MGF

Mostly because of weather I've only had the boat out twice. Most of my fish thus far have been from ponds and it's been a lot of dinks. I'm down a vehicle and the river is low so I haven't been out there at all...it's a one way trip down river when the water is low.

You've heard of the 4 'W's of picking a camp site? Wind, Wood, Water and Widowmakers. This has been taught for a very long time and widowmakers should be a concern whenever you're near trees.

The other day I was bank fishing a flooded quarry that's down in a huge hole (hard to get to). I decided to keep a few fish but I didn't have a cooler or stringer. I just tossed them in my back pack. I fished a couple hours until I had enough and climbed out. I went home and ate the fish. They were great. LOL

Fish, specifically bass, is really good food. These days I'm almost strictly catch and release...almost. Last night my wife and I fished a new private pond for the first time. It seems to be loaded with bass that are all the same diminutive size. After losing count of the number we turned lose it occurred to me that we'd probably be doing good by taking a meal or two. I almost forgot how good LMB are.

I guess over the course of all my fishing I've used a jig of some kind a LOT more than a TR or spinner bait. For me a plastic worm goes back to my beginning but it was a weightless creme worm that my father "pre-rigged" with hooks. I think I was in my teens before I ever saw or used a TR or Carolina rig. I guess I used a carolina first. I know this is a bass forum but when I say that I've used a jig more I'm talking about catching multiple species. I've caught about everything on a jig from panfish, catfish, carp, walleyes, spots, largemouth and smallmouth. A TR just doesn't do that. When I was a kid back before I ever saw an electric trolling motor, bass boat or even knew there might be such a thing as a bass tournament we used to set up a drift across a point, toward or along a weed edge and cast marabou jigs tipped with a leech, nightcrawler or whatever we had. Very often we caught mixed bags of bass, walleyes and white bass.

My favorite "go-to all around" jig is a 3/8 oz. arkie head with a rubber skirt. From the river to moderate depths in the lakes I can do almost anything with it. If I could only have one color I'd take black. A few blue strands are ok but not too many. Going back over the years I've probably spent more time with a 1/4 oz. ball head...rubber or marabou. I caught a lot of fish on them. These days I have more of a variety. I have football jigs, swim jigs and some Rapala Terminators which is sort of a combination. I even have a "skipping jig". Given the conditions I fish I don't really think the greater variety has done much for me. I want to add some swing heads to my arsenal but I haven't done it yet.

It's great when the bite is good on a wacky under docks or over hangs. I only mention this because of the current thread on learning to skip but sometimes you do better on a jig or something. I can skip the jig just as far or further. I fish one lake that gets pretty socked in with weeds but docks still hold fish. A frog on braid skipped with a BC is just the ticket.

I only really have one pond that I fish regularly and it really changes. Sometimes it's socked in with weeds and moss and sometimes it's clean. When the weeds get to be a problem on the wacky I tend to go to something else like a weightless TR. There isn't much contour but there are areas where it drops off a little faster and/or the weeds extend further out. So in some places you might not be able to work it back very far. It just depends. I can't help but think of the river first since I fish it more than anything else. The worm is drifting down the river as it sinks. Depending on current and depth the initial sink can cover a fair amount of river. Successive sinks (for lack of another description) by lifting or twitching it up may present to a different and different fish without retrieving and recasting. Picture the wiggling stick bait midwater drifting down river. That's the presentation.

It's a dangerous world especially for the very young and the very old. I'm only 62 but I'm not what I once was and I don't do everything that I used to do. I worry about my father who just turned 83. He does a lot of things alone...walks, bikes and fishes. I won't try to tell him not to. If he didn't do those things alone he wouldn't get to do them.

There again it depends on what kind of water you're fishing. For the past good many years most of my jig fishing is for brown bass in my shallow river. Sometimes I pitch to isolated cover but most often my cast is angled upstream and the jig bounces down river with the current.

Fishing cover...I tried to carefully describe fairly specific situations. If I were casting to a stump or something I might not work the bait back because I expect the fish to be on the stump. That's not really the norm for me. I never noticed an issue with "foul hooks".

If you were catching fish before you can catch them the same way now...and for "spot lock" I use the same anchor I used as a kid. I announce to my wife, who is in the bow, that I'd like her to apply "spot lock" and she throws the anchor out of the boat. When advanced technology is called for I have another anchor that I toss in at the stern.

What works, works.

As a wise man once said "It depends". I have a pond I fish where I sometimes cast straight out (probably only 7 ft of water) and work it all the way back...or I might cast down the bank and do the same. You could get hit anyplace and I've caught hundred of bass (maybe more) doing that. Then I float our mostly shallow river where, especially in summer the bass could be almost anywhere relative to the bank. There are sections of the river where there are fish holding rocks/breaks all across the river and many are out of sight. I've caught about a million brown bass floating down the river with a wacky rigged worm drifting with the boat just a few feet away. I'll add carpet tacks or pieces of nail weights to get the sink rate I need based on the current. My wife catches a lot of fish dragging it behind the boat. Too many possible scenarios to state hard and fast rules IMO.

Why not work it all the way back if you can cast down the bank (or whatever structure/cover) and be in the "strike zone" for some distance? I've caught a ton of fish that way. I work it different ways. sometimes I let it sink while doing nothing. Sometimes I'll bounce my slack line a little. Once on the bottom I might bring it back using short hops or I might raise it several feet and let it sink again. On my last outing I was getting them under the deep end of docks. I'd skip under to a corner and let it sink doing very little. Then I'd raised it once or twice more until I was out from under the dock. Once the bait is in there with the fish I couldn't see any reason to just jerk it out. They often hit on the fall but they often don't.

I like the weight of a stick bait and use plenty of them but the action of a trick worm when wacky rigged is really cool!

First be discerning. If you the watch the youtubers close you'll see that most of them aren't really very good at it...though they manage to get a few good casts on camera. I notice that I see very few other anglers on the water actually doing much skipping. That may not stop them from trying to teach you how to do it on the internet. LOL I won't claim to be any good at it but I do an awful lot of it...on the water, in the gravel drive, the lawn and even across the snow. I use a real jig for a practice weight on BC and a soft stick bait or the like on spinning. There's more than one way to do it and it's good to be able to use various methods. I stand with my feet below the surface of the water in my flat bottom boat, I sit in the canoe and I may be standing chest deep when I wade. If I couldn't cast effectively backhand (especially skipping) I wouldn't get much fishing done. We usually choose between spinning and bait caster based on the bait and conditions so it really helps to be able to use both. On my last trip out I was catching bass under docks and I was switching off between a swim jig and bladed jig on BC and weightless plastics on spinning...sort of a one-two kind of thing. In the shallow-ish water where we're usually skipping mono can work just fine but I also skip braid on a BC. My casting method does NOT determine my line choice.

I guess my answer to the op would be a qualified "yes". It's mostly in the river that I use the ned. I try to size it so that it bounces down river with the current just barely ticking the bottom. It's actually fairly snag free using the Zman TRD because it stands up fairly well with the nose of the jig bouncing on the bottom. I haven't really used it much in lakes...heck for the last few years I've mostly been on the river. I sometimes use a drop shot in the exact same situation but I think it's a different presentation. The bait is slightly off the bottom. On a few occasions it's been just the ticket. I often swim a grub on a jig or Texas rigged but it's a little different presentation than the way I use a ned...similar but different.

I don't think there's enough emphasis on this. I think there are plenty of anglers who are fortunate to spend a lot of time fishing varied locations and develop great physical skills but when newer anglers see them on youtube they see the cool bass boat with "spot lock", side scan, 360 scan and live scope. Whether you have all that stuff or not it's often skills that make the difference. If you have a rod and reel it doesn't cost anything to cast in the yard. I have a little pond close to home where I go to be outside and cast. I think this has made more of a difference in my overall fishing success than any other factor.

Well, in my river last year was pretty typical. I caught my biggest the second half of may but the numbers were way better in the summer. Before may all I got were a few dinks...they just don't seem to be in my part of the river earlier than that. This spring the water is low...low like in August. That means that a river trip is one way...down river. There is no motoring back up. I just lost a vehicle. With low water and only one truck there's no river fishing.

I can't even count the number of times I've been cut off my pike or musky. I've almost completely stopped using jerk baits in my river because if fish are active I can be pretty confident a pike is going to take my lure. I did have one take a tube last year but I got over it. For some reason they rarely cut off a jig or whatever but the suspending jerk baits are gone. LOL

One I've thrown but haven't caught much on is a bladed jig. Another one would be a lipless crank...the river is awfully shallow and snaggy and other places I fish just seem too weedy. Years ago I fished places that were more suited to it and I used it a bunch but not in recent years. I guess I have more. I never threw an 'A' rig in my life and I'm not looking to start. The other would be the hard swim baits. I just don't have any. I do have a big glide bait I bought for muskies but it's bigger than most of the bass I catch. LOL

It's hard to beat black...my most productive is mostly black with just a few strands of blue. My black/blue with a lot of blue just haven't worked as well for me. I've done well with the natural colors (green pumpkin) too. But an old favorite of mine was a yellow marabou...and I just bought some more.

I don't own any megabass. There's no real reason for that. I just never came across it when I was looking to fill a "need". I started using suspending jerk baits kind of by accident. My wife and I were using a lot of floating and count down Rapalas. She was in the fishing department of a local store and they didn't have either but they had some x-raps. We started using them and catching fish on them before we even knew what they were. Then we got some husky jerks when they didn't have x-raps. Other than the feathered rear hook I'm still not sure I know the difference.

ok