JediAmoeba

I am sick of it. We have an 9 acre pond, that everyone in the community I reside in calls a lake. I live a few hundred yards from it so I fish it frequently. In eastern pa the amount of public water is diminished and the quality of fishing is terrible due to certain people keeping everything they catch. Literally everything. This year I made a guarantee with some people in our community that I would catch 500 bass out of this pond. Well, it's been a grind. I currently sit at 418 bass caught...the biggest one was 3.2 pounds and counting that one I have only caught 2 over 2 pounds. I catch a lot of pickerel but again, they are small, mostly in the 12 inch range. And I like to power fish but this pond sees a lot of pressure - in the summer it isn't uncommon to see 25 lines in the water all day with people live-baiting. Top water is a no-go and forget most moving baits, the fish just don't hit them. It's a wonder any fish survive at all... Last tuesday when I took the kids down to swim there were 4 kayaks fishing and 12 people on the banks. So yeah, I am sick of dinks right now. After I get to 500 this year I may not fish it for a while.

I always use a blood knot and put a dab of superglue on it. I had the Alberto knot and the Albright knot fail one too many times on me. The blood knot has not failed me yet

I can't find the pictures but they are in this thread.

I just want to say if anyone wants to send me free tackle to try, drop me pm! I will gladly accept your gracious offer! Lol

I see a lot of applications for it but fall jerkbaits in semi murky water is what initially piqued my interest.

Anyone see this guy? I am intrigued and trying to think if this may replace the feathered treble on some of the jerkbaits depending on the weight.

Why not look into tungsten jigs? https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/catpage-BCT.html?from=basres

I never cared for fire line. Back when it first came out my friend got it and loved it, so I bought some to try. I previously was only using Spiderwire. On my first cast I backlashes so bad it took me hours to dig it out. Finally after fixing it I tried it for a day and ended up taking it off the spool and letting it sit. I tried it on my friends rod one day and noticed it was a lot better for me after it had been used for a long time. Frankly, I dont want a line that I have to fish for a long time to break in...it should be manageable from the get-go.

For skinny water I have a lot of luck with lucky craft 78 pointers. Depends on the forage but bluegill/perch or shad patterns. You can get 3 of these on ebay most of the time for about 10 bucks a piece

I would rig a small swimbait Tubes are a finesse bait. They are not meant to be fished like that. More of a hop, hop fall retrieve- similar to a jig but more subtle and slow.

I honestly didn't know my love of Balsa until 5 years ago. I was throwing cranks and tearing it up with this innocent looking cross eyed crank when others were just not producing - it was a little longer than others but had fantastic action. I had had it in my tackle box for years and took it down to my local tackle shop... Looked around and couldn't find one like it and asked him if he knew what it was and he told me it was an old Bagley Killr B. He had a few behind the counter and I bought them...

I have some older bagleys that I love. I went swimming recently to get one of them back.

You need to get the trio!

I was in the Hamburg Pa Cabelas today and the selection is great for the most part but I wanted some Ned Heads and they literally had 2 packs. TWO. PACKS. And those 2 packs were the 1/5 oz which is way heavier than I wanted. Otherwise the in-stocks were pretty good except for the lighter braided lines and some of the TRD zman worms...which makes sense if everyone is buying ned heads. I wish they didn't drop all the Cabelas rods/reels as I liked those better than the BPS brands and they were cheaper.

I agree about its versatility, but when you go somewhere inundated with Shad, white is hard to beat

When you say small pond, how small? Are we talking half an acre? An acre? How deep? Does it have water running into it? Is there a fountain? If it's really small, a trick worm is a decent size bait. You may need to downsize. Try a Texas rigged grub - I use to have great success catching bass on my grandpa's tiny farm pond as a kid. Also, in small ponds like that when you catch a fish it's a pretty substantial thing happening in that body of water to a lot of times the fish become weary until things calm down. Bass have memories and often times they will remember a lure for a year or more so change things up. Everything Mr. Roberts told you is spot on. I would just like to add, that punching is the act of pinpointing a location that you think holds a fish twitching for a bit and then retrieving your lure. It's an entirely different technique than you have probably done before.

I have used power bait from the late 90's recently with no issues and caught some fish.

Jackall Gigantarel is on closeout at TW: https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/catpage-JACKALL.html?from=basres Yeah, it's huge but it looks great! At least the Gantarel and the Jr. do...

I just had a birthday (40) and I got a 100 dollar gift card to spend on tackle...so I got exactly what I don't need, 200 dollars in swimbaits. Bought a Gigantarel and ordered 2 slammers. I don't catch much on big swimbaits but for some reason I enjoy throwing them...

Wow. I have never even thought about that. This could be amazing... It's also having control over the fish and what's going on.

Ok, so I have read many an article about drag and setting the hook. Ever since I started with baitcasters more than 20 years ago I have always set my drag much weaker than I need. When I set the hook my left thumb is always firmly locked on the spool to make sure it's tight as needed. In fact I use my thumb as a makeshift drag on the reels the whole time so I can add or reduce drag as needed. This is something I have always done and it really started when muskie fishing so I could control them more on the strikes right next to the boat when running a figure 8 so they didn't break my rod. This is one reason why I dislike spinning reels and try to throw everything on a casting reel - even Ned rigs I chuck out on baitcasters. I never feel confident the drag will hold and worry about it slipping even though I have good reels. Am I alone here because I never see it mentioned?

I was expecting something truly devastating! Losing a few fish isn't that bad! Losing gear, damaging boats or damaging yourself is waaaay worse. You can go back and catch those fish!

I had what would have been a pb muskie shake off a few feet from the boat years ago and I jumped into the cold water (50 degrees) after it...

I always use a twistlock EWG hook for flipping. My hookup ratio is really good at the local weedery I use it on too.

Susquehanna River or upper Delaware river are great for scenery.