Brew City Bass

Either Daiwa or Shimano on the reel. I hope Daiwa, I'm a big fanboy.

I went with the Daiwa DXSB swimbait rod. 8ft and rated for 1-4oz lures. It really chucks em. Action is great on baits at 1-2 oz.

Thank's for the heads up. got 12 5XD's for $40 shipped as a non-member!

2 bass an hour seems like a good target. My averages are all over the place hour wise. Sometimes I get 5 bass in the first hour and nothing the other 7 hours, or sometimes it's 1 bass every two hours.

Lmao. I know that exact feeling of being fine to cut the line on that one lure.... For me it was a jointed swimbait I bought last winter. Used it this spring and I just hated the way it looked and fished. Finally got it lodged in a rock and said screw it and just cut the line. Didn't even want to see that lure again.

A 7lber for Illinois seems like a monster to me! Biggest I've ever caught here (Milwaukee) is a 5lber, but I've seen fish closer to 7. I'd scream like a school girl if I caught a 7. No real advice for the tourney, I'm just a fun-fisher. Any tournaments I have done were $20 three hour tourneys between 10-15 guys. Fun, but not really a money on the line type gig. I'd definitely think about drop-shotting that lake though!

Here's another question I'm sure is a hard one. Or easy lol. Do you expect a certain number of fish to catch while you're out? A good day for me is around 5-10 bass. I feel like that's decent some days, and other days I feel I should have caught way more and that I GRINDED for those 5 bass. I'm really trying to push myself this year to become way better than the last, and I feel I can only accomplish this if I don't dick around and just focus hard on fishing the 7-9 hours I'm out. It honestly is starting to burn me out, but I do see improvement from last year. Just not as much as I'd hoped.

Thank you for that great advice. The log book sounds like an amazing idea. Can't believe I never thought of that before! I mainly fish the same 3 lakes, with the odd balls here and there. I've been on these lakes for the past 4 years. Each year it seems like every lake is different. For example, last year Pine Lake was fairly weedy. They didn't chop the weeds at all for the most part and there seemed to be a lot more bass hanging around the 10-5fow mark. By the end of the year I had em pinned on where to get em. But this year they must have treated the lake or chopped a lot more weeds. They've moved a lot deeper to 10-20fow. I can find them on my graphs, I just can't establish a pattern. This lake has both smallies and LMB. I find I have better luck with the smallies even though they seem to move around a lot more. Another lake I frequent, Moose Lake, is a very deep, clear and weedy lake. I see fish at all depths, under docks, busting topwater or sitting on ledges leading to grass flats. Last week I was murdering them on cranks on the ledges. This week they want nothing to do with moving baits and I've only managed 2 off a dropshot. Couldn't get bit on anything else. This is a very small 80 acre lake so I can fish the whole lake in a matter of 4-5 hours, but I'm usually there 8-9 hours every time I go. I feel like I should absolutely have this lake pinned, but I just can't do it yet. Thanks everyone for the responses / advice. Tight lines, happy 4th of July.

I wish I was that confident. In the spring and during the spawn I feel pretty confident on finding them and what to throw. When it comes to summer and hot weather like now, I know they're deeper in my lakes, I just have a hard time knowing what to throw. I can find them and usually catch a few, but getting a good bag is difficult. Some days I kill em on cranks, other days nothing on cranks. Then I start junk fishing. Some days it's C-rigs, next day they won't touch that. I am always re-rigging.

I find with topwater baits the bass do one of two things. They either inhale it, or just swipe at it. If I go on a streak like you had of bad hookups, I start to assume they're just swiping at it and switch up my game plan. Bass are insanely accurate and don't usually miss often, and we aren't humanly fast enough to pull the lure out of a fishes mouth.

I have been pretty wishy washy with what I plan to throw before going out. I'll check the weather the night before and tie on whatever I think would be best on my 5 rods. Then I usually get to the lake and find myself retying everything before I even take a cast. I may just be in my own head. Do you guys have everything ready to cast before you hit the lake, or do you play it by ear?

Bass are opportunistic feeders. They will eat / attack just about anything that moves, and that looks alive. This is why there are lures that literally look like nothing but still get bit.

If you can't see what they're busting on, it's probably a mayfly hatch or some other bug. Is there baitfish in the pond? Is this pond pressured by a lot of people fishing it? One of the ponds I use to fish was so pressured the bass would never make the mistake of hitting any normal bait, especially topwater. Give a whopper plopper a try? Everyone seems to be loving those right now. Other than that, go texas rig with a craw plastic or worm. Maybe a lipless?

Exactly. I wasn't talking about catching 1lbers all day. That is easy. I'm talking NICE bass. Good luck going anywhere but the south and catching 4+ lbers without working your ass off.

Because bass fishing isn't about catching the biggest easiest fish in the lake. I started bass fishing because it's hard. I could just soak live / dead bait and catch bigger bass. I could do that for a multitude of even bigger fish in my state, but to me, that's fish in a barrel. Much like the same reason I don't hunt at a game farm in a treestand that's really a cabin overlooking a feed stand where the deer would come up and let you pet them. Just too d**n easy. Yes, I admit it's fun catching big easy fish. But hunting down bass on my graphs, studying lake contours and depth lines and then using my knowledge of what artificial bait to use and where at a specific time is half the fun of bass fishing. Catching the actual fish is the other half of the fun. Also, we get to play with some cool gear and lures because "We're bass anglers" None of this is to knock catfishing or any other fishing. I also fish musky because they're even harder and more elusive than bass, and same for pike that are 35"+. I'll look for the occasional walleye as well because they are pretty hard to catch in my local lakes, but some giants are out there. Bass Fishing - The journey is the destination.

This would be great if DSG stocked half of what I wanted to buy. I've yet to go in there and even see a reel I would consider. Also, do they even price match ebay? I've never had a store price match ebay. That rod probably only costed them $15-20 to be honest. I just returned a reel to cabelas, nothing wrong with it, just wasn't what I expected. No problems on the return. I just bought a cabelas rod when I was there doing the return as well. Hopefully I have no issues if it ever breaks. Sorry to hear they shafted you over some bull like that.

I know you said you know, but Gander came back as Gander Outdoors and I just went there last week. I like it better than what it was. It's less "camo everything up in your face" and more just regular store. The selection in the store I visited had some decent mid range rods with a little section of high end, which I was excited about because it was mostly brands I use (st. croix, Daiwa, G loomis). The reel section was pretty tick poor, but whatever, I get my reels way discounted on Ebay when they have coupon codes like yesterday. Got a Tatula HD for $90. The hardbaits and plastics were pretty decent, plenty of good brand hardbaits and plastics. Prices were cheaper than Cabelas or BPS by 50c - 1$ on a lot of stuff. That was cool. I just can't really justify spending cash at brick and mortar stores because everything is flatout cheaper online. I just really prefer buying rods instore because I can feel them before I pull the trigger on a $100+ rod. Getting harder and harder to find stores with any decent rods that aren't a St. Croix mojo or Veritas anymore.

The millionaire I have is black, classic utd. I was completely unaware if this has any brakes. I read the "instructions" and no mention of it at all. I've pretty much wiped my hands clean of this. I just said screw it and bought a Tatula HD and I will return this reel. Thank you for the reply.

I pretty much stopped going to the stores. They turned into the walmart of outdoors, pushing cheap brands and crappy selection. Hounded by people selling timeshares or vacations, and can't find a single employee who knew what the hell he was talking about. I can't go in there and hold a high end rod anymore, I can't get any of sizes or brands of plastics etc. If they have a sale, I'll maybe buy online, but usually I go to a mom and pop shop who has a smaller, but better selection to suit my needs. Tacklewarehouse is where I do the majority of shopping anyways.

This is exactly why almost every lake I fish has a no wake at night. It's slower, but I'd rather be alive than dead.

You're very right, every lake is way different.

I don't personally know of a way to do that without having one unless you were to ask someone who has fished the lake recently that has sonar. You could get a portable sonar like the Deeper, that may show the thermocline. If you're fishing from the shore, it's flat out gonna be hard to get deep unless you fish something like a quarry. Before I bought a boat all I did was bankfish and I had the same issue when it got hot as hell out. Fish moved deeper and out of range. When that happened, I'd take a senko, wacky rig it on a jig head and BOMB a cast way out deep and just pray it was where some fish were. I got hung up a lot, but it caught some fish here and there. I always had my best luck shore fishing at night. The bass came up shallower to feed.

Okay, so the thermocline is a line at the bottom of the lake where the oxygen basically is non-existent. Right now in my lakes, it's about 30ft. This is where the bass will usually hover around for me. They'll almost never be below it. When people say bass go "deep" they don't mean to the absolute bottom of the lake. Sometimes in shallow lakes that is true, but in lakes that are 50+ feet, they will hang close to wherever they feed. This means wherever that grass flat meets a drop off, they'll be hanging out on some piece of structure that's on the drop off. I like to fish steep declines and drop offs with cranks or jigs. You're really looking for a reaction strike here. If you find a school of fish deeper, a flutter spoon can really get them fired up. Otherwise, I like to knock crankbaits off whatever is down there to trigger a strike. Carolina rigs, heavy T rigs, cranks, heavy swimbaits will all work for deeper fish. It's all about finding them, and then casting at the angle that'd trigger a strike. Sometimes I'll fish a ledge or point for 30 minutes before one decides to strike.

I was lucky enough to catch the sale in the last hour myself. Ordered a Tatula HD for the swimbait rod. $94.00 out the door.

I recently decided to get my feet wet in the big swimbait world, so I ordered a Daiwa Millionwaire Classic and a Daiwa DXSB rod. The rod has been great, the reel not so much. I have it spooled up with 20lb mono and was tossing a 2oz huddleston. Every cast would get a backlash after about 50ft. I've been fishing baitcasters for years and have no issues with those, but this is my first round reel and this is aggravating. I've tried to tension knob dimed, or all the way loose and it doesn't seem to make a difference. I have no issues thumbing the spool, but I won't accept short casts for the sake of not backlashing. Is my line all wrong? I noticed when spooling the reel that the line went on kind of lopsided, will this affect backlashes? I really believe in this reel and doubt it's the issue, I'm sure I am doing something wrong. Any help is appreciated.