IndianaFinesse

Some guys swear by it, but I've never tried it either because of the price. Just thought I would mention it since there are a few people on here that I know use it, Team9nine and a few others.

Do you guys have any ideas for how to reduce ice freezing in the guides? Do you think spraying something like Wd-40 on them would work?

If anyone's looking for red label flourocarnon or tatsu they're 25%-45% off at tackle warehouse for the 25 days of Christ mas sale

Lucky Craft staysee.

Wax worms, bee moths, and mousees if I can get a hold of them, are usually my favorite, but if I have to use artificial bait I use the gulp one inch minnows (often cut down a little), or a couple segments of the gulp euro larvae.

Nice fish, what length of pause were you using with the jerkbait? I'm not looking forward to winter, at least there should be thick enough ice to ice fish, but it's just not the same as open water.

And the fact that lead is also banned from use in jigs and jig heads is just plain stupid. What do you think is gonna happen if a loon decides to eat a tungsten jig head? The same thing that would happen if the bird had eaten a lead jig head, the hook would likely kill it, not the lead that was banned.

looks like the raiders a gonna win this one unless they completely fall apart.

Sometimes I like to soak them in cold salt water for a little bit before I deep fry them (a half an hour to an hour will do it) if I've caught them in warm water or expect some fishy taste or if they feel a little soft. Don't know how it works, but it seems to firm them up and get rid of any fishy taste pretty well, and it doesn't leave any salty taste at all.

I don't have any problem with them tasting fishy, I actually think they are firmer and milder tasting than crappie. And I don't do a thing about that "mud vein" people talk about, and I have yet to have that ruin a fish.

Ned rig, pointer 78, 1/8 or 1/16 ounce Bucktail jigs, and if you have a clean bottom a 1/2 ounce blade bait.

That's a lot of nice fish, we were out Saturday to, but we were crappie fishing. Managed twenty decent crappie, but sounds like the bass fishing was better. It would have been a whole lot nicer before the rain came in, but I was at church in the morning so I was stuck with fishing in the afternoon rain. At least it wasn't freezing rain like it was predicted, that would have been pretty hard to fish in.

Anyone else fish in the freezing temperatures and rain today? I was alone on the lake which was nice, but the fish weren't cooperating. caught eight fish in two hours, all on the ned rig. They were out deep on the 10-15 foot drop off, off of points, and the only productive retrieve was the drag and deadstick.

It is true, just ask ned kahde himself or @Team9nine. You do not need a sensitive rod for the ned rig, ned uses old $15 synergy rods and catches thousands of bass every year on them. Just pick something in the 6'-7' range, medium-lite power, and a fast action and it will work perfectly.

That could be true if you don't put the amount of effort into retrieving snagged lures that I do, I always carry a plug knocker and if that doesn't work I will swim for it, even if it's ten feet down or way back underneath a dock. It is extremely rare that I have to break off on something, the only time I have to is if it's snagged in water over ten feet deep and I can't get it out with my plug knocker.

On the contrary, soft plastics are the baits that you have to buy the hooks, sinkers and the actual bait separately, which adds up quickly. Plus on an average day of fishing you might go threw at least a bag or two of plastics, while with hard baits you can use them forever.

A medium-lite, fast action mojo bass spinning rod in the 6'8-7' range paired with a pfluegar president xt will work nicely for a general finesse rod.

Must have posted mine just a few seconds before you and your computer took a second to register or something?

What's the water clarity like? I usually have a hard time catching them on jerkbaits if I don't have at least 2 feet of visibility. Also, make sure you give the bait slack immediately after both jerks, this allows the jerkbait to swing around and dart to the side. I usually like play around with a new jekrbait right next to the boat where I can see it, that way I can tell what motion I need to give it to get the right action out of it. My standard retrieve is two jerks and then a pause, and I vary the pause length starting at only a second or two and go up to around ten seconds, occasionally in very cold water they want something even longer than that but as a general rule that's as long a pause that the fish want (plus I'm not usually pacient enough to wait longer than that, using a thirty second pause between jerks could take over ten minutes per retrieve if you actually time it). And there are some days that they just don't want a jerkbait, for instance if they are hugging the bottom instead of suspended, a jerkbait might not be your best option.

Cabela's hand tied Bucktail jig.

Fished for about two hours and fourty-five minutes this afternoon. Water temperature is 46 degrees with about 3 feet of clarity where is was fishing by a dam at the lower end of the lake, and only a foot and a half at the upper end. Started out bass fishing, and stumbled across a few good white bass schools while throwing a blade bait for bass so I decided to switch over to targeting the white bass. They were schooled up close to the bottom in 15-30 feet of water, mostly in this one steep dropping pocket with scattered dying weeds on the shallower parts of it. The most effective technique was vertically fishing the blade bait, dropping it down to the bottom initially before lifting the rod just far enough and fast enough to feel one or two vibrations and then letting it drop back down to a tight line near the bottom. Ended with a total of about a half a dozen largemouth and 47 white bass, not what I was planning on catching but very fun nonetheless. The weather forecast shows the highs for next week being in the low 30's and 20's, hopefully it warms back up but if not it'll be iced up about Christmas time. At least I might be able to get out ice fishing this year instead of dealing with the 2-3 inches of weak ice we had last year that's to thick to plow threw with a canoe but is to weak to walk on.

The KVD jerkbait is very inexpensive (for a jerkbait) at about eight dollars, and had been a solid performer for me this fall although it is not as effective as the higher end baits. But my all time favorite cheap jerkbait is the smithswick suspending rogue, it retails for only seven dollars. Other good choices are the lightning pointer (it's labeled as slow-sinking but it's actually suspending) witch is a 7-8 foot diver with tight action, and the RCSTX knock-off of the vision 110. Before I picked up a pointer minnow, vision 110, and kvd jerkbait this fall the only two jerkbaits I used was a doctored suspending rogue, and the lightning pointer for deeper fish in cold water. Now if pick up the vision 110 the majority of the time followed by the pointer, and occasionally the kvd jerkbait or rogue. Bottom line with jerkbaits is that you get what you pay for, and I love my rogue's, but my vision 110 and pointers are generally much more effective than the cheaper baits.

And yet you still probably end up catching more total bass than me.

They are both great frogs, and both catch fish about equally as well. The difference is that the livetarget frog seems to last a little longer than the pad crasher, but the trade off is that the pad crasher has a slightly higher hooking percentage because it is softer. I personally prefer the pad crashers because I can get two of them for the same price as one livetarget frog, so the difference in durability is more than made up and they do have a slightly better hooking percentage than the livetarget's. BTW, try the popping pad crasher (in the cricket frog or dart frog patterns), it shows them something a little different than what they're used to which has made a huge difference for me.

Order from tackle warehouse before their 20 percent off everything sale ends tomorrow. Get some green pumpkin zinkerz's or zero's (they're the same thing sold by different companies) cut those in half and put them on 1/15 or 1/20 ounce finesse shroom-z mushroom head from z-man. Also try some 1/8 ounce inline spinners, they can be a killer river bait. The rebel crick hopper is a great bait for when they're feeding on crickets and grasshoppers that fall in the water, which is surprisingly often. The bitsy crank from strike king is great little crank for river small mouth to. And lastly although I havn't got a chance to try it out yet, I think z-man's new finesse tubez will be a killer river smallmouth bait when rigged on a 1/16 ounce mushroom head.