snake95

I have had a Deeper castable since February and here's my 2c. They have a new line out in the last month or so - some with wifi instead of bluetooth connections, so not sure how the following applies to the latest versions: The plots are very clear, the bottom depth is accurate, and so it has the potential to be very helpful. The app is easy to use. What I have found the Deeper to be best for is learning what the bottom profile is and where the vegetation is. Sometimes I have learned where fish congregate. Here are the significant caveats: First, it is like casting a wallet with $200 on it into the water. You don't want your line to break unless you can swim for it! It splashes down like a baseball being lobbed into the water, so you won't want to cast it out when you might spook fish - obviously, any time you are actually fishing. For this reason, it is only really useful when you are on a mission dedicated to learning what is underwater, or, when you are in a small boat - I've used it from a jon boat. It won't work in turbulent water, so that might rule it out for the river. Maybe you can drift it into an eddy or pool and get good readings. Mine has had connectivity problems. I drop the connection a lot, particularly on long casts. Their tech support has been fairly responsive and I am working through it to see if I can get it to work better. Not resolved yet for me. If someone sees this and has experience resolving it - reply to my question in the electronics thread! In summary, the castable fishfinder is a reasonable concept and the implementation has potential. You'll never get around the risk of losing it, or the huge splashdown effect. It has the potential to be useful toy, but it is not a silver bullet for bank fishing.

RW, Darren and others have made it clear how much they like YZ Hybrid. Thanks for this post and the replies. Lately I've gone back to my spinning gear and gotten addicted to the Ned rig with the TRD and small craws. Just ordered my first spool of 6# Hybrid to try.

DSG has the usual suspects on sale this weekend, but you have to buy in quantity (varies by lure) Kietech paddletails: $4 or $6/pack depending on size; Livetargets $4 hardbaits (min qty?), $10 sunfish (buy 2); Rapala buy one get one 50% off; YUM or Havoc plastics $10 for 5 packs if you buy 5; Strike King banshee house brand $3 each if you buy 4. Based on last year these same baits will be cheaper or the quantity requirements will diminish as we head through September. Best thing is they have all their scatter raps, DD22's, and full size Sexy Dawgs for $6/ea and bandit cranks for $5. It is buy 5 get an equal or lower priced 5 for free, so I got 4 dawgs, 2 scatter raps, and 4 bandit 100's for $30 all in. If you have a $10 off $50 survey coupon hard not to spend $10 more to get $20 more in stuff. Good sales strategy.

Glad you started this thread. I don't have any stories that can rival the stellar ones on here but here's my score: One spot has yielded over a dozen plastic worms that allowed me to try several types out to see what I like. At another spot I used the tree trimmer to work away on the "lure tree." I got a very dirty look from some lady walking past. "What are you doing!!??" she demanded. When I calmly explained the hazard that the lines and hooks left in the tree posed to wildlife, her expression changed and she thanked me for being so thoughtful and taking the time to eliminate the risk for our birds. Another spot I go to eats my T-rigged plastics like crazy - because I toss them directly into or over brush piles (I know). In return, this spot has given me back two good rapalas. One is a nice scatter rap shad size 7 in Helsinki Shad. I took her home, gave her new trebles, and first cast back at work, she caught me a nice bass. "Pro" beachcomber tip: I gave the scatter rap and a number of other finds with pond scum a vigorous scrubbing with my wife's Phillips Sonicare toothbrush set to "whiten". I added a little extra baking soda to the toothpaste for that extra shine. Works really great and gives your baits that nice minty smell. The bass don't seem to mind the flavor. I now have a dedicated sonicare head for pond scum.

Jar, and others, thanks for verifying that this was not a one-off occurrence. I feel like I've identified a sort of pattern that I can apply again in the future. I'll be looking for more bluegill pods to toss weightless senkos into now.

Lately I've noticed bluegills congregating near surface in tight schools of circling fish that I guess can best be described as "pods." I'm fishing in mid-sized, shallow ponds in Georgia. I'm relatively new to fishing in the south, so I hadn't really noticed the bluegills doing that before this summer. Maybe I'm really showing what a rookie I am by not really knowing about this before. The last few times out, I've avoided fishing near these pods, because I assumed that the sunfish wouldn't be congregating and splashing around if bass were around and targeting them. Today I experimented by bombing an unweighted T-rigged senko with direct hit on the middle of a pod. The sunfish scattered - a bit. The senko couldn't have sunk below the bottom of the pod when it was slammed by a good bass apparently lurking below or nearby. This was a real learning experience for me. Maybe the bass was lurking by the pod and just waiting for one of the bluegills to show an obvious sign of distress? I'm interested to hear if anyone else has had similar experiences and if I should be bombing more pods with senkos, or if this was a one-off freak incident. If this is a good target, any other lures you like to throw at it? Seems like a stickbait fits the bill well. Thanks for the input.

The suggestion to work on your casting is a good one. A friend who is serious about tournament fishing gave me what I thought at first was sort of condescending and obvious advice: every cast you have to stop, think about your cast, then make the cast. If you don't want to lose a lure, be especially careful and weigh the risk. It seemed abundantly obvious to me when I first got back into fishing about two years ago. Then after losing a few favorites I started to realize I really needed to take that advice to heart and practice it: think strategically and consciously ever single cast. Your fishing gets a lot better too because you land more casts on target instead of spooking fish. Well, that, and I usually take my wife's van and load it up with her extendable tree pruner and an extendable lure retriever every trip I can.

OK, thanks. I tried some of the 1/20 oz and 1/15 oz Z-man heads and they worked well - my experiences bear out your suggestion that lighter is better for shore in a shallow pond. I'm snagging partly because I'm throwing right into submerged brush, or can't avoid it in our local ponds - at just about any depth. Sometimes it is intentional, sometimes just being clumsy. But I'm learning that the bass sure like the small TRDs and other small baits you'd put on a true Ned rig with mushroom head, and I can say that already the great alternatives put out on this thread are working for me.

Bunnielab, I will try them. If only someone made this configuration - so you can easily T-rig the TRD, but with a small, flat head and maybe a longer straight hook segment adjacent to the head.

Thanks for the suggestions. Just to update I've now tried several of the suggestions and here is my score so far - casting in ponds in hot August GA weather, I've tried managed to try: - the "Ed rig" - Bitsy Bug with TRD trailer - no luck yet, but I think it's just me and limited effort factor - T-rigged TRD on 1/0 EWG with about 1/16 oz bullet - non-pegged, I didn't have the pegs with me - but it caught a couple of bass tight to shoreline cover - Owner ultrahead 1/16 oz - caught a small bass - Weedless mushroom head - haven't had a chance. We only available in 1/10 oz size. Seems heavy for shallow bays in ponds to me. I can see that I will be using any and all of these. I love the super sharp and sturdy Owner hooks and very weedless profile. With the Size 1 hook there is plenty of TRD left flapping beyond the hook. The ball head is pretty shiny and would be nice to have black but the bass didn't seem to care. The downside is the flat end of the TRD doesn't sit well in the tiny bend near the head, and doesn't butt up neatly like with the mushroom head jig. I might try gluing it next outing. Need to go back and read more about Ned's recommended retrieves, etc. I've had the most strikes with a small but noticeable splash-down on the fall before it hits bottom.

SuperB and everyone else - thanks very much for both the encouragement to fish these things, and some pointers on when and where - even if the best answer is just about everywhere. I'm relatively new to bass and especially plastic baits - so I really appreciate the responses. Glad I could help the boards take a brief rest from whopper ploppers and senkos. The time I gave it an honest shot recently, not really knowing what I was doing, it worked like a quiet reaction bait, gliding and swimming past an ambush point - when it got ambushed. I'll keep on trying some of the approaches suggested.

I tried YUM tubes last week and to my surprise caught a bass swimming the tube on a T-rig. Most of the colors I have are black or green pumpkin. It seems to me this is a bait that doesn't get a lot of attention these days. For me, it was pure experimentation that led me to try a tube. When do you go to a tube over another bait in your collection? And, for what conditions? Thanks.

Thanks @Yeajray231. I just want to add the following link to this resurrected thread, in the hopes that I sort of kill it before it takes up more attention from forum members, and to redirect people interested in the subject to some valuable responses. Among the responses I got, smalljaw provide a great explanation of how they walk this lures. I asked the question in a more general way, that generated more responses, and the responses are hopefully more useful to readers using tight walking lures beyond just the Livetarget walking frog, see below:

I got a Deeper Castable Fish finder back in February, and it has mostly sat on the shelf. It seems like generally a good product, but makes a huge splash when cast, so I reserve it's use for when I'm in a small boat or just trying to get a feel for subsurface conditions and not expecting to do a lot of fishing at the time. Lately I've been trying it out again. When it works, it works well, but the connectivity is spotty. I'm trying to reach their customer support for help, but maybe someone out there has had a similar experience and found a resolution?

@aceman387 Do you mean you leave the skirt on and use the TRD as a trailer? That's interesting! At the price of bitsy bugs, I guess you could just take the skirt off and add the TRD if you wanted to. @Bluebasser86 and @OCdockskipper I've been using the 1/20 and 1/15, and most of the time, but not always, I've kept it up in the water column. I've been trying to throw them close to cover but not into it, and maybe part of the issue is user error when I've chucked them a little too close to the brush. @beardown34 what type and size of hook are you using - thought I read someone else suggesting this elsewhere, but couldn't find a thread dedicated to weedless ned rigging. Interested in what kind of hooks have worked for this. With the light bites and durability of the TRD I was wondering if it is a problem to drive the hook through with this approach. Thanks everyone.

Lately I tried Ned rigging following recommendations on Glenn's video, including sticking with the Z-man products. I've never done so well on a single bait. I'm mostly bank fishing ponds. The downside is I'm finding it hard to avoid snags, even in ponds with little significant structure - I'd say the main structure is submerged limbs or stumps. Since I'm bank fishing, I normally don't have the ability to unhook the snags and wind up breaking off and re-tying. Obviously there are a lot of downsides to that. I'd like to learn what the favorite alternatives are for Ned rigging in similar situations: try to T-rig on the shroomz? (loses the vertical orientation), T-rig a TRD with a small hook and pegged weight? use the shroomz with weedguard? just accept it as part of Ned rig fishing?...

X2. This thread motivated me to do an internet search to look for data on connection knot testing and performance ranking. To summarize what's out there in a few words: there is no 100% consensus about which knot is strongest, (floro, braid, or mono). There seems to be general consensus about which knots tend to rank close to the top; to name a few: the Berkley Braid, the Fish-n-Fool, the Burke (aka "doubled Uni" per Aaron Martens, but with fewer wraps than Martins recommends), the Palomar, NanoFil (doubled Palomar) and the San Diego Jam. A common thread among these knots (sorry) is that they have doubled line at the connection point, with the exception of the San Diego Jam. These are knots that I've found fairly easy to tie. These top tier knots tend to rank somewhat higher than single-strand knots such as the uni/Grinner or the Pitzen/Eugene Bend and the Trilene (doubled at the connection) (though all of these can also rank highly, and an endorsement by RW is good enough for me). The improved clinch tends to rank lower in performance but can also be adequate. My feeling is that once you've narrowed it down to one of the knots in the top-tier groups, your selection will be based on personal preference and trial and error. My primary references are the "knot wars" series videos, Berkley's website, and various knot tying videos by different pros such as Grigsby and Martens. I also use and practice with the excellent "Pro-knot" app, or the related website. That, and my own completely unscientific field testing. For line-to-floro leader connections, there seems to be more consensus about which knots are the best, and a quick search through the forums shows two of the top are the FG knot (which many feel has drawbacks, others wouldn't do any other way), and variations of the Alberto/Modified Albright. Also up there, depending on the application are the uni-uni and the J-knot.

For the past 2 years, I have also been using the SD jam, or the palomar with floro. I haven't had either break on a fish yet. But maybe that's because I don't catch a lot of big fish! Recently, I watched an older vid on YouTube with Aaron Martens doing a "double uni" - but to be clear, I mean doubling the line, then tying a regular uni, except that Martens adds lots of turns to his uni. I have started using it and while it is a little bulky it also seems to work well. It seems to have the right ingredients for a good connection knot: doubled line at the connection, and multiple wraps around the main line, pulled tight. The Trilene is another knot that works well with floro, according to Berkley, and features a doubled line at the connection and multiple wraps around the main line. Easy to tie but I just don't use it.

My tackle room is just off the garage and it gets into the 90's. I was concerned about it, but so far everything is held up to the heat better than I expected.

I don't have a picture handy, but my "tackle room" looks a lot like curtis9's shot above. There are two of those metal racks like Curtis. One rack is for clear plastic shoeboxes and plano boxes with spare hard baits, jigs, and swimbait hooks, and the rack closest to the door has larger clear plastic boxes with plastics, sorted by general type. I moved to that system based on the recommendations in response to a post I put up earlier this year. One of the members suggested Wally world for their affordable shoeboxes and planos and I've found that was a good source for reasonably priced storage. Probably more efficient organization boxes out there for somewhat greater cost, but its working for me. Scott (I think) suggested I replace my wife's clothes closest with baits. I didn't go that bold, but we adopted a mutual don't ask don't tell policy when it comes to the attic with larger totes and the "strategic reserves."

Favorite #1 - for numbers, in stained to muddy water: Crankin' Rap No. 3 or 5 in firetiger. Without much exaggeration, in our stained Georgia ponds, this lure produces almost every time out over most of the year. No idea why it appears the crankin rap series is being discontinued. Am I the only one that likes them? Favorite #2 - numbers, clear to stained: Jointed Shallow Shad Rap 08 in any of the "shad" colors. Been an effective reaction bait for me, even in hot summer conditions. Easy to work: crank and wind. Pause if you feel like it. Favorite #3 - for fun: Skitterwalk 08 shad translucent. First walking bait I ever tried and caught on. Still the best producing walker for me. Love the shad translucent pattern. Honestly, love all the rest: the controversial scatter raps (like the shads, the cranks, the crank shallows), DT-fat and DT-flat, rattlin' raps, flat raps, x-rap props, and of course original floating and countdown minnows.

Just a great explanation and makes complete sense with the way the walker was behaving for me. One of the things I've enjoyed about getting back into fishing has been learning to use baits that I wasn't familiar with effectively, but this Livetarget walker had me stumped. Thanks a lot, smalljaw!

@smalljaw67Thanks so much, smalljaw that's very informative and helpful. I liked your point that it will take practice. Smalljaw, @Molay1292 (and others) - any further opinions and experience on line and knot (position and type) preferences, and rod preferences for this type of tight walking bait? (especially with this particular bait - I'm throwing the lighter one 5/8 oz).

Thanks guys, just for clarification, I'm talking about their walking bait not the soft-bodied frog here. FWIW the form and graphics are cool, but personally bought them more for reputation for overall quality than a belief that the fancy graphics help catch many more fish than a spook with simple colors.

Vertias 2.0 6'-6" M/F. 15 lb big game. I'm relatively new to walking baits - started last year - but have been able to walk skitter walks, sexy dawgs, and one knocker spooks and catch bass on them. This particular bait has some pretty good reviews out there and a nice looking flat spot below the nose like a sexy dawg, so I had high hopes.