Troy85

There also something to be said about watching the sunrise on the water. This is one reason why I like to launch before sunrise, I like to be on the water for this....

@catt. Pirates Cove. I saw several boats fishing the road bed near the islands where Pirates cove meets the main lake.

My wife has friends in Memphis that she wants to visit next March or April. I am planning on bringing my boat up there, and spending a couple days fishing either Pickwick or Kentucky Lake. What would you recommend between the two? I would like to go for smallmouth as much as possible, as they don't have any where I fish.

You can probably answer this. I saw a lot of boats fishing offshore. I looked on my navionics app and it looked like they were fishing road beds and submerged bridges in 15-20fow. I never got close enough to really tell, but what presentation would you use for that this time of year? Deep cranks and traps, or more like a C-rig or TX rig?

Just got back yesterday evening. Shad were starting to move into the creeks from what I saw. For the past few weeks I've been trying to decide if i wanted to try and learn to fish deeper structure when i went up there, or stick to my strengths, which is more shallow water fishing(less than 10ft). The 2 cold fronts that came thru only about 2 days apart, made it pretty breezy most of the time and made it an easy decision. Fished Pirates cove most of the time, from the main points to the backs of creeks. Wednesday: N wind about 15-20, and misty. Could only get fish to bite a TX rig. Thursday morning: Cloudy in the morning and breezy. Fish were biting crank baits. Caught them at the mouths and mid of several small coves. Thursday evening: Mostly clear and dead calm. Top water bite turned on, chug bug was the bait of choice. Most fish caught in a deep main lake pocket. Fish we caught were in 4-6ft. Friday morning: Partly Cloudy and calm. Friday morning was pretty slow. Caught a couple on top water, and 1 on a C-Rig. Friday Evening: Spent most of the evening on the phone dealing with a work emergency. Got for fish for like an hour. Me and my brother each caught 1 on a chug bug. Saturday morning: Light rain. Frogs over pepper grass caught a few. Most were caught fishing grass edges with a senko with a spinner blade. Saturday Evening: Front began to push thru, Wind switched to the N at about 15. Fish turned off, was able to pick up a few on a drop shot. 6-8ft in a main lake protected pocket. Sunday morning: NE winds 10-15. Clear skies. Only fished for about 2 hours. Picked up a few fish on a drop shot. Fishing secondary points in coves with a dropshot. 8-10ft. Had a great time. We caught fish every day, while I wouldn't say the fishing was on fire. We still caught a good number of fish just about every time we went out. The slowest outing was probably Saturday evening. We didn't catch any monsters, most of the fish we caught were between 2-3.5lb. We had a few throwbacks, but more keepers than throwbacks. Biggest fish was 4lb. I did lose what was probably a 5lber, it hit my chug bug. The fish wrapped me around a stump and threw the hook.

Once I had to crank my engine off my trolling battery, but it was because my cranking battery was going bad. If you don't want to worry about jumping from trolling to cranking battery in an emergency. You could always buy a portable jump box. I picked one up from Walmart for about $60. I plug it in when I charge my trolling batteries, its a nice little insurance policy.

Almost never on a spinner bait, almost always on a jig.

I use a cranking battery for my outboard, it also runs my electronics, and live well pumps. I've never had any issues with cranking the engine, even after running the pumps and electronics all day long.

So my trip starts 1 week from today. Looks like we are getting a mild front later on this week. Looks like Early next week a decent front is coming thru, lows around 50 and highs in the 60s. Any tips on what to expect from this cool front?

The opposite is also true. Came in 2nd earlier this year in a local bass tournament throwing a white Red fish magic. Won 1st just last month tight lining Voodoo shrimp.

My trip starts 2 weeks from Today. Can't wait! Been looking at Navionics and google earth almost every evening the past few days.

MDJ just announced that he's going MLF. Whats that 79?

No doubt. Its funny, the past couple weeks I've heard it mentioned many times about how its so hard to make a living in this sport, and only a few pros are able to do it in the current system(which MLF claims they are trying to fix). Yet, The only ones invited are the ones who are already making a good living from pro fishing. The lesser named guys who are more likely struggling to make it, who probably need the guaranteed payout of MLF are the ones who didn't get invited. Not blaming MLF or the pros decisions, in the end its just business.

I use to find areas that generally have cleaner water when the rivers get high.

Amart always seems to look uncomfortable on camera, unless he is explaining some fishing technique. Seems like the only time he seems to not be nervous on camera....kinda like myself at most social events....you will get mostly 1 sentence answeres from me....but you mention fishing and the floodgates open.

How are you so privy to all this information? Not asking for names, but are you buddies with pros or bpt execs involved with this whole process?

It depends on what I'm using. I find that culprit worms and baby brushhogs are usually pretty durable, and I can catch several fish on them before having to replace them. Senkos on the other hand, I can go thru a pack of those if I hit a bump to hard on the way to the launch.

I'm assuming bass let them vote, hoping if they got their way that maybe they would stay. They should go back with the new 80 angler lineup and revisit to issue(I doubt that will actually happen though). I was really looking forward to watching those west coast lake events on Bassmaster live.

Hey honey! I have to go fishing again today, if not my mono will coil!!!!! ?

Roy Hawk Mike McClelland Michael Neal Fletcher Shryock Dave Lefebre Andy Montgomery Gerald Spohrer Jason Lambert Kelly Jordon Edwin Evers Marty Robinson Zack Birge Skeet Reese Timmy Horton

I say to each his own, as long as its legal. If you wanna chum and catch them that way, go for it. I prefer to use artificial baits only, but plenty of people I know fish with live bait. Nothing wrong with it, its just their preference vs mine. For me personally, I'd say its 75% 25%. 75% of my enjoyment is figuring out how/where to the catch the fish at a particular time/day, and 25% is the actual catching.

I use black tungsten weights. I only really use 3 different weights, 1/8, 1/4 and 1/2 depending on wind and water depth. Most commonly I use 1/4, that seems like a good all around weight for most of the conditions I fish. I also prefer to peg my weights. I don't really throw trick worms, but when I throw flukes or senkos I always throw those weightless.

If BPT is setting up fantasy fishing, this should be their first event! Who comes and who stays.

This is exactly what I caught them on.

I generally thought the same thing, but the last couple weeks have taught me otherwise. Two weeks ago I fished all morning and had only 2 small bass. Found a spot around mid day with some water moving, and shrimp were jumping all over the place, I could see fish hitting them on top. At first I thought it may be speckled trout(as they are starting to move inshore again). I threw what I had tied on, swimbait, spinnerbait, frog, and crankbait and got nothing. Then I remembered that I had a plastic shrimp in my rod locker from the last time I went salt water fishing. I tied it one and it was like night and day. My next 3 casts I caught 3 bass, in the following 30 minutes I caught 25-30 bass. Many times as soon as my bait hit the water, they were crushing it. A few times, I would see them coming up to grab it, before it even hit the water, it was pretty awesome. I kind of got to excited and forgot to retie, and ended up losing my shrimp. I retied with a baby brushhog, which was the closest shrimp imitation I had, but they didn't want it. In the next 10 minutes I only caught 1 fish. I brought about 5 home to cook up, and when I cut their stomachs open, they were just FULL of shrimp.