Buzzbaiter

Today, I lost a decent sized fish because of a bad hookset. He was on for about 3 seconds before he popped loose. This isn’t the first time that this has happened. My hooksets just aren’t consistently strong enough to drive an EWG, even if it’s a light wire. Is there a way to fix my hookset or is it something that will get better over time?

With punching, it’s easy to get lost in dead water, especially when most of the lake is covered in vegetation. Before you even make a cast, listen for baitfish. If you can here them feeding, you can expect the bass to be close by waiting for a meal. Fish those areas

They’re e probably just sunfish sipping insects off of the surface. They tend to make small swirls and ripples. When they get fired up, you can see a lot of them eating at once

Junebug

I don’t do a true slack line set, but if I’m slow fishing plastics, I do leave just a hair of slack, not more than two feet

Ive never flipped with a lizard, but I imagine that it’d have the same issue. A baby brush hog should work better, just stay away from something like a full sized brush hog, which also gets short strikes. Personally, I like ~4 inch beavers and craws without really long tentacles

3/0 is a hair small for my liking, but should absolutely work. I like a 4/0 for 7 inch ribbon tails. I think that the problem was that you were flipping with a ribbon tail in the first place. For flipping, I like shorter baits. When I’ve tried flipping long ribbon tail worms or big creature baits, I’ve experience a lot of short strikes

I think that the next world record will be caught in Alaska. A ton of untouched wilderness, low fishing pressure, and all-you-can-eat trout and salmon! The only problem? The current state record is 0.5 lbs. I take back what I said earlier…

Personally, I’ve never tried it and I don’t think I would. In my experience, trout rarely eat anything off of the bottom. Your lure needs to be relatively high in the water column in order for them to eat it, and a jika rig just doesn’t suspend the bait high enough in the water for trout to notice it. If you’re going for stockers, however, it might be worth giving a shot with powerbait on the hook, but even then, I’d go with a dropshot or spilt shot rig

Definitely a rock bass, not a crappie, warmouth, or green sunfish. Light green body, dark green stripes, and red eyes give it away

That rod should be able to handle most trout and panfish presentations, so stuff that’s less than or equal to 1/4oz. It should also handle finesse swim baits and dropshot rigs well

4/0 EWG Gamakatsu hook, just like you’re using. I also use an Eagle Claw 4/0 Jason Christie Heavy Wire EWG hook if I can’t find the Gamakatsu ones

Try something different. When I get burnt out on bass fishing, I go bluelining for little brook trout in little mountain streams. It’s a totally different feel that renews my appreciation for nature. It doesn’t have to be brook trout; any other fish that offers a different challenge can turn on your interest in bass fishing again.

Did it have any vegetation in the blade that was blocking the blade from spinning?

I’m using a Rebel Pop-R in baby bass, since I can’t afford some of the more high end ones. I’ve tried fishing it with a walking retrieve , pop-pause-pop, pop-pop-long pause, pop-long pause, etc.

Lately, I’ve been trying to catch fish with poppers but I haven’t had any luck. When do you guys like to use poppers? How do you retrieve them?

I’ve never encountered this situation since all of my fisheries are bluegill-dominant, but I would throw an underspin. That way, you can imitate the baitfish while still standing out from the crowd, thanks to the blade. I’m sure an assortment of topwater baits would also get them, as well as flukes, spoons, spinnerbaits, and any other baitfish imitation.

It not really a fishing question, but it’s still interesting to think about. I’d want to go to NH 700 years ago (precolonization) to catch silver trout, an extinct subspecies of brook trout.

Oh these things will catch you fish. Don’t even worry about the claws. If you’ve ever seen underwater footage of bass eating craws, you’ll know that they don’t care about getting pinched. IMO the claws standing up gets more bites

I run skirt and trailer hook just because I have a ton of confidence there. I feel like I catch bigger fish on a skirt

Either way works. You can slide a jighead onto it, but you can also Texas rig it. It’s a fairly popular way to rig tubes

What type of worms are you talking about? If we’re talking about ribbon tails air straight tails, I use those a lot

4in Yum Dinger in Elder’s Magic, wacky rigged and suspended under a bobber

It’s hard to walk a frog over thick mats, and it’s nearly impossible to do so over heavy lilly pads. I usually just bump it along the vegetation by shaking my rod while slowly reeling. This way, you can create a lot of commotion while keeping the frog moving

In the context of fishing for river smallmouth, when do you use a tube over a Ned rig, or a Ned rig over a tube? What are the advantages to each? They seem pretty much the same to me, just different profiles.