Danarchy

I'm currently living in Eau Claire, but grew up on the St. Croix and it is still my favorite place to fish. I've got a BUNCH of rivers down here to try, including the Mississippi, and small streams in the Coulee region. Cant wait! So many fishing oppurtunitues in this state...

It is that time of year! Might want to let them do their thing and go back in a few weeks.

I go ice fishing myself. Sit in a warm ice shack with the wood stove fired up, watch fish on the aqua-veiew, allow the spinning orange glow of the vexilar to hypnotize me, jig the heck out of crappies and perch, watch the tip-ups (we've caught a lot of pike over 30", waiting for that 20 pounder), jig bass using hair jigs and jiggin' raps, caught a 17" bass today on a 2" perch jigging rap, ride ATV on the frozen tundra, and spend A LOT of time with my girl. Hell, you gotta keep busy, don't let a little ice keep you from gettin' at them fish!

What do you mean by worms Andrew? Live worms? In all of my years of fishing live worms have done just fine for smallies, also live minnows. I fish minnows on a split shot rig or on a plain ol' 1/8 oz jighead. If you want to get into using lures, like yakfish said, grab some tubes, senkos, and grubs. You'll find that depending on the size, grubs will catch you just about everything that swims. Some good colors to have are green pumpkin, smoke, or watermelon. I personally have about 20 different colors in about 4 or 5 different sizes and I don't go fishing without them. I'm not too partial to tubes myself but they do work well, and with the senkos, try the same colors and just cast and let it sink - it should do the rest for you. If you are fishing from shore, try to work every square foot of the water you have access to, at all depths, and always experiment with the way you retrieve your lure. If you try these lures or the live bait and thouroughly cover the water available you should catch smallies, if they are there.

You have'nt been bit by a fish untill one of your digits ends up in the mouth of a Northern Pike. I don't think they really mean to bite, they're probably just thrashing in an attempt to free themselves from the clutches of the strange being that pulled them from their world. I was removing a Mepps inline from a small Pike and he did just that and I ended up gettin' bit and the small tooth broke off in my finger. I also dropped the fish which led to a break off and the loss of my spinner, not the best outing.

Are there any baitfish in the pond? You might want to throw in some bluegills or perch so those bass have something to chew on in there. We stocked a pond (as seen on my pic) in oklahoma last April with about a hundred little largemouth and about a hundred white crappies. I'm anxious to see how they grew over the year when I go down there in the spring.

T-rigged, unpegged with HP hook

Hey, if you can see the bottom, then the water's probably clean. Running a crankbait along the bottom will probably stir up a cloud of silt and might be a good presentation. Now is it mud or is it muck? If it's real dark and full of leaves, and in a shallow bay, it's probably a good place to be during the early part of the season. Dark bottoms attract more sunlight so the water will warm faster, drawing in the whole food chain.

I just had to post on this one because I've been spending the last two weeks installing docks and boat hoists for clients in the cold lakes of Wisconsin. One of the methods we use for getting the hoists back into thier proper positions is to find the "wash-out", a deep hole where the bottom gets washed away by the props of the boat being parked. The bigger the boat on the lift, the larger the wash-out. I've caught many large largemouths by dragging a jig into the washout area. Also, the deeper it is below the end of the dock the better, and if the hoists I speak of have a canopy over them, then you've got a prime dock. I've also noticed that pounding docks is usually more productive during the middle of the week. The weekend pressure will send the bigguns out a little bit deeper. But if they like the dock, they shouldn't be too far away from it. If you see any floating rafts, like the 8'x8' platforms used for swimming, don't pass them up. I've caught many bass from these because they provide great shade and are usually anchored above that magic 8 to 10 foot range.

Maybe you should try what I did. Last summer, I too was noticing that I wasn't the only one putting on a little weight. My plano pal was getting a bit hefty as well. I ended up having more sacks of plastic that I never used than baits that I had confidence in. What I did was grabbed an assortment of never opened, wierd looking baits (like bubble-gum pink floating trick worms and some strange zipper like worms from a garage sale) and headed for the river. I hit my favorite spot, a place where I knew the fish were, and started fishing these new baits. It took a little adjusting, but eventually I caught fish on just about all of the baits I brought with. One of which has now become a favorite of mine for chasing river smallmouth, that being a plain black power worm. In order for this to work though, you have to leave those "silver bullets" at home and grab a round of "blanks" and make 'em fire! Oh, yeah... If you have action tailed worms or grubs that you've never got around to using, (ribbon tailed, twister tailed, forked, paddle, etc.) try sticking them on jigs or spinnerbaits as trailers. They especially seem effective if the color doesn't match the skirt. With grubs or shadtailed swim baits or even worms, you can easily snip off the front half of the bait to fit the hook perfectly, and then to further the use of these otherwise unused baits, you can keep the parts you cut off and use them for finesse situations or even for panfish. I remember a time when I as on a school of crappies. I was cutting off two inch pieces of old used power worms and threading them on a plain aberdeen hook. This kept me busy for over an hour!

I just caught my first smallmouth of the year two days ago, using a five inch green pumkin kinami flash. They were holding in slack water near fast current in 36 degree water. It was just a matter of getting the lure in front of them.

As soon as the water hits 40 degrees, the water will "turn over" and there will be good oxygen all around the lake, causing fish of all species to become more active. Fish like Scott said, real slow, because cold water bass will be sluggish. When the water reaches 50 degrees, bass will enter the pre-spawn stage and begin feeding heavily. Look for them on shallow flats where the water warms quickly, preferably along the north side of the lake or in sheltered bays. Watch the weather, looking for steady warming patterns - if a cold front comes along, it will most likely drive the bass back to the depths. And listen to sarget! If you're going to fish bass, be stealthy, and don't keep any. If you happen to see the authorities aproach, make sure to have a small jig or something tied on and tell 'em you're fishing panfish! I got busted for fishing out of season last year, and the fine was quite hefty!

Swivels can save a lot of trouble from line twist. If you're using inline spinners, spoons, pre-rigged worms, or any other lure that spins, a swivel is a must. They are also the best thing to use for carolina or lindy rigs, keeping the weight from sliding down. I'm not quite sure but I think that different sized swivels can handle different wieght, the bigger obviously capable of pulling more pounds.

I'm not trying to tick anyone off, and I'm a firm believer in catch and release, but go ahead and eat all of the bass you want. Just remember to practice "selective harvest". If you're going to eat bass, I think that 15" to 17" bass are the best. Remember that trophy size bass are the big spawners, so killing them could really affect the population, and the fatty meat of an 18"+ bass isn't as good as the smaller ones. Now I'm sure that many of you are allready angry with me if you've read this far, so think of it this way. Would you rather clean 50 sunfish that barely yield any good meat or two 15" bass? I'd choose the latter. In many lakes where I live, it would probably be better for the overall bass population to take a few small ones here and there, but that's just in some lakes. It might not be a good idea for other waters where bass populations are lower. People have been catching fish for dinner for hundereds, maby even thousands of years. Bass are delicious. Oh yeah, don't eat smallmouth, they are no good!

Getting back to the topic at hand... Alright JT, I seem to have the same problem with sacks of soft plasticbaits. I think you have a good point about selecting certain baits and leaving the ones that you probably won't use back at HQ. My question for you is how do you store/organize so many bags of plastic? It seems that no matter how big of a tackle box I have, I quickly stuff all of the droors to point that they barely shut. I've seen the zip-up binder style "booklets" for storing plastics, but I think I would need at least twenty of them. Any tips for keeping bags 'o' plastic in order?

10 pounders are everywhere, it's just a matter of finding them. I used to think that I had to go south to catch one of thos monsters untill I read the Wisconsin state records. The biggest bass caught here was 11 pounds! Hunt 'em down, they're in there!

Raul pretty much summed it up. I've watched bass spawn from shore numerous times. I saw small males stationed all around the lake, some on rocks, some on sand, and some on gravel. It appears that the male picks the spot and waits for a fine lookin female to chose his spot. I've witnessed the males nip at the females' tail, trying to get them to stay. It was almost like they were flirting. I guess if the female doesn't feel comfortable with the area, she'll probably move on to find a safer haven for her eggs, or maybe she was looking for a bigger male. But then again, size doesn't matter, does it? You can never fully understand females, no matter how hard you try.

pro-295, are there any good sized cats in the pond? Maybe those cats could be eating the bass. I know that they can be very aggressive. My friend used to have three small catfish in an aquarium. One was abouat a half a poun, the second a bit smaller, and the third was a runt compared to the other two. The two bigger fish would attack the small one, often biting off it's tail. The tail would grow back and they'd bite it off again. Eventually bones were showing. It was an example of how aggressive they could be. Maybe the cats are chowing down on bass meat?

Work the north sides of the lake after ice out, since they warm faster. Also look for rocks, they gather heat better and warm the water faster.

I can't believe that someone would call a smallmouth ugly! I would much rather fish for smallies than largemouth. In my region, fishing for largemouth can be almost too easy, for me that is, unless I'm hunting for trophies. Hunting for smallies, in my case, usually means fishing a river, and I just love flowing water. It's awesome going to a river, even from the bank, and searching for current breaks and eddies. If it's a nice big rock or a huge stump, with the water boiling over, I get goosebumps before I cast. The smallmouth is, and always will be, pound for pound, the gamest fish that swims. I've caught 9" smallies that put up more of a fight than the 2 and 3lb largemouth that I routinely catch. When you find a sweet spot on that perfect point or drop off, you can catch 20 or more(I've heard of 50+) at the same spot, even if you made the same cast repeatedly; can you catch largemouth like that? I've also caught smallies a few feet away that when I set the hook, they'd go nuts and swim straight towards me or almost jump into the boat or on shore. I would later find out that the smallie that took my bait was actually swimming frantically away from another smallie that was trying to steal it! This level of aggression is probably why anglers have reportedly caught two good size smallies on one lure. I could probably go on for days typing about smallies. I'd like to say that while I love smallies, I still like largemouth fishing. It's just a preference thing, like blondes and brunettes.

Some new tricks that I plan on mastering are speedworming, drop shotting, wacky worming under a float, and some two timing topwater action(a popper or walker with a plastic bait rigged behind). I also plan on getting to know my diverse collection of crankbaits a little more.

#1: Fathead minnow on a 1/8 oz jighead... color not important. Nice long fatheads, prefferably 2 and 1/2" to 3" long have produced more smallies for me than any other presentation. I've caught them using minnows by swimming them in the shallows, under a slip float, 25 feet down, and just about everywhere in between. I've had 50+ fish days using minnows, and many were taken from the same spot, cast after cast. #2: Senko... They are a crutch that I soon hope to break away from. These baits worked for me from April to November, rigged on everything from sledheads to T rigs. My biggest smallie to date was caught on a green/lemon senko on an ultralite rod. #3: Swimbaits... I prefer the Walleye Assassin, by Bass Assassin lures, color is opening nite, a clear blue with silver flakes. Rigged on a jighead, these baits accounted for my first and last big bass of the year. I toss them into shallow bays and shoals in the spring for pre-spawn smouth, and again during the fall frenzy. They also worked well in the summer when I actually wasn't using a senko or a shad rap.

When I fish senkos, I catch way more small fish than I do big ones. It could just be the locations that I fish, or it could have somethng to do with the aggresion level of the fish, either way it would be grounds for another topic. I have caught some big bass on senkos and other knock offs, but they seem to come after precise coverage of a given area. As for the small ones, I don't think they think twice before inhaling a senko. I once literally tossed a senko right into a small bass's mouth, or at least it seemed that way, right on top of it's nose; before the ripples spread a foot and a half I had a fish on. And like earthworm said "they may be responsible for retarding the learning curve of an entire generation of bass anglers", I may fall into this category myself. I don't think I went fishing at all in '04 without casting senkos first and foremost. They did produce well while my partners were getting skunked, but I wish that I would have spent more time with other patterns.

I've never tried to practice in the off season. I just read every thing I can about fishing, over and over again. I used to play with the cat untill it hooked itself in the mouth on an un-attended rod last summer. Someone bumped the rod, knocking it over and the cat grabbed the inline spinner in it's mouth, and tried to run away, setting the treble in it's upper lip with the weight of the rod. I struggled to remove the hook for about 5 min, all the while being bitten and scratched by a very disturbed Mr. Gray. I plan to do some open water fishing for walleyes this week below the dam here since it is no longer -5 outside, which should keep my casting skills up to par, and also keep my bottom type feeling sixth sense in full swing.

"The magazines are about 14- to 18-months behind what is really going on so figure that you will read about updates sooner or later." from Craig DeFronzo's Advanced Dropshotting Here's just another reason why the internet resources are so handy. Does this quote seem accurate to you? I'm starting to think that with all of the articles online, and pros interacting on boards like this, one doesn't need magazine subscriptions to stay on top of the game, especially with some of those "pluggers" I mentioned before. Once again, good advice J.T., keep up the good work. I wouldn't be as successfull of an angler if it weren't for online resources.