Talio

Thomas EP spin in 1/4 oz is a killer in open water.

I'm in your area and I fish marabou jigs quite a bit for smallmouth. I prefer PJ Finesse over any other because the hook is superb. There's really not much to the technique. It's essentially a swim jig without a brush guard. I do not consider this a bottom presentation because they hang up really easily. In my opinion, it's a leech/hellgrammite pattern that works best in areas that a bass might be eating those kinds of baits. I love them in the shallow fast water where bass may take up residence behind a rock and feed on the drift the way a trout would. This method rarely requires a long cast, but to increase casting distance, I would start throwing it on 10# braid with a fluoro leader. 10# braid has the same diameter as 2# mono, so on my 7' medium light, I can cast a 1/16th oz jig out to at least 50 feet. If you're focusing on faster water, you're probably not going to want to have that long of a cast anyway. What I normally do is throw them upstream into the current and keep a semi-slack line while retrieving back to me. If that line moves at all it's either the bottom or a fish, so set the hook every time. In still water, this is my float and fly presentation. I'll cast the bobber out, which will give you the weight for a long cast, and wiggle it every so often. But my secret technique for marabou jigs is to tie on a fly fishing bass popper with a palomar knot, slip the tag end back through the eye like a drop shot and tie the jig to the tag. I once hooked a double on this rig in the Wissahickon Creek here in Philly. Thank god one was a complete dink, because I'm not sure I could have fought two big ones on that setup. I don't trust my knot tying skills enough for that!

Maybe it's just me, because I'm a ridiculously large person, but I've found those pontoon boats to be super cramped with two people. I tried it with a friend once and he was dodging elbows all day. I'm all limbs. I also didn't find it to be all that stable. More stable than a canoe, but less so than my kayak. Also, they're not super dynamic in the water, so while we could be all day out in the canoe on one battery charge, we had to be really conservative with how much we ran the battery. I'm 215lbs and he's probably a 180 holding a fat baby, so it could be that we just weighed down the boat too much, but I never went out with him again. It was just too uncomfortable.

What hook are you using?

I've got similar conditions on my favorite lake out here. The shallows get socked in with thick hydrilla and at this point in the year a good 25% of the lake is fully matted on top. For grass that's high enough to stick out of the water, I like to dance a 6" Zoom trick worm in pink over the top. For submerged, I like to throw a Caffeine Shad on a superline hook. It sinks like a senko and generally stays at whatever level you let it sink to once you start to retrieve it. I'll either twitch it and let it die into the grass or I'll just do a straight, slow wind. Caffeine Shads have an awesome, subtle movement in the tail when you do a straight retrieve that just seems to work. I was watching GMAN give a talk about jigs and he says that a jig with a vertical line tie doesn't pick up as much junk as a horizontal, but I haven't tried it yet.

Yeah, spey casting is a really dramatic looking way not to catch fish, I've found. Swinging is a crappy presentation. There's nothing really natural about it. It's basically just hoping you trigger a response from the fish. I've only gone steal heading once or twice, because we don't have any around here, but I didn't get one till I started using a float. I really think there are better ways to get a natural drift that using a bobber, but they're painstaking for trying to cover water in a big river. And I don't see the point of using indicators on a fly rod. You can get a better, easier presentation from a bobber rig on conventional gear. You just can.

Depends on what I see what I'm on the water. If I think there are shad, I throw white. If I think there are bluegill, I'll throw something green. However, my new favorite is green pumpkin with blue flake. We have a lot of pumpkin seeds around here, and I feel like that color works really well for that presentation. Almost all my worms are black if I can help it or the closest color to black I can get, just because I think it stands out. Hot Pink is my preferred weightless trick worm color for when I'm dancing on the surface or over weed beds. For jigs, I like a brownish colored skirt with a black trailer, but I'll also do black skirt with green pumpkin because black crawl trailers can be rare. I don't do a lot of chartreuse though. I feel like everyone is throwing chartreuse baits, so I avoid it.

So one of the techniques I accidentally discovered is that you can turn a regular old grub into a wakebait. I don't have room onboard right now for another combo dedicated to top water, so I'm trying to figure out what the biggest hook I can float with a 3 or 4" grub. Right now I'm using a size 4 Aberdeen hook, but the day is going to come when I straighten that bitty thing out. I plan on experimenting myself with different sized hooks, but I was thinking maybe the community could help me save a little time here. Do you float grubs? What size hook can you float? Thank you!

Well the research does show that the body staying in a state of controlled hypertrophy has a significant impact on age related atrophy. I'm not arguing with you though. You're absolutely right. There are a ton of factors involved, mainly joint health and after 10 years of paddling your shoulder is probably shot. Not to mention, the sun is gonna age us no matter what we do. I can just imagine an army of old, wrinkled haggard faces with these giant shoulder and back muscle blowing the doors off of some 20 year old!

This year has been a mess out there. So many people partying, camping and leaving all their trash behind. I only got out there twice this past summer, but both times there were so many people on the water it was almost pointless. The pressure was just crazy, crazy high. With tubing season closed, I think things will greatly improve. Planning on making the jaunt out there sometime next month myself. I'll report back if anything happens.

Wow, Cap, I hadn't even considered that angle. Makes me wonder if kayak fishing can keep you young? I mean, as long as you keep fishing and you keep using self powered boats, you should stay in pretty good shape right? Assuming you eat a good diet though, I suppose, and I'm sure all of us traveling around on the road to fish are ALWAYS eating healthy. Right, fellas?

I'mma be straight up with you. All the ones I've bought have worked so well I'm not sure I've even tried 10. Probably be easier to list the ones I don't like. It's only one. Berkley Gulp Nightcrawler. Hate that bait.

I mean, that's kinda how I expected that to go down. The waders I have actually have belts at both at the top and waist. Then, my wading jacket also works kinda like a crappy version of what you described Francho. So I figure if I go over, between my vest and the trapped air in the legs of my waders, I should fully float. As long as I can get back to my boat before the water really starts to seep in, I should be dry from the chest down still. Then I can just change my top and hat and I should be dry. My long ass hippy hair will probably be a problem though....

I'd like to ask you a question about wearing waders in the winter on a kayak. This was my plan since my wading jacket and waders combo keep me 100% dry when I've taken a drink before, but I also see the argument that you'll still get wet if you can't get back in the boat fast enough and therefore it's still not as safe as a dry suit. What are your thoughts? For OP...It would totally depend on what kind of water you deal with. Jon boats are almost always going to be more expensive cause of your engine and requires way more maintenance, but will be far more comfortable on calm water. An 18' Jon boat will also probably need to be launched from an official ramp on most public water, where you can kinda launch a kayak from anywhere. Kayaks I also feel like handle rough conditions better due to most being rotomolded. I was in an 18' Jon boat in the Delaware River once and the wind started kicking up white caps like crazy. Added to the already heavy commercial traffic and tugboats on the water, we almost didn't make it back. The waves were crashing over the gunwales and swamping us out. He stayed on the motor and I pumped like crazy. However, I got out there in similar conditions this past summer in my kayak and I had no trouble. You can't swamp that thing because physics. I suppose I could be thrown from it one day, but I've yet to meet the wave that even triggers my stumble response. Just a couple of things to think about.

1oz jig is a whole other thing. That's punching weight, so normally you're like pitching that with a vengeance to try to bust through a weed mat. I'm assuming if you're having that effect you're using a spin rod. When you get all that coil coming off, you probably tried to cast the lure way too hard and too far. That means that slightly more line has come off the reel than the distance you cast. In that case, just close the bail and it should fall naturally. You can mitigate this by either using your index finger of your casting hand to feather the line as it comes off the reel or you can use the thumb on your opposite hand. Either way, on any spin cast, you want to control the line coming off the reel the same way you would with your thumb on a casting rod. It's tricky, but you can do it. Edit: In general, I feel like a good rule of thumb is to keep spin casts within 50' of you. I consider it to be a short distance presentation. Casting rods do a much better job at casting lures a long distance and managing the slack. Spin reels are slow, so taking up the extra slack from a boat can be a challenge. Plus, on the caster, the reel spins where with a spin rod it's stationary. The energy from the cast is just going to keep peeling off line. An object in motion, tends to want to stay in motion. So even though you CAN feather a spin rod, it's still an easier task on a shorter cast.

I like to just cast till it hits the water, leave my bail opened, pull a bunch of line out by reaching my rod tip over my head and then letting it fall that way. You can just leave the bail open as well, but I personally find it harder to detect strikes.

Are your creeks locked or do they have access to larger bodies of water? If they're locked, I've found two keys to finding them and having quick access to deep or sheltered water is key to both. I've found that the fish that took residents in the faster, tumbly water will still be there. I think some of them may never move and working this water with a dead drift presentation is great. I like to use hiviz braid to a fluoro leader and chuck them directly upstream from me into faster water. You leave it drift and fall on a semi slack line. If the line tightens, it's either bottom or a fish, so set the hook every time. The second key is finding the changes in the sun. Certain areas of my creek are killer from around mid June to sometime in September, but shut down the rest of the year because the change in the suns position with the season has that water lit up most of the day. Finding where the water has changed from being super sunny during the summer to dark during the fall has been a pretty good pattern for me. I use weightless plastics in the fast stuff cause it's normally not that deep and maybe add a split shot for depth. In general I like to use finesse techniques for this type of water because it's normally super clear and any spot with a good casting position from the bank has normally been beat to death by now. Other than that, shallow water next to deep water like always seems to be a good presentation. They're hunting to get fat for the winter, but so are the birds. So looking for a good place for a bass to hide from a bird, but still has access to shallow hunting grounds seems to be a decent pattern. If it's an open creak...I dunno. Not enough experience in that yet.

I took a year off from fishing to get my life right and came back this year to almost no fish. I must have gone out a dozen times without a single hit. I totally agree with you that this can be a gift. It re-invigorates your love for the sport. I had gotten to a place before where I almost never got skunked. Finally, I bought some new equipment, because I knew I was making compromises and a whole bunch of new baits I never tried. I rented a cabin on a small, 23 acre private lake that had incredibly low pressure and got one on my first cast. Proceeded to catch 40+ bass throughout the week. Stella got her groove back! Now I'm doing much, much better back at home. That one week away on that playground of a fishing lake was just what I needed to get my confidence back. I mean, it's a tough year. I dunno about the rest of you, but quarantine has definitely put more boaters on the water. The pressure on public water this year is immense I think. I've been watching the pros and they're all out drop shotting in super deep water no matter where they go. I don't think that's an accident. I think most of us may be seeing the toughest bite we'll ever seen in our lives and I think our efforts to try to adapt to this will only make us better anglers in the coming years.

Weighted whacky hooks or split shot. Split shot I think works better because you can vary the weight easier and the distance between it and the bait to give it a different action. https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/Weighted_Wacky_Hooks/catpage-WTWACKYHK.html https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/catpage-SPLITSHOT.html?from=basres Edit: Or a drop shot, if you're nasty! Either way, the answer is weight or....patience.

Well they're a lot of clutter this way is the issue. Generally, you could just roll it up and stick it somewhere, but once you start giving it rigidity, it kinda needs to lay out on your boat somewhere and a lot of bass fishermen just won't like that. I have a giant blank space on the back of my boat behind my seat, so it's not an issue. I actually believe they specifically designed my boat for this. I have a D ring all the way on the back of my boat and I have no idea why they would put it there if not for a drift sock. So it's a compromise for folks with really busy kayaks, but mine just isn't. It's literally a stand up paddle board with outriggers and a cooler with a seat back on top. So what I do doesn't always work out for everyone. Edit: Let me put it this way. Unless drifting is going to be your primary form of fishing, it's probably not worth messing with. There are a lot of compromises to drifting. Sometimes, you just can't get the boat to go where you need it to go and the sock just doesn't want to play nice some days. But if you don't have proper electronics on your boat, which I do not yet, it's probably the only way you're going to be able to really cover deep water expanses effectively. I'll usually start out by flipping into shallow cover for an hour or so and if that's not working, I'll usually be able to pull at least two or three out of the deep stuff just by riding the wind and throwing a chatterbait. I actually got the idea for this from the competitive fly fishing world. They do a thing called Loch Fishing where they chuck out a sinking line with a bunch of flies on it, stick the rod in a holder and strip the line back as fast as they can with both hands. I figured I could just do the same thing with conventional gear and a chatterbait. The reason you don't see this so much in bass fishing is because keying in on deep structure with electronics is simply more effective. You can pinpoint your presentations to high percentage areas. But without them, you need to cover water with a lure that can do varying depths. If you try it with a square bill or deep diver, you'll almost never be at the right depth. A lipless crank or chatterbait you can kill at anytime and it'll sink right back down to the bottom.

Oh man, the drift sock troubles. So I did two things to help this. First, I tied an extra paracord line coming from one of the straps at the opening of the sock. If the sock folds up, I can yank on the paracord and it'll get it to open up sometimes. The second thing I did, was cut a ring out of a 2 liter soda bottle, covered it in hot glue and slid it down till it was snug in the sock. This keeps it from fully folding in on itself and combined with the little paracord trick, I can usually get it opened. Ultimately, my plan is to cut a wire hanger and put it around the opening so it always stays opened.

I have the same problem on flukes IF THEY FLOAT. I've had the same pack of white Zoom flukes all that time and I was finding the same problem. They just didn't seem like they worked. I remember distinctly that I danced one past a wooded shore line with a nice overhang and got nothing. I was convinced there was a fish there, so I quick changed to a 6" pink trick worm and a dink smashed it. So what was the difference? Then I got a pack of white Caffeine Shads that sink naturally, rather than float and everything changed. I believe that a floating fluke does a great job at triggering a fleeing bait fish response. That's a much harder meal for a bass to catch than a worm struggling around in the water and he's going to need to be in an actively feeding mood. The key I believe to making a floating fluke work I believe will be calculated pauses. If you pause for the same amount of time every time, you start giving a following bass something to key into for an ambush. If it doesn't work, you've probably whipped up the bass enough to get him to eat something dying. This is why I fish Caffeine Shads now. On superline hook, they fall very similar to a Senko and tiny little twitches make it look like it's really dying and falling. It's also important to realize that flukes make very little sound and flash. So unless you're talking about really clear water, you might have to put the thing right in front of him. It's also a painfully slow technique when it needs to be. We'd all love for the conditions to be right to be able to rip these things through the water column and trigger bites, but at least I find in my water, that's rarely the case. The fluke can be difficult to master, because there are endless way to work it. Start putting different sizes of split shot on your line at various distances from the bait and you'll see what I mean. Almost every change you make to that weight has some subtle variation on the retrieve.

You definitely need a drift sock. It slows that drift waaaay down. I was having the same problem on drifts. Maybe 2 or 3 good cast and retrieves before I had to paddle back upwind and drift back. Then it suddenly dawned on me that if I'm using a similar retrieve on every drift, I'm probably presenting to the same areas over and over again. The drift sock changes that big time. Depending on what size you get and how the wind is that day, I can get a dozen casts where I used to get my 2 or 3. Hook up ratios went through the roof.

I don't do spinners often, so I'd just google around on that. When I do throw them, I like 3/8's oz with multiple silver blades with a white skirt. I think it kinda looks like a small school of shad skittering by. A lot of folks like chartreuse, but I think that looks more like a bluegill, which I think can be done better with a chatterbait. For chatters I either like the Zman Freedom because you can rig your trailer Texposed which keeps it from hanging up in the thick stuff. But my go to chatterbait is the Zman Custom. Both in bluegill and some kind of white for a shad presentation. My trailer is normally a Caffeine Shad Jr. in white and baby bass or a Berkley max scent jerkbait in green if I feel like I could use a little scent for confidence. I feel like ripping a heavily scented baits over and over again in the same area can stir up fish on a slow day. If I'm getting weeds on my blade that stops the vibration almost every cast, I'll sometimes put a paddle tail swimbait on there because you'll still get some water displacement and noise from the tail. Otherwise, I don't want a lot of movement in my trailer. The Caffiene Shad has an awesome little wiggle to it when you do a straight pull and also doubles on it's own as an excellent soft jerk bait. I like lighter weights, usually 3/8ths at the max. If I'm going half ounce in the really deep stuff (20ft+), I'll throw the Freedom in a half ounce since you can rig it weedless. Every once in a while, if I know I'm on a lake that have a good trout population, when the bite gets really tough or I just want to see what kind of panfish are in the area I'll throw the Zman Flashback mini in the natural silver and fire tiger 1/8th oz. That makes up like 50% of my fishing system. I almost always start on a chatterbait because they're fun to fish and have so many triggering characteristics depending how you rig them. If those won't produce, I'm probably going to a soft jerk bait and then some kind of heavy texas rig or jigs. Something slow and quiet, because I think that normally if they won't hit a chatterbait, they're probably a little skittish that day. But I've caught them in all four seasons and a bunch of different places and conditions here in the Northeast. They just seem to always work for me. Good luck!

How often are you moving spots? If you're staying in the same spot most of the time, it's conceivable that you've caught enough to spook the others into not eating or push them into the deeper, off shore water. It's also possible that you're fishing a spot that your bass like to hang out in during the day and then they leave that spot to hunt when it gets dark. Senkos are a really slow presentation and it's possible after dark they want something faster. Forget crankbaits for now if you're having trouble getting them hung. Treble hooks can be tough on beginners. I would recommend going with a spinnerbait or chatterbait to get a good moving bait fish imitation. The senko is going to look like something dying or an easy meal to a bass. If they're in the mood to chase something, you can experiment with your retrieves on those baits to trigger that reaction. Top waters can be really good in the dark, especially on the big ones. I like to use baits that create a wake and reel it back to me. More often then not I'm just using a regular 3 or 4 inch grub on a light enough wire hook to not sink it and just cast and reel it in. If you're fishing casters, wakebaits and buzzbaits are super fun. Mice get really active when it's getting dark and often swim across the water. Big bass love that in the dark.