MassYak85

I think at some point too you've tried enough to know what you like and what works in your area so you can keep purchases to mostly restocks.

This. Between the layout, the sales getting worse and the low shipping costs. I used to do small impulse orders like twice a month. Now? I might order from them a few times a year.

Sounds good to me! Definitely give a blade bait or lipless a shot jigged off the bottom if you have one. Play around with how how you lift them. If they're active more aggresive rips can trigger bites, if not short hops where you just barely feel them vibrate before dropping them back down, combined with longer pauses.

Hit Webster today. It was tough and the pattern I was hoping to find never developed. The water temp was 50 but we couldn't find any bait balls that usually develop later in the fall. The only signs of life came near sparse weed bunches that were still alive, but even then we found ourselves basically finesse fishing for pickerel and perch. I got one bass on a jerkbait but it felt like sheer luck. Managed to castoff a vision 110 and broke off a beast coast jig 🥲

This is probably gonna be the first time in 7 or 8 years I don't do a large black Friday order through them. Their sales have been less and less impressive and dividing it up this way kind of ruins it altogether IMO. I know Covid hit them hard but this combined with their shipping increases has taken my ordering from like twice a month to a few times a year at best. It used to be if I wanted something for the upcoming weekend I could do a quick order and get it for what was it....5 bucks for two day? Not anymore. Now my cart sits as a wishlist and I have way more time to contemplate my purchase. I basically don't impulse buy anything anymore.

Sure bud, I'm sure that's it. For the record I use both.

I was wondering if today would be any better for anyone after my strikeout yesterday. Sorry to hear that. I'll get a couple more trips in before putting most stuff away for the winter Thanksgiving weekend. Won't call it quits until it's ice season though. I'm gonna stick with the big baits mostly until it gets really cold then I might try my hand at the float and fly. Got the stuff to do it last year but never got around to it.

Went out today...managed one dink. The lake I fished was 49-52 degrees and has a shallow north basin and a deeper south basin. Well the entire south basin looked like chocolate milk, and this is usually a very clear lake. So I'm guessing it had just turned over. Sucks but can't do good every time out. Couldn't even force a jerkbait bite in the northern part that seemed to be normal conditions. My lone fish came on a chatterbait off a windblown shore. Didn't even see fish besides that one. To not even have perch or pickerel tapping/following baits is just crazy.

I use the generic powepro. Generally I can go two years before it starts looking fuzy/frayed. On my most used setup I've done it after one year once or twice, but that was after like 50 or 60 trips that year using that reel every time out.

The weekend is looking very seasonal. Some wind on Friday I'm hoping that and the low overnight temps gets them into a good feeding mood. I'm gonna go out for a solo session.

d**n that's crazy, me and my dad got two 3s haha. It was pretty slow we went out on one of the rivers.

These last minute warm spells in the Fall usually spell some awful fishing in my experience, but I'm going to go out tomorrow and try anyways haha. Anyone else find the same thing?

It can be very hit or miss, if you're on them you can clean house, but the fish move around a lot and can get very focussed on certain bait. One lake I fish a lot has landlocked Alewives that school up and the fish can get very keyed in on them. If you find them it can be fish and fish cast after cast but if you're not on them it's a lot of empty water.

When the fall bite is on it can be crazy. Days when the wind is blowing and they're in that fall feed mode can be the best if the year. Fishing around the remaining green vegetation can be key, or windblown shores. Some of the best fishing can be had after everyone on the lake has already pulled their boats.

I have a spinnerbait tied on almost anytime the water isn't in the 30s or low 40s here in the Northeast. I fish double willow most of the time occasionally an indiana blade in murkier water or if there is a lot of bluegill but even then I find a silver/gold willow blade mixture with the right skirt color to mimick our forage (perch/bluegill/shiners) is usually the ticket. Retrieve can sometimes be key, I'm usually working it just fast enough to stay over the vegetation, with occasionall quick snaps of the rod or starting and stopping the reel handle key in triggering reaction bites. Sometimes killing it for multiple seconds they'll hit on the fall withba lift and fall retrieve. Then in colder water a slow roll on the bottom. Easily the most versatile bait I fish.

Nice catch! I've still somehow never landed a pike in MA. I've had several soft swimbaits bitten off by them on Quinsig though and saw a dead one on the shore that had to be pushing 40" once.

Got a late morning start in Central MA again, water temps finally dipping into the upper 50s. I grinded it out with the big baits and it paid off. I hooked into a 6-4 off a deep point on a Monka crawler, and followed it up with a skinny 3-13. The 6-4 ties my PB from a couple years ago on the same lake. I was so stoked haha, my heart was racing trying to net it.

Got out for a couple hours today in Central MA. Tough bite, only got one. Going to try again tomorrow.

I did okay but was a bit dissapointed as well. Managed 8 bass on spinnerbaits but the bite was definitely off. It was weird too cause the ones that did end up hitting were hitting like freight trains. It was very much a shallow reaction bite they didn't want to go after much else. And I only caught them in areas near startled baitfish in shallow vegetation. Didn't catch anything over 2.5lbs but man did I think I was gonna need the net on a few of those hooksets. Seems like every time I think it's definitely gonna be a good day I get thrown a curveball by nature haha. I can't complain with the 8 fish but I had visions of some heavy hitters when I launched haha. Took a few hours to get on the bite that I did. And the rain made for some unpleasant conditions. This rain has done a number on my reels, two of my workhorse reels crapped out on me so I had to do some rod swapping. One the AR bearing went, and the other had gotten a little too wet recently and the handle bearing fused to the handle with rust. Gonna need a new handle smh. But the thing that really took it out was the retainer clip for the spool bearing came loose and jammed itself between the drive gear and the pinion geat and seized it up.

I'll be getting out Friday. Hoping the leading edge of the front yields some good ones.

I haven't been able to put down the spinnerbait. It's just so consistent for me and I can cover so much water this time of year. That and a tailspin especially on lakes with alewives.

The bass we were catching were full of energy, the largies were fighting like smallies.

Fattest bass I've ever caught (not my PB but just the girth). I thought I finally had a 7lber on when I saw her come to the surface. I got out again today to kick off the fall. Had a pretty decent day, got most fish on spinnerbaits but there was soooo much bait in the water. As soon as we launched there were just clouds of what looked like tiny little shiners roaming above the shallow weedbeds. Managed to get a few but I think we could have capatilized more had we got there a bit earlier. Out in the main lake we got some off a weedy point that seemed to be chasing perch. My biggesy was just over 3lbs on a spinnerbait and had a huge perch in it's stomach. My dad got a slightly bigger one later on as well. It was a weird day, we saw dozens of dead perch floating around all over the lake, seemingly with no injuries, and they seemed to be the only affected species (yellow perch). Anyone ever seen something like that before? Oh and we gave back a bit to mother nature. There was a struggling pigeon in the water that seemed exhausted and couldn't fly so we returned it to shore. That's a first haha.

I'm heading out tomorrow. Got one of those Spro KGB glides I'm excited to try, and some more spinnerbaits. Going to see if we can find them in the outside grass lines chasing gills and perch around but if not I might have to get the jerkbait for the first time in a while.

Mostly ticking the top. The last couple days we did well on two deperate lakes finding the deeper beds in 8 to 10 feet and fishing them. Couldn't put much of a shallow bite together. The Monka has a tendency to slay 2lbers for me lol. They were all about the same size and it was hardly sporting dragging them in on a 7'9" swimbait rod lol. Such a fun bite with that bait though. And yea I bet you would do well with a popper. It was just one of those "fishy" feeling days and the fish agreed haha.