BrianMDTX

@thediscochef I tried that pond you told me about. Holey moley! I just fished Lake Raven yesterday and remarked about having little experience with hydrilla and weeds. That pond is absolutely choked! I fished for an hour, collected 42.5 tons of green stuff and left lol. Went to my local pond as it was now after 9:00. Caught 13 bass in 3.5 hours. All on soft plastics. Most were dinks. These five were the biggest. The last was #13 and the biggest. The dinks were true dinks. Like fugitives from a sardine can.

@ol'crickety New water is fun, but I went back to old water this evening lol. Only thing that got bites was a wacky rig. Caught two dinks then a decent 2 lb’er. Just as I got it in the boat, the knot broke at the hook. That’s on me, as it’s been tied on a while and I should have retied it. It fell on my fish mat and I lipped it and was going to snap a pic, but it headshaked itself out of my non-GI Joe kung fu grip and back in the drink it went. Caught two more dinks then I hooked one big enough it pulled drag. And then…poof! It was gone. It’s very rare I lose a bass on a wacky rig, so I’m guessing I barely hooked the lip. Darn. That was a good bass! I ended up working a Neko Macho Texas rig. Went to bomb cast it and it went about 20’ and I watched it sail into oblivion as my reel exploded line all over. Must have had a wind knot or something. Oh well, it was spooled with Big Game so respooling is cheap. Might try new “new” water tomorrow or Monday.

Ok, so while I was doing it “right”, now I know for sure lol. Thanks for the replies!

It’s been a heck of a weekend so far! Back up to Monday. Dropped my truck off at a local shop (first time) as I had a P0455 large EVAP leak CEL and my left exhaust manifold gasket gave up the ghost after 177K and 18 years of use. Picked it up Thursday. Said they wouldn’t try the manifold as it was too rusty, and they smoke checked the EVAP system and found a leak at the top of the tank, but once again, passed on the repair due to “too rusty”. I fished yesterday morning and called a shop I stopped at on the way home Thursday. He said it may take longer due to possible snapped bolts so if not, I would not have my truck until Tuesday at best. All the bolts snapped. Needed a new manifold as well. He was finished at 4:30 and 1/2 the cost quoted at the other shop. Came home and reset some hoses on the charcoal canister and cleared the code. No new code after 60 miles of driving! So…having a truck, I decided to fish Lake Raven. Now, 203 acres is not huge, but it’s way bigger than the 2-5 acre ponds I fish 99% of the time. Only fished there once before and got skunked. I am not used to fishing deeper water, and having loads of hydrilla. It’s a learning process. I started on top with a Whopper Plopper, then worked the lily pads with a Texas rig. No strikes. Then I started casting a chatterbait, which lately has been producing. After 10 minutes or so I thought I had a strike and set the hook. I felt it pull and then…boom. Dead stop. I thought it threw the hook and I snagged a log. I kept pulling and still felt a fish. I’m thinking “what is this? A DD?” It was. Almost 3 lbs. of bass wrapped in 8 lbs. of hydrilla lol. I switched to a jig (another bait I rarely use in ponds) and caught another nice bass. Plus I hooked a 20” gar but it threw the hook at the boat. Probably a good thing. So, only two bass but both were good. I have to fish this reservoir more and learn how to fish it.

When you reel in a chatterbait or spinnerbait, do you keep the rod tip pointed at the bait, or at a 45° or 90° angle? I find I get better feedback to how the bait “feels” during the retrieve with the tip angled vs. straight at the bait, but to be honest, I’m not sure if that’s the best position as far as hooksets or the action of the bait. What say you? I still kinda suck with spinnerbaits but my chatterbait success is starting to climb.

Nice bass!

Boy, this morning was kinda frustrating. I started with a Whopper Plopper but no takers. Switched to a X Zone Adrenaline Craw Texas rig and caught a dink, who somehow shredded the bait. Went to a chatterbait and caught a bass, then shortly afterwards I hooked a decent bass that threw the hook. These are two of four bass I’ve caught in the past few days on a chatterbait (after getting skunked untold times). Maybe I’m getting the hang of it. 3 of these bass were hooked and the bite took me by surprise. For a moving bait the bite is very subtle. I went back to the WP and got a bite but it threw the hook. I put on a Mann’s blackberry Jelly Worm and got three bites quickly, but lost them all. They never took the hook, only but the tail. Thinking the worm was too long for today I put on a tube and caught a small bass, then I put on a blue/black laminate Senko and caught two back-to-back. Losing 5 bass is not great!

I’d ask @WRB He forgot more about hair jigs than most of us will ever know.

@WRB Tom, that is excellent advice! My “favorite” is a Pop Max, although I get more bites on a Whopper Plopper than I do on poppers.

I did neglect to add that all three reels on those rods are spooled with braid-to-leader.

My primary wacky rig rod is a 6’ 6” Fenwick HMX MF. I have zero issues with hooksets. But I use a circle octopus hook and reel it in to set the hook. As far as T-rigs, I often fish weightless Senkos on a 3/0 EWG with a 6’ 10” St. Croix Bass-X ML/XF or a 6’ 6” Daiwa Procyon M/XF. Both set that hook well. That Procyon should as well if it’s a F or XF tip.

I’ll say Texas rig, as I rarely use a Carolina rig. Texas rigs pretty much always produce. For me lol.

O’s take a huge lead in the top of the 11th after scoring one in the 10th followed by the Jays tying it up. Two outs, Mullins on 2nd and now 8-3. Should this hold, they will gain a game on the Rays, who dropped one to the Brew Crew. Ain’t baseball fun (again)? ?

Use both. Like both. I mainly use spinning for wacky rigs, weightless Texas rigs and jerkbaits. But I fish those presentations a lot. I can skip a Senko a long way with my spinning rigs. Braid-to-leader was a game-changer to me for spinning. No more coils of mono coming off the spool.

When the lure got sucked down, I saw part of the fish. I thought it didn’t look bassy. The fight proved it lol. Yeah, I know they will bite a topwater from hearing about it from others, but that was my first. Thankfully it lipped it and I got the hooks out fast.

I’ve caught them in full sun, total cloud cover and everything in between. Not so much in windy conditions. Seems to do better in calm water. I mostly cast, let it sit until the ripples disperse and then reel it in back to the boat/bank. But, you can twitch it and work it like a popper. Move it about 8”-10” and it will “plop” about three times.

Yesterday morning was good. Caught 12 bass and missed one. First bass was on a Whopper Plopper 90. About 1.5 lbs. Caught it on my 3rd cast. About 10 mins later I watched it get slurped down just as I started reeling it back. Something looked off and the so did the fight. It wasn’t a bass. It was a 3 lb. channel cat. Caught one on a squarebill last year but this was my first topwater catfish. Chatterbait struck out. Caught the rest on Texas rigs with a blue/black laminate Senko, a Zoom Z-Craw in California 420 and a General’s Watermelon Neko Macho, as well as a black Senko WR. Speaking of the wacky rig, I was getting ready to pack it in for the day and lost my Senko at the boat reeling in a bass. I had that Neko Macho (torn up at this point) handy so I rigged it wacky-style on the 1/0 circle octopus hook and soon caught another bass (#9), but that destroyed the bait. I didn’t want to go through my Plano box for another O-ring and get another black Senko out of the bag for just a few last casts, and when I put my hand in my pocket I felt a bait- a 4” Rage Menace in Green Pumpkin. I must have removed it as a spinner/chatterbait trailer and forgot about it. I figured “what the heck” and hooked it through the nose on the circle octopus hook and casted it near partially-submerged brush. Boom! A 2 lb. bass took it immediately. So did the next bass two casts later, and the 3rd bass three casts after that. It’s a light bait and sinks slow, but it had great action on a slow retrieve being nose-hooked. I’m going to try that again!

It’s all I use. So simple to tie and very strong. I’ve used it on 20 to 50 lb. braid and 6 to 14 lb. mono.

No sweep, but taking 3 of 4 against the Halos would be sweet.

Topwater is fun. No doubt about it. But my favorite is working a Texas rig on the bottom. Especially in cover. Just feeling that subtle bite, taking in the slack, slamming that hook point home and then watching that bass take off gets me going. I like using pretty much everything, but I tire (mentally) of chucking and reeling in crankbaits for long periods of time. But I can work a Texas rig from dawn to dusk.

@ironbjorn I get what you’re saying. But I look at it like bowhunting. Sure, I could simply sit in a treestand and be with nature, but I would never be as “in tune” with the forest as I would be with a bow in my hand and a tag in my pocket, whether I see a buck or doe, or not. To me, fishing for bass is the same. Yeah, I could just go out on the water in my boat and enjoy nature, but I would not be as “in tune” with what was or wasn’t happening above and below the water as I would be with a rod in my hand. I love catching bass, and getting skunked is never “fun”, but casting and working baits beats simply paddling around lol. I learn things even when I don’t get a bite. And I still enjoy the heck out of it.

Sounds like a great day!

In taxonomy, the birds were originally (and still remain) classified as Class Aves (like we are Class Mammalia). But they should actually be Class Dinosauria in the Family Therapoda. Watch a blue heron stare down a meal. If that ain’t a feathered dinosaur I’ll eat my hat.

Going for the sweep today. Only series loss this year was to Atlanta, and that series was hotly contested.

Hitting for the cycle is HARD!!! Brooks did it in 1960 and it lasted until Cal did it in 1984. Mullins made a name for himself tonight! 2nd best record in MLB. It’s been fun so far!