Pat Brown

I was THIS close to having a picture of an 8 lber for ya this morning. I went back for her and hooked her and got her to the bank and tried to flip her when she started making more runs on braid up close (scares me) and she popped off because I couldn't heave her in. It was the exact same fish I caught on a frog 3 weeks ago!!!!! Same area as I caught her before but closer to the bank cover/shallower. I had 2 more blow ups that I didn't connect on also in a 1.5 hour session so it's proven itself to me. These are highly pressured fish that typically don't go for anything noisy or fast and this is as close to something like that I've ever gotten them to bite!

Yeah pretty much you're not mimicking anything. You're making a bass bite because of anger, territorial nature, fear, surprise, curiosity, hunger (least often I'd wager), so it has very little to do with matching anything and more to do with getting their attention without alerting them to YOU. Presentation matters a lot more than color with regards to your poll but in terms of your post, I'd say neither color nor matching the action of the food matters that much at all.

1/4 oz - 1/2 oz lipless crankbaits can work very well if it's not choked out grass. Many people have success fishing over the tops and around the edges of weedlines with a rattle trap or red eye shad, myself included. If it gets hung a little in the canopy, you can usually rip it free if you learn the rhythm and cadence and you'll get some violent strikes pulling it free of the top of the grass.

I was rocking the Billy GOAT in the green pumpkin color and I got it on 50 lb braid on a MHF 7'4 with 8 speed reel.

I like full moon fishing at dusk and dawn and all hours in between ? New Moon I find I catch em when the sun is shining.

I fished the GOAT on a screw lock hook and got a massive fish to blow up on it right when dusk was hitting but had to leave right as the action was getting good to do groceries and dinner. I'll definitely be tossing it in the morning and it definitely works. Try it out @Rora Thanks again @RRocket that's golden. It literally FLOATS on the pause. I'm gonna stick a toad with this thing this year and I'll be sure to tell everyone who showed me this one.

Seeing @Team9nine success on the jig has me very excited for the full moon coming on Tuesday August 1st. It will be the first of two full moons in August and which makes it a blue moon and it is called the 'Sturgeon Moon' which has gotta bode well for big fish chasers. I suspect things should fire up on Saturday evening when that moon gets to glowing and stay hot til Saturday morning up shallow. I always catch giants around full or new moons. ????

I 100% will do. I'll be going out at 5 am before work tomorrow and I'll probably just toss the weightless goat and maybe a jig. I expect this to work very very well because I've had some wild blow ups on swim jigs with craw trailers buzzed on the surface when it wasn't really intentional or expected or a prime time of day for it at this pond. Should be fun.

@RRocket I love the z man floating plastic idea so much I'm stealing it and trying it tomorrow. That's just evil genius.

@CattI think what we may be getting hung up on (pun definitely intended) is more like the part where 'you know he's got it'. That part I try to get through as quickly as humanly possible. Recognizing the difference between a limb/a rock/a little clump of weeds/a closed mouth bump and the bait being in a basses mouth is the more nuanced part of the whole deal and I try to do in a reel big hurry if I can, like milliseconds. That part requires deep focus and staying in contact with your bait at all times and is probably the single most important part of fishing bottom contact baits. If I feel something that isn't right I swing but I try to swing in a firm and measured and powerful way rather than got startled by my teacher napping during lecture kinda motion. ???

@Catt I mean I watch hackney set the hook and he does it with authority but it's forceful rather than quick is how I'd put it. He almost always gets the tip of his rod loading up before he lifts and that's a BIG part of how it works IMHO. If you can take a few steps back on the bank or deck of your boat, even better. You just want torque. He explains the whole deal in great detail in some video somewhere. I can't remember. All I know is it helped me stop losing ole big ???????

Going further down this rabbit hole, a big reason I don't do the slack line snap hook set is hinted at in all of this. The way bass clamp down on a bait, you're better off using torque and muscle to drive that hook in slow and deep with a firm sweep. When you snap on slack line, you just blow their lips open and the bait comes flying out most of the time. Last year I lost a lot of big fish because of my hookset being too snappy and quick. I mean a lot. It was really killing my confidence. Learned the hackney sweep set and I do it with everything at all distances now. I don't lose fish very often. Sometimes they don't get the bait very good but that's out of my control. YMMV

Really excited to have discovered another local bait manufacturer! I placed my first order with Bizz Baits yesterday. Going to try their Dinner Bell buzz bait, the big thumper 5/8 oz single Colorado spinnerbait (night fishing anyone?), Got my favorite colors to try in their Bizz Bug and their Dizzy Diamond worm and I got some of their Flip n Skip jigs to try because I love the horizontal line tie, coupled with the head shape and the wire tied skirt! They seem to be doing really cool stuff! Check out Bizz Baits from Concord NC if y'all get a chance! I'll let you know how I do on some of this treasure soon hopefully! ??????

Yeah I really like the suggestions of casting parallel to the bank and getting your bait on the bank and then dragging it into the water. Go with the lightest line and baits you can cast accurately with.

There is some video on YouTube where Greg Hackney talks about how in tournaments he fishes with baits with no hooks on them to determine if there are fish in an area so that he can go back and catch them during the tournament. What really got me going on the slow hook set deal is him talking about how it's a rather common occurrence for fish to swim around with a 3/4 oz jig in their mouth for hundreds of feet before deciding it's not food. He even says it's fairly difficult to shake them off sometimes even with no hook! Food for thought and ultimately why I go slow to set the hook. I mean we naturally are already in a hurry and slow is relative. It all happens so fast anyway. I just try to pause and make sure the fish has the bait.

That's better than a cup of coffee to start the day. What bass fishing is all about. Making memories and bringing joy to life.

While this is often the case, this isn't always the case. Crayfish often burrow down into the silty bottom and bass are often attracted to little critters kicking up dust on the bottom. I feel like you just gotta learn how to fish a silty bottom which involves a lot more hopping and a lot more pauses and much less dragging. That being said, id probably opt for a dropshot or Carolina rig on super silty stuff in general. The key with jigs is identifying the hard cover and structure even if it's small areas like an old log that's halfway sunk into the silt or a small mossy boulder cluster or a little sandy shell bed or a place where current washes a channel into the bank. Jigs are better for fishing targets than just covering water.

Have you tried fishing a shaky head with a straight tail worm??? Or a hula grub on a football head with an EWG? Perhaps a swing head with a beaver bait!??? These are absolutely fantastic ways to gain confidence throwing jigs.

I started preparing for old age by having a real slow reaction time and hookset now ??? So far it's working fine. Don't miss a ton of fish. I think sometimes we take the bait away from the fish and my slow and steady reaction/hookset style seems to let them really get the bait. Caught an 8 lber on a frog over open water and I waited til I felt her trying to get away before I pulled back. She was stuck good. If the fish is gonna get it, it's gonna get it is my philosophy. Sometimes THEY miss the bait and there's nothing we can do about that.

I will try to add a little to what @Catt is saying. If you know you're on em real good and they're munching soft plastic worms, that can certainly be a good time to try a jig out. Sometimes you'll catch the bigger fish out of that school. Sometimes the school will vacate the area when a skirted jig falls into the water. That can sometimes offer a clue as to what certain schools of fish on your lake are willing to bite. I find the best way to gain confidence in a jig is to pitch and make short casts to pieces of cover and let it fall to the bottom and then hop it in place a couple times and wait. Hop a few more times and wait and kinda work it out til you're maybe 3 feet from the cover. Repeat this around pieces of cover from different angles. The best pieces of cover tend to be the ones you can only see a little bit of and are mostly under water. Start with small profiles and lighter weights. In the summer you can just go down a bank with shade and submerged laydowns and pitch a 1/2 oz black and blue jig with a craw trailer tight to every log, stump, brush pile or lay down and you'll stick a few good ones if you make good casts. Learning to slow the descent to the water of the heavier jig to silence the splash by making casts low to the water and thumbing your spool are essential for those shady over hangs. Those heavier weights will have a faster rate of fall and really trigger the big fish to react. Have fun! Jigs are my favorite way to fish year round.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you don't want 'tons of bait' in the area. Just signs of life. Tons of bait means the bass are napping and finished breakfast and lunch and dinner 2 hours before you arrived. Another way of looking at it. You think tons of bait is gonna just chill and sit under your boat if the big bass are eagerly feasting on them? Naaaaaaah I find that a 'competitive' area yields the best bites and these competition zones are very situational and seasonal and even come and go from one hour to the next with wind direction or cloud cover. The key is learning the where's and when's of your lake mechanically and how bass fit into the competition. Mayfly hatches are a huge deal here. Everything on the lake just becomes zombies for the little critters. The areas where wind is blowing them into the water /they are hatching and swimming to the surface become these frenzied competition zones where everything is eating everything right in the shade of certain trees. On days when that's happening, good luck getting bit anywhere but in those frenzied little competition zones.

@Bluebasser86 you crushed it. Not only did you make it through, you darn near won it. Hats off.

I actually go the opposite of most folks. I prefer 3/8 oz and up in general, rarely going for the lighter weights. Why? I'm generally trying to get a reaction strike with the rate of fall in clearer water and I like to force them to make a decision fast. I also like to impart hops and the hopping action is way more convincing with heavier weights. Beyond that, I get most of my bites that aren't on the fall, on the bottom so I'm trying to get my bait down to where it needs to be to get bit. Works well enough for me although I used to use lighter weights a lot more often back when I felt like it mattered. If the weight needs to be less than 1/4 oz on the sinker, I'll throw a weightless senko or a small shaky head or something like that.

Judging by how long you were on the water. How much water you covered and the conditions. I think you fished way too fast. You need to slow down on areas they are biting and try different stuff. Usually there is one bait they want way more than others and you can often find them biting it in similar areas on the lake so you don't just burn bank. I probably would have fished a few stretches really hard for that 5-6 hour day and those stretches would be determined by bites and my electronics looking for steep drops with cover and baitfish in current.

When I switched over from braid to nylon and fluorocarbon lines, I started landing more fish. I think stretch is essential to landing giant bass who like to tear holes in their lips and surge like crazy. Another thing I started doing is using rods with more moderate tips and practicing a more sweep style hookset. Making sure hooks are sharp and the ability to feel subtle changes on slack line are essential ingredients to my success when targeting big fish. Fluorocarbon 20 lb is more or less a must for me when working the bottom and setting hooks on big single hook baits. And a firm even sweeping hookset.