Brew City Bass

I'd lie if I said I was any different 10 years ago when I was 13. I had no clue about fish care, how to set the hook quick, all that hoopla. I definitely killed my fair share of fish. But, I'm not concerned. There's a very healthy population of bass, even a flock of young fishermen couldn't make a dent in it's population from gut hooks or mishandling. It hurts us to see, and we should help when we can, but this is the learning curve a lot of people go through. I use to hunt avidly. I stopped when I turned 18. I realized there's beef at Walmart and I don't need to be killing anything that I don't absolutely need to eat. I felt terrible about my past kills and regret hunting for sport. I felt like a murderer. Now I don't expect anyone else to feel this way, but I'm just saying how much I care about our game and fish. I've personally got a gripe with the older folks up here who seem to keep every fish they catch, legal or not. I've witnessed many times these geezers sitting on the launch (illegal) with a bucket full of undersized pike, bass, muskie, you name it, they've caught it and kept it. They're there every other day taking limits of small or illegal fish. Those people are doing more harm than a few kids gut hooking bass.

Excellent! Straight braid for you!

Yeah, we'd prefer if he stayed up north though...

Good chance they're just popping it. Last year I had a phenom I posted about. Bass were nailing my frog, popping it 2-6ft in the air. They were very obviously not feeding, just very upset my frog was in their waters.

What's your water clarity? If you're like me fishing lakes with 20ft+ visibility, I'd just go fluoro. If you're fishing stained lakes, might as well go straight braid. I love the feel of braid. I adore it's strength and it's cast-ability. Like I said though, I fish super clear lakes, so I compromised and ended up going braid to 5ft fluoro leader. I've yet to have a knot break or let loose on my leader. If I feel the knot wasn't the best, I just re-tie til I'm confident.

Salted sinks, un-salted floats, like you said. The floating worm is great on shaky heads, or worm jig heads. It keeps the nose down and the butt-end floating. Really gets the fish triggered. I've never personally used salted, I always liked the floating trick worms.

My pride says I'd clean house and shake all their hands for the donation money. In reality, those guys would probably still smoke us with their period correct equipment.

Acquired or partners?

My dad is a retired Milwaukee Firefighter, he's lost a lot of his hearing from that job. He got $10,000 hearing aids and absolutely hates them. He only really wears them if he needs to.

You do whatever makes you feel safe, and I don't say that sarcastically. It sounds like you have treacherous wide waters. Use floods! I doubt you'll be disturbing and homeowners or such.

Because I fish lakes that have nothing floating in them and rarely have other boats on the water. Worst I could do is hit a dock, but I'm not driving more than a few mph and I'm not blind as a bat. I only drive with the lights that make me legal. Anything more on my lakes are obnoxious and would have homeowners at my throat for floodlights or headlights.

Match the hatch. I'm in Milwaukee, so we're fishing very similar waters. I use a lot of natural colors, because our lakes up here tend to be so clear. Sexy shad works great at mimicking some of the baitfish up here, but I believe (could be wrong) the healthy diet of most Midwest bass are going to be bluegill, perch, craws and bugs. So what does that mean? It means blacks and blues, greens and reds, light oranges mixed in. If your lakes have trout, throw trout imitations, it's guaranteed the bass are gorging themselves on em. My staples are green pumpkin, watermelon flake, and black and blue. Everything else comes after. I throw all the whack crazy colors if I'm not getting bit. So that covers colors. Now lets talk about specific baits. The 5 lures I always have tied on-deck are Jig with craw trailer, Double Willow Spinnerbait, Paddle tail swimbait, Swim jig, and the fifth is a toss up between a frog or a dropshot rig, depending on the season. Can you catch fish with different baits? Of course! But I've found these to be extremely effective for our finicky clear water bucketmouths and bronzebacks. If I'm specifically targeting smallies, I'll have a lipless, tube jig, twist tail grub, drop shot, and popper for topwater. Those get me consistently bit every year. Bottom line though, bass are opportunistic feeders. If they're hungry or ticked off, they'll eat just about anything in front of them. I've seen bass strike at garbage floating in the lake. I've seen bass go after bass the same size as them. They don't really think, they just act. Natural instinct. So I'd personally worry more about fishing the right method at the right time in the right place than worry about fishing the right lures. Focusing on Midwest bass patterns, seasonal movements, and where they're likely to be in your lake will get you much further than just worrying about which lure to toss. I could probably go out tonight and catch a bass on a Texas rigged hot-dog if I tried, but that's only because I know where to put it and when. Long post, I know, but lastly, watch videos man. There's a never ending library of every technique, bait, rod, reel, method somewhere on youtube. I learned from youtube myself, and that's a lot better than some guy like me on a forum telling you what to throw.

Few issues I see that could have happened. #1 - Reeling slack line #2 - Cheap line #3 - Put the line on the reel backwards

I disagree. This is what the free market is all about. How many times have you heard someone say "It's just too much". And guess what, it really is! Unless they're putting tungsten rattles and gold plated hooks on these things, they're worth MUCH less than they're selling them for. So why do people pay too much for a bait like that? Because they cornered the market for a short time. Then Berkley shows up, brings the price to a fair point, and forces R2S to either get off their high horse and lower the price to compete, or they can lose business to Berkley because they chose to charge $10 too much for a d**n chunk of plastic. I've used both WP and Choppo now, they both are indistinguishable from each other. So why would I go pay $5-$8 more for the same d**n thing, same quality, same fish catching ratio. I'm sure you've heard of Creme Lures? Mr. Creme invented the first plastic worm. When was the last time you used a Creme worm? I get supporting small business, but lets not act like these guys deserve this corner of the market just because they ripped-off the idea first. Personally, I will not be purchasing any more ploppers. I go through 5-10 of them a season. I lose a few in trees at night, pike usually get the others. Even saving just $5 per bait means I saved myself $50 at the end of the season. It all adds up. I will be buying Choppos for the same reason I shop at Walmart for my T-shirts. It's cheaper and does the same job as a t-shirt from the boutique clothing store down the block.

I toss all kinds of spoons and catch everything on them.

I can respect it. I feel differently though. I've never caught the bait collector bug. If I buy it, I'm throwing it. If I don't feel like I should throw it, why would I buy it? Now if it was an investment to flip or sell, cool beans, money is money. I just couldn't imagine spending $10-??? on a lure and putting it in the garage like it's a 1960's Corvette. Perhaps one day the collection will happen! I just can't get myself into it right now. Too much to be spent on gear I could really use! This is just my personal opinion, I know it wasn't asked for. Hope I didn't step on toes

Yep! I use a brass bullet weight and a glass bead rigged just like you said, it takes away from the weedless factor a little, but it does at noise.

No lure is truly weedless. Weedless just means it was designed to come through the weeds as best it can. At every lake I fish there's parts where not even a spinnerbait would come through without a clump of salad on it. Either I use a frog here, or a punching rig / flipping rig.

It doesn't matter what condition it is, water clarity, depth, weather, I've got some type of jig tied on. Spring I absolutely slay em on craw imitation jigs. Come post-spawn I'm dragging a mop jig on breaks / ledges looking for those tired, hungry females. All summer long I'm either swimming a jig or dragging bottom. Do I catch most of my fish on jigs? Nope. I'd say a spinnerbait produces 70%+ of my fish. But I'll be damned if catching them on a jig isn't more enjoyable than on a spinner.

Tacklewarehouse say's they'll have them instock late June.

I haven't read all the replies, so I might be repeating the trend here saying this. It's situational. If I'm on a stained lake I'll just make shorter, more methodical casts. Trying to really pick apart the area I'm in. Fish are obviously hindered sight wise in stained water so I feel they can't see my boat as well, but they also can't see the lure as well either. So their strike zone gets smaller, means I gotta pick apart the area. Now lets say I'm at my clear water lake where you can see 30ft+ underwater on a sunny day. I'll bomb casts as long as I can because these fish can see my boat well before they could in stained water. But like the stained lake, the clear lake allows them to see really far, their strike zone increases. If a fish sees my bait 10-15ft away I'm confident they'll attempt to check it out. I've seen followers stay 10-15ft behind my bait just slowly following it in. So yes, super long casts are worth their weight in gold, when the conditions present themselves. Is it worthwhile in every situation on every lake? Nope.

Since May 4th (opener) I've boated 100+ fish on a spinnerbait. Variety of colors / blades and sizes. Second place goes to the humble jig n pig.

Pretty much what Mike said. Best you can do is eliminate every variable you can on your side of the water. This means using quality gear, tackle, and line. Using cheap line, rods, reels, hooks = lost fish eventually. I've had cheap reels lock up fighting a fish and then break off. I've had cheap line snap whenever it felt like. Cheap hooks bend. etc. Beyond gear, quality of hooksets is another thing. For the longest time I had a bad hookset and fish would come unpinned all the time. That paired with me using underpowered rods. I eventually started practicing the mechanics of my hookset. Instead of just feeling the bite and slamming the rod back with slack in the line, I learned that reeling down a turn or two and picking up that slack gives you way more power in the hookset.

For the same reason I've owned fast cars, it's fun. If you can afford it, there's really no reason not to go as big as you can. Same argument can be made for length of a boat. Is 21ft necessary? Nope, but it sure is nice to have that extra room! Same for the ponies in the back.

Don't underestimate it boys. Went out last night, it was a balmy 43* air temp, 14mph sustained winds, stained water on a normally 20ft visibility clear water lake. Water temp was 56*. I had all the odds stacked against me to be a bad night, I almost stayed home. Well, I'm glad I didn't. Found out the pattern, ended up putting the smackdown on them. Caught a total of 15 bass in 5 hours, all great healthy pre-spawn beauties. The ticket to ride was a 3/8 oz black skirt single colorado blade spinner. Stroking it off the bottom almost like a jig. Trailer hook was a must as most were short striking. Every fish came out of 4-8ft of water.