LrgmouthShad

If we’re talking worms…. plum apple, black grape, scuppernong, and green weenie are some good colors around here Jigs there is a color pattern that Oldham makes that is absolutely killer around here. It’s called watermelon pepper chartreuse. I like it with a watermelon trailer.

Yes I do. On all bottom contact baits with a baitcaster

Swapping out for a new kayak crate / rod holders that enables me to carry a few more rods in the yak. Right now I’m limited to five. Refining my electronics mount because it is sketchy right now. Besides that, nothing for now. If I get big into tournaments, I will do an overhaul of electronics a couple/few years from now. A lot is up in the air right now because it is likely I’ll be overseas next year.

Similar to my NC July Fishing thread, here is the winter edition. Once again, I’ll be headed to NC to be with family over the holidays. My family knows I am quite enthusiastic about fishing around Christmas and New Year’s. This year, my expectations might be a little too high. I am bringing my electronics with me and installing on a kayak that the family keeps there. In the summer, I bounced around to a lot of lakes. This winter, I plan on focusing on just a couple in vicinity of @Pat Brown. I’ll be tempted to make it out to Badin and I might make a trip, but for the most part I plan on fishing around Greensboro. Hopefully I get to see @Pat Brown, Jake, and @FishTax again. I’ll revisit this thread as it gets closer to my leave. As you can see, I am already planning a few things for the trip. Stay tuned….

Nice trio of bass! I have a few hybrid hunters. I haven't tossed them much but they will get some hours clocked in, soon enough. For what I have in mind, I believe the Spro Little John fits the bill, but I appreciate any and all suggestions.

Gentlemen and ol' crickety, I am looking for a shallow diving crankbait ideal for cold, muddy water. 1. 4' or less 2. Runs okay through wood 3. Good color options for dirty water 4. Preferably includes a rattle but not a requirement What matches?

I’m in the process of swapping all my crankbait split rings and hooks to these after bending out and nearly breaking a split ring in a tournament. The KVD triple grips I’ve used for a few years. They’ve been quite good to me

Much too early for me to answer!

😂 yeah I went up there and they hand me a big piece of cardboard and I think, well I guess I just stand and look pretty with this

I am subscribed to Ken Smith fishing so this popped up in my YouTube feed... Ken Smith fished this tournament!! It was his first time fishing in a kayak tournament, as well. What a great video. Love Ken Smith and love his content. This is a good video. It's funny... I saw his name listed before I fished the tournament and I thought... nah surely it ain't him. Sure was! I did not see him at the weigh-in but may have missed him. They posted some photos for the tourney. Here I am on two hours of sleep.

I fish a pond occasionally in NC when I am visiting family that I call Ol Muddy. It has a muck bottom and often dirty water. Same as y’all describe, those bass almost exclusively like plastics. I have gotten them to strike a Megabass PopMax and 1/4oz trap, but those bass for the most part like plastics and little else. Jigs do very poorly there. Sometimes you just gotta listen to the fish

@KozI want to know what Jorge Rosas was doing with his jigs! 2 big fish hourly prizes and third place overall in the tournament! I figured it was going to be a pretty lopsided tournament. TX can be a bit of struggle bus sometimes.

I am quite fond of the red eye shad and the 1/4oz is a sleeper size

Y'all crazy. I'm going to be drop shotting ASAP and I wouldn't be surprised to land a few dandies on it. For many lakes in TX, and for my home lake, a dropshot is something I can no longer ignore.

Yeah man. I didn't want to say anything about your tournament experience on here because I didn't want to speak for ya in any way. I felt bad for Koz when he was getting bothered about work while fishing the tourney. Koz is a gentleman and I wish I could spend a little more time with him. His kayak rig is also awesome!! Hope things get better for you quick, Koz. If you are ever around in Texas I'll be happy to fish with you.

For those curious, the biggest bass caught in the tournament was 23.25 inches. That angler took home an hourly prize like mine and also a brand new Titan X 12.5 kayak. The first hour of the tournament, the 23.25" fish was caught almost instantly and a 23" was not far behind! The weights for big bass dropped steep after the first two hours of the tourney. There was definitely a morning bite for the big gals.

Yes the photo posted here is the photo I sent to them after they rejected my original submission. They accepted the photo shown here

Uh that first photo I uploaded cut off basically right at the fish’s mouth. It kinda just barely let you see all the fish but they might not have been comfortable with it. They are quite strict about the photos

No I haven’t thought about it yet, but this forum is extremely well read on the effects of cologne on bass

Okay tournament report. I traveled to Yantis, TX to stay at a motel after getting off of work Friday. It was a busy week so I had to do about half of my tackle prep and packing that night. I got to the motel around 11:00 PM and wound up sleeping about 2 hours for various reasons, including spooling fresh line on every rod that I brought. Tournament morning I woke up very early to be at the boat ramp sooner. Rules stated we could be in the water prior to launch time and just hang around the launch, so I was ready in the water 5:30 and stayed right by the ramp waiting for 6:00 while finishing some kayak organization. There were only three kayaks with me ready at that ramp for when 6:00 hit. Several tournament participants were still pulling in right at launch time. At 6:00, none of us early-launchers said anything to each other. We just parted ways to our first spot. Going back to practice, I spent a lot of time graphing structure using side-scan. All practice weekend, most fish were shallow. But, I was already looking at weather a week ahead and saw some of those cold mornings that Koz talked about. So during practice when I was scanning stuff deep, I was looking for places that bigger than average bass were either already there or likely to show up on tournament morning. The stretch I ran to first was the absolute best I found during practice. The way it set up, I was confident this stretch would still be good a week later. 6:30 was lines in, so I bee-lined to this area and made it there - losing only about a minute of fishing time. The first hour of the tournament, I was running around too much. I just wasn't settled. I was throwing shallow and throwing deep with a variety of baits. I never stayed in on place long enough to accomplish anything. After the first hour, I settled myself down and started to graph and make use of my anchor. Around 8:00, I located some more activity and larger fish. I anchored with the wind to my back and started through a rotation of baits. It was windy! I'd been throwing a couple different crankbaits but then I got the crazy idea that maybe my crankbait wasn't big enough. Truth be told, I don't think it was anything special about the DT-20 I settled on. It was just the right time and right place for one large fish. Anyways, I make some long casts with this DT-20 and on about the 5th or 6th, I feel a thump like a spinnerbait bite. That fish inhaled the crankbait instantly after it deflected off a piece of timber. Good hookset. The fish first runs up and jumps, just to scare me I guess. From this point on, I was aware that the fish could be worth $1000. Next it runs and starts surging in deeper water. I loosen the drag. As soon as it gets close, I'm ready with the net and I perform a clean netting job. The experience with this fish is surreal to me because everything happened like it was supposed to. I take several photos to make sure I have a couple good ones but I did not weigh the fish. As soon as I was done with the release, I was right back to casting. I get a text message from the tournament director that my fish was denied due to photo cropping! I look to see if I have a better one, and I do. The next photo is accepted and they count the fish as 22.75". For the next 2.5 hours, I fish this stretch thoroughly. I catch nothing except a sub 14" bass, a catfish, and a crappie. I'm getting ancy. I do have other spots with potential, but I was faced with a pivotal decision of whether to head back the way I came, or head out even farther and head into Little Caney. I chose to head back the way I came, and I believe that was the biggest mistake I made in the tournament. With two hours between lines out and weigh-in, I could have headed out a little farther with plenty of time to make it back. There were some deep water spots out of Caney and headed into Little Caney that might have done me some good if I'd tried them. Headed back into Caney, I stop at two offshore locations with timber close to the channel and a bridge but I have no luck. I'm running out of offshore locations that I am confident in, so I start fishing docks with a jig until lines out. I catch one more sub 14"er doing this and one jumps me off. All told, I ended the tournament weighing in one fish, but that fish won me $1000. It was a tough fishing day. Many people zero'd, but I heard several comment that all they caught all day were sub 14" bass under the minimum length. The winner walked away with it, catching 180" of bass. It was a cool tournament and the directors are nice gentlemen. A good experience!

DT-20 cranking timber near mouth of Caney Creek. Fish was in about 16ft of water. I’ll put more in the full report but I found this spot when I prefished. It’s really a stretch but there’s a sweet spot on the stretch. All I did was fish for the big bass. I let everybody else go for the no-limits.

This is going to require some storytelling later

Excellent Let us not forget

The field is up to 138 anglers now. That is pretty impressive. I ain’t even all the way packed yet. It’s been a busy week. I leave tomorrow after work.

I used to fish out a very old Jon boat my Grandpa owned. It had a persistent leak I couldn’t quite fix. I would stop fishing every hour to bail out water using the battery box cover