the front. And if that's all he's giving you to work with, then you really have no choice.

There are some small to medium size ponds in the small town where I work. There used to be lots of largemouth in there and tons of bluegill and crappie. I'd go fishing at least 2 or 3 times per week, catch some nice bass and release them. What happened? Morons were constantly walking away with 20 or 30 or 50 panfish per person, and even any bass they caught. Within 4 years, every single pond in town was devoid of fish. What did the town do? Just this year they finally put up a few 'Catch and Release Only' signs. There aren't any fish, but it's catch and release only. Idiots.

As far as I know, this is not at all illegal in the BFLs. If a boater isn't on fish, I'm pretty sure it's fine to ask the Co if he has any good spots or ideas. Only thing you can't do is contact others by electronic means about fishing spots or methods during the tournament. As a Co, I shut up and keep suggestions to myself unless I'm specifically asked though, figuring that most boaters have been there practicing and already have a game plan. If they want my two cents worth, they'll usually ask for it at the pairings meeting.

I broke a rod on a fishing trip once and had few choices for a quick emergency replacement except for a GX2 6'6" Medium spinning rod. It's easily as stout as other brand's Medium Heavy. From my experience, you could put bigger lures on without breaking it. Just be prepared for sore arms by the end of the day because it's a log and weighs a ton.

If it's anything like the ponds in my area with weeds ringing it around all the edges, the bass may very well be hanging out on the outer edge of the weeds, waiting for small fish to swim past. I've had good luck throwing a swimbait diagonally outward and reeling it back towards (and partway along) the weed edge. But kill it just a foot or two before it reaches the weeds and let it fall. The bass can't resist darting out and hammering it as it flutters down like an injured or unsuspecting baitfish.

Couldn't wait any longer and just had to spend a few minutes after work fishing at a nearby retention pond. Water temp 40 Air temp 38 Caught three in 30 minutes on a drop shot/KVD Dream Shot. One 13 inches and two 15 inches, including this one. They're still deep, about 12 ft down with no interest yet in moving shallower until spring decides to show its face. It's looking like that won't be until about August. Hands were frozen after half an hour and couldn't stay out in the cold and wind any longer. But at least it's a start!

A couple ponds I fish most often have some decent size bass shallow and along the drop-off about 15-25ft out from shore. Those are obviously easy to reach. But the biggest ones (after the spawn anyway) live out deep and stay there where they're difficult to cast far enough to get a bait. Two methods I use to reach them far out. 1) The obious one. Use a heavy bait like a tungsten football jig or big swimbait or a Whopper Plopper. 2) If you have a good spinning reel with a relatively long rod, set it up with 18lb Gliss for your main fishing line. It's super lightweight, but strong and casts smoother and further than braid. Then tie a 3-4 ft. leader of 8 or 10# fluorocarbon onto it and rig up your preferred bait I like to use a Senko, either wacky or texas rigged, depending on how weedy it is. Or if the bass are finicky, I'll tie on a drop shot. Works like a charm and I've never had the Gliss line fail me. My barely adequate knot-tying abilities are a different matter.

The northern midwest lake I fish the most is fairly small, but deep, and thankfully has no public access. In over 15 years of almost constant fishing there, I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen anyone else going for bass or northern pike. Everyone I see is fishing for crappie and bluegill. Because of this, I basically have all the bass and northern to myself, and they're huge. I'm perfectly content for it to stay this way. Catch and release almost exclusively, unless it's deep hooked and I know it's going to die. Then it goes into the frying pan. If you don't like the taste of a larger bass on its own, try chopping up the fillet and mixing it with some wild rice and broccoli. Delicious.

Fish tank thermometer. Put a wacky o-ring on it and you can easily cast it out.

Yep, Wal-Mart. Or try Farm & Fleet if they have them in your area.

25-pack of VMC Octopus Hooks Size #1 at Wal-Mart for $5.83 In three years, I've never once had one break or bend out.

Gamakatsu hooks are still readily available on the Wal-Mart website and through their app. Their website pricing is weird.. sometimes you can randomly find things at clearance prices. I just stocked up on a bunch of Gamakatsu's Skip Gap hooks for just $2 per 6-pack. But Gamakatsus have completely disappeared from my local Wal-Mart in favor of Eagle Claw, and even those are only the most basic panfish, walley & catfish styles. Useless. I did just start using the Berkley Fusion hooks late last year though. As ww2farmer said, they're strong and sharp and the packaging is pretty slick. Here's the removable plastic insert you can put in a 3700 box, with the factory sticker showing what's in it. No extra labeling needed. Going to give the Berkley Fusions a bit more of a try this spring if the ice ever decides to melt.

It's pretty weedy in most of the ponds and lakes I fish in, so I usually go with a lighter 1/8 oz DS weight. Unless it's particularly windy, in which case I'll go up in weight until I can easily keep bottom contact. I almost always use the cylindrical ones, rather than round or teardrop, but I've never bothered using tungsten. At least not for fun fishing. Might try them for tournaments this coming year, in places where they're not likely to get snagged.

There's a pond near me that's exactly the same, stained water and very pressured from spring through September. But I can always count on catching bass using a drop shot with a wacky rigged Zoom Trick worm, or a nose hooked KVD Dream Shot. Both in Green Pumpkin, or a darker color if the water is heavily stained.

Vibrating jigs, spinnerbaits, something that makes noise and creates a lot of thump so the bass can zero in on it in low visibility. They may be holding tighter to cover, so maybe a jig with rattles and a good size trailer for fishing laydowns. Dark colors would probably help too.

I have a pond almost exactly like this one near me. This early in the season, I hit it with a weightless wacky rigged Senko. Chuck it out as far as possible and work it back in with little pops and jerks, letting it sink on semi-slack line inbetween. They might be out really deep and hit it out in the middle, or they could be hanging out on a shelf. Either way, you'll find their preferred depth. Once you know that, you can try just about anything you like. They're just starting to bite here in northern IL, so the only things working on my favorite ponds so far have been slow baits like drop shot worms, Senkos, and small texas rigs.

Some braided line can be very slippery. It's possible that your knot is slipping loose, rather than breaking. Maybe try a double palomar knot, rather than a single one to see if that helps. If they're hitting your carolina rig right as the weight is bumping against the rocks, they could be responding well to the noise and vibration it's making. If you try throwing something else (such as a jig) and it doesn't work, try one with a rattle in it. They might like the extra noise. If you try a ned rig in riprap, you may possibly get hung up fairly often. It's small and can easily get stuck between rocks. If you do, maybe instead try banging a shallow running crankbait against the riprap or even a Biffle Bug on a wobble head jig. Or the old standby, a spinnerbait.

Wow, I've been to Tackle Warehouse a million times and somehow never noticed that rod bag. Looks pretty sweet. Might have to give that a try as the season is FINALLY ready to get started.

I've tried putting a swimbait on those as a trailer and all it did was interfere with the action of the blade.

My greatest strength is catching bass that measure 13-7\8" in tournaments with a 14" minimum.

I'm not sure if this will actually help anyone or not, but I thought I'd share a few things I've learned over the last few years about organizing fishing takle from the perspective of a non-boater. When first starting tournaments as a non-boater, I researched as many articles I could find about organizing tackle. Some of them seemed helpful at first, but I found that most of them are geared toward boaters. This makes sense, of course, since they have a boat literally full of lures, plastics, and other assorted tackle to have to keep organized. But almost that entire boat is available for storing that much tackle. With the design of the modern bass boat, you can have five full size boxes of crankbaits, two or three boxes of spinnerbaits, eight or nine boxes of jigs and worms, and so on.. But when you're a non-boater, you simply do not have have the luxury of much square footage to work with. You not only have a tiny bit of room available, but you need quick and easy access to all of it. And it has to be as unobtrusive as possible for you and your boater. But at the same time, you need to be prepared for absolutely any style of fishing that may be thrown your way. You're not necessarily always going to know what kind of fishing you're going to be doing at any given minute of a tournament and you'd better be prepared for the unexpected to come up. Those well-laid plans for beating the bank may change completely when they open the dam to generate power, the wind starts blowing 40mph, turning your clear water bay into chocolate milk, or a storm comes in and your planned ledge fishing suddenly turns into a run up the river to get out of the wind and elements. So what does a non-boater really need for keeping tackle organized? I originally thought it would be a good idea to have one single, large-size bag that holds absolutely everything. So I purchased one of those Bass Pro Shops tackle bags which holds six 3700 boxes and has big pockets on each side, plus a big front pocket. Big mistake. On the plus side, it holds a ton of tackle. On the negative side, it holds a TON of tackle. Soft plastics are heavy. Really heavy. Add crankbaits, chatterbaits, jigs, senkos, buzzbaits, swimbaits, drop shot weights, hooks, and all the other terminal tackle, and that adds up to a massive load of stuff all packed into one container. It's heavy enough that just picking up the bag and putting it in the boat can be a struggle. No big deal if the boat is tied to the dock and you can just step in. But often the boat is going to be parked on shore, leaving you access to only the bow, where your boater has a dozen or so expensive poles strapped down to the deck. If you don't feel like wading into the water and soaking your shoes and pants, there's not much room for hefting that bag past the trolling motor and onto the deck without landing it on one or two of your boater's poles. If you want to ruin your and your boater's day before it's even started, breaking one of his eyelets before takeoff is a great way to do it. The other problem is the expanded size of those large bags when the side pockets are full. Often (but not always) your boater will have one of the rear compartments empty for a non-boater to store a tackle bag, rain gear, drinks, etc. If they do, make good use of it. Unfortunately, the large bag almost never fits into one of those compartments unless the side and front pockets are completely empty, which they never are. And it would defeat the whole purpose of having them if they were. To make matters worse, you're going to need access to certain things quite often during the day, and if you have to keep opening the compartment every time you want to grab another soft plastic, you're going to waste a lot of time that could be better spent fishing. So... after dealing with the annoyance of one annoyingly large tackle bag, I decided to change tactics. The new, ubreakable rule is that the main tackle bag MUST be small enough to fit into the rear compartment, but still allow for easy access to its contents. This effectively limits it to four 3700 boxes, plus one smaller box that tucks into the back/outisde of the bag. Here are my individual boxes and their contents: Box 1: Jigs & Punch Rigs Includes all Craw style jigs, Bitsy Bugs and jig trailers, plus punch weights, punch skits and hooks. Box 2: Chatterbaits, Swim Jigs, Swim Jig Heads, and various colors of Swimbaits. So far I haven't had any problems with the swimbait tails taking a 'set' from being stored like this, but I may have to move things around if it does occur. Possibly leaving them in bags and keeping them in the soft plastics tackle bag. Box 3 Topwater Solid and hollowbody Frogs, Buzzbaits, Spooks, Poppers, Whopper Ploppers Box 4: Crankbaits, Spinnerbaits, Lipless Crankbaits, Jerkbaits, Wakebaits This is the interesting one, as I used to bring a 3700 size box filled with spinnerbaits and buzzbaits, and another 3700 box filled with crankbaits. I rather quickly realized that I'd use one or two spinnerbaits throughout the entire day, and maybe 2 or 3 crankbaits at most. Almost all the rest of this space was completely wasted. As a non-boater, you're not going to be going through one or two dozen crankbaits and spinnerbaits in an 8-hour tournament, so why bother bringing so many? What I found that I needed is small, carefully-chosen selection for multiple situations, which could all fit into one single 3700 box. - Top left is deep crankbaits, five of them in various colors - Top right is large squarebill crankbaits, five or six colors - Middle left is thin squarebill crankbaits, and next to it is Lipless crankbaits. - To the right of those are smaller squarebills - Bottom middle is filled with wakebaits, jerkbaits, and one large segmented crankbait. The bottom left and right corners took a little bit of work to fit in some spinnerbait holders. I sacrificed the large spinnerbait box I'd previously used, pulling out the 'rack' that holds the spinnerbaits in place. Cutting the rack into thirds, the outside portions still contained the tabs that hold the rack in place at the sides of the box. These tabs fit into the slots that make up the box separators, while the cut end of them (which do not have tabs) can either be left loose, or simply cement/epoxy the bottom of the rack in place. Now those two mini-racks hold 7 white spinnerbaits and 7 colored ones. Enough to cover pretty much all situations and depths, while taking up very little room. Box 5 is a smaller one which contains only Senkos and an O-Ring tool & nail weights. It fits neatly into a pouch on the back of the tackle bag. With all that in the main tackle bag, that leaves a second, smaller bag which remains with me, sitting on the floor at my feet while the boat is running, and on the seat while fishing. It contains the soft plastics I use the most, separated into bags of bags with the biggest possible labels on them Because this bag remains easily accessible, it also contains: 1) My most-needed/important small stuff for the day (Pliers, Scale, Line Clippers, Culling tags, Culling beam, Attractant, etc.) 2) A small box containing my most-used terminal tackle. I may need to get into this dozens of times a day, so it needs to be compact but organized. 3) A small box of drop shot hooks and weights. Drop shot is a co-anglers best friend. I can't stress that enough. Does anybody else have tackle organizing tips to share? If so, it would be interesting to see. Especially for non-boaters with limited room.

I'm registered as a co-angler and I paid for the event shortly after my original posting. So hopefully that'll get me into it, even if I'm not linked with a boater. Thank you, I did read that about the BFL. I've been spending the last couple weeks reorganizing everything into a smaller, easier-to-handle tackle bag that has a little of everything, since I won't know precisely what the game plan will be until talking with the boater the night before. Have to be prepared for just about anything. Definitely looking forward to it!

Big fan of Seaguar. Red Label is awesome for us guys on a serious budget and the InvizX fluorocarbon rocks.

I'm happy to say that I've never had a boater back boat me. I'm sure it does happen, but it sounds like it's thankfully rare. In fact most of the guys in the divisions I've fished have gone out of their way to be helpful, so I didn't want to give the impression that I was frustrated about that. I've just never tried a league where nonboaters fish only against nonboaters. Looking forward to giving it a try.

That's exactly the information I was hoping for. Thank you!