OCdockskipper

Well, if YOU have been known to shorten plastics for a smaller profile, I guess that settles it. (looking furiously for the sarcasm font...)

"Proper" Ned baits and accessories or ones that have been proven to be more effective than others? You can T-Rig a plastic using a tiny trout hook, but it is less effective than using something designed specifically for that application. That doesn't make the latter over thought.

Don't bother PM'ing me. If you don't want to mention in through the course of the thread, no problem. It is not one of the worlds great mystery's that needs to be solved

Yes I did vote. I don't understand your point. Do you have a problem with Midwest Finesse baits being called Neg Rigs? Do you believe that ZMan products such as the TRD are not part of the Midwest Finesse system? Do you believe there is no difference between a 3" senko on a football head jig and a TRD on a Shroomz head jig? Were you once wronged by a man named Ned? Not trying to be argumentative, just trying to understand where you are coming from.

From what I have read from those much more knowledgeable on it than I, neither ZMan nor Ned rig aficionados claim that Zman invented the Ned rig. It is a system, not a particular bait (such as the TRD). Even ZMan's web site talks about Midwest Finesse and how their baits can be used within the system. The difference with Zman's baits and a worm on a jig head is the material. Comparing Elasticel with the plastics used on other worms is like comparing monofilament to fluorocarbon. While they could be interchanged, the characteristics of each lend them to specific uses that make them more effective than the other in particular situations.

In addition to what A-Jay wrote, the lack of an outboard on the rear (or one that is tilted up) can cause a smaller boat to be rudderless. Basically, there is nothing for the rear of the boat to resist against when the front goes one direction, so the rear just spins out. On little pond boats, you can use an old trolling motor chassis and convert it into a simple rudder. Here is a discussion on a product designed to go on the bow mount trolling motor but can also be used to create a rear rudder

I think that may tick off the fish more than the people questioning you...

I'm not too sure about this chart. Had I been born on my due date, I would have been Portagee Bigstick, but instead, I was 3 weeks late and therefore became Cap'n Shortstick? Apparently hanging out in the womb too long changes your nationality and gets you in charge of a vessel, but does a real number on your private regions...

...You are driving down the road, looking at the hillsides and imagining where the fish would be if it was all underwater.

Don't you know that Mr. Mast was leading a Walleye tournament and that those other boaters were encroaching on his livelihood? That family had an entire lake to fish, why did they have to choose his honey hole?. Poor Mr. Mast was just trying to earn enough money to put dinner on his family's table, while the interlopers were intent on keeping everything they caught & wiping out the fishery. It costs Mr. Mast 30 million dollars a year to fish on the American Walleye & Skeetshooter tour and last year he only cashed twice, earning 38 bucks and a coupon for a free ham. At least I think that is how the argument from some folks goes...

As a pre-teen getting into bass fishing, I saw casting gear being used by B.A.S.S. pros while spinning gear was being used (upside down) by people using hot dogs to catch catfish. Therefore, I used casting gear exclusively, even when it wasn't the right tool. 40 years later, I use both. I don't try to make my casting gear do stuff that is better handled by spinning gear and vice versa. I can feather a lure with my index finger on a spinning rod as well as my thumb on a baitcaster. A side benefit of switching between the two is it helps fight off fatigue that older body parts are susceptible to when using one type of gear exclusively.

This is no longer true, I have a new PB found lure. While fishing Saturday, I saw something near surface of the water. I motored over to it and at first thought it was a dead bluegill attached to some kind of fish stringer. As I reached down for it, I realized it was a medium sized hard body swimbait in bluegill color (Jackall Gantrel Jr.). Great lure, it even fooled me. Took it home & it cleaned up well (before & after pictures below). In regards to the poor soul who lost a $30 swimbait, I am 99% sure it wasn't one of the other two serious fisherman on the lake. Since I found it close to a green belt area that is accessible to the public, my theory is that a knowledgeable fisherman who doesn't have lake rights snuck down here to do some fishing and hung up the lure on something. If it was another homeowner or a guest of a homeowner, most likely they would have jumped in a boat and motored over to retrieve it. I do get this is Orange County, but a $30 floating bait is worth some effort in retrieving.

I always had a problem with the thin Roboworms tearing when rigging them with a conventional Texas rig. A friend of mine uses the old style Mr. Twister Keeper hooks, which work really well in this combination. The front "keeper" section of the hook is thin enough to stay in the slender Roboworm, it has multiple barbs to stay in place and doesn't tear up the nose like coiled keepers or traditional T-Rig hooks. It is old school hook in a new school worm...

According to what I hear, their costs are real low. My cousin's fiancees stepfather knows a guy who says Elasticel is made from Soylent Green...

Binoculars

Nice of that bass to tell you his exact weight. I am assuming this is the infamous bass that broke the new 8lb leader in the middle, meaning that it had to weigh more than 8 lbs. I wonder what the breaking point of the knot was?

Most expensive usable lure I "found" was a Storm Arashi crankbait attached to the mouth of a big catfish that ate my swimbait. He also had a football jig stuck in his side, so he had been busy breaking hearts & lines. Changed out hooks on the Arashi & it was like new. The lure I was happiest to find was one of my own. I busted off a Strike King 3XD in a brushpile and then found it floating in the same cove about 5 months later. I say it was mine because it had the red hooks I always switch too that I am pretty sure no one else on the lake uses. It had some moss & gunk growing on it, so it had been underwater a while. Not sure how it finally broke loose & floated to the top, maybe that catfish freed it. .

That reaction, those exact words, is universal for anyone the first time they see a really big headed bass breach the surface.

8 am on July 2nd of this year, I caught one that beat my PB by 2 ounces. Even though it was overcast for the first few hours of the morning, the ongoing warm weather had more fish deep than shallow. I was making my way from one deep water spot to another, passing by an isolated dock on a point. Out of habit more than anything, I made a cast towards the corner of the dock as I approached it. I never felt her inhale my 6" Zoom Dead Ringer in Green Pumpkin, just saw the line moving away. I set the hook, she came away from the dock, surfaced & shook her head. She was unimpressed with my gear, peeled off about 20 feet of line & went back under the dock. I was able to turn her and after a few minutes, on her first pass by the boat, was able to lip her. She was in about 3 feet of water, 8 feet off the shoreline while almost every other fish in the lake was in 10 feet of water as far from the shoreline as they could be. Thank heavens casts are free, else I probably wouldn't have made that one on that morning.

If you are using string on your reel, should we assume you are using thread as a leader?

Out of the nearly 300 homes that border our lake, there are literally 3 people who fish for bass seriously enough to want the weed beds around. There might be a dozen or so folks who don't care while the remainder want a lake that looks pretty. Remember, this is Southern California - for most people who live here, the outdoors and hunting/fishing are mutually exclusive . The HOA wipe out the weed beds about every 3 years or so, when they get large enough that homeowners can see them from the docks. After a week or two, the bass that had been living in the weedbeds adjust and start using the other cover in the lake (docks, undercuts in the concrete seawalls and the planted brushpiles). It actually makes the dock fishing better, I'll often find 2 or 3 fish under a dock instead of solitary ones.

I started using one a year ago, but I am still self conscious that I look like a hoodlum with it on. When I pass by other folks, I'll pull down the mouth area so I can speak with them & they can see me smile.

You did the right thing. You made the school panic and then had your lure drift to the bottom as if injured or dying. That is a recipe for a strike. Until I saw it film footage of it, I never realized that bass will "hang out" with bluegill or other forage and not bother them. I used to think the moment a bass saw prey, they would attack. Not the case. They will ignore prey until they decide not to & then eat them. A trigger for that attack is often the forage panicking or being eaten by something else. Stickbaits work well for this, but base your lure selection on the depth & cover of the area you are fishing as well as the size of the forage and the time of the year.

My daughters boyfriend was going to join me fishing yesterday and I planned on it being a pretty good day. He hasn't done alot of bass fishing, but is enthusiastic and a quick study. Weather and water temperatures had been dropping for the first time in months and the forecast called for an overcast morning, so I figured topwater and moving baits may be the ticket for the first few hours until the fish moved deeper or under the docks. What I hadn't anticipated was one of the stranger days of my life, not all of which involved fishing. I woke at 4:30 am and noticed my wife wasn't in bed with me. I figured I must have been snoring and she fled the scene, but as I went to the bathroom, she came into the room fully dressed. Apparently I had slept through her getting a midnight call that her Raider-like brother was drunk at a club, her picking him up and bringing him to our house to sober up, him going outside to smoke a cigarette but then forgetting which house was ours, him knocking on the neighbors door asking to be let in, him falling down & busting his head open on the neighbors planter (resulting in the police, fire & ambulance showing up), him getting stitches at the hospital and then walking out before they were done examining him, she picking him up 2 blocks from the hospital bringing him back to the house again, him going out to smoke again (this time in the backyard) and then once again falling over & cutting the other side of his head. All this between midnight & 4:30 am. Yes, I did sleep through all of that, my wife is an angel. So I got dressed and took all the gear down to the dock. I realized I had left a flashlight I use in our other car, (it is still dark outside) so I went out to retrieve it. I had parked the car up tight to a hedge to avoid potential door dings on the other side and as I tried to wedge myself in, I lost my balance & fell into the hedge. Had they neighbors been watching, they would have thought I was the drunk. I get the boat set up and as daylight begins to approach, no sign of my daughters boyfriend. I know he works hard during the week, so I figured he overslept. I sent him a text to let me know when he arrived & I would double back to the dock. I got in the boat, went to a point and fired out a cast with a Zara spook. As anticipated, I immediately hooked up...with a bluegill. I figured it was a good sign nonetheless, until I went the next 90 minutes without a strike. I cycled through different baits, different type cover, shallow & deep nothing. Then, when I was working a jerkbait over a weedbed in 7 ft of water, I realized as i looked at the depthfinder that the weed bed was no longer there. What I ended up finding out later was that days before, the HOA had treated the lake with some kind of weed killing chemicals and had dredged (by hand) some of the more problem areas. The cover I had been fishing no longer existed... Not knowing exactly why the weedbeds were gone, I made some adjustments and caught a few fish. My daughters boyfriend had indeed slept through his alarm (he hadn't missed much), joined me near 8 am and I was able to put him on a few fish (we even had a double). However, as we were working a couple of docks, a party boat came towards us being driven by a women in full muslim garb. There were a half dozen other women dressed the same way and single man in the boat, so I am assuming they were his harem. I know nearly everyone on this lake and they kind of stuck out because I had never seen them before. Apparently they didn't know me either because they drove their boat between us and the dock we were casting to, laughing & taking pictures. I was going to say something, but realized from their chatter, they most likely didn't speak English. Near noon, my daughters boyfriend had to leave and the sun had popped out. I put on my buff & sunglasses and headed over to another cove to flip, pitch & skip some docks. As I made it to the back of the cove, a woman came out of her backdoor, intently staring at me with her arms crossed. I waved hi but she didn't flinch, staying like that for a good five minutes. I know I might look like a criminal with a buff pulled up, but I have been by her house over 50 times in the last year. She is just now noticing me?? I work out of that cove down to another and once again, a different woman comes out her back door looking at me. This time, she is chattering with someone inside in a foreign language. As I pass by their dock, a man comes out & in a heavy accent says "Please do not throw your line into my boat". I may not be an Elite pro, but I am a much more accurate caster than that. I assure him I won't and he retreats back into the house with his nagging wife in tow. By this time, I am completely spun out, unable to figure out what in the world is going on. As if to put an exclamation point on the days adventures, another smaller party boat again filled with folks that are speaking a different language, comes down the cove between me & the docks I am fishing. However, since I was skipping the docks at this time, there wasn't much space between me & the dock. They manged to fit their boat in between, at full speed nonetheless. I loudly said "Hey!!" as they passed, to which they smiled & waved. Ugh. I put my rod down, went back home & took a nap.

I misread this at first and thought you were saying it takes several hours to get the right one "in". I figured you were either using a Snoopy pole with 2 lb test or had come across some new Zen method where the fish gets so bored of being hooked that he eventually just jumps in the boat.