Lottabass

After spending several days in the house hiding from the heat dome and watching Virgil Ward reruns I was ready to get my string stretched! Coike Fullcast on a carolina rig and a SK 4.0 squarebill worked great. A few on a 10 inch worm too. Fish were on the 6,-8 foot drops off of flats.

Where are you getting urchin baits? Everything on TW is unavailable. I have 2 Fullcast and would like to hit the water with more than that. Thank you for your help!

Power vs Finesse. I do both. Whatever I can catch bass with. So this is how I see bass reacting to my slow, finesse presentation a lot of the time: I'm walking through the park and I see a super model sitting on a bench. I walk over and sit next to her. She slides to the other end of the bench and looks the other way. 🙂

What Pat said, and hit that stump MULTIPLE times.

I enjoy learning. I have an Eagle Eye 9. I have to remind myself that making good decisions, figuring out the fish every day, and enjoying what's happening around you is still important. Screen staring and button pushing can consume me to the point of frustration.

@FloridaFishinFool Awesome write up! This work is great.

@rangerjockey "But most seem to be putting the weight at the back of the bait opposite the line tie and holding it right against the body." It seems to me that having the weight in front with the hooks up during the fall would work better. As I said I haven't fished these yet so I got a lot to learn.

SK 4.0 and 8.0 works well in dingy water and wood cover.

I've got some urchins but haven't used them yet. Why not just use a bullet sinker pegged to the hook?

3.5 inch BPS Tender Tube on a t-rig.

Not me. It is a quote from some famous fishing writer. I don't remember who. It mimics my thought but I'm not very good at putting thoughts into words like others are. I'm glad you like it!

I remember tying one on and throwing it for an hour. The 5 1/2 foot rods I had back then were good for throwing a Big O but not so much for the Poe's! Put 'em away and haven't seen the light of day since. Our lakes have been high and dirty but with the hot, dry weather ahead I will give them a try soon.

David Fritts won a Classic on these baits many years ago. Digging thru my tackle on a day when heat index is 105 and I found several I had bought. I don't think I ever used them. Anyone have any thoughts or experience wih Poe's?

There will be days when the fishing is better than ones most optimistic forecast, others when it is far worse. Either is a gain over just staying home.

DITTO!!!

This is an observation I made. Maybe it is common knowledge... The beam from the transducer is 3 dimensional. It has length (distance), height (depth), and width (cone angle is 18 degrees on the Eagle Eye 9). The screen you look at is 2 dimensional. It has length (distance) and height (depth). If you see a fish on your screen the only way you can tell exactly where that fish is (if the boat and the fish are motionless) is to pan with your transducer and when you get the brightest return then you know your transducer is pointing directly at the fish. If the fish is 50 feet from the transducer it will show up but could be on one side of the beam or the other. Seeing the brightest return will result in you knowing the transducer is pointing at the fish and you can then make a more accurate cast.

Mine does not have SI.

I'll give you my experience with the Eagle Eye 9. Keep in mind I'm not an electronics expert. I mounted it on my 8 ft pond prowler using the mount that is shown on the GG Fishing web site. Our lakes have been high and dirty most of the year so that may affect what the unit shows. The beam is narrow so seeing fish or a school and staying locked on to them is not easy, especially with a small, bouncy boat. I have not played with the settings much. With the distance set to 70 ft for some reason it gets kinda fuzzy at 40. Out to 40 it is pretty good. Playing with the settings may help but I haven't done that yet. I have learned more about fish than I knew. Many times a fish (crappie or bass) will follow your lure to the boat and not bite it. If they do many times you can watch the whole school follow it to the boat. My strategy is to use it to find cover before I get to it with the boat. I believe that passing over bass in 5-10 feet of water may inhibit them to bite. Seeing bass would be a bonus. Schools of crappie are easy to see and catch (as long as they don't follow one and end up under your boat)! Telling crappie and bluegills from bass is pretty easy. I hope this helps somewhat. I will get more use from it but having high, dirty water kinda limits its use, I think. I would buy it again.

woops, playing around with google photos, didn't mean to add this. don;t know how to delete....?

My plastic teeth. Yes, need 'em to eat! If you still have the real ones count your blessings!

@Swamp Girl The way you catch 'em, I would say, "make 3 more casts"!

"If a bass can survive being skied on top of the water, boat flipped into a boat, drove around in a live well all day, transferred to a tank, held up high, weighted showed off to a crowd of spectators, transferred back to a tank, then released miles from it's home, and live to be caught another day," IMO, many of them don't live to be caught another day, it's called delayed mortality. The above description is a poor way to treat an animal. Yes, I know I stick sharp hooks in them and fight them to the boat where they don't want to go so I have no room to lecture anyone. Just stating my opinion, not lecturing. To reply to the OP. I get them to the boat right NOW. Do I lose big, hot bass next to the boat? Yes. So what? Like @A-Jay says, wipe the water off your face and make another cast!

FWIW. I hold my rod high during the retrieve. When a bass blows up on it I drop the rod and jack 'em. So I'm only giving them a second before I jerk. There will be days when you miss a lot no matter what you do. I don't know why. Maybe they swat it because it's a territory thing and they are not really wanting to eat it. Maybe they just miss it because of poor aim on their part! In my experience most days they will have the whole frog in their mouth. If the ones you hook are by one hook in the lip and miss most others, well that is why we call it fishing and not catching! Small bass and bluegills will swat your frog. I caught a bass the other day on a frog. Got the blow up, jacked him right away, fought him thru the weeds and when I lipped him and looked in his mouth the frog had been swallowed. All I saw was the line going down his gullet. That means that he ate it and swallowed it immediately when he wacked it!

The bass hit so hard today they loosened my upper plate! Frog and Ol' Monster did the heavy liftin'.

Katie, Some can fish a crankbait through weeds, but not me. Never have figured out the feel for it. A pattern that works in the summer on the dirty water lakes I fish involves a bladed jig. There are scattered clumps of coontail in 4 to 8 fow on the deeper end of flats. Not a solid weedbed but clumps here and there. A 1/2 oz bladed jig, a stiff rod, and braid are used to snap that bait out of those clumps. I've tried doing this with a crankbait and it just gets balled up but a bladed jig comes out fairly clean if you snap it hard enough. Bass love to hang out in those clumps and will wack that bladed jig on the snap! Can't see these clumps with the eyes but you can on a depthfinder. An area with these weed clumps at the right depth I'll cast around and try and hit them with the bladed jig.