Afishionado

Dayum! That's a legit toad

Found some time to get out this morning.. Hit the stick marsh and had the yak in and paddling at grey dawn... First cast with the horny toad was a hookup! They really come out of their skin for that thing they were airborne all day trying to eat it... Had a bass boat come in on me around 8 this morning.. Two guys fishing live shiners with floats and in the 45 minutes they were on top of me the horny toad outfished their shiners 11 to 2.. Lost count of how many I caught, at least 40 fish, most were dinks in the 1lb range.. The biggest was probably not even 4lbs.. I'm good at catching the young stupid ones apparantly... I cut out early because the gators were out in force and they were being really territorial (mating and nesting season).. I was cutting through a canal about 20 feet wide and had a 10 footer come off the bank and nearly get in my kayak with me.. I took that as a sign to call it a day haha.. Couple quick questions.. If I am in an area where I am only catching small ones, is that likely all that is there or do the big ones mix in with the dinks? ALSO... For some reason, my horny toad ran upside down unless I retrieved it super slow.. Rigged weightless with a 4/0 owner EWG .. anyone else have this problem? Didn't seem to mess with the hookup ratio though.. Toward the end I rigged it on a keel weighted swimbait hook and it kept it right side up, but the retrieve speed in order to get it to plane out was too fast..

Figured I would share this... I hooked this fish on a blind cast on my FIRST cast of the morning... Furthermore, it was the first cast I had ever made with these MrWiffelures (an old school bass lure) that I had won in an online tournament.. Needless to say I was an instant believer in these softies after this... Yes, that took place during a january and YES that water was freezing haha.. I had my ultralight setup with 6lb braid becuse it's ususally smaller 20-24" inch fish in this area so I like to make it sporty by going super light.. The last thing we expected was a 48" beast sitting in less than two feet of water.. We didn't even have the cameras on or anything at that point.. just whipped it out there, closed the bail, bounced it twice and it was game on.. The fight was nearly an hour and probably the most memorable redfish battle I have ever been involved in.. My biggest red on artificial to date..

Awesome topic here, lots of good insight... I know that in the salt, when you have a big moon the fish feed hard at night (considering the water temperature is high enough, over the winter they will feed in deeper more insulated water, or just go into a holding pattern).. On those full moon days we wait to go out to fish until about 11am because a solid pattern I have found is that the fish feed hard at night, you get a very short lived bite at daybreak and then they are laid up until about 11am I am assuming letting that belly full of food digest.. full moon fish at 8am here pretty much need a court order to eat... is it the same with bass in that there is a early morning gap where they don't eat? Sounds like they just eat whenever the mood strikes them from what I can gather here..

South florida is snook heavy so that will be your most likely target.. If you are fishing from shore try to find an inlet.. You won't have to make great long casts for snook because at inlets and jetties they hang close to the rock line and are often right at your feet.. Cast parallell to the rock edges with lipped plugs.. Its almost like bass fishing, you wanna feel that plug bouncing off the rocks.. Plus most canals down there hold peacock bass..

Stud! Nice work man!

that's whatsup right there!

I won't lie I didn't read 5 pages of comments haha so hopefully this hasn't been said yet Weighing yourself down with too many choices and options is a big mistake in my opinion.. Pick a few lures that cover a range of characteristics and depths and become proficient with them.. The biggest key is building confidence in the choices of lure you throw and you will subconciously fish it better, guaranteed.. For the normal type of fishing I do (redfish) I use a 4" curly tail shad and only bring 4 colors.. White, Natural silver, Brown/gold glitter and chartruese.. This gives me a loud color for stained water, a natural color for clean water, and a darker color for dark water, and a white which seems to work in just about every water condition.. and being new to bass fishing, I only bring a couple certain types of baits out each time so I am not constantly switching.. Just working with one lure for a long period of time with different techniques to see what brings the bite and why.. Having 20+ different styles and colors colors of something is kind of an example of the fisherman being caught by the lure companies.. In reality you only need a small handful of tackle and a few situational colors to be successful..

Craziest thing I ever caught that wasn't a fish was a 6-7 foot gator on a 4" shad on a jighead.. Don't know if he ate it or I snagged him but it happened subsurface and I thought I had the biggest snook known to man.. Had my kayak flying through this little backwater, my hands were shaking.. Then it surfaced and all of a sudden I was like ehhhhh I don't need that lure.. palmed the spool and popped him off.. Not that dream 40lb snook but it had my adrenaline pumping just the same for about a minute..

So is it okay to hold a bass by the jaw? I know with big saltwater fish like snook holding them from the jaw bass style is a 75% mortality rate.. Is it okay for bass because they weigh less? I have always wondered.. It seems widely accepted so I couldn't imagine it's too bad for them

that's a fatty tight work man

Louisiana has some big ol pond donkeys too.. and they are as dumb as a bag of hammers.. You can bonk them in the head with a lure 5 feet from the boat and they will still destroy it.. Nothing like that over here.. our reds are so pressured it's like fishing for 30lb bonefish.. they can hear a mouse peeing on cotton

You're not kidding about the sensitive bites man.. I was using a cheapo 30 dollar berkley amp rod a few days ago.. wasn't getting any hits .. I picked up my falcon bucoo micro and stared throwing a worm with it and felt these tiny little ticks.. took me a few to figure out those were fish.. So who knows how many bites I was completely missing with the other rod.. I am used to redfish who about knock the rod out of your hand when they hit the lure, and I expected the bass bite to be the same but it is such a super subtle little tick.. Now I understand why a sensitive blank is so important in bass fishing

Chesapeke bay has the biggest redfish in the world!

Any salty dogs in the house? Post up some pics if ya got em! My biggest redfish to date at 50.5" ... Sadly I was on a solo mission and this was the only picture I got of it.. 40" Black Drum I sightfished with a plastic shrimp on super light tackle.. that thing fought me tooth and nail My boy is a junior slayer! We get em at night too! And in the ocean! Saltwater definitely runs through my veins but man I have been a hell of a time learning how to bass fish lately.. it's a great change of pace..

that is indeed a seriously epic tune

Here's another killer one shot by yours truly.. best concert I have ever been to hands down..

Hell yeah, awesome to see I'm not the only metalhead here haha.. Hard choice but I would have to go with JMANN from mushroomhead.. seriously underestimated vocalist along with co-vocalist Jeffrey Nothing's haunting harmonics..

I did a google search on the subject and this was the number one result haha.. I couldnt find it in the forum search! This thread is great, lots of good insight..

Right on yall, I appreciate the insight! Just gonna stick with the EWGs for now, and if the bite is really good I'll start playing with the other hooks just to see... thanks!

I'm not sure about whether these regular offset worm hooks will work for these baits.. It looks like they don't have enough bend to slide down but it really looks nice and streamlined and hides the shank well.. And I would figure that when you do get a hookup on them that you get a nice pinch on the lip between the plastic and the hook .. I know from extensive snook fishing (very similar mouth to a bass) whenever I could get that plastic to pin the hook the the lip tightly they couldnt't throw that hook for anything if that makes sense.. Or should I just go with the EWG's? I'm thinking the worm may be a bit too big for the regular offset worm hooks but the fluke has a hook pocket and should slide down enough..

Ohhh I gotcha.. I thought those were called flippin hooks... man I have a lot to learn bahaha.. I guess my question is what is the difference between the two hooks pictured and why would you use one over the other?

Awesome on those pros and cons that explained a lot for me .. I have been able to snell both styles just fine.. I use the owner 4/0 cutting point EWG worm hooks for my wide gap selection... Just to be certain, that red hook on the bottom is considered straight shank right? Thanks!

The lagoons are currently fouled with a huge brown tide outbreak which is a form of algae that turns the water a sewage brown color.. It is brought on by huge nutrient loads entering the lagoon from stormwater runoff, fertilizer, leaky septic and sewer, ect.. The last time we had this bloom when it cleared up, we lost 43,000 square acres of vital seagrass habitat.. So far this one has came on much earlier and much stronger (it is more common in the dead of summer which scares me because our water is not even hot yet).. When the algae reaches a high enough concentration it begins to deplete the water of dissolved oxygen, and the fish slowly suffocate.. This is by far the worst fish kill I have ever seen here hands down.. And now the problem becomes we have close to a million fish bodies now decomposing in the lagoon.. This will cause a huge spike in nitrogen which will fuel the algae and start the cycle all over again.. bad bad news.. gonna be low sodium for this guy for quite a while by the looks of it!

I have used trigger x numerous times in the salt with virtually no success (two redfish total).. even putting it right on the nose of sighted up redfish it got rejected the vast majority of the time.. You don't hear a whole lot of hubbub about trigger x and there is probably a good reason for that.. but at that price I would say buy one bag and if you have success with them, go back and stock up..