Hillbilly Bennett

This is the smaller of the two and it measured 30 inches. The larger of the two was 38 inches long and we were unable to get a picture. I measured it on the back deck and it started flopping. Nearly knocked a rod in the water and when I put my foot on it to try to stop the flopping it nearly put me in too. Lol It rolled off of the boat before I could ever regain a good grip on it to get a pic. Whole lot of fun though!

Hey A-Jay, how’d you like the Vixen compared to the old Paycheck bait style spook? I’ve been a fan of that Vixen for a while now.

Man that is a frustrating situation and I’ve been right where you are a lot but I found a couple of things that can help in this situation. What I’m about to say goes against what most people think, as we are all told to “match the hatch,” over and over again but when I encounter a situation where there are active fish keying on small bait I throw a lure that is close to the color of the forage but it has some differences to make it stand out. Like a 4.0 squarebill in natural Shad or a Shad color lure that has some chartreuse in it like a chartreuse sexy Shad pattern. (I’m hungry so bare with me. ?)Think about it, if you have 1000s of tiny plain, but delicious, hamburgers all around you at dinner time and suddenly you see a giant burger in the middle of them you are going to go for what looks like a big, easy meal instead of having to eat 200 of the little burgers to get full. Bass want to get full while expending the least amount of energy possible, especially when the water starts to cool off. If that approach doesn’t work, that’s when I’ll throw the lure with extra color in it to make it stand out. In this analogy it would be like having a tiny cheeseburger with all the fixin’s in the middle of the plain hamburgers. Of course you are going to at least try the one that looks different, right? For me, this approach works well, especially in the fall when you have to complete with a billion baitfish to get the bass’s attention. Give it a try the next time you hit this scenario and you may catch a few more. Hope this helps.

I use the palomar knot about 98% of the time and this is the best advice to avoid curling your line. Pull the tag end instead of the mainline, wet the line and don’t over tighten it.

Kayaks and I don’t go together. A few years ago I went with my wife on a float trip that the local tourism office where she works puts on. She asked me to bring my Go Pro camera to get some footage for the tourism website. About halfway through the 15 mile paddle I managed to roll the kayak and lost the $200 camera in the deepest part of the river. I tried to find it but there was no getting it back. But compared to what comes next, that is nothing! Fast forward to a year later. My fishing buddy and I decided to kayak fish a stretch of the river we never had fished before in an excellent smallmouth river about an hour from where we live. I’d checked it out on google earth and it looked smooth, safe and not swift at all. It looked Perfect for kayak fishing, except for one small stretch that I couldn’t see. It was covered by heavy tree growth so the satellite couldn’t get a clear shot of what it looked like but we went for it, assuming it was just like rest of the river we could research and assuming we could paddle to shore and drag the kayaks if it looked too rough. We started the peaceful, serene float and immediately started slaying the smallmouth. As we neared the hidden stretch of river I caught a beautiful 18 inch spotted bass and we were in fishing heaven...until we paddled around the sharp bend. The river narrowed extremely quickly, got super fast and turned to straight whitewater before we knew what was happening. Needless to say two cheap fishing kayaks aren’t cut out for shooting that kind of stuff and we both rolled over while desperately trying to paddle to the bank. I crashed off of no less than a dozen boulders and got wrapped up in my fishing line and the rope that held my small kayak anchor as I bounced through the section of the river that we later learned the local whitewater crowd calls “The Meat Grinder.” (No joke! The friggin Meat Grinder!) I finally got stuck behind a huge rock at the bottom of the rough stuff and was luckily facing down stream so I was able to poke my head up and get some air while I struggled against the raging current to wallow my hogtied butt on to the rock. After a few minutes of struggling I was on the rock and was out of the water. I was able to survey the damage and had lost my new Costa Cayan sunglasses, my hat, my shoes, my wedding band, a whole host of plastics and hardbaits and even a small chunk of skin and shinbone. I had broken my new Lew’s Custom speed stick but was able to get my reel back as the popper I had been using was snagged in my shorts right in the most delicate of areas (I have no idea how the trebles didn’t snag any, uh...skin, but I’m eternally grateful for that!) and I was tangled in about 30 yards of line and 10 yards of rope where I had rolled over and over down the rapids. My buddy had rolled a little further down stream and he also lost a bunch of tackle and broken his fishing rod but was in pretty good shape except for his twisted knee and a pretty good cut he got from bouncing his head off of a rock. We searched down stream in the smooth, deep pool below the rapids but only found a few of our lures and one of my shoes floating close to the shore before licking our wounds and dragging the yaks back to where we could paddle to the truck. That was my last time in a kayak and if I ever think about getting back in one I just rub my finger over the scar and the missing chunk of bone in my shin. Several people have asked what it was like and I tell them that it was like being in a washing machine full of bowling balls. Please, don’t do what we did and kayak on a river that you really don’t know. We were very lucky to get out of there with our lives.

West Virginia Sorry, I struggle with uploading pics on here.

Tennessee Kentucky

Oh I know it. Those Florida strain have hybridized with the native northern strain to make bass that get huge but don’t mind the cold. I’m the 5 or 6 trips I’ve made to Chick I’ve never had a trip where we didn’t catch one at least 5 and 5 of my top 7 personal best have come from there. It’s a giant factory. My dad caught his PB 10-7 there last September and I backed that up with a 6-8. Out best 5 that day went a little over 32 lbs. That 3 day trip was the best fishing trip I’ve ever been part of both numbers wise and size wise. This spring my fishing buddy and I went down the last week of March. We didn’t put up huge numbers but we caught huge bass. Everything was 3 pounds and over and we caught a 27 lb limit in 20 minutes on one 25 yard stretch of bank. We caught an 8-1 a 6-1, a 5-3, a 4-8 and a 4-3 in about 10 casts. All on squarebills. Don’t get me wrong, Chick can be fickle and tough as nails too. It took a couple of tough trips to figure the lake out and when I go down now we still have plenty of really hard days. I can’t really say that about Guntersville. Pretty much everyday I’ve spent on the lake down there we’ve put numbers in the boat, just not the same average size that come out of Chick.

My first fishing memory was when I was 5. I went to a local lake with my grandpa and I caught a small bass and a crappie or two on an in-line spinner. I also hooked his ENORMOUS fishing buddy right in the back on a cast I made too. It scared me to death until he started laughing and I knew I was in the clear. After that I had the bug. Everyday I dug red worms out of the garden to catch little bullheads out of the creek in our back yard. (Mom didn’t believe I was catching fish but I brought one I caught in the house and you should have seen her face when it shook off the hook and it fell in the bathtub with her! True story!) That fall I went to Dale Hollow with dad for the 1st time. We caught a bunch of smallmouth and I caught a mud cat that was as long as my leg. That was it. I was hooked. From that point in my life I have chased bass all over the eastern half of the country. No matter where I have been and what has been going on the one constant has been that I fish as much as possible. It has provided me with 32 years of peace, tranquility and enjoyment. I just hope that my son picks it up and loves it like I do. He’s 6 and loves the boat but he just wants to swim. That’s ok with me though, just as long as he’s with me I’m happy.

Since when did Kentucky relocate go to the northeast? It blew my mind when I woke up today and My state was on the eastern border of Ohio and the western border of PA but Lake Erie was STILL 6 hours away! On a serious note, is Guntersville really doing that well this year? I haven’t been since last fall but it would be hard to imagine that it’s doing better than Chickamagua right now. The last 3 trips I’ve taken to Chick have been just awesome and were far better than anything I’ve had at Guntersville since 2015. Could it be that Bassmaster is just trying to pump everyone up since the classic is at Guntersville next spring? Hmm....

For me, if I didn’t want to catch dinks then I wouldn’t go fishing around here. On the lakes I fish in Eastern KY if you catch 5-6lbs in a Thursday night tournament you will win 95% of the time. 2-3 15 inch bass almost always Gets you the win. This year I think I have 7-8 bass 3 pounds and up out of the 3 lakes I fish most and that’s pretty good for here. What our bass lack in size, they make up for in sheer numbers of dinks. I can go to my home lake and pound the grass for 2-3 hours and come out with 20-30 10-13 inchers or I can fish the ledges and deep points in that same lake every day for a week and maybe catch 3 bass over 15 inches. It is what it is but that’s also why we take road trips to Chickamagua, Dale Hollow, Cherokee and Guntersville several times a year. It’s like a man dying of thirst finding an oasis when we get to get on a lake that has some quality fish in it. Fishing good lakes will spoil you rotten and if you are lucky enough to have a good lake to fish, enjoy it.

I lost a Duckett Micro Magic I had paired with a Revo SX. Had a 3/4 oz jig on it and it sunk like a stone in 30 feet of murky water. My buddy was driving, hit some wake when we were blasting off in a tournament and it bounced right out from under the rod tie down. We dragged for about 10 minutes but didn’t want to waste the tournament time. I came back the next day and drug treble hooks and weights for about 4 hours and never got it back. Caught all kinds of trash and junk but no rod.

Eastern KY fisherman here. I live in Johnson county and fish dewey, Yatesville and Paintsville-aka “The Dead Sea” pretty regularly.

This spring I did 90% of my damage came on 1.5 and 2.5 strike king squarebills. I haven’t had much luck with them before but they got crushed this spring. Since the post spawn I’ve caught most of my fish on a T-Rig, a 75 Whopper Plopper, a Cavitron buzzbait, the very evil wacky rigged Senko and the even more evil Ned Rigged TRD. The ZMan crawz have been coming on this summer as I have been wading and floating the rivers around here since the heat has set in. Those things are smallmouth candy!

Two of my all time favorites right there!

That is one impressive selection of War Eagle spinnerbaits! Have you ever thrown the war eagle double Colorado wake blade spinnerbaits? They have two truly massive blades and they absolutely rattle your hand when you slow roll them. They are made to wake but I’ve caught more when slow roll them around wood and over grass.

How do you like the Dark Sleepers? I have one but haven’t had much luck with it yet. Haven’t thrown it a ton either.

I’m using an SV for the 1st time this year. I love it! Paired it with a Shimano/Loomis Conquest and the setup is just phenomenal. I use it for my lighter weight stuff that I want to throw on a baitcasting setup. Amazing reel and incredible rod.

In lakes that receive a lot of pressure I avoid lures with loud rattles no matter what the water color is. They see so many lures that sound like dishes falling down a flight of stairs that I think they get conditioned to them pretty quickly. I will, however, throw lures with rattles that are “different.” IE a two tap or something like that but most of the time I start with a silent lure and go from there.

I have had no issues with the heat but I left a Z-Man craw laying in the back of my SUV and it ended up under a plastic sandwich baggie. They reacted and turned in to a giant blob of melted, salty goo. Be aware that they don’t mix with ANY other kind of plastic material, not just other plastic lures.

I’d go with the following: 1-Colorado bladed Spinnerbait-Lots of thump 2-Texas rig with a bulky plastic that moves a lot of water-Moves lots of water 3-A squarebill in chartreuse or craw color.-Catches Largemouth and Smallies both very well. 4-Topwater like a buzzbait or frog-Fun and effective 5-A jig-Because you should always have a jig tied on! And a weightless Senko also works very well in water with low visibility. The slow fall and the shimmy lets the bass find it a lot better than you’d think.

I like to use the Stanley Top toad hooks with any toad I throw. They are sharp and the ones with an 1/8 oz weight do really well with keeping the toad from turning over. Also, the screw lock is a must for any toad.

When I’m fishing less than 20 feet I hardly ever use more than a 1/4 oz weight. Sometimes if I have a bait that is particularly bulky I’ll upsize, but 90% of the time I throw a t-rig it’s with a 1/4 oz weight or less. I also like a 1/8 or 1/16 weight on a t-rigged stickbait.

If you aren’t trying to break the bank Bass Pro Shops has a crankin stick that I really like for squarebill cranks at around $80. Of course either a G-Loomis CBR or a Denali Lithium cranking Rod are very tough to beat but you are looking aground $200 and up (and up and up!) for one of the higher end sticks. I have had success with a medium heavy or medium moderate rod for cranking. My favorite cranking rod is a Lew’s million Crankbait rod in medium moderate action that is no longer in production. https://www.americanlegacyfishing.com/lew-s-team-lews-hm85-million-graphite-7-m-crankbait-casting-rod-tlcc70mm.html I like the moderate action for the deeper bend that the rod has. It helps with hook sets by allowing you just a split second more for the bass to get the crank because I tend to set the hook and pull the crank away with a faster action rod. I love this rod for throwing any type of moving bait for that reason. Hope this helps!

My fishing buddy and me hit it the 15th-17 and it was a grind to get 5-10 bites a day. However, when you did get a bite it was a good one! We never caught a fish under 15 inches and only had 2 under 3lbs. On Saturday we worked our butts off for 3 good bites until midday when we pulled up to a section of bank and in 20 minutes caught 5 bass that went over 27lbs. I caught a 6-1, a 5-0 a, 4-4 and a 3-14 and my buddy caught his PB 8-1, all in a 20 yard stretch of water. 4 of them came off of one lay down. That’s what makes Chick special. One magic spot can make a trip outstanding. We caught all of our bass on squarebill cranks that had chartreuse in them. Everyone on that lake was throwing something red/orange and when we changed it up we caught bass. Water was 52ish in the mornings to 58 or so in the afternoons.