Big Hands

I usually have something tied on a rod or two. Maybe a jerkbait (X-Nanahan +2 maybe) on one and a topwater (Sammy/Zara Spook/popper/plopper, etc.) on another. I don't necessarily have to wait for a bass to bust the surface. Sometimes throwing the topwater bait to area you think should have fish seems to trigger them to get the party started.

I tried to go the digital video route after (film) SLR's became more or less extinct, but the rendering process just wasn't ready for prime time. I would set a relatively short video to render and it would take all night. Then I would all too often find that it had hung up and froze at 2:30 am and I would spend hours troubleshooting the cause that might be something like the file name of a still/jpg was not to the program's liking, or I would regularly have to reinstall my OS to get it to play nice for a cycle or two. I had a love/hate relationship with Pinnacle that was a tad threadbare on the love side TBH, and finally decided that I would go the DSLR route and found that it better suited my temperament.

It's amazing what you can get done when you forego sleep.

I would break down swimbait rods into two main categories: Single hook swimbait rods Crank down, rear back, and try to cross her eyes with every muscle you possess, then reel hard to get her to the net ASAP before she gets a chance to throw that heavy mess. Treble hook swimbait rods You can't horse them quite the same way you can with a single hook bait, so it may take a more finessed approach to get her onto your side of the gunnel. And, of course, they can be broken down further under each of those headings. As always, that's just my take on it. The Dobyns Fury 806 (MSRP $159) is listed as a fast action rod that can throw swimbaits that range from two to eight ounces. I respectfully disagree with both of those assessments from the rod's manufacturer, BUT I would still recommend the rod at that price point for use with treble hook swimbaits (because I think it is more of a regular action than a fast action) in the one to five ounce range because I don't think I would dare huck an eight ounce swimbait with it. I'm not sure it has the backbone to reliably set a good size single swimbait hook (JMHO). As for a suitable 'beef stick' that I would call my single hook rod, I don't know of one I would recommend in the $150 price range that would snatch a good size bass out of a grass patch before they hunker down and hurt your feelings instead of the other way around. I think you could find a rod that could do the work at that pricepoint, but I'm not sure how long the weight of that rod would take to make me want to try another technique. But that's a 'me' problem and not everyone has an issue with that. I have found that the butt length is something I tend to pay attention to with swimbait rods as I have a certain way I like to hold them. I am the size of a pre-adolescent sasquatch and like more butt length than most. Things like this are born from experience; my experience, but YMMV.

I have tried other "stick baits' a handful of times. None that I have tried have the same characteristics as the Yamamoto Senko. . . . For better or worse, they are what they are. I'm absolutely sure there are times others work as well, or dare I say better for some folks. I just haven't been one of them. For the record, I have not tried the Berkley General, but have heard generally good things about them. For me, I value my time on the water, and I have a lot of confidence in the original 5" Senko, so that's what I use most of the time. Your mileage may vary. I'm sure that setup would do just fine where I fish. One of my bass fishing mentors told me about weightless wacky rigging plastic worms back in the mid-80's and I kinda wrote it off as more fantasy than reality. I don't even know if the Senko existed at that point in time. Once the Senko came out and got popular I tried it, and I too struggled with it until I was out night fishing and saw a friend on the lake that told me to pull up and get in on the action. I'm not even sure what could have been different, but I am often a 'monkey-see-monkey-do' type of learner and I did just that. I have been off to the Senko races ever since. Confidence from that experience got me to invest more time in the bait.

You will almost NEVER see a photo I have taken that has not been processed in some way, if not in several ways. I figure that if someone is going to take their time to look at my photos, I can at least try to level a horizon, or maybe crop the parts that detract from the story the photo is intended to tell. I always try to shoot a little loose so there's room work with. Even photos I take with my L lenses need some post processing to bring out shadow details/highlights, adjust saturation, contrast, white balance, etc. and maybe a little sharpening here and there. I try to get my camera pre-sets decent, but no settings work great in all situations. And they're still not perfect by any stretch. And then FB downgrades the quality and they look like I a had a smudge on the lens 😬

My (current) dedicated weightless wacky Senko rig: Daiwa Elite spinning rod: 7'6" ML-M/F Daiwa Caldia LT 2500S-XH spinning reel 10 lbs hi-vis braid (8 carrier) Daiwa Samurai Camo Fluorocarbon leader (anywhere from 5 to 12 feet): 6, 7, or 8 lbs test 5" Senko, some shade of green, and several other more natural colors Gamakatsu Wide Gap Finesse: Size 4 or size 2, hooked lengthwise under the o-ring from the skinny end toward the fat end of the Senko; probably not that critical, just the way I do it. #11 o-ring placed two rings below the egg sack on a 5" Senko I use scent (hot sauce gel) There are none of the bullet points above that couldn't be altered anywhere from a little to a lot. Senkos get bit in myriad ways. Anytime from dead sticking to while you're retrieving them when you think the cast is over, and everything in between. With that said, "on the fall" is what they built their reputation on, and that reputation is not unfounded. Default: I like to give them a slack line to fall on so they fall kind of straight down with no action imparted by me at least until they hit bottom. I often feel the bite, even on pretty slack line. Or, I see the line jump or moving in a way it wouldn't when something hasn't tried to carry it away. But you do have to pay attention to maximize your chances. I get bites from the absolute water's edge to thirty feet deep, and everywhere in between. Casting 100' away from the boat and bounce it off of a rock and fall into the water, or lazily fling it fifteen feet in front of the boat and wait for it to slowly do the "wooba-wooba" all the way to the (deep) bottom. I can skip it under branches easily, I can drag it across a "cheese mat" and bass will come up through it to inhale a Senko (I LOVE doing this in the spring when the water is high in the back of coves). I have had a pattern where I would throw it into a small stream as it entered the lake and let it wash in by the force of the current. I've had countless bites where it gets slammed when it pulls free from some sort of structure or cover. It's an incredibly versatile rig, but the bottom line is that I would try to cast it to places where it will fall NATURALLY and UNIMPEDED into an area literally ANYWHERE the fish are lurking below. When you have determined that a fish may have inhaled the bait, point the rod down, reel in at a medium rate until you feel some weight. Then keep reeling as you FIRMLY lift upward Lift, don't swing, or you may pull the relatively small hook through their lips before it has a chance to sink in. One last thing that I highly recommend is a pair of long needle nose pliers. My favorites are the Booms F05. They have an especially effective bend to them that makes them incredibly good at removing small finesse hooks that are deeper in their mouth. Sometimes I can carefully go through the gills to grab onto them and greatly minimize the negative impact.

I'd break out the tiny stuff. Hard baits like the Lucky Craft pointer 48 SP, Yo-Zuri pin minnows. Maybe dropshot on 4 lbs test with 2" EZ minnow or swing impact in electric shad. Another one I use in tough conditions where all the bass have to do is swim around with their mouth open and they can inhale all the microshad they can handle is the 2.8" Keitech sexy shad, but pinch about half of the thick part of the body off and put it on a tiny dropshot hook like a mosquito light.

As someone that has taken well over a quarter of a million digital photographs and spent countless hours processing them. . . I feel your pain. And, an eye for composition is not something you can purchase from B&H. Definitely a glaring weak spot in my photo game.

I had a co-worker that would cast plugs to tea cups. He had some trick casts too. One of those guys that did whatever he did to a very high level, or didn't do it at all.

I avoided the Senko for way too many years. And, even when I did begin to embrace it, I thought it was a pretty one dimensional bait. For quite a while I thought the main way to fish it (weightless wacky rigged 5" Senko) was to chuck it anywhere from the water's edge to10' to 15' deep, let it flutter straight down, give it one or two lifts and then reel it in and let it fly again. I caught a lot of bass that way. So many that in some years it has accounted for more bass than all other baits combined and I was more than OK with that. Then, this past spring, I out a new trolling motor on my boat that has spot lock that allowed me to sit on main lake points and ledges with much more control than I have previously been able to achieve. One of my most successful presentations has been to fish the weightless wacky Senko in 15' to 30', and not just cast it out, take a few lifts and reel it in. I have been over and down steep ledges and get many bites from near vertical to totally vertical. It takes some patience to let it get to the bottom, and some focus to keep it near the bottom if not in contact with it as it drops off the points and ledges. But that patience has been rewarded with numbers and some relatively decent fish too. Most don't really think of the WW Senko as a deep water bait, nor a bait to be fished more vertically in the same manner as many would a dropshot. I know you're primarily a bank angler, but you can cast it straight out, or completely parallel, and everywhere in between. At any rate, I think you may be missing out by not giving the weightless wacky rigged Senko some serious time and effort. Another one I see on your mid-confidence list is the carolina rig. Another very versatile presentation that I have a LOT of confidence in all year round. Just about any chunk of soft plastic can be used with a carolina rig, deep to shallow, finesse to heavy-duty, super-slow to just slow enough to keep contact with the bottom. BTW, I know many top level sticks, and there isn't a single one I know that doesn't have some neglected areas in their game. Some are way better at some techniques, while be less than stellar at others. No shame in that. I used to think I had to maximize the number and size on every trip out. I don't think that way nearly as much as I used to. I live much more in the moment and have been able to develop/add many more tools and techniques to my arsenal, which is a far cry from one year where literally every bass I caught (over 50 days fished and caught bass on every trip) was caught on soft plastics. Be safe and have fun.

Nothing wrong with some strategic overlap, or straight up redundancy in some cases. Sounds like you've acquired some nice rods.

"NOTICE: Wire Extension Length refers to the distance from the batteries to the trolling motor leads." Remember, that is in addition to the cable that comes on your trolling motor, so if you have 5 foot stock cables, and you could extend that another 5 feet and still be OK per their chart at 8 awg. Not to mention that there is likely a fair amount of safety built into that recommendation. Most of their trolling motors only have 8AWG leads on them, including my Ultrex Quest that supposedly draws up to 60 amps. If it was mine (but it isn't so do as you please), I would run 6 AWG from the back of your PWC up close to where your Terrova is mounted. Can I assume your cables will be below deck? If so, run the 6 AWG to your breaker near your battery, and continue with 6 AWG to a on/off switch like the Blue Sea Mini somewhere within reach of where you fish from, and then come through the bulkhead near the trolling motor with a plug like the MK-26 or MK-28, and then connect to the trolling motor leads. I would have no problem cutting the leads so there's just enough to get to the bulkhead plug so your 8 AWG section is only as long as it needs to be. Use the Blue Sea Mini to cutoff power to your TM while charging and while the unit is sitting. I don't care to repeatedly connect and disconnect any TM plug other than when needed, and you can subtract the length of wire you cut from the stock leads and add that to whatever is needed for your 6 AWG length of cable. I would not use a breaker for turning the power on and off regularly as that is not what that is designed for. I would also suggest using a quality tinned copper marine wire, which you can get online. I bought a hydraulic lug crimping tool from Amazon (Hobo Freight also has them for an almost as reasonable price) and use it for all of my ring terminals and connectors (along with the self-gluing shrink tube) on my custom cables. JMHO, and good luck with your project.

Bait Monkey be skillfully playing three dimensional chess with your rod collection. Serious question: IF you could have the attributes of fluorocarbon line in a line that floats, would you add to your rod collection, or would you replace whatever you're using now with this miracle line you're proposing?

I was born and raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles. My father assured me that we were in fact 'city slickers'. In the early 60's some of his friends introduced him to water skiing and speed boats, and he was 'hooked' on those activities, so we began to identify as water skiers. Even my mother could do a shore start on a single ski. For whatever reason I have no idea, I loved the water, but was enamored with the idea of fishing rather than water skiing. They had to order me to water ski, that is if they could find because I had usually wandered down the bank to find a quiet place to fish. We took water skiing vacations many, many times over the years, travelling 500 miles each way to a lake in Nevada where the water stayed nice and smooth all day, which is fantastic for water skiers. We could pick any place on the shores to camp among the plentiful white sugar sand beaches under the cottonwood trees. I distinctly remember on the trip to the lake and then again on the way home, every time we would see some janky fishing vessel being trailered (like the rig pictured below) someone would chirp "Hey, there's Jeff's boat!" Rinse, repeat. Rinse repeat. Rinse, repeat. I remember one night when the adults would gather on the sand to play volleyball, I waded out to our boat and cast out a chunk of a hot dog and an enormous carp ate it. The rod was bent to the fore grip. One of the other men promptly waded out to the side of the boat and cut my line with his pocket knife saying "That's just a nasty old carp!" More hilarity, and I was scolded later for fishing from the boat. One day, I checked out a book from the school library that was a collection of stories that were all about bass fishing. Something about the way the tales were told spoke to me and I have been enamored with bass fishing in particular ever since. As a teen, I would get at o'dark thirty to ride my stingray to the local golf course pond to dangle earthworms at the edge of the reeds in hopes of catching a bass. I caught everything but a bass. I did hook into a pond donkey, once using a Creme grape colored worm that came pre-rigged with props at the end (as I have recounted in other posts) that promptly broke me off after a short but valiant battle. I was in my twenties before I finally figured out how to catch an actual bass. Trolling crankbaits of course, LOL. I was working at an aircraft factory where I joined the company fishing club. It was there that I met and befriended some really avid and knowledgeable bass fisherman. One of them told me that he lived in Castaic, and was able to get home and fish after work (even though they close the lake at dusk). To make an already long story slightly less lengthy, the stars aligned for me and I moved here in 1987; I've been here ever since. This last pic is of one of the best days of my life. I was able to buy a one year old Ranger in 1988 (a 393 with a 200 Merc). This was an Easter Sunday not long after I bought the boat. My entire family came up[ to the lake to spend the day. Each of my brother had their boat there too. My older brother's boat is in the foreground (a 16' Avenger, very much overpowered with a modded 200 Johnson). My younger was there with an 18' jet boat (with a big block Chevrolet). My older brother's boat needed perfect conditions to reach it's potential, which we didn't quite have that day, and try as both of them might, I waxed both of them with fish in my livewell and rods strapped to the deck. Hilarity ensued. Within days, both had their motors torn down claiming something wasn't right. Hilarity still ensues to this day, and probably always will. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. . . . Every chance I get.

As WRB mentioned, Orange County itself is very limited in terms of bass fishing. Suburban park lakes, and Irvine Lake ( a private lake that you pay to play (even more than public lakes nearby) are about the only options. The surrounding counties have many more options that are within semi-reasonable driving distance.

Message sent.

My second biggest bass (12 lbs 4 oz) was caught trolling, and isn't my only DD caught trolling. My tale of a buddy and I landing DD's five days in a row in February? Trolling. Targeted trolling, but still trolling. We caught several 5-10 lbs bass trolling too. Using this particular technique during that era, we only caught one that weighed less than five pounds. Some were just in random open areas, but much of the time we targeted main lake points at specific depths. When you feel it digging on the bottom, get ready with a net. . . . or a lure retriever. These days, I rarely troll. Occasionally, since I got the Ultrex Quest, I will drag a deep diving crank over a point or two on the way to another nearby spot. Points I have been grinding across throwing the same crank I drag with the trolling motor, and the trolled crank can get bit when the others aren't. But, it's not something I am likely to do other than that.

Oh no you didn't. . . .

This reminds me of a 'game' I used to sometimes end soccer practice with. The name of the game is "Outrageous", and the idea was during that time, each time you had the ball in your possession, you would try to do something that would normally be considered unnecessarily risky or showboating, but instead of being criticized for spontaneous creativity, it was not only encouraged, it was expected.

It's one thing to have an 'activity period' in the early morning or late afternoon, it's expected to have fish be active, and I've maybe even planned what to use. When these periods happen, say mid-morning, on some days I may have found the bite to be a bit. . . . lacking. . . first thing in the morning. I might figure that I've chosen poorly in some way with either my location, bait, presentation, etc.. Then I switch up, when I've really just giving it my best during a predictable period of inactivity. And then, when the bite turns on, I've altered what or where and I really should have been more patient or plan my day more deliberately.

This is what a true bass fishing friend would tell you. If you can accept truly thoughtful feedback, even when it doesn't necessarily feel great, your learning curve will trend skyward in the best way possible.

I'm certainly not risk averse, but I am definitely unfamiliar with gators in the wild. and then: Sounds like some people I have known.

That's outflow. Probably holds some fish as it's structure, an ambush point per se.

On the right body of water, those things are more fun than the law should allow.