Dens228

This is my second year back at fishing after a long hiatus. I started out with two budget reels that seemed to work great and I still use them. As I watched video and read this site I couldn't imagine how people were casting so far. I recently bought a Lews Tournament Pro G. I now know what I was missing.......smooth, and casts a mile. Couple this with the fact that I suffer much less backlash with this than my budget reels. As a matter of fact I think the only backlash I had was on the first cast.

It depends on what state you're in.

Thanks! I wish I got into this kayak fishing addiction sooner!

Well this certainly beats the bullfrog hitting my top water frog a couple weeks ago! That adds a different element to fishing!

I recently bought a Radar 115 and today brought it out to a 15 acre lake. Third time out in it, first two resulted in 0 fish. That all changed today. I caught this one on a hollow body frog casting into the middle of lilly pads and walking it across. He was 20 inches and weighed in at a nice 3 lbs 15 ozs. Caught 5 others after, 2 on the same frog, 3 on texas rigged Senko's. The smallest came in at 16 inches the others were all around 18 inches. I only weighed the biggest. Nice morning on the water and nothing beats watching a big bass hit a top water frog!

That's also what I used on mine.

I'm pretty new to this also, at this point I'd go,.......... medium depth crank bait Hollow body frog Plastic worm

I just bought the Radar 115 two weeks ago and have used it twice. That makes a total of three times I've been in a kayak. I can tell you that I absolutely love it. I use a C-Tug to get it to the water, have rigged it up with my Hook4 in the front console, couple of rod holders, and made an anchor stick out of a plastic coated tomato stake. I use the scupper holes for the stick. I'm 245 pounds and it's stable, quick, and a dream to maneuver. I still have to make a few adjustments to it but absolutely love it.

Part of first name, last initial, and there were 227 with the same before me!

My daughter and son in law have a small lake right behind their house, flat bottom, no structure to speak of, 4-5 feet deep for 95% of it. He put his two Christmas trees just off shore behind the house, about 20 feet out, in 4 feet of water. We caught 5 bass around those trees in about 10 minutes. All of the them were 2-3 pounds which is bigger than average in there.

I fished a shallow pond yesterday. Deepest part is 5 feet, pretty flat bottom. No bottom structure to speak of. Just an doglegged shaped oval bowl. We used my Basshunter and tried several things, included frogs on the few patches of lilly pads and nothing worked. We switched to weightless Senkos in and around thick weeds and under overhanging trees and began catching bass, all between 2 and 4 pounds. We kept catching until we had to leave. So in summary, what worked was slow fishing in weeds located either in, or very close to shaded water. It was a cloudless sunny day with little to no wind too.

I used to fish all the time up until mid high school. Got away from it for whatever reason but started up a bit last summer, really into it this year. I bought a 10 foot Basshunter and read here extensively as I try to learn. I live in the suburbs of Chicago and yesterday we went to my daughters house. They have a small lake, about 6-8 acres right in the middle of her subdivision and it's right behind her house. I decided to throw a few casts out from shore and try a wacky rigged Senko. I've never fished a wacky rig, or a Senko for that matter. Here's my second cast result.............

A 55 lb thrust TM gets my 10 foot Basshunter cruising at about 3.2 mph. Plenty fast for the small lakes I fish.

After a many year break I'm back into the fishing scene. I bought a 10 foot Basshunter and installed a Lowrance Hook 4 on it to fish a few local lakes in my area, northern Illinois. There's a local lake with nice, clear water that gets quite a bit of shore pressure, especially on weekends. You can only use a boat in the top shown lake, Mallard. The Shallow area to the west of the two walking bridges have a thick carpet of grass/weeds that basically cover the entire bottom. Most of the northern shoreline is clear of weeds with rock. I was out a few days ago, water surface temp was 57 degrees. Any pointers or ideas on potential hot spots on this lake? Lures? I'm trying to speed up my learning curve here.2011_MallardLakeMallardCloverdaleMap (1).pdf

I use braid for topwater and just switched from mono to a lighter braid for everything else. I don't use a leader. I can tell you that with the braid I'm able to feel everything so much better. After reading about ripping the hooks from fish with braid/trebles I can say I haven't experienced that at all. I do sweep the set with braid rather than just rip the set.

I started using VMC duolock snaps this year. Size 2 or 3 depending on the lure. I like them so far.

I'm not an expert being fairly new to this but I have a 10 foot Basshunter with a 55 lb Minn Kota. I upgraded to a AGM size 27 and tooled around a smaller lake for about 3 1/2 hours. Some with slow trolling along the shores while I fished, some going full speed to get to another spot. At the end of the fishing I was still almost at full charge. I'd save some weight and go with the 27.