plawren53202

I'm afraid that by the time Covid starts to wind down, there are going to be a lot of people with a pile of fishing junk in the corner of their garage, laughing about the time they "tried fishing" the same way that I laugh about my failed attempt at Rollerblading every time I see the pair gathering dust in my garage. But I didn't ruin anyone's Rollerblading path when I gave it a shot (and by some miracle didn't put anyone else or myself in the hospital LOL)...but I think a lot of public bank fishing water is going to take years to recover for exactly the kinds of reasons you are describing, plus litter and similar mistreatment. I see it nearly every day at my subdivision pond.

Thought provoking topic, OP, so kudos for contributing this. I think your observation is dead on. I also think it can be applied more broadly than bass fishing. I see the same thing in my other hobby, playing guitar. I see people in this thread pointing to fishing-specific skills. But I think there are certain character traits that underlie those fishing skills, and led to developing them. I posted a separate thread a couple of weeks ago about fishing my first tournament, an Angler's Choice tournament. The boater I fished with I had only met online and on the phone until morning of the tourney. It didn't take long to tell that he had "it," whatever "it" is, that we're discussing in this thread. For me, I think "it" is a combination of three things. First, if I'm going to do something, I go all in. It's almost like it's a competition against myself, to see how well I can do at it, and against the standards of greatness that I see in that particular activity. Like, I look at Jacob Wheeler or Jordan Lee, or the long timers like KVD, I see how great they are and recognize that they have worked their butts off to get to that point. So how much can I work at it, and how good can I get? The biggest way that I see this determination or bull-headedness or whatever it is manifest itself in fishing is the pace that people go at it. I see a lot of people--in fact most people--for whom most fishing is more like a leisurely stroll by the water or boat ride with a little fishing thrown in. Even if I'm by myself, fishing a pond on the bank, I just can't fish like that. Wish I could sometimes. I'm fishing at tourney speed (at least the extent that I am able to) any time I'm on the water. I'm also thinking at tourney speed, if I'm not catching them or getting enough bites, why not, what bait should I change to, where should I move, what detail like wind or sunlight or weather am I not thinking of. It's thinking at a hundred miles an hour. I know it drives my dad and family crazy sometimes when I'm running the boat for them. But I can't help it, that's just how I am if I'm near water. The second thing that contributes, for me, is I think I do a good job at processing a lot of information and boiling it down to the essential points. This was a skill developed out of necessity; I don't have a particularly great memory so a lot of my classes in school, college and law school, there was just too much information to straight up memorize. I had to get good at figuring out rules or patterns, boiling 100 points down to one or two rules or patterns. I think this works really well for fishing, especially today with a gazillion YT channels. Info comes at people from all directions. It's easy to remember that so-and-so said use this squarebill in this color around this cover. But there's a million "so-and-sos" who say these things, some accurate and some not. It's a lot more helpful for me, and easier to remember, to figure out why that squarebill in that color worked around that cover, and then the "why" becomes a pattern that I can apply in other situations, other baits, other seasons. The final thing, and I think this goes for all of us, is that I just love fishing. The thump of a hookup or hard bite gets my pulse and adrenaline going in a way that a lot of people around me just can't totally relate to. In a way it's purely biochemistry, I'm sure there are adrenal and dopamine and serotonin and other reactions going on that just don't happen to the same extent when fishing for a lot of people...they've probably got other things that trigger the same biochemical reactions for them and would have little impact on me. I think on the most foundational biological level, it's that reaction that fuels the first two things I described, although I'm sure the interplay between them is a lot more complicated than that. A lot smarter people than me could probably analyze it better. All that aside, though, it's funny because even though we each have our own unique factors that contribute, I think we all "know it when we see it." I did when I met my boater partner before the tournament a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure I would if I met most of you on here in person.

One pond that I fish has exactly that kind of grass, and that thick. Three baits I would suggest: t-rigged weightless fluke; t-rigged weightless fluke; and a frog--all on heavier tackle. If bluegill are the primary forage here, there are a couple of Zoom fluke colors that will work well; bluegill flash, and I think there is a "sungill" color with more orange. With water that clear I would suggest going with bluegill flash. You could also get one of the more "standard" colors like Tennessee shad and doctor it up a little with blue and orange Spike It pens. I'd also be curious to see how ripping a swim jig through that stuff would work. Obviously more in the upper zone, you're not going to want to let a swim jig sink way down in that stuff. Might be too thick, and you're definitely going to need heavier tackle, but swim jigs shine in weeds and you can put together a killer jig/trailer combo to imitate bluegill.

At my local pond, add massive wads of line (usually 50 lb mono or something similar), bread sacks, hot dog packages, and packaging for hilarious tackle (like steel leaders--at a pond with only bass and bluegill--and a Castaic 12" swimbait in a pond where the average bass runs about 8").

25 ft. sounds really short for that setup, and you've got good gear there, so there has to be something not working properly somewhere. Couple of things I thought of off the top of my head as possibilities....do you have a guide with a broken ceramic inside it that is maybe causing drag? You can check the guides by rubbing a Q tip inside them and look for fraying. Issues being caused by your braid to leader knot? Either maybe catching on the guides on the way out, or if your leader is long enough that the knot lays on the spool when casting, maybe it is catching on the spool line when you cast? Are the casts coming to a sudden stop, which might indicate that the braid on the spool has dug in? I don't see anything in your setup that would come close to causing this, so there must be a malfunction-type problem somewhere in the chain.

Fussiness with knots is why I finally threw in the towel on fluoro. Copolymer (Sufix Advance copolymer) now for both leaders on spinning/braid setups and as a mainline on baitcasters. I've just found it to have the good traits of fluoro (nearly as sensitive and nearly as little stretch) but also the good traits of mono (soft, forgiving with knots). I'm careful enough for fluoro tying knots at home, but out in the boat or on the bank trying to tie a knot in a hurry, I just had way too many breaking off with fluoro. Was throwing a drop shot this evening and it was the only thing catching fish for me. I just tie a good old fashioned improved clinch with a long tag end and double the line back through the hook eye. I know it's not a textbook knot to tie on a drop shot but it's the one I'm most comfortable with, and the fish usually don't seem to care either way.

Ditto on the VMC Neko hooks. I used VMC wacky, weedless wacky, some Mustads and I forget what else in a long parade of trying to find something where I wasn't missing fish constantly. The VMC Nekos aren't perfect, but they do really well and for whatever reason they do a lot better than any other hook I tried. For the record, I've had really good luck with them as a drop shot hook too.

Ned rig, TRD finesse blue craw or twilight Yum Dinger, either morning dawn or bream, usually wacky rigged

I use hybrid/copolymer (Sufix Advance copolymer; have also used P Line Floroclear copolymer) on my baitcasters for similar reasons as you. I fish texas rigged baits on these setups all the time and have experienced no problems. Copolymer to me is the best of mono and fluoro; it's much more soft and forgiving than fluoro, but has much less stretch and more sensitivity than straight mono. I'm usually using 4/0 and 5/0 hooks and have had no problem driving the hook home with the copolymer.

Alright, OP here checking back in after first time using the Black Max. Fished an 8 hour tournament day. Originally I was planning on using this combo for flipping and pitching. I did a little of that but the spots we fished weren't as conducive to flipping as I anticipated. But, I did end up using the Black Max quite a bit for, of all things, deep cranking a SK 5XD. So, probably not the easiest task for a reel, and also meaning that I was bombing as long of casts as possible so I could get the 5XD down deep. And the 6.3:1 ratio is the slowest of my baitcasters so it seemed the natural choice for deep cranking. I'm happy to say, I was really pleasantly surprised at how well the Black Max handled this. It obviously wasn't quite as silky smooth as my Lew's Tournament MP, but it did really well. No problem bombing the 5XD a country mile on the 7'3" rod, and the brakes did pretty well also. No birds nests and just a little line fluff once in a while. If someone is on a tight budget or wants to recommend a beginner a good solid reel, the Black Max really seems like a strong choice. So, I may just leave this one on that rod for a while rather than trying to replace it quickly. To use a baseball analogy, the player who just got called up from the minors did well enough the first time out to earn a few more starts. Let me just say as an aside, I have really enjoyed by Tournament MP since I got it last winter (it was the first reel in that price range I have owned), but putting it through 8 hours' worth of tournament fishing today, man I love that reel. In particular the dual braking system, dialed in, just made so much of my casting effortless. Trying to cover a lot of water and bombing cast after cast in rapid succession, and really trying to launch some casts, with accuracy, and not wanting to overpower the reel and backlash, that dual braking system dialed in is just...effortless is just the only word for it.

Somehow having fished my whole life, at age 46 I finally fished my first tournament today. Let me just say in summary, OMG I am hooked, and I have never had so much fun not catching a keeper. I have never owned a boat, which of course makes fishing tournaments a little difficult. Thankfully I recently met a boater that was looking for a partner for local bass club and Anglers Choice tournaments. The fishing was tough. It was bright bluebird skies and hot, paired with pretty clear water (4-5' visibility). The only saving grace was a little bit of a breeze to put a little chop on the water. Couple all that with the fact that after about 10:30, there was a huge amount of recreational boat traffic in what is a pretty narrow lake. Meaning, trying to fish any offshore stuff after 10:30 or 11:00 felt like an episode of Deadliest Catch. The winning bag out of approximately 50 boats was only 13 pounds, whereas in the past at this lake winning Angler's Choice bags have been closer to 20 pounds. Having said all that, we did actually catch a decent amount of fish. Problem was that this lake has a 16" minimum limit and most of what we caught was 12-14". First thing after blastoff, there was a decent topwater bite and we had several blowups on buzzbaits. That bite didn't last long . Rest of the day, when we could find a very particular mix of conditions--edge of the weedline on main lake points, where the dropoff was from about 12-14 ft. to about 18 or 20 ft.--the shorts would hit a shaky head trick worm (SK Bull Worm in Moon Juice) or a Carolina-rigged curly tail worm in green pumpkin. We slowly picked them off all day, grinding it out, just couldn't find the bigger fish. But later in the day, the boat traffic and waves just wouldn't allow us to fish a lot of those spots. Despite it being a 2:45 a.m. wakeup call, 8 hours of hard work fishing, and a zoo out on the lake, I came away from this day hooked. What a blast. I also learned a lot, not really about the fishing techniques themselves, but strategy, planning out a run from spot to spot, study and planning ahead, maximizing the number of casts and efficiency of fishing, that kind of stuff. Plus, after many moons of watching MLF/FLW/Bassmasters tournaments and YouTube channels for Wheeler/MDJ/etc., it was so much fun to get out and experience a little piece of that--obviously scaled down a lot in every way, but all the stuff like staging, going through boat check, blastoff, and then all the strategy and thought process out on the water. I'm dead tired, sore as heck, and can't wait for the next one.

No doubt, it may handle them great and Jonny from Fish the Moment sure bombs them. I just meant that since I intend to mainly pitch/flip with this combo, I wasn't worried about it. I may find out it bombs and buy several more LOL.

Thanks! I am excited, so I do imagine sleep is going to be hard to come by Friday night....and highly suspect that Red Bulls are going to be flowing Saturday morning, we are leaving at 3:15 a.m. to make the 1.5 hour drive and be ready for 6:00 start time. I kind of suspected that this reel would be safer planning on it as a flipping/pitching setup reel than if I wanted to use it for a long bomber.

Found out last minute that I'm fishing a tournament on Saturday (super excited, first one ever, Angler's Choice). Based on the lake, I'm expecting to do some flipping and pitching. Normally being a bank-only angler, I don't have a dedicated flipping setup. So I had one day, today, to put one together. No time to order online, and I could not afford to spend a fortune--and, lovely Covid-related inventory shortages to deal with as well. So the mission for the day was find good quality at a reasonable price, in stock in person. Rod was no problem, Academy had an Ethos HD in stock in H/F, 7'3". I'm really enjoying the Ethos HD MH/F 7'0" I picked up a little while back, so I'm a fan of that rod, and a big fan at the $69 price tag. Reel was a little more of a problem. Bass Pro literally had nothing in stock sub $100. Academy was pretty limited as well. The only aluminum frame reels were all well north of $100. They had one or two Lew's reels that are graphite frames less than $100 (like the Laser MG). But I figured if I'm going to have to settle for a graphite frame reel for this weekend anyway, I might as well save a few bucks, so I went with the Black Max. I've heard people say they really like this reel for the price. I know Jonny on Fish the Moment owns a herd of them. My intention is to upgrade to something aluminum frame when I have time, but for now, what should I expect out of this Black Max that I didn't really anticipate buying? In particular, how finicky are they to get dialed in; and how is the longevity?

I'll just throw this out there, could be totally off base, but are you 100% sure they're truly suspending in the middle of the water column or is there some very slight bit of structure or cover they're relating to? Like someone else said, bass usually don't just totally randomly suspend, that's more like crappie or bluegill, there's usually some sort of structure the bass are still relating to even if they aren't glued to the bottom or to cover. Reason I ask, my subdivision pond is a nearly-featureless goldfish bowl of a pond. There are places where the bass could appear to be suspended mid-water column but on closer inspection there is a bit of structure they are relating to. In one place there are a few rocks where a storm sewer enters the pond and then on the other side there is a kind of overflow outlet. The rocks are barely noticeable, hardly big enough to detect with a bottom bumping bait, but where there is no other cover they will hold fish. Also, in a lot of places around the perimeter of the pond there is the slightest little drop off. In some places I'm guessing it's 6 inches. But in this pond that is enough to hold fish, and with that in particular I think they cruise along it. I've used a squarebill a lot, burn it along at a pretty good clip and then when it bumps one of those rocks--or when it starts to dig into the bottom all of a sudden and I know it has probably hit that "dropoff," I pause it for a couple of seconds, I'm sure long enough to let it rise at least a foot or two.

To me the real appeal of the fluke is the way it flutters up when the rod tip is lifted and then slowly flutters back down as it sinks. I fish it weightless to get that, I would think that even a 1/8 oz. bullet weight would really impact that action. To me that slow flutter really captures dying baitfish action. I use 3/0 or 4/0 hooks, if I want to fish it a tad deeper I go with a thicker 4/0 hook, or if fishing it super shallow a thinner 3/0 hook. Having said all that, I've seen people fish it lots of ways I've never tried, like nose hooked on a drop shot, belly weighted hook, on a jig head, trailer for a chatterbait or spinnerbait, etc. So what do I know, honestly I think a lot of the fluke's popularity probably comes from its versatility.

I'm sure they're trying to deal with Covid related supply chain problems just like everyone else. Then that recent explosion of publicity from MLF/Bassmasters/FLW all going up north and everyone seemingly tearing them up on Berkley products, I'm sure that only added to the shortage of supply (though I'm sure Berkley is loving it).

Sportsman's Outfitters has the Mach II combo in MH for $119: https://www.sportsmans.com/fishing-gear-supplies/fishing-rod-reel-combos/casting-combos/70in-mach-ii-baitcast-combo/p/1447069 Go away bait monkey, please, I have absolutely no need for this right now and had sworn to only buy aluminum frame bc reels from here on out, but dang I do love the way the Mach combos look. Someone please buy all these up before temptation wins out.

Big fan of my Aird-X so I have no doubt that Procyon will be great. Also, few weeks back I needed to pick up a "cheap" spinning reel because I wanted to switch my ML between bass (braid/copolymer leader) and crappie (straight copolymer). I grabbed a Sienna because it was only $29.99 at Academy. I was extremely surprised at what a solid reel it was for the money. I have no doubt you'll enjoy that reel as well. I think you hit a good balance on allocation of dollars (points in your case) between the rod and reel; I'd always prefer to spend more on the rod for a spinning setup as sensitivity is more important and lots of spinning reels can do the job.

In my experience a ML spinning rod is the ideal Ned rod. In watching the tournaments up north lately, it seems like a lot of them use a ML spinning rod for Ned rigs (or dropshots), for instance I saw a lot of ML setups when MLF was on Sturgeon Bay. I have the Daiwa Aird-X in ML (7'0") as my Ned rod. For the price range I can't recommend it highly enough, and it has a lot of fans around here. Very sensitive, nice light tip; sensitive and light enough to feel bites and have some fun fighting the dinks in the public ponds around me. At the same time, it has enough backbone that I landed a 34" gar on a recent trip to Kentucky Lake. Having said all of that, I'm sure there are lots of great ML spinning rods if you want to spend a little more. I love my Dobyns Fury in M and I have no doubt it would be an excellent rod for Ned rigs in ML. I just had to go a little cheaper when I picked up my ML rod. One thing I'll add, not sure if you're using braid or not, but any spinning rod becomes markedly more sensitive if you use a braid/leader combo. I have Sufix 832 braid/Sufix Advance copolymer leader on all of my spinning setups; 10# braid/6# leader on ML, and 15# braid/8# leader on M. When I first switched to braid/leader quite a while back, I couldn't believe the instant improvement in sensitivity.

I haven't used a swing head football jig hardly at all, but I understand that they are popular for ledge fishing. They were talking about swimming them on the bottom like a crankbait, using a creature bait. Can't personally vouch for that but I have heard it from other people also.

For keeping the dust off of them, something like the reel cover linked above would be perfect. For cleaning them, I have been fishing a couple of ponds with some funky film on the top of the water that coats my line and gets all over my baitcaster reels. When it dries it turns into a brown powder. The easiest and best thing for me is just simple Q tips dipped in warm water. Perfect to get in all those nooks and crannies like around the line guide and between the reel and rod. For larger surfaces, a little warm water on a microfiber cloth (I think the ones I have were made for washing cars) works well. I wouldn't want to use any soap type product because although I don't know for sure, it seems like soap if it got inside the reel cover could compromise the lubricants.

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts on this. I was out again on this particular pond when the squarebill was working well. I have a theory on why it is working well in this particular summer setting. The pond is fairly small, shallow everywhere (max. depth 6 feet or so), and almost no structure or cover. It's one of those goldfish bowl HOA ponds. So that (a) allows me to fish a squarebill where I couldn't in a lot of summer locations, and (b) I think for the most part during the day these fish roam, with no cover or structure to set up against until the sun is low enough early morning/late evening to set up right against the bank. So whereas I usually go with a more finesse style because these are heavily pressured fish, that also requires working the bait slowly of course. I think that with the squarebill I can cover water a lot faster, while I may be missing a few bites I'd get on Ned rig/wacky worm, I'm trading that for picking up some bites because I can cover a lot more water with the squarebill.

This question didn't exactly fit in the "Tackle" section, but couldn't figure out where else it fit better, so I'm posting here... Anyone know of any good deals on shirts or hats with fishing logos on them? Either a website that specializes in them, or from individual companies? I've been looking around on the web and so far all I have been able to find is a few individual companies with stuff on sale for full retail, meaning $20+ for t-shirts or hats. I would think that in the interest of getting their logos out there, there have to be companies selling gear for less. I'd much rather throw on a Lew's or Strike King or 6th Sense t-shirt than a Nike or Adidas t-shirt to make a quick run to the store, but the bait monkey strikes enough as it is, and I don't need to be replacing my entire wardrobe at $25 a pop. May be a complete shot in the dark, just thought I'd give it a try.

This was my exact answer LOL