Jon P.

Earlier this month B.A.S.S. updated their rod length regulations allowing rods up to ten feet in length on the tournament scene. this opens the door to a variety of new presentations with noodle rods, fly rods, surf rods, monster swimbait rods, etc. Personally I bought a noodle rod for weightless worms and dropshotting and a surf rod for deep cranking and swimbaiting and I have always had a fly rod with shooting line on hand for super finesse topwater situations, which is crazy effective. so out of curiosity what are you planning to do with the new regulations?

invest in a shooting line. when thread fin or yearling bluegill are schooling a little flashy streamer pattern can outfish the best baits any day

at my grandpas old house we used to catch bullheads that weighed up to a pound and a half with freakish baseball stomachs, few things taste better but they are a pain to deal with. i still have a scar on my thumb from being impaled by one when I was six.

if you wanted to paint a laser pattern crankbait i would go with a dyed red resin and just dip a clear bodied crankbait in the dyed resin.

I've only fished for them once in a little airport ditch while waiting for a flight in florida, absolutely crazy fish. right now they are in about the same place in north American game fishing as our largemouth bass was in the early 1900's. few anglers fish for them exclusively but they are growing in popularity. if they weren't so small I would value them over the largemouth.

I live in Montana, here everything is giant swimbaits and finesse, none of that power fishing activity like down south. I live in Montana, here everything is giant swimbaits and finesse, none of that power fishing activity like down south.

I live in north western montana and my usual solution for fall fishing is a wacky worm wherever there is a wind pocket (windchill also affects fish) and slow rolled spinner baits in the bulrushes and near depth transitions. I find that the bass try to avoid the cold weather by avoiding the wind and soaking up the last rays of sun while packing on a few extra pounds before the ice freezes over.

recently I obtained a St. Croix Triumph surf rod for an upcoming fishing trip to the bahamas. while testing it out with a weight in my back yard an idea came to me; why not start using surf tackle in place of our conventional bass tackle? after all it can cast farther and by extent cover more water, and the added rod length means more line control. so what are your thoughts on this? has anyone tried this before?

there is a lake near where I live that has a lot of largemouth and pikeminnow, whenever the pikeminnow are in the backs of the creeks spawning the bass chase them up like shad. so I was wondering if any of you have any experience with the pikeminnow as a baitfish.

if you dip any fly in liquid silicon it will float like a bobber

the problem with my situation is that I have no silvery color baitfish in the local lake

personally I've always subscribed to the theory of fishing slow in clear water, that might be why I always do so poorly with hard baits. That tip will definitely help me in the long run, muddy water is a rare sight in the lakes of Montana.

so just reading your comments I take it that matching the hatch definitely takes precedence over matching the conditions?

I used to have a suspending yo-zuri lipless crank and a suspending rat-l-trap both of which were excellent in the spring and fall. The rat-l-trap now belongs to a tree and the yo-zuri is a lip piercing for a pike

<p> recently while on an excursion to my local lake I was digging through my box of lipless cranks while rigging up in search of the perfect color for that day. The bait that I was trying to imitate was a pumpkinseed sunfish. Now for those of you who have never seen a pumpkinseed, I will tell you that they are the physical embodiment of the firetiger color pattern. Bright green with dark green parr markings and a vivid orange stomach. Now here is where my problem lies. The water I was fishing was so clear you can see a jig sink to the bottom from twenty feet away on a calm and overcast day, and the logical color for a water like that is to get as translucent and as light as possible. But the bait I was trying to imitate is a vivid green. So do I choose colors to imitate the bait like a firetiger? Or do I choose colors for their function like a Clearwater minnow pattern? And in which situations do either color choices take precedence? </p>

when i say surface area I'm just talking about how wide the body of the bait is. something that's very thin (like a blade bait) will sink faster and will require a lot of reel speed, alternatively, something thats very thick (like a redeye shad) will fall a little slower and can be retrieved at a slower speed. I find that the slower a particular crank can be worked the more finesse-y it can be worked, then I can fish it more even when the water is very clear or in the fall and winter.

hey folks, just wondering if anyone knew of any good lipless crankbaits for slow rolling im looking for a pretty light, slow sinking bait with a lot of surface area

<p> hey folks, I&#39;m curious if any of you have any experience moulding swimbaits, and if so, how do you make the joints? I was thinking of making a door hinge style jointed bait and individually moulding each segment and connecting them with steel rods post-moulding. But I was hoping someone could tell me a way that I could mold the joints with the bait. Keep in mind that I&#39;m not going to be making CNC quality moulds, I&#39;m just using alumilite vac 50 and some white resin. </p>

I actually bought an airbrush set up not two days ago, it should arrive relatively soon

tell me how that goes, I'm also thinking of using a powerdrive for the smaller foot print on deck

up in montana there are just as many carp fly fishermen as there are bass fishermen. my personal fave setup is a sucker spawn fly tied behind a golden agotcha

in Montana my biggest problem is having my bass get eaten XD

the combined peddle and bowmount bracket would take up too much space on the deck to stand comfortably

oh well, probably going to nab one off craigslist anyway

just after a brief look over of the exploded parts diagram I'm 99.9% sure i can disassemble it without any damage to me or the motor and reassemble it backwards. I suppose this concludes this topic, and to all of you, good fishing.