Ogandrews

In rivers I seem to catch more and bigger fish on smaller tubes for some reason, in lakes I will usually throw 3.5” and have success with them.

I don’t have experience on pool 2 much but I do on pool 4. I have caught smallies right around the time that the ice has gone off of pepin but it was not easy. Early on the fish are still going to be in or near their winter spots which are pretty much the deepest slowest parts of that pool. Targeting them on pepin I always look for rip rap that drops quickly into deep water. I know pool 2 is a different animal than 4 so I’m not sure how useful my info is. If you can find some wing dams with deeper water on the downstream side I could see that holding fish. Usually the colder the water the deeper the fish are, so as spring progresses finding them gets easier. My best presentations in early spring have been hair jigs when the water is clear, deep diving jerkbaits, 2.8-3.8 keitechs in a Shad color. As the water starts to warm some more I have so much success on squarebills and swimjigs, especially if we have a high water spring and we get flooded timber. Tubes are of course good any time of the spring. In depth outdoors has a great episode about early spring smallmouth on pepin, could help you out

To get used to throwing a tube get some 2.5” power tubes and some regular ball heads 1/8-1/4 depending on the current. Tubes are my number one river bait and I still throw 2.5 power tubes as much as any other tube, they are also an incredible lure for brown trout in streams. Majority of the time I drag a jig or just let it move with the current, but don’t be afraid to pop it or pull it. I can’t tell you how many fish I have caught burning the tube back to the boat too

Got 4-5ft of snow next to my driveway and lakes with real roads on them you can drive a semi on because the ice is so thick, I’ll trade you open water and a 1/4 inch of snow any day

Thankfully I live near the lower Mississippi in southern mn where the season never closes. I’ll spend the next month walleye fishing on pool 4, then I’ll start pike and bass fishing in the backwaters until the whole state opens in may

I know some old timers use them around here on the Mississippi for walleye, no reason that they shouldn’t work anymore. Seen some fish over 30 on our local forums taken on them

Thanks for the reply’s, opens my eyes up a good amount as to why you guys do it. One point I didn’t mention is that pretty much every rod I own I also use for pike/musky/walleye fishing. For pike and musky there is no reason to use anything besides braid to 60-120+lbs floro leader, titanium, or straight piano wire, with as bony as their mouths are you need every advantage to get the hooks set well into them. They also fight a lot differently than a bass, but when they want to make a real run you need serious line strength unless your finesse fishing with a really light drag. For walleye it’s not as big of a deal, but a few situations it makes a difference. Most of my eye fishing is done in rivers with strong current down to depths over 40ft, and trying to keep the bait as vertical as possible. 10lbs braid is going to get dragged way less my the current than 10lbs mono which makes it way easier to present the bait how you want. Also when I’m fishing live bait in a lake situation, most of the time your fishing a tight line and the only thing you feel of the bite is a tiny tap, in my experience it’s a lot easier to feel that on braid with a lot of line out. I’m going to keep fishing braid to a leader because that’s what I’m confident in, but i can understand why if I was strictly bass fishing the advantage of the other 2.

I do agree with you that wind knots suck but it’s not a super common issue for me, but most of your other points are things that I really don’t deal with. If the braid is spooled correctly (pretty much as tight as you can) than I never have it dig in even while musky and pike fishing. I get significantly better casting distance with braid. If tied correctly I do not break knots in braid, you just can’t tie it like your tieing mono. Braid having very little stretch is great in some applications, and when I need stretch a longer mono leader and correct rod takes care of that. Never had issues with knots damaging guides, most of the time the knot is not noticeably much bigger than the line. Yea good braid is expensive, but I’ve used the same spool of 40lbs maxcuatro for 2 years without issue and the same spool of 80lbs courtland masterbraid for 3 years and it is still working great. Not trying to say your wrong it’s just in my experience theres a way around most of these issues

I have never once broken a properly tied leader knot while fighting a fish so I don’t even consider that 2 knots as being an issue. I would argue that some of the benefits of braid are increased casting distance, better sensitivity, better hook sets, in my opinion better depth when fishing a crank because of the smaller diameter, being able to change out your leader line on the fly for different presentations without respooling an entire reel. I use mono for almost all of my leaders and have them usually 10-15 ft long so I still get the benefit of the stretch. There are some techniques I can somewhat get why guys wouldn’t like braid, but for stuff like jigs, flipping, punching, or finesse presentations where sensitivity is a big deal I really don’t get why you wouldn’t be using braid to a leader. Thanks for the input

I fish out of a field and stream kayak I bought for 150$. I have dragged it down gravel roads with 60lbs of gear in it, wedged myself in jagged rocks in heavy current to use as an anchor, gone over super shallow rocky riffles countless times, and pushed myself over more trees than I can count. I’ve been using this yak for 3 years now and it isn’t showing any signs of being too best up to use. If my super cheap old kayak has stood up to my abuse than your brand new one isn’t going to have any issues

Keep it for more powerful presentations. My favorite reel I own is a Calcutta 400d, got it on a 9’ h st Croix legend tournament big nasty. I love tranx too but there is something great about how smooth those Calcutta’s are.

I have been fishing strictly braid to a leader for 4-5 years now and love it. I know a lot of guys fish straight floro or mono, including a lot of pros. I believe that braid to a leader has so many benefits that I just don’t see the point of using anything else. I don’t want this post to come off as me telling you guys that if you don’t fish like me that your wrong, I’m just honestly wondering what benefits you guys see of fishing floro or mono. I’m curious to see what you guys have to say because it seems like the majority of guys aren’t using braid/leader. Probably not going to change the way I fish but always interested to see some other perspectives.

For how I fish I would be hands down buying another tranx 400 or 300 if someone handed me $300. For traditional bass reels any of the Shimanos in that range you will be really happy with. I don’t have a bantom but I’ve used one and that is one sweet reel, same with ether chronarch mgl or G. I haven’t gotten into DC reels yet but I’m sure the curado dc is great with how awesome a reel the K is

I know this might not be the best way to look at it but when I saw that it’s plastic I stopped looking into it. Had 3 plastic reels break on me waaaay sooner than they should have after pike fishing with them so I’ve not even considered anything without a metal frame after that. Could be a good real, but I would just spend the extra couple bucks and get a metal superduty which is proven to be a pretty sweet reel

Girlfriend wise she’s pretty cool with me fishing. Obviously I would be fishing more if it wasn’t for her, but she gets it that I need to get out a couple times a week to keep me sane. Haven’t really lost friends because of fishing but definitely see non fishing friends less than when I wasn’t fishing as seriously. Probably the biggest impact it had on me is the fact that I huge part of the reason I dropped out of college was to fish more. Looking back in it that’s a really stupid reason to leave school but it worked out really well because I’m making a way better living being a plumber than I would have with an exercise science degree, so you can say fishing actually helped my life a lot ahaha

I will give you an honest look, never ran across any of your stuff. Didn’t mean that to come off as calling you out in any way, I just believe that there is a lot of info out there that isn’t the best. I’m really not a fan of the majority of the fishing content on Yt, really can’t stand the ADD editing with cuts every half a second, people clicking baiting with titles that have nothing to do with the actual content, slow mo shots of drops of water falling because they don’t actually have any quality fish to show, etc etc. Pretty sure I follow you on insta like your stuff there I’ll check it out on YouTube edit- looked your channel up and realized I’ve actually watched a few of your videos, I’m a fan. I like your stuff for the same reason I’m a big fan of tactical, your content is actually centered around helping people learn how to be better fisherman. Wish more people were interested in videos like this as opposed to the other end of things. Been thinking about trying to make some in depth videos about northern pike fishing similar to how you make your stuff, there’s really little content out there about targeting them in the US

1- switching to strictly braid to a leader/ straight braid as well as using the right rod for the lure 2- applying tactics I think should work to places where people around me don’t fish like that and gaining confidence doing stuff differently than the people around me

Pretty much what everyone else said but thankfully in south east mn I can keep fishing for stream trout and river walleye all winter as well as going for pike through the ice. Definitely not my first choice, but it’s a lot better than sitting at home

Bass wise I have learned so much of what I know from tacticalbassin, they are the only channel I really take advice from as I haven’t gotten an misinformation whatsoever from them. Be careful who you listen to because so many people are more interested in selling you something than actually giving you information. For other fish I have learned way more on my own due to there being not as much info as their is for bass.

The main pond(110 acre reservoir) is just like this in a lot of the lake. Some of my favorite presentations when I’m bass fishing there is a t rigged weightless senko, 1/4 oz dirty jigs finesse swim jig with a 3.8 keitech or rage swimmer on it or a keitech on a weed less 1/8th oz owner beast hook, flukes, frogs, chatterbaits, and really shallow running squarebills. Takes some getting used to but I can fish all of these Without getting gunked up too often

Worst I have ever been in was a storm while musky fishing on lake vermilion in northern mn. I knew a storm was rolling in but I thought it looked small so I headed out to a shallow rock reef in the middle of one of the biggest basins of the lake. By the time I got there the wind had started to pick up to 20-30 mph, but me being hardheaded I decided to try and fish the wind blown side of the reef. Weather started to get worse and worse, and I started to realize that the whitecaps were getting 4ft or higher, and that my trolling motor couldn’t keep me off the reef. Had 2 waves in a row go completely over the bow of the boat so I panicked and started the motor just to realize that the wind had pushed me straight on top of the reef, and with the passing of every wave my motor was hitting the rocks. Water temp was 45 and all I could think about was hitting one of those rocks just wrong and sinking my dads brand new ranger. Ended up getting incredibly lucky and was blown right off the reef and made the 30 min boat ride back home through one of the worst storms I have experienced in my life. I take storms a little bit more seriously now

Didn’t do a huge amount of bass fishing this year, spent a lot more time chasing toothy critters. Biggest largemouth was 4.5 and biggest smallie was right around 4. Had an amazing year for fishing though, got my pb pike at 44.5(my profile pic), pb brown trout, pb walleye, pb channel cat, pb sauger, and bought my first real boat.

For rivers no question I’d say a 4” rage menace on a ball head jig. Fish it like a tube and it is an absolute killer. For still water I would have to go with a jerkbait probably a shadow rap. I very rarely have pike bite me off but if I’m worried about it get some tieable single strand titanium. It’s as supple as super light floro and I really don’t notice a big difference if the amount of bites I get

Here in Minnesota I always find its best in the afternoon for bass and northern. For the week or two after ice out the water is usually in the 30’s so a degree or two difference in the afternoon can make a big difference. Once the water gets into the 40’s I find them to start biting much more regularly throughout the day

Good advice but make sure you only bend the hooks up and out a tiny bit, you barely want to be able to notice that you adjusted it. If you bend them even the slightest amount too much your going to really up your chances of that fish coming off. The other thing I try to do is wait a second before you set the hook and try your best to set the opposite direction of where the fish is going. If you pay close attention to the hit a lot of the time you can tell which side the bass is diving down to, so if you set in the other direction a lot of the time you can get a stronger hook set. Proper gear will also make as big of a difference as anything else. I use a dobyns mag heavy 7’3” with 65lbs maxcuatro braid. If you can get it I’d strongly recommend maxcuatro, it is a very thin and somewhat coarse braid that does an amazing job cutting through weeds on the hook set as well as giving you as much casting distance as possible