Jon P.

they're originally intended for snakehead in Thailand, but they're pretty solid for bass, as well yup

I've thrown a modified dropshot rig through holes in the ice the second that it begins melting but I've never caught fish through the ice

too bad there's no such thing as topwater ice fishing ?

what are your thoughts on jump frog type lures like these? unlike most topwaters they have heavy bodies with a slow sink rate so that they can plow through cover better than their soft bodied counterparts. they look like a buzzbait on the surface, spitting water everywhere. the mouths on them are flat, instead of cupped like a popper so they can "jump" out of the water a little bit when snapped hard enough. they originally created in Thailand by guys who were tired of having their soft buzz frogs chewed to death by snakehead. recently I purchased a few from MegaFrox USA and they have been producing very well. wherever I would ordinarily fish a buzz toad or weedless frog I've been using these and they've been producing pretty well!

most of our water bodies in montana have a steady flow in them so most of our bass are high in muscle but low in fat, unfortunately this means they grow very slow

once while fishing at a flooded quarry a little one pounder bass slammed the spinnerbait I was fishing and the second he did so a gator pike, the biggest one I had ever seen comes plowing towards my fish in under a foot of water and plows the little bugger. it ripped the fish off the hook and chased it in circles before cornering it by a sunken bulldozer and swallowed it whole.

that photo is the official state record, the original photo I was talking about I don't have on my computer

this is Darren Williams with his state record

Once again, I'm not looking to retrieve a dropshot like a buzzbait, or a shaky head like I'm burning a spinnerbait, I'm just looking for tips tricks and alternatives for fishing a finesse presentation slightly faster. with wacky worms, for example, I dip the bends of my hooks in tungsten fly-fishing paste and opt for a thinner worm so that it can reach the bottom faster. it's simple things like that, that don't make a monumental difference, but do shave seconds off of the time you spend fishing. I don't believe that subtlety is necessarily fishing at a snail's pace. it can be as simple as using a smaller bait, less vibration, or lighter lines. I apologize if I phrased my initial question poorly.

if you want to optimize your ability to fish most any finesse presentation the obvious solution is to fish slow, but I would prefer to optimize the time I spend and the water I cover, so I'm looking for a happy medium here that would allow me to both catch finesse-y fish and simultaneously cover water. obviously I cant throw a wacky rig through the water column like i would a spinner bait, but I can wrap the hook in lead wire and use narrow braid so that I can fish faster.

hey folks, just curious as to what your thoughts are on finesse fishing with speed. I find that if you can succesfully cover an entire pond or a large part of a reservoir with any bait or presentation you greatly increase your chances of catching a fish. but if you have a finesse-y bite you might have troubles fishing fast. any thoughts or ides are greatly appreciated.

(in order of personal importance) 1. Catch a new PB and/or Montana state record 2. Get a new fishing kayak 3. Expand my swimbait box 4. Thoroughly map the Bitterroot and Clark Fork rivers for better bass fishing 5. More tournament fishing

the electrofishing survey teams always find giants, but for whatever reason I have only once seen one as big as that one in the photo. my little brother caught one that large on a huddle bug in an irrigation canal by the MSU griz stadium in missoula, it was nearly the size of him! but for the most part they average out around 2-3 lbs.

thank you, I'm not the best with words or math

I've never measured the weight differential, it never really occured to me. but if you find the volume of 1 oz. of pure lead, divide that volume by two, and calculate the weight of that volume in tungsten and then in epoxy, add the weight of the epoxy and the tungsten, you should get your answer.

you cant keep the squawfish off you if you use live or scented baits, they account for about half of my catches in the first place here's a squaw fish just to give you an idea

instead of buying lead moulding gear and ingots just buy epoxy and tungsten powder, make a 50/50 mix of epoxy and tungsten, spray UMR mould release on your lead mould and poor that cheap stuff in

here are a few photos of the river in question. note all the little canals and sloughs that the bass winter in. during the dog days of summer they almost completely vacate the sloughs to avoid getting trapped or boiled alive. in the sloughs I through punching rigs and hard body jumpfrogs (too many pike to risk shredding a softie) in the main river I throw swimbaits on a surf rod, spinner baits, gan craft Shape-S's, and football jigs. the crawfish species in question is the virile crayfish (orocontes virilis) and the baitfish are trout and squawfish. I see many more bass than I catch and the only info I can find on fishing rivers is on fishing larger bodies of water like the potomac. the biggest bass rumored to come out of here was about nine pounds out of a strict "no trespassing" area. the guy who caught it (a local fly fisher by the name of Andy) caught it on a salamander streamer but released it to avoid having to face the possibility of a poaching fine. personally I don't believe it and his photo doesn't look quite like a nine.

in the afternoons on my particular river you can fill a Nike gym bag with crawfish just by walking along and picking them up, I'll have to try this rebel craw of yours.

does anyone have any tips for fishing for bass (largemouth) in faster flowing rivers? if you need an idea as to what I'm talking about look at Kelly island in Missoula Montana on google maps. it's an intersection of the largemouth stuffed bitterroot and the trout choked clark fork in a maze of sloughs and deep pools in the main river.

yes he is in the photo, he is standing on the dock holding the fish by the jaw, I'll ask him to send it to me so I can post it

so quite recently at my local highschool I started up a little bass fishing club, and we've been doing pretty well with about a dozen members so far. the last meeting discussion we had turned to fish photos and a variety of good fish photos were shared, some six pounders, a few fours, and one seven. one of our new members kept on saying that all of the fish photos everyone had were "tiny" and "hardly single pounders" and when the conversation turned to him and what he had caught, he produced a photo of an easy nine to ten pound fish. keep in mind that in montana our state record is just a bit over eight, so this was a pretty impressive fish. according to his story it weighed in at two pounds, as his scale was broken. but unfortunately he ended up eating the fish and never brought it in as a record.

The big thing with the ability to have longer rods is the ability to cast larger presentations like swimbaits and umbrella rigs easier. also, casting distance.

why not?

personally I like to practice for tournaments with tournament regulations in mind