KSanford33

Excellent recommendation. I’ve watched a few of his interviews with Rick Clunn and learned a bunch.

Now you're speaking my language! I'd actually be in shape if it wasn't for chocolate and peanut butter. Well, maybe not. So that raises another question: What's the best way to learn how to get the most out of your sonar? I have a Garmin Striker Plus 4 (I know, entry level) and want to find something online to get the most out of it.

I live a little east of the finger lakes, but I grew up in Elmira, so I've fished Seneca, Keuka, and Cayuga a lot. I've always found them incredibly hard to fish offshore unless you're trolling.

Thanks, I'll definitely look into this.

Excellent answer. Now let me ask you to expand on it a little. How do you find a thermocline? I know what it is, but I'm not sure how to find it. Also, I live in the northeast, so our fisheries were made by glaciers, so we don't have any channels (that I know of), but I definitely look for points and random humps. Also, I look for any of the above near where a creek feeds into a lake. Thank you again.

I wanted to start a thread I thought could help several other fishermen here, so I thought of the biggest issue I run into: finding fish offshore. I'm a reasonably capable fisherman going after structure and the like near shore, but when fish are deep, I always have trouble. I know to look for steep drop-offs, but outside of that and submerged structure, it's kind of cast and hope. So I wanted to get the input of the people here. What do you do to find fish offshore?

Thanks Deleted, this is what I've been doing previously. I almost always troll with at least one crankbait, so like you said, with the current I needed to go a little faster or else the crankbait wouldn't wobble much, and against the current I needed to slow down because it would wobble like its life depended on it. I'm glad to find out I was actually doing it correctly; I just used common sense.

Trolling a lure behind the boat.

I was almost hesitant to ask this because I feel I should know the answer, but the only stupid question is the one you don't ask, so here goes: Is it better to troll with the current or against the current? Inevitably I'll be doing both, since I have to get back to my vehicle somehow, but I wanted to find out if a lure swimming either with or against the current would look unnatural.

Has anyone here fished the Hudson River striper run in spring? If so, what were your results and what did you do?

Do you know what I hate? I hate those reviews where it takes the reviewer 20 minutes to tell you what they actually think. So I'm not going to do that here. @road warrior Guaranteed Way to Catch Bass is exceedingly effective. Below I'll tell you about my experience with it, and the things I've learned. I spent a week in central Florida fishing old mine pits. A lot of the shoreline has dropoffs of 30+ feet within the first few feet. But there is some 'normal' shoreline that gradually increases in depth. So that's where I used this strategy. The first day, my little brother and I caught 4-5 bass each using this strategy. So of course we're thinking, Bassmaster's Classic here we come! However, this tactic doesn't turn your rod into a magic wand. We didn't start our first day until almost 5pm due to flying into town that afternoon. That day, it was overcast and a little windy. The next day was much hotter, sunny, and no wind. We did ok in the morning, but the bite tailed off after that. We struck out with both the Senko and the Fat Ika. Not having confidence in this strategy yet, we threw our tackle boxes at the water, trying everything from topwater to drop-shotting. Nothing worked. One thing to keep in mind is that we were bank fishing, so we couldn't access the middle of the lakes. Over the next few days, we found this technique worked exceptionally well mornings and evenings, but not so well mid-day. A few of my takeaways: -You really need to focus when you're doing this. I'm not some millennial with a fidget spinner. I'm 42 years old and have been fishing for 35+ years. But using this technique, you really need to focus on what you see with your line and more importantly, what you feel. By the time I was done, I'm pretty sure I could tell you if the submerged branch my lure went over was oak or pine. The focus side of things started out difficult, because naturally you catch yourself looking at the birds cawing or a splash near the other shore, etc. Again, you really need to have a singular focus on your lure and exactly what it's doing. -This technique will catch bass, but not necessarily big bass. The biggest we caught during the week was 16" which is great, but we also caught a lot of sub-12 inchers too. I think if we would've switched to the Fat Ika it would've eliminated a lot of the smaller fish. -I grew up fishing Mister Twister and Culprit worms (rather unsuccessfully I might add), and Senkos are completely different. With older plastic worms, you had to set the hook quickly before the fish spat it out. With Senkos, the only reason to set the hook within the first few seconds is to make sure the fish doesn't swallow it. If a fish picks up your Senko, he's not likely to spit it out. -In the most unscientific experiment ever done, my little brother and I tested fishing this technique with the T-rig versus a wacky rig, and the wacky rig outperformed it slightly. Keep in mind that we were fishing mine pits, so there wasn't a ton to snag on. If I were doing this anywhere else, I'd stick to the T-rig. So yes, Road Warrior's Guaranteed Way to Catch Bass absolutely works. Thanks RW for posting it.

I just wrapped up a week long fishing trip to central Florida. I primarily used @road warrior tactic he describes in his post on guaranteed way to catch bass. I’ll post a review of that once I’m back in NY (spoiler alert: it works exceedingly well, but there’s some things to keep in mind). We blew it up from ~7am-9am and 6pm-8pm, but the mid-day bite was awful. I understand the mid-day bite is almost always more difficult, but I wanted to reach out to the BR community to see what you guys do to get the bite in the middle of the day.

I’m in Florida this week and the local bait shop has told me there’s a quarry pit that holds some big bass. I scouted it out yesterday, and it’s basically a big bowl; 4ft from shore is already 20+ feet deep. There’s zero cover I can see from shore. How would you fish this?

This. I play golf as well and have played with some people that you would’ve thought they were sitting in the dentist chair. Like Mr. Slide said, I don’t pay money to be miserable.

My brother and I are going on a fishing holiday to central Florida for a week. We're not bringing our own equipment with us, we're just going to buy the essentials while we're down there. What would everyone suggest for a minimalist setup?

I already look up to you from a fishing perspective after reading your post on fishing a t-rig Senko in the Best of Bass Resource tab, but let me ask you this. Why do you prefer moving water? Oddly enough, that's where I struggle most. And in regards to finding more productive water, what if you're fishing in a tournament? Would it just be finding the most productive water in that fishery? Thank you sir, I hope you don't mind me trying to glean some more knowledge from you.

I've learned that as long as I'm enjoying myself, the results will come. Maybe not today, but they'll come. So I enjoy my time on the water and let the rest take care of themselves.

My bias is simple: Fishing is the outdoor equivalent of playing poker. Sure, some have a legitimate amount of talent and can do well wherever they are, but for the majority of us, we can do our best to increase our odds, but in the end we're still relying quite a bit on luck.

@Team9nine That's pretty much what I figured. I can't imagine the demand for these being very high. It was very cool to meet those guys though. I remember Zell Rowland telling us the tricks he used to modify his Rebel Pop-R and Zara Spook.

I was going through some old boxes in the attic and found these. I went to a bass fishing seminar in 1990 with my stepdad in Rochester, NY and saw these guys. I believe Tauber was selling the Gitzit at the time. I have no idea how much these are worth, and I really don't care. I just figured I'd share them with people who would appreciate them.

@Choporoz Oddly enough, that's exactly what I was hoping to hear. Thank you sir!

@keagbassr I was actually thinking of suggesting that, but I wasn't sure how unwieldy a jon boat would be on one of those. I'm glad to hear it works!

You may need to fabricate something. I know they make things like that for kayaks, but I'm not sure about your situation. You may be able to fabricate something out of an old yard cart or something like that.

Mods, if I posted this in the wrong section, please move it, thanks. Has anyone on here fished in any of these tournaments, and if so, what did you think about it?

I would say 95% of the members of this forum are better fishermen than I am, so I'm not going to give you advice on what to throw. Instead, I'm going to relate it to something I'm good at: golf. In golf, I can hit any shot on demand; cut, draw, high, low, you name it. I play in a lot of tournaments as well. And do you know what I do when the tournament is on the line and my nerves are kicking up? I hit what I'm confident in. Sure, I can hit all of those shots, but there's one or two that I'm most comfortable with. Do that in fishing. To use your example, if you have a patch of vegetation, throw what you're confident in. In my example, that's going to be a weedless frog or a jerkbait around the edges. Sure, I might be better off throwing a jig or a weedless Senko, but I'm not confident in either of those (yet). What you can do as well is throw what you're confident at first, land a few fish, then when you know there's fish there, try another lure and see what you can do. Then you don't have to worry about getting skunked and you can explore other lures or other methods and see what they do. That's my plan. I know I can catch fish with jerkbaits, frogs, and crankbaits. This year my goal is to become proficient with Senkos.