MassYak85

@DogBone_384 I can't wait for fall to really get going I fished the Merrimack from shore between classes today. Got one smallmouth on a paddle tail. Probably about a pound.

I use 2/0 straight shank Gammakatsu's for lighter worms.

Same, I have two that I actually use. Both Cavitrons, one is just a backup.

Haha, mine comes tuesday. I still don't know what I'm going to do with it. I might replace another reel with it if I like it enough.

You will run into three major problems. The first, the hooksets required to drive those heavy frog hooks home when your frog gets sucked under thick pads or vegetation is going to be plenty to snap 15lb braid. The second, the same hookset is going to cause that braid to dig deep into your spool and make the next cast a nightmare. The third is if you do hook a fish and your line doesn't break, if it wraps you up in cover you have almost no chance of getting it out. I'd say 40lb minimum.

I'm usually an open book personally unless I know you're gonna eat the fish, but I understand other people not wanting to give up the secrets to their success for that day and I respect that. The only one that annoys me is people not wanting to say how they did or what they caught. I don't see how telling someone what you caught could possibly in any way give that person an advantage unless they were watching you all day, observing your technique and lure selection, in which case they already know how you did and telling them otherwise just makes you look like a pathological liar.

Fished Quinsig today. It was pretty slow. Only caught 3-4 bass. All under 2 lbs. Water temps were still in the upper 60's. The highlight of the day came when fishing a large weed flat that's about 6-8 feet deep and has a little channel running through part of it that gets down to 9-10 feet. I make a cast across the deeper channel and slowly reel back. When I get to the edge of the channel...*tick*, the stretch in the line gets taken up and I swing hard. The tip loads up and before I can even feel the full weight of the fish, SNAP. The real kicker. I was using an 8" Weedless Rising Son (photo below), and 25lb line. The only way I can explain it is I either ran across a trophy pickerel or one of Quinsig's elusive pike. The line was cut pretty cleanly and I have been pretty anal about retying my swimbaits so far. Sigh.

I generally use spinnerbaits when they are feeding aggresively on baitfish in water where they will easily see the flash it's putting off. Chatterbaits are more of a chuck and wind tool for me, generally in water that is a little muddier.

With braid this should be a non-issue. The stretch in braid is negligible. If you were using fluoro or mono then depth itself, at least the depths you are talking about, should have minimal impact as the distance of your cast is going to play a much larger role in how much line you have out, which ultimately is what determines the "cushion" or how much stretch you are getting when you set the hook. Also the line you are using is a little light for the "cross their eyes" style hooksets so moving to the sweeping like you said you are doing was probably a good move at any depth.

It might work for a little but tying braid to a loop like that will kink, and consequently weaken and cut straight through the fluoro and most likely fail easily after some use. For simplicity the double uni is pretty easy I would stick with that if you don't want to tie the alberto, FG or any of the others.

That is extremely tempting and the kind of thing that makes me regret looking at this thread.... .....aaaaaand I bought one. Thanks...I think.

Me trying to do an underhand roll cast and accidentally hitting the lure against the surface of the water, causing the worst backlash of my life, and subsequently ruining an entire spool of sunline sniper.

x2 The weave itself I can do in 20 seconds by just holding the line in my mouth. It's the finishing half hitches I agonize over.

War Eagle is basically what I've settled on. A few Revenge as well. Strangely enough though I did not like the war eagle buzzbaits. I thought I could keep things simple and stick with one brand for both but I'll have to stick with Cavitrons for that.

If I had my choice I would have two: The Dirty Jigs No-jack Swim Jig for fishing around wood and the Lethal Weapon IV Swim Jig for fishing vegetation. ....unfortunately I can't fish either of these any more since I'm trying to stay as legal as I can when it comes to the Massachusetts lead law so I've been using the Eco Pro Tungsten Sick Boy Swim Jigs. I actually really like these. They aren't perfect for much but they're pretty versatile and I've been happy. The weedgaurd is stout enough I can fish it around and through wood without getting snagged. The hook is stout enough I don't worry about bending it, and it stays fairly clear of weeds. The wire trailer keeper is also nice to have. And their bluegill and crappie colors are spot on, which is really all I use.

Fished webster today. It started off great. We launched at sunrise and we quickly got about 6 bass all around 2lbs give or take. I saw a bunch of bait balls in that cove so I was burning a spinnerbait over the weeds and it did the trick. After the sun came up over the trees and we stopped getting bit in that cove we moved all over the place and just couldn't get any consistent action going. A few real dinks here and there. The boat traffic was worse than I had ever seen it. There must have been well over 50 boats out and the high winds added with the boat waves made it really choppy. We fished until 3 trying to get something going but it didn't happen.

Lol so I guess the one I stopped at wasn't the only one. I wonder why they are doing that. It's not like Rage products are unpopular and wouldn't sell normally. The ones I bought even had their own display box and were still discounted 65%.

I "had to" place an order too. The 10% donation is nice of them and I was glad to see it. I mainly needed to restock on some paddle tails for trailers and some owner safety caps, but grabbed a couple other things to try. ...The Bait Monkey also just introduced me to spybaiting to get my order over 50 bucks

Definitely generalist. There are certain techniques you can be successful with year around all around the country. Jigs would be one of them. But if you want to fish a frog in winter when the fish are on a 50 foot piece of structure, or throw 12" glide baits when the fish are feeding on 2" minnows. You are probably going to hurt yourself vs reading the conditions and adapting.

Stopped by a Walmart out in Iowa while visiting familly...good call They had Rage Tail Structure Bugs for 2 bucks a pack. I grabbed 4....and then the bait monkey tapped me on the shoulder and told me to buy 9....they only had 9.

I'm not familiar with the Quabbin rules. But do they allow boats on with larger engines if the prop is removed? If that was the case you could get a kicker engine and have it pull double duty that way I guess.

Decided to hit Whitehall instead of A1 today. Fished from 11 - 3 and only got 2 small bass and a few dink pickerel. The water was clearer than I think I've ever seen it. Had to have been a good 8-10ft of visibility. The weeds seemed like they were just starting to die back. There were a lot of brown patches but still plenty of bright green remaining. I don't know what part of me keeps thinking the next time I go to that lake will be the time I slay them but it never happens lol. It is one of the more beautiful lakes to be on in the area though so it's still nice to just paddle around and it was an amazing day to be on the water. Also, do any of you guys keep a log? This is the first year I have done one and so far I've logged every trip. I've done time fished, air temp, water temp, barometric pressure, moon phase, wind speed/direction, environmental changes, general observations of bass behavior, and the fish caught and on what. I'm not sure how much it will help but it is interesting when you see theoretical things line up with actual good fishing. Like yesterday there was a huge barometric pressure drop and I had a really good day all things considered.

I'm usually using them on the back of a swimjig, and the bigger ones usually just engulf the whole thing. But the little 8-12" ones that can't eat the swimjig just nip at the tail.

This Unless it's a giant actually worth catching I stop fighting them once I realize what it is and hope they throw the hook (which they do about half the time). Unfortunately they love Keitech's more than the bass sometimes and it gets really annoying when you go through 10 dollars of trailers in a day of catching the non-target species.

I love them too but so do the pickerel. The little ones will grab the tail and when I set the hook and wiff I know I'm about to reel in a useless trailer. I can usually squeeze about 5-8 fish out of one if it's just bass biting by biting a section off combined with turning it upside down, which is not bad IMO. But if the pickerel are munching I'll go through a pack or more in a day easy.