SlabbyPatty

The boiling water method mentioned above works very well in my experience

7’0” Medium Heavy KVD rod. Hard to beat at their price range. I have many of them.

I’ve had the deeper chirp for a couple years now. I’ve always just sort of lobbed it using any of my medium heavy rods. The connectivity to your phone only works about 20 yards from you if that. So you don’t have to worry about casting it very far. That being said it does work pretty good most of the time. I just wish you could launch it out there a ways further.

Personally in my experience I believe line size doesn’t matter that much except for affecting certain lure’s action. Like a crankbait being burned for example. However I am also a bank fisher 90 percent of the time and have to constantly flip fish over bushes or over some rocks and have many Northern Pike in my waters. I also like being able to pull my lures free from snagging. I like to know my line isn’t going to break so I always use pretty high rated braid to a flouro leader. That being said if I was on a boat more I would be less worried about using strong line and I would use lighter line. I think line size is a factor as is scent/flavor and color however I think putting your lure in front of a fish is 85 percent of the battle.

The part of the lake that I fish most of the time is almost always pretty discolored. So I’ve always had more luck with a black lure in low light or cloudy conditions. Including hard baits. Also the water I fish is tinted green so I hardly use green natural colored lures as they seem to disappear within inches of being in the water. Black is my green pumpkin I guess you could say. For me metallic lures, quite literally, shine best during bright sunny days. A black jerkbait sounds pretty cool to me. I might have to give that a try!

1) You don’t ask the fish how to catch fish, you ask the fisherman. 2) Alcohol is God’s apology for making us self aware. 3) Always bring toilet paper.

I personally started making my own lures because of “gaps” in available lures for sale. Such as a style of plastic that doesn’t come in a color I want, or a spinnerbait that doesn’t come with the size of hook or blade etc. It’s also incredibly satisfying when one of your creations turn out to work very well.

I’ve heard numerous reasons why some smallies are pale and other are striped. I’ve caught smallie after smallie in the same location and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to their colorings. I always assumed maybe it was a female vs male thing but I’m sure that’s not correct. One thing I’ve noticed is that the bigger/fatter ones tend to be the ones with pronounced tiger markings, but I’ve also caught many 3 inch long smallies with very noticeable markings so who knows for sure.

I also lurked for years before just joining. My account still has restrictions I’m assuming are for protection from spammers and bots.