FCPhil

I use cotter pins from Home depot. If you drill a hole small enough that the pin is tight as it goes it, you can glue it with Gorilla Glue and it will stay put. As long as you get a good 1/2-3/4 inch into the wood it is going to take a lot more than a bass to pull it free. I use the second from the smallest size cotter pins.

Welcome to bass fishing. I highly recommend you get these lures: 1. Berkeley flat-dawg worm (awesome with a 4/0 Texposer hook) 2. Ima Skimmer ghost minnow 3. Booyah poppin’ pad crasher 4. Shallow jerkbait (KDS jerkbait on eBay). 5. KVD 1.5 silent squarebill.

I just wanted to post a few lures I made that have produced fish for me in the last few weeks. The tail on the green crankbait gives it very unique action I have found.

1. Ima Skimmer (with just the belly treble attached) 2. Whopper plopper 110

If it is a steadily retrieved bait (whopper plopper!) and you have sharp hooks the fish will set the hook on itself like a crankbait, all you got to do is sweep back on them like a crankbait. Try owner st-41 hooks, they are crazy sharp.

It’s the ultimate topwater...it just only lasts a few casts. Actually it just keeps the swim jig tails straight. They are sandwiched in between with the paddles sticking out. I keep a few few bags of soft plastics separately.

Is the lake pressured a lot? In my experience places that are pressured a lot have big bass that are hard to fool and need more inconsistent retrieves to get them to strike. Jerkbaits are good for this but just about all lures can be retrieves inconsistently (start and stop). The biggest fish I caught last season was on a whopper plopper (start and stop) and my PB was on a small glide bait (start and stop). Maybe look into the savage gear shine glide in the smaller size if your water is clear.

This is my lineup for 2018. I fish from the bank and all of this fits in a 3700 Plano case. The painted lures are ones I made myself. I had to customize the case a bit to fit it all. Questions? What is your arsenal?

x2 on the owner St-41. They are scary sharp. I forgot to set the drag on a crankbait once that had st-41s, the drag was barely engaged at all but still was able to set the hook and landed the fish, the bass just could not shake it.

I tried to get into bigger swimbaits in similar waters. I tried 6.5-7 inch lures around 2-3oz. All glidebaits. The fish are a bit smaller in my local ponds/lakes (3#-4# max). I caught a few but not much bigger than average and definitely didn’t catch as many as I could have been. This is year I going to downsize my hard body swimbaits to the 5 inch range.

Here is a cheap and easy option I have used on lots of lures I make. Buy 3/16-1inch cotter pins at a hardware store. Drill a hole sized so that it fits snug when slid in. Cut them to length and use a file to roughen up the shank. Glue it in with waterproof gorilla glue. It will be plenty strong for bass even with just a bit of the shank in the bait, never had one fail on me yet.

Ima Skimmer

How do you bend them to make them hunt?

I have seen crankbaits that have a “hunting action” where they dart out to the side occasionally during the retrieve. Are their any brands of bladed jigs (chatterbaits) that have the same hunting action rather than retrieve in a straight line?

I have never fished fluke style baits before and I’m thinking about trying them out. I’m looking for the smallest size fluke that can be cast reasonably well on a baitcaster when rigged weightless. I know a baitcaster is not ideal for weightless plastics but it’s all I got. Suggestions? (I use a Abu Garcia black max reel)

Love their jerkbaits. Good erratic action and casts well. I heard the paint comes off easily so I coated mine with nail polish clear coat and it has held up so far. One barely sinks and the other slightly rises but I fish mine pretty aggressively so it doesn't make much of a difference to me. I have one crankbait from them. I need to tune it because it runs left. The hooks they come with are light wire hooks so you need to keep your drag not too tight. They are crazy sharp though and I have not lost any fish on them.

I live in northern Colorado and I caught one on November 20th (3lbs) and one on the 26th (1lb-10oz). I haven’t been out much otherwise. The first was on a jerkbait in the deeper corner of a large pond with a fairly fast jerking retrieve. The second was in a small pond fishing a squarebill along the shore by the rip rap. Smaller, shallower ponds will make it harder for the fish to get out of reach.

1. Savage gear shine glide bluegill 4-1 2. Whopper plopper 110 bluegill 3-12 3. Strike king kvd 1.5 squrebill 3-9 4. Rebel Pop-r 3-4 5. KDS jerkbait holographic chartreuse 3-0

The bass swimbait swims great. The other swimbaits swim good, but not perfect. Others ones are really good in the water.

I just wanted to post some lures I made recently. The glide baits are 5.5, 5, and 7.5 inches long for some perspective.

I have a crankbait that runs to my left when I retrieve it. I can’t bend the eye very easily so I’m going to shave down the bill on one side to straighten it out. If it runs to the left when retrieved, which side of the bill should I shave off material?

I’m trying to decide on the color for a shallow Squarebill crankbait and a topwater walking bait. Neither have rattles. I want to use them in both clear and stained water. What colors should I pick? (The ponds I fish have bluegill, perch, some Shad and some trout.)

I have just started fishing a 6-inch Savage gear line thru swimbait. It is soft and I have the hook rigged on the bottom. It is the slow sinking model. When feel a bite should I set the hook right away or should I pause for a second like with soft plastic worm and then set the hook? Any advice?

I am just starting to get into jerkbait fishing. I have caught a few fish on them but they have all be shallow near shore and I saw the fish strike and then set the hook. When the jerkbait is out of sight I keep thinking that a bass could hit it and spit it without me ever knowing since the line is slack between jerks. Is this something I should be concerned about? When they do hit it will I feel it in time to set the hook?

Last night I posted that the WP produces better than other lures in my experience. This morning I caught my biggest fish of the year on a WP 110. One thing I think that is unique about the whopper plopper is that although it is loud, the noise it makes is more natural, it is all splash. Buzzbaits make a metallic squeal and many others have glass or metal rattles but the whopper plopper is all water. Just something I have noticed.