Sphynx

Yeah, this one was a push through, so the most obnoxious bit was having to cut up a brand new treble, but I have had ones in the past that were far less pleasant, I have to admit that taking newer anglers fishing I tend to steer them away from treble baits for just this reason, had more than my share of these sorts of things and I don't especially enjoy it.

Lol, I like to think I handled it with at least marginally more dignity than that ?

Managed to hook up on one pound and a bit or so fish tonight, and he proceeded to bury one of the points on a 1/2oz Bill Lewis Rat-L-Trap in my arm, one of the nice EWG style thick ones, be careful boys and girls, removing those is not a pleasant experience. Other than that the river has been a grind with the barometric pressure changing the last few days, but I've pulled a couple solid fish out, couple nice jig fish and this guy tonight, hopefully things settle down a bit tomorrow and we get back to normal.

Oh come now, where's your sense of adventure? LOL

Caught smallies on the vast majority of that list, though condition dependent I have to say that a Popper has far outproduced the buzzbait and frog this year for me on the river, but that is possibly a local thing as the year round primary forage around here is shad, or crawfish, and both of those are seemingly abundant at almost all times of the year, I would also add a paddletail swimbait (basic keitech style of a brand you like) has been a top numbers option for me this year, and a football head jig has consistently produced bigger fish when they are interested (I know, let me put my shock face on) you might also do well on lipless, or squarebills depending on where your fishing, and I seem to notice that a bit of chartreuse almost never hurts my presentations. Fantastic point towards the end of this, I find that smallmouth like to jump, a lot, this comes with all the usual risks, including an increased chance of flying trebles to the face, keeping your rod tip low can help minimize jumping, but they still do it with regularity...some sort of Eyewear is an absolute must when your running those risks unless you have an organ donor on hand and more money than sense

The utter lack of anything at all smacks of unhealthy water, or human intervention of one sort or another, no surprise really that there were no bass since there was none of the conditions they require to live, might be worth the time to see if either some sort of governmental decision had been made to clear/Chem the area, or if there is something about it has been noted by the local wildlife/fishery agency, I can't think of a single stretch of anywhere I fish that is just plain mud bottom without even a bit of vegetation for very far, usually measured in yards at most this time of year,

Well, based on what you've said, both, Mono -does- stretch, this is not usually a problem if your just flipping a jig into close areas, but if you get it out there a good ways, the amount of stretch can be fairly high and can definitely cause hook setting issues, and hooks that are not razor sharp are also a big problem, for the gear you could try going braid to a leader, I wouldn't use less than 30lb braid for a jig, and 15ish pound mono works well for a leader material. The leaving slack thing would be a user error in my book, we work hard to get that line tight, don't go giving the buggers any extra bites at the apple to get away lol, most of the jigs I fish have bigger hooks in them, so they want a pretty firm set to make sure you get it in far enough that the barb helps you out...once they are hooked it's just like fly fishing, keep tension in the line or they'll get loose, and you can probably forget about "letting fish jump" as the best you can do about that is try to minimize the chances, some of them are going to jump no matter what you do, and in my experience that goes double for Smallmouth, very acrobatic and energetic fish.

Maybe, but I don't know if otters eat anything but fish/shell dwellers, never looked into that

Few hundred miles from the coast, and no gators on the Columbia to the best of my knowledge, though the times they are a-changin', I considered a juvenile bull shark, but I doubt it this far east of the Pacific, who knows though, definitely going to be keeping an eye peeled for anything that gives me an indication of what it could be

Boy that'd be about a full book to name them all, because my "favorite lure" depends heavily on the situation I am fishing, season, weather, water temperature, water clarity, vegetation, current, bottom composition, food sources, moon phase, all kinds of things affect what I am favoring on a given day, if I had to pick a "style" that if I could snap my fingers and always be able to catch fish on? Topwater baits of all sorts (buzzbait is probably my favorite of them all, or whopper plopper which is essentially a floating buzzbait), spinnerbaits, crankbaits (lipless, squarebill, deep divers, flat sides, love every crank) I mean, we can literally name a bait or a category and I have a time or condition it's a favorite, but the one box, no matter what happens in life, that I absolutely will not leave home without is my jig box, it has swim jigs, bladed jigs, finesse jigs, football heads, arkie style heads, you can fish them under literally any condition, time of year, whatever, you will never find yourself on the water fishing a jig and have anybody ever be able to say your "wrong" for fishing a jig unless it's a subjective preference thing..they catch numbers, and size.

So, other than an outstanding night of fishing, I decided to listen to the baseball game on the radio (headset) down here tonight with a barley pop and a pipe, it's a fine evening, anyway, while watching the small fish hitting bugs and stuff on the surface I got to watch a mess of gulls and other river birds doing what they do, and a couple of water weasels hunting the general area I fish, that was pretty cool, but that's when "it" happened, these weasels aren't small, and something enormous took a massive shot at one, topwater bite for the ages, don't know if it was a bass, too dark to be sure, but there is a monster hunting this stretch of river, he messed up a weasel pretty bad judging by the cries I'm hearing, but it got away, now a salmon or steelhead are big enough to do it, but it was on the edge of a weed choked eddy and not anywhere I have ever heard of those fish being, and they don't really hunt for food on runs that way anyhow, which leaves 3 fish I know of in this river big enough to pull a stunt like that,.a monster sized bass might try it, an enormous catfish might too, but considering the end results my guess is I have a tiger Musky for a neighbor this evening, I think anything that could cause that kind of pain had teeth, and that would be unbelievable to get to at least see, preferably I will get a chance to give him a photo shoot either up close, or in his natural environs, maybe even catch it one day, but that made a generally not cool Saturday suddenly worth remembering for good reasons, God works in mysterious ways as the saying goes, totally would have made tonight worth it even if the fishing had been terrible.

If they got you believing all that stuff about trade in values, and they are anything like the dealership I used to work at years ago, they got the wool pulled all the way over your eyes, just remember, your smart enough to figure out what your payment should be all on your own, and that sounds like exactly the sort of dealership that tries to 4 square customers every chance they get.

FC line might help, if your not already using it, but I agree entirely that in those gin clear fisheries, it's tough sledding on anything not finesse, even then it can be a challenge.

Not an option for me I'm afraid, vegetation is up to the surface in almost all of my spots, just poking proud of the surface, for me my options are frogs, or swimjigs/paddletails that are designed to come through that stuff pretty well

Trouble I have with crankbaits this time of year is constantly getting them hung up in the salad, hardly a crankbait specific complaint, really any treble bait suffers this around this time of year, but as soon as the vegetation starts to die off, mat up, and get out of the way? It's game on, I've had days where 10+ fish in 1-1.5 hours are a continuous thing on them, and that pattern is pretty consistent throughout the fall feedup

Good luck, hope you whack a DD today

There aren't many times I am glad I learned diesel theory, and other more idiotic motor repair skills in a structured environment, but it has sure saved me a pile on vehicles over the years, now whether that's a fair trade for all the late night calls, familial obligations and outright being taken advantage of on account of being a reasonably competent mechanic I'll let you decide, but my advice would definitely be to learn how they work, more importantly WHY they work, then find something made by an aftermarket happy manufacturer and keep that joker running off your own knowledge as long as they make the parts, it's working reasonably well with my 77 K5 Blazer

Over the last few weeks I have been endeavoring to pattern these fish in anything approaching a predictable pattern, the fish are laughing and I can hear it, I'm sitting 45 landed 58 hooked since the contract started 3 weeks ago, it isn't that I haven't caught fish, I clearly have, the trouble comes in with the only identifiable pattern I have is that these fish are finicky, and d**n willing to feed, I average 1.5 hours an evening over probably 16 days, a couple of which are skunks early in this period by foolishly assuming that rocks meant crawfish imitations are going to be important, during this period, and I have landed fish on paddletail swimbaits, squarebills, lipless, shakey heads, ned rigs, buzzbaits, poppers, and can't seem to figure out what the trigger is outside of proximity, seems to me I get a bait of ANY sort of baitfish near enough to a fish to become noticed at all they destroy my theories, should I just enjoy this period of being able to catch them on the baits of my choosing at my discretion because it just can't last, or is it likely that I am missing something important here? The number of fish landed/hooked seems to be roughly proportional to the time spent fishing it, and I'm truly stumped to guess why they are so easy to catch, the only two standing theories not utterly obliterated have been baitfish as the primary forage, strongly suspecting shad/white colored fish, and rip rap/rocks/current breaks seem to trump all other concerns.

This is more or less what I am getting at, I landed about a 2lb pike on a 18 sized prince nymph on 6x tippet, it was maybe the most epic battle I ever had with a pike, took like 20min, and he missed a chance to water ski by not biting the conventional stuff I was tossing the evening before, but if you properly pair your gear, you might get dragged into the wood, or the rocks, or a brush pile, but you shouldn't be bending out hooks, if you are, your fishing to stout of a rod, too stout a line, too stout a drag, or some combination of those.

Doing better than me, one of those lasts me until I snag and lose it lol

I'm definitely ok with those durability and price figures if I am competitively fishing and think it's worth a check, but I have far more affordable baits to use as daily fun fishing stuff, as long as nobody is being deliberately deceived, or forced to buy them, I definitely agree that the market will decide whether it is successful or not.

Any hook CAN bend, I am just saying that when properly paired with a rod/line/drag designed to handle a #2 hook, vs. a 2/0, you can be much more aggressive with the 2/0 than the #2, not at all trying to say you can't bend out a 2/0 hook lol.

Hopefully they can do so without making it less desirable to fish, the durability and the price seem to be the biggest complaints I hear about Googan soft plastics.

Bit of a disclaimer, I do not fish Googan branded baits, and I am not at all the world's biggest fan of the Googans, be that as it may, those baits either catch fish, or else a $6ish bag of soft plastic is such an embarrassing experience that you have hundreds or thousands of people continuing to buy them, then go out of their way to lie to the rest of us about it...I don't believe that anymore than I expect anyone else to, this is one of those things to me that falls into affordable baits, I'm happy to spend $6 or so on a new bag of soft plastics to satisfy my curiosity, worse comes to worse trade them for something else, I personally fish a lot of BioSpawn baits, they work for me, and the price always seems to be right when I buy them, does that mean they are "The best soft plastic baits ever?" Probably not, but they work for me, if that ever stops, I'm positive there are dozens of other brands selling soft plastics that could fill that place in my arsenal perfectly well...buy a bag, you'll be out $6...

To me it would depend entirely on the environment your fishing in, is this an open water scenario? If so, then no, light line, lighter rod, light hook with a properly sharp point, properly set drag and your fish is very likely coming to hand, if your talking about a fishing environment where you need to control the head? Dock pilings, brush piles, stumps etc, probably upsizing my gear so I can not bend out hooks trying to get him out of the junk, basically I go as light as I think I can get away with, and let the environment I am fishing in dictate changes for heavier stuff.