MassYak85

Float and fly is something I wanna try this year. My cold water confidence isn't very high and I've seen people do well with them.

It depends where your frustration is coming from. Nicer gear is a nicer experience to fish, you'll have less issues, and can focus more on actually fishing than gear failures. That said, nicer gear doesn't mean successful fishing. What it does do is give you less excuses. What do you do when you go 8 hours without a backlash, without a lost lure, without a knot failure.....without a fish? Nothing you can do but evaluate what you didn't do right or what detail you missed.

That would mean a new rod haha. Not this time bait monkey.

Yea I got 20lb copoly on my Tatula 200 on a 795 rod. For those 4+ ounce baits I bit the bullet and got a Tranx 300 witrh 25lb copoly and threw it on an 867. I gotta be honest I think I prefer the Tranx after fishing both but they each have their strengths I think. Tranx I feel is smoother reeling but I like the magforce brakes better on the Tatula.

Nice they have a low profile for those bigger baits now. I have a Tat 200 for like 1 to 3 ounce baits but feel it wouldn't be adequate for much bigger.

I tied my PB (again smh) last October slow waking a slammer over some remaining weed flats. Not a pleasant day it was like 50 raining and windy.

Yea that's crazy I've been seeing low to mid 60's in central MA

Yea I was joking haha, but are most of those rods designed around much bigger round reels or could they accommodate a 400 tranx or something? And would the action of the rod be appropriate for much smaller game fish than Tuna? Would a 10lb bass even load up the rod? That said if Gary put out a step above the 908 I'm sure there'd be some legit interest. I know some guys were getting dedicated custom rods built for the mother chaser. I mean they're already spending 800 on a lure what's another 500 for a rod haha.

Consistency wise I gotta give it to.... 10 powerboat worm Jackal DoooN spinnerbait Psycho Gill swimbait

Dobyns needs to put out like a 1010 rod for that thing ?

I usually leave the stock hooks to start unless they're obviously garbage or I'm looking for a different size or style. But the second I bend one I replace them with quality hooks, either Owner or Gammy usually.

So question...when you find the perch, are you trying to imitate them with your presentations? Like today I found some perch in a weed bed near deep water, but the bass didn't seem to be interested in perch presentations (cranks, spinnerbait, drop shot in perch colors). I did manage to put a decent pattern together in an even shallower area on the other side of the lake with spinnerbaits but I wasn't really seeing any baitfish activity. I assumed they must be targeting bluegill in those areas.

I'm counting the days man this transition period has been kicking my butt. All of september has been frustrating trying to get anything going.

This has been the only consistent thing for me is downsizing to match these schools of baitfish. But it almost always means I'm catching smaller bass when I do so. How do you upside your bite? When I go to bigger baits like a 5 inch keitech on a bigger underspin it seems like they don't wanna commit. Are the bigger fish usually in those same areas just not as aggressive?

Spinnerbaits are my go to search lure. And usually the lure I grind out tough days on. Want to slow roll it in 15ft of water on a drop-off? Boom covered. Want to fish docks? Weed lines? Lilly pads? Lay downs? Rocky points? Boulders? It gives a jig or t-rig a run for it's money for that "all terrain vehicle of bass fishing" title. The only time I wont use one is the coldest months of the year when I really want to slow down. Nah then you just get into that "hey if they're eating an underpin I'll bet they'll hit a finesse spinnerbait" mentality lol.

I'm also faced with a duality where most of the lakes I fish are pretty small compared to the rest of the country. It's easy to feel like you've covered almost the entire lake in a single outing, which is nice cause you can feel confident that the fish must have been somewhere you were, but you just missed on a detail. But at the same time it drives me nuts looking for that little detail, and I never want to accept that the detail night have just been "right place wrong time" but I feel like sometimes that's just the way it goes. I often find myself in a pattern of starting shallow, having little luck and moving deep and then when I can't put anything together deep I move back shallow to grind it out with confidence baits. Which usually produces something, but rarely do I ever feel like I was really on them that way. Maybe I gotta grind it out deep on those days but it's definitely my area of weakness. And I feel like whenever I do find them deep with finesse stuff it's small fish, I feel like i can never find quality bites when i go that route.

That's pretty much been where I'm at. Started with a buzzbait or moving topwater with no luck, then had some very half hearted strikes on spinnerbaits but couldn't find a "bite" really. My only consistently has been small profile baits on deeper drops with like a 3" easy shiner of tailspinner but even then it's been all small fish. My instinct says to continue starting shallow, and then moving out deeper but I keep feeling like every time I spend the whole day "falling back" to deeper or more finesse and never really find them you know?

So September here in the Northeast welcomed a pretty drastic shift from 85 degree weekends to suddenly waking up to 30's and 40's in the mornings. The cooler night temps have dropped water temps about 10 degrees in many places, even more in shallower bodies of water. The cold fronts have put a cap on recreation boating for most people (finally lol), but have made for some tough days of fishing for me and I know I'm not alone. We're about to have a pretty warm stretch again going through this weekend. How do you deal with these summer "restarts" that make it feel like the middle of August and make you forget October is right around the corner? I've always struggled this time of year, maybe I'm just trying to force that Fall bite too early. During the transition period how does your fishing change between cold fronts and shifts back to warmer weather? Is it just a matter of continuing to check to see if the fish are pushing up shallow yet and then falling back if that fails or do you employ a different strategy?

Lure I gotta go spinnerbait, it can come through virtually anything. Worm I gotta go with a green pumpkin or watermelon senko, or during the warmer months a 10" ribbon tail power worm.

I fished Pflueger Presidents for probably 10 years and got a BG a couple years back. I still keep a president as a backup reel cause they're pretty hardy especially for the price, but man the BG feels like a mini tank and it's really smooth.

Usually I tie a 6 ft leader. Most of the time it gets too short from retying and I'll tie a new one once it gets shorter than 3 ft. But at the same time if a fish drags me along a piece of cover like a rock or dock piling I might only get to use that leader for one fish if it gets shredded. Also just take a peak at your leader knot throughout the day to make sure it still looks okay.

I love those too, I'm using a Champion 744 atm for football jigs. I use braid to leader (usually 40lb braid to 10lb leader for those jigs) but i back my drag off a bit more than usual when fishing them.

This is the correct answer

The only "hype" bait that absolutely sold me head over heels was the whopper plopper when it really blew up a while back. Without exaggeration I probably fished with it exclusively over 50% of the time one summer. I couldn't put it down cause it just kept working, and worked and worked and worked no matter the conditions. Was it the best bait to be using all the time, probably not but I knew eventually I'd get a bite and the hits were (and still are) explosive. I don't use it as much anymore but it's remained a staple for me. The swimbait world is probably the worst offender for hype baits. Not that there aren't some amazing baits out there but when you have such limited quantities available, instagram videos of people smashing huge fish on them, and the "afraid to lose it, I gotta have a back-up (or 5)" factor you get crazy demand for some of these baits.

Hey guys I'm gonna be meeting a couple friends in Mashpee this weekend and it sounds like they might wanna do a little shore fishing (freshwater). I'm not familiar with the cape at all really, any recommendations for ponds to check out with decent shore access near there?