Ogandrews

Definitely disagree with the trailer part. I have pretty much completely switched to skirtless buzzbaits with usually a 4.8 keitech as the trailer. The bigger swimbait gives the bait lift in the water and also gives the bait some extra weight allowing you to cast farther with a lighter weight head on the buzz bait. Especially on pressured fisheries I have a lot more success with this setup than a regular skirted one. I also think that it helps the bass actually eat the hook because there is a swimbait to hit when they get close, better than a regular skirted one where they will regularly miss the hook. I know there’s a time and place for both, but I definitely have more confidence in a skirt less with a swimbait.

Frogs obviously. Swim jigs are one of the best baits for situations like this. For really thick weeds I like going up to a 1/2 or 3/4 oz swim jig and plowing it straight through the thick stuff. A 3/8 will worm but a heavier one will stay down better while going through them. I usually throw it on a Flippin stick with 65lbs braid to a 20lbs mono leader or straight 65lbs braid. A weedless swimbait is also always a good option, as well as pretty much any technique on the outer and inner weed lines

So I am heading up to lake vermilion tomorrow for the next week. For those who don’t know lake vermilion is a 40,000 acre lake in northern Minnesota that is part of the Canadian Shield. To give you an idea how far north it is it would be about 250 miles north of the north shore of Lake Ontario, so it’s pretty far up there. The lake is pretty unique, it’s got around 400 islands on it and has multiple separate basins separated with narrows with some very long bays coming off of some basins. Lake is mostly made up of rock with a lot of expansive weedy shallow bays and lots of offshore reefs. I fish up there 7-8 different times each year, but I always struggle to get onto a good smallmouth bite until the water gets into the 60-70’s. Last weekend the water was upper 40’s in the basins and low 50’s in the shallower bays. I know the fish will be in the earlier stages of prespawn, and I know that they will most likely be near the spawning grounds which are usually shallow gravel flats. I have had minimal success fishing the outer edges of these flats around this time before. Does anyone have any advice on what to look for location wise? With the warmer weather we’ve had up there I’ll bet the water will be in the low 50’s in the main basins most of the time I’ll be there. Bringing a lot of gear up, lots of dropshot baits, tubes, neds, deep and shallow jerkbaits, blade baits, mid depth cranks, liplesss, keitechs, hair jigs. Any advice would be appreciated. It’s strange that here where I live I’ll be able to catch smallies in low 40 degree water but up there I struggle so much.

That’s awesome, glad to see some other people targeting an under utilized fish. It’s crazy how some places here in the north have such an issue with crazy amounts of stunted pike, then you go somewhere like where I live in southern mn and almost all of our Pike fisheries are low density with really nice size potential. I’m not sure what it is, we have warmer water down here so you would think that the bigger ones would die off but it’s pretty much the opposite situation. My favorite fishery that’s close to me is almost like musky fishing when it comes to pike, regularly get follows from big fish and get few bites in a day but they are almost always fish over 30”. Prime time on that lake it’s rare for me not to see a fish that is at least in the upper 30’s, truly incredible place. Then you go 50-100 miles north and all the lakes are just loaded with little 15-20” fish, really odd how that is. Once you get up closer to the boarder with Canada the size gets a lot better in some lakes but a lot are still over run with hammer handles. A lot of it comes down to people keeping the wrong fish, but it still doesn’t make sense to me why there are such quality fisheries around me when most of them are shallow water stained lakes that are half way full of silt.

Dobyns fury 806 is another great option at 120 ish, also comes in a 795 if you plan on throwing smaller baits

Dobyns fury, Shimano slx, and the st croix bass x are all great rods. Each one has models that stand out at that price point.

I use a lot of different brands, not really loyal to one besides with swimbaits where I’ll only really throw keitech unless it’s bigger baits then I’ll branch out more craws- zoom z craw, paca slim, Berkeley chigger craw, strike king rage craw and rage menace if you want to call that a craw stick baits- only use senkos worms- strike king fat baby finesse worm for shakey heads, berkley power worm or a strike king rage worm, can’t remember the actual name of it but it’s like a senko with a rage tail Creature- reaction innovation sweet/smallie beaver, man bear pig, strike king rage bug and space monkey, missile baits d bomb drop shot- 3” yum dinger, strike king dream shot, jackal crosstail Shad, big bite baits smallie smasher, 3” keitech easy shiner ned- missile baits Ned bomb, z man trd or their craw grubs- b fishin tackle moxi or regular grub, Kalins lunker, mogambo, and octogambo grubs tubes- berkley power tubes, get bit baits various tubes.

Not completely on topic but I think I found my new favorite drop shot bait. Bought a pack of big bite baits smallie smashers on a whim in the chick magnet color and tried them out today. My god did they look great and the fish destroyed them. They probably won’t replace my other favorite which is a 3” wacky rigged senko, but it is definitely an awesome bait. Probably will replace the jackal crosstail shads and strike king half shells I used.

Got my first good bass of the year, was just over 5lbs. Not a great picture, took it at a weird angle which made it look pretty small but it was ridiculously thick. Got it burning a trap over the top of grass in 4-5fow. About a foot of visibility if that, water was really low which makes fishing really hard but that won’t be the case after all this rain.

I actually was looking at knots after my last message and realized how easy the Alberto knot looked to tie. I’ll definitely give it a try, actually looks easier to tie than a blood.

Usually I’ll use about double the length of my rod. When I tie on the leader, the spool of leader line is on the ground and I’ll reel until it gets onto the reel. Usually ends up around 15 ft. I get lazy and end up with like 1 ft tag ends when I tie lures on so it gives me a lot of reties before I need to make a new leader. Do this with both spinning and casting.

I know that the blood knot is by no means the strongest knot out there but like you said you don’t need a 100% knot strength to land fish. I will say though that for the first 2 years of fishing braid to a leader I used a uni to uni and I feel like the blood knot is stronger. Now I’m not basing this off of tests I have done but I definitely broke off at the leader knot more often with a uni than with a blood knot. There’s not a huge difference in strength between the two but the blood knot definitely has a smaller diameter which is a big deal for me. Both will work, and the uni is easily the easiest knot around to tie. I have wanted to try the fg knot but I end up tieing leaders on the water so often to switch lines that I really appreciate something easy to tie.

There’s a lot of knots that will hold 2 lines together but in my opinion the thing that separate the good from bad is the knot diameter. I always use a 9 loop blood knot, it is very strong and a very thing diameter. If you are fishing braid to a leader like I do where you tie on 10-15ft leaders and are reeling the knot onto the spool, a knot with a bigger diameter will not be fun to use. That one looks like it makes a pretty thick knot, similar to a double uni. The blood knot is really easy to tie, I’m really not sure why it isn’t more popular.

I would look at Shimano SLX, st croix bass X, and dobyns fury’s. Those three are the best $100 rods around in my opinion, each line has their own set of rods that are the best for the price point imo.

Not sure what the most ever was but I know this fall while fishing a pool under a dam on a smaller river here in Minnesota I got walleye, sauger, smallmouth, Pike, channel cat, carp, bigmouth buffalo, drum, white bass, moon eye, redhorse, white sucker, and lost a shovel nose sturgeon next to the boat in one day.

I own a curado dc and really like it but don’t rule out the non dc reels. The dc is nice but it doesn’t make a huge difference a lot of the time. If you don’t want to spend the money on a curado dc then I would get a regular curado k, I think it will hold up to hard fishing better than an slx dc. If you really want a workhorse of a reel than the tranx 200 is one of the toughest bass reels you can buy and is only $200, casts just like the curado k. If you want to spend a little more than I’d definitely go with a bantam, definitely a better reel than any of the curados.

This might be me over analyzing the situation but I think that bass will pick other forage sources over bluegill most of the time if they have the opportunity. Bluegill are a hard shape for bass to eat and are super spiny which doesn’t make them the best forage in the world. I know around here generally if the bass have the option they will feed on perch, which are a lot more slender, over bluegill if there is a good population of both. Obviously bass eat a lot of bluegill but if there is another good source of forage like Shad, shiners, sculpin, smaller tulibee species, or crayfish I think they will usually try to eat that first. I could also be wrong and giving bass too much credit though, you’ll probably catch them imitating either one.

For heavy weeds my favorite swim jig is the dirty jigs no jack swim jig. Most people use the California swim jig because that’s the one everyone talks about but the no jack swim jig has the same crazy strong hook and also has a true pointed swim jig head design which comes through grass better than any other head. The head of a swim jig also helps create some more rocking action I believe, it can be subtle but different head designs can make an impact on how a swimbait moves on a plain jig head so it will also make a difference in a swim jig. If the cover isn’t crazy thick you can switch to a regular dirty jigs swim jig which has a much lighter weed guard and still a pretty stout hook.

I’m a plumber so I have a lot of O rings and scrap copper so I’ll just rob my work van of a small piece of half inch copper pipe and slide the o ring I’m going to use over it, put the senko in and slide it off. Never done it any other way

At least someone agrees with me, I’ve got so much more confidence when fighting a fish with a mono leader than with floro. Broken floro at knots on either end of the leader too many times to use it other than very specific situations.

Every year it is pushed and funded by a group of lake front owners in the Detroit lakes area and the rep is part of them. It is honestly laughable their reasoning behind the bill, I’m not worried it will ever pass because musky fishing is only getting bigger and more people are realizing that the best musky lakes in this state are also the best musky lakes a lot of the time. LOTW has arguably the highest population of musky (partially) in the state and is also one of the best walleye fisheries in the world. Same with vermilion, leech, winni, Cass, Detroit lakes area, ect ect. I hope that the population of this state has enough common sense to realize how stupid these bills are and keep turning them down like they have in the past.

Generally I’ll throw my heavier wire jigs on a dobyns 735c and lighter wire ones on a 733c. I fish braid to a leader all the time unless I’m punching then I’ll go with straight braid. 735 gets 65lbs maxcuatro and the 733 gets 40lbs. I feel like a broken record because I say this so often but give mono a try as the leader material. It takes a knot better than floro, doesn’t burn as bad, has better shock resistance, gives more stretch which is a good thing with braid to leader, and has barely any difference in visibility. Also depending on the brand it’s just as or more abrasion resistant than floro, the whole floro being abrasion proof is just a way for tackle companies to sell more expensive line. I use mono like big game or maxima UG as leaders all the time and I would only throw floro if I was fishing in like 30 foot visibility. Floro I will break off near the leader knot more often, mono it never happens if I tie my blood knot correctly.

The only know I use is the blood knot and it works flawlessly. It’s pretty easy to tie, very strong and very small diameter knot size. I never break off at the leader knot unless I mess the knot up. The main thing I will recommend you do regardless of what knot you tie is to try mono as a leader. Floro offers very little for benefits over mono as a leader material. Mono doesn’t burn as bad as floro, ties stronger knots, gives you extra stretch which is a good thing, is cheaper, and just handles better in general. Only time I use floro as a leader is with a jerkbait, everything else is mono. Especially while you are getting used to tying the knots it will really help. I’m not sure why everyone thinks that floro is the only way to go for leaders, unless your fishing Water with 30+ Foot of visibility than mono is going to be the way to go.

Although it is a good reel I’d recommend going with something besides the curado dc. If you want to not spend as much, go with a regular curado k which is still an amazing reel or spend some more and get a bantam mgl which is much better than the curado dc. Another good option is the chronarch mgl, although I think it is better for lighter baits although it will do anything. If you plan on throwing bigger cranks than I would also look into a tranx 200, incredible reel that is absolutely indestructible. I’m really not sure why the tranx 200 isn’t more popular in bass fishing, it is almost exactly like a curado K only much beefier. Perfect reel for a high resistance retrieve like a deep crank or really heavy duty applications like punching/flipping/smaller swimbaits. I own multiple 300 and 400 size tranx and even those size will throw 1/4 oz jigs without issue.

Zodias is a good option, another good one is the dobyns 734c. You can other get a Sierra for 180 which is a great rod or a champion which is better for the low mid 200’s. St croix avid or avid x is another great option for that price range.