BassFishingMachine

Whats up.

In my opinion the scumfrog is good when the muck Isn't as thick. It tends to collect weeds due to the design of the head being cupped with a metal clip sticking out to which you tie the line. I prefer the original scumfrog for the real thick stuff, it just seems to have more of a weed proof body design, and therefore it catches alot less weeds than what I notice the popper does.

Im not a big fan of rattles myself, I will use them when the water is chocolate milk, or at night, but thats pretty much it.

Ok, here is what im talking about, lets say you have a lake/pond, the lake is pretty much round or oval, with a few coves etc here and there, but in some part of it, back, front, side etc, it becomes a type of "river" where the water gets alot skinnier side to side (30 feet?). Sometimes it branches off into 2 "rivers", not just simply 1. Now that I have the picture in your head, and im sure you guys fish lakes/ponds similiar to this, my question is when do the bass typically hang out in these back "rivers" of these lakes/ponds? Do they hang out in them constantly? Or only in certain times of the month? If so what time of the month? As the deepness of these back "rivers" lets say there 5feet deep being the deepest, in the middle. When do you fish these back rivers?

What is your most productive bait for sight fishing? I would have to say mine is a 5inch GYCB Kut-tail worm.

Nice, I never knew they schooled up alot of the times while in the grass, will have to look into that more. Thanks for the info!, always good to receive some more tactics to add to the arsenal .

Everyone I talk to, or atleast majority of the people, will frown on cover like this. They'll say to me "theres just so much weeds and muck I couldn't even fish it", or "theres too much crap on the water". I don't understand these people!! There are tons of ways to fish that stuff, and it truly is one of my favorite types of cover to fish. I can pull some quality fish out of that thick stuff. For anyone who looks at this muck and weeds as something to stay away from, read these tips and try and give fishing that cover another shot, I guarantee you'll probably start to love that slop just as much as I do. 1. Get yourself a medium or medium heavy 6'6 rod, and a hollow weedless frog, I recommend a Original Scumfrog, but a bronzeye will do. Cast out the frog directly on top of the thick stuff, and just twitch it along, let it stop every 3-5 secs, and give it a good 4-8sec pause. Then just keep twitchin it along and repeat. You catch quality fish like this, big bass love breaking through that slop for a frog, and the hit is just incredible to watch. When the fish hits, it is important to let him have a hold of it for a few secs (4-6secs), feel the fish, than set the hook, if you set the hook immediately, 95% of the time your going to lose the fish. 2. Try a jig, specificly with a cone style head, a "flipping jig" basiclly, designed to come through weeds. I don't trim the weedguard on jigs that I use for flipping the muck, but I guess what ever floats your boat. Rig the jig with a good chunk, I recommend a Paca Chunk, or Yum Chunk, and flip/pitch or cast it right into that thick muck, keep tension on the jig, and just feel it, alot of times the bass will just suck it up immediately when it hits the water or while its sitting there on the initial fall. Try working the jig along the bottom, and just kinda hop it or crawl it along, with constant pauses. Sometimes the muck is too heavy to work the jig back to yourself, if this is the case don't cancel out using the jig completely, just keep throwing it at key structure in the mids of that muck, like pads, sticks etc. I recommend a Terminator Pro's Top Secret jig, or a Booyah jig. This is another tactic that works great in that muck, and catches quality fish. 3. Some say they do this with a small bullet weight, but I prefer weightless. Weedless rig a creature bait, or ribbontail worm, which ever softbait you prefer, I prefer the creature, you can use a bullet weight or weightless, like I said I like it weightless. For the creature bait I recommend a Yum Wooly Hawgtail. Now cast the bait on top of the thick muck, and just kinda twitch it along with pauses like you would the hollow frog. They'll blow up on it like crazy, the advantage to using a soft plastic over a frog, is you can let it slowly fall into any open pockets you come upon while bringing it over the muck. But sometimes the fish seem to prefer the frog over this technique. But its definetly a tactic I use in the thick stuff. 4. Flipping/pitching/casting a soft plastic. You fish this pretty much exactly like you would #2, which is a jig. Peg a bullet weight onto a creature bait or a ribbon tail worm, I prefer the creature, I'd recommend Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver (perfect profile for slipping through weeds), Zoom baby brush hog, or Yamamoto Kreature. Now when you have it weedless rigged and pegged, cast, flip or pitch it out onto that thick slop. And fish it the exact same way as was #2. Just with long pauses, hops and crawls. Trust me, when a big bass sitting under that slop watches a nice juicy creature fall right through the top of that crap, hes going to suck it up, you can bet on that. 5. This technique I only use when the muck Isn't extremely thick, I use it when its scattered, such as a small patch of muck there, a small patch of muck there, little patch of pads there, basiclly water is covered 75% with muck, and there still open holes in alot of areas. The technique is a soft plastic frog. Weedless rig it with a appropriate size hook (most commonly 4/0 -5/0), cast it out there and bring it in with a steady retrieve. The feet should start kicking like crazy, the advantage to using this frog over a hollow frog is it mainly has more action than a hollow frog, although it doesn't come through the weeds as well as the hollow frog, so I'd stick with the hollow if the muck is just everywhere. But when you have a few open holes, enough to let that soft plastic frog kick its feet, you'll get some monster strikes steadily retrieving that frog along the top. I recommend a Stanley Ribbit, but you can use which ever soft plastic frog you like. When the fish hits, it is important to let him have a hold of it for a few secs (4-6secs), feel the fish, than set the hook, if you set the hook immediately, 95% of the time your going to lose the fish. And thats about all the tactics I use when I come across the thick stuff. I just thought I'd share them with you all, alot of you probably know them already or use them yourselfs, but you don't know how many people I come across who look at the muck as unfishable, or just not worth the time. Trust me, you catch some monsters out of that thick crap, its the perfect cover, and the perfect shade. It is definetly worth the time to fish. If your one of the people who dislikes the muck, seriously, try these tactics and you'll soon see that muck is your best friend . You can also use these same tactics on areas of thick lillypads.

Ultralite? Your not talking about a little 5,5" trout set up are you? How the heck did you set the hook on that fish with that setup?!

Hey all, I finally caught a new pb. Had a friend of mine come and weigh it for me, he also took a few pics on the digital camera which he is going to send to me sometime soon. Anyway, the fish weighed 5lb 5oz, and we didn't have a tape measurer, but we estimated it about 19-20inches. Not anything real long, but sure was fat, I'll show you the pics once I get them. Had a gut hangin off it and all, was beautiful . Caught her in a stick pile about 4 feet off the bank. She took a 5/16 Booyah Baby Boo in black/blue with a Black/blue Senior Paca Chunk as trailer. I truly thought she was going to wrap around all the branches in the sunken tree, and just manage to break free, leaving me with just another fish story.. , but no! I managed to tire her out while she fought me within the sticks, and than slowly pulled her over one of the branches and to my hand to be lipped ;D. Beautiful fish, I always heard people saying "I could fit my whole fist down the mouth" and I was never able to experience that, until today, my fist could just manage to fit into her mouth. Like I said I'll post the pics once I get them, man I love the jig, let me tell you, if you don't know how to fish the jig, learn it, its a bait that truly catches quality fish. And oh yeah, I also caught 3 other bass about 12-13inches a peice, and lost a couple hits here and there. I also loss the jig at the end of the day on a large log >, but what ever.. my new pb will keep me happy for a long time.. 8-)

Yeah I say carp or cat, I had a few fish fight me like this, 2 were on a inline spinner while going for trout, one of which was in about 1 1/2 foot of water where carp are rarely ever seen in this river I was fishing. Don't know what it was, but it sure did fight. Had a few saltwater fish do this to me too... never got to see them eitha.. :'(. But you got to think positive, remember.. these are the events they keep you fishing 8-).

No one knows? :-/.

20 bucks tops on any bait other than swimbaits. The most I'll spend on swimbaits I'd say is 30$.

Yeah, I love those rage tail chunks. Amazing chunk, you can work it along the bottom very slowly and get alot of hits, and then when you want to bring it back in and re-cast, just slowly swim it back in, and the action it produces is incredible. I also get a bunch of hits on the slow retrieve when im about to re-cast.

Original Scum Frog.. trust me..

Wow... those sunfish patterns look soo beautiful , if only I could afford them .

Well I went out today, and caught about 6 bass on a jig, 2 decent fish about 3-3 1/2lbs each. Ok now heres comes the bad news, and I know you guys are probably gonna yell at me for this, but hey.. we all make mistakes.. My friend called me and was going to come right when I hooked my 3lber, so I wanted to show it to him, I took about 2-3feet of line off of my reel (cause I didnt have a stringer with me), and tied it thru his gill plate and made a regular knot (3 times). I then tied the otha end to a stick, and as I was tying it to the stick he managed to break free, and swim away with the 2-3foot of line. The line was about 10lb test flurocarbon, and it was tied to his gill plate, not hitting the actual gills, just around the plate. What I wanted to know is do you think this fish will live? I hope so.. I hope to catch him sometime soon, and be able to cut it off of him. What do you think the chances of him living are? Please say high.. I'd hate to know I killed a decent fish :'(.

Don't like them. Bought them for sunfish, to use on a small jighead, specificly the jighead that comes with trout magnets. Anyway, the cheap plastic trout magnet grub worked better than the food source grub, so I don't think I'll be buying these again. If your targeting bass I especially wouldn't buy these things, your much better off with a GYCB, Yum, Berkley Powerbait, Zoom product, then any food source bait if your after bass in my opinion. I just generally wouldn't these baits for anything, they just don't seem quality to me, but who knows, maybe someone does good with them :-?.

Lol, is what I have to say about that .

Yes, the Power Minnow is a jerkbait style soft bait. http://www.todopescatienda.com/images/berkley%20power%20minnow%20perrigged%20bs%208%20cm..jpg. I don't use it with a jig head, I just fish it like I would a superfluke, weightless/weedless.

Megastrike for my soft plastics. Yum Crawfish Spray for my jigs.

Hey I just started using this lure around my area, and it works great. Every other lipless crankbait I throw dives down too deep and collects weeds etc in the 1-3 foot water I fish. What I was wondering is, is there any other lipless crank lure that acts just like the Lv-0? Meaning a lipless crankbait that stays shallow, and doesn't hit the bottom in 1-2 feet of water? This lure works amazing for me, just wanted to know if there was something else very similiar to it. Also a fat crankbait that does this too, would be cool. This is the only lipless crank lure I have found that I can cast out in my local ponds, and come up weedless 95% of the time in 1-2 foot of water.

In my personal opinion I'd change the line to a little heavier/thicker line. And after a pickerel catch/hit check the line for any damage what so ever. I lose alot of softbaits/hooks to picks, especially the 5inch superflukes with size 4/0 gamakatsu's... can get expensive :-/. I don't think I'll ever use a steel leader only because I hate to lower my chances of hooking up with a bass, as I believe a steel leader would lessin the action and be a bit visible. But I guess if you really need to it should be used. I don't know I try my best to put up with it and check my line regularly when around them. And even though I believe you already stated, fast hooks sets are key.

Hey, I have a friend who is just getting into fishing. Hes looking to buy a cheap rod/reel combo for 30-35bucks, any suggestions? He will primarily use it for trout season/bass. Links would be appreciated. Thanks.

I personally only like the Megastrike out of the 3. The rest I wouldn't say are anything special. But the megastrike is a scent that is easy to apply, lasts long, and works great.

I voted for jigs, jigs are very versatile and I think its a good idea to master them. They also produce alot of quality fish. A few Jigs I'd recommend are Booyah Jigs, Terminator Jigs, and if you want to go with cheap jigs that still catch fish, then strike king.