Pat Brown

Thank goodness that you came out okay! Rest up and heal so you can keep making those bass sore lipped!

They like the 3-5” sunfish mainly because they can fit it down their throat. I would look for sunfish schools where the majority of the fish in the school are 4” or less, and also find smaller sun fish on beds. My experience is that with a thin rayed fish present, like golden shiners, or mosquito fish or shad or whatever, bass will not eat sunfish very often. I also find that bass will eat crappie a lot more often if that option is available. For what it’s worth, in North Carolina, where there are lots of different sunfish species, my observation has been that the shellcracker or redear sunfish is the preference of the largemouth bass above other sunfish species followed by the bluegill.

I’m not trying to be efficient. I’m trying to get one big fish to bite my lure. Realistically speaking. Efficiency is a tournament angler thing and I find that on the lakes around here you leave a lot of meat on the bone trying to be efficient. Totally depends on the day/time of year and what’s happening on the lake etc but in general - catching giant bass isn’t very much about being efficient so much as cunning. Around here if you’re positive there’s an 8 lber in an area - it pays to let that bait soak and work it slowly because if she isn’t gonna hit on the first cast she’s almost certainly not gonna hit on the second cast. Usually you get one bite from a big fish per bait if you’re lucky and she doesn’t think she’s being fished for. That bite is usually investigatory and trying to determine if the bait is fake or food. Bigger fish seem to bite after a long slow retrieve a lot more often than small fish for what it’s worth.

I don’t know very much about anything in this universe, but I do know one thing. Be ready from the moment that frog starts flying through the air towards your target till the second it’s about to be back to your pole tip to be cast again and fish the whole entire cast like she’s about to smoke it. A statistically significant number of times I’ve bombed a frog 150 feet and slowly walked it back in and had it smoked 8 feet from me while I was basically asleep and caught an 8 lber. A statistically significant number of times I have bombed a frog 150 feet and started burning it to get the slack out of my line and caught an 8 lber.

It’s been extremely hot, but the bass don’t seem to care and we’ve been doing pretty good when we get out on a cloudy day or a day with some wind. I’ve been in the process of moving for the past two weeks and the new spot has a 15 acre pond in the backyard and I just caught my first big fish this morning. Up to 20 or so fish under 2 pounds in the past two weeks. This beautiful 6 lber was just the confidence boost I needed. Steady 10mph winds this morning and casting a free rig culprit 10” red shad ribbon tail directly into shade got her. Her tail is bloody and stomach is deflated from recent spawning on the new moon this past week!

Maybe they are drinking cold beverages and enjoying the jukebox -on a little vacation- at the hydrilla inn express.

Colors catch the angler first. Dumb names are just branding and they reflect what we as anglers are buying! 😉😉😉

The GOAT finesse top water deal is ludicrously fun catches small fish and giant fish and it's perfect for this time of year when they don't want to eat anything. Can officially confirm.

Yeah this is kind of something where you just go down the bank and cast a lot and it doesn't have to be very far. It's just more about making a lot of casts to good looking pieces of cover usually. I do pretty good on flats but I'm not super confident when it's much deeper than about 6 or 7 ft.

I have never had much luck with the clacker variations. I like the buzzbait because it is rather subtle and the clacker sort of defeats the purpose of that. I like them to squeal. I like an 8-speed reel. I like 50 lb braid and a long Stout rod with a moderate action. The key with the buzzbait is covering water and casting to as many good looking targets as humanly possible in a day.

I threw the Picasso hog snatcher in black with usually some kinda jr fluke trailer, no trailer hook, 1/2 oz. I had to retie the skirt and made a bluegill pattern for that. It's caught me some huge fish this year. Funny thing is - I throw a ton of buzzbaits and they all seem to work - I have done really well on the 1/8 oz size buzz baits. I really like the lunker lure, prototype, accent, Nichols offerings - really they're all gonna work if the fish want a buzzbait +/-.

@10,000 lakes Bassin - for my big ribbon tails, I use a lot of 10" power worm, local pours with floating plastic (deep creek lures and Dave's tournament tackle), Zoom Ole Monster and Mag 2 and the Big Bite Baits B2. I have fished other ribbon tails and they all work good but these are the ones that I go back to the store and pick up packs of. Oh yeah culprit! Those are also great!

Spro frogs Buzzbait 1 oz grass jig with 4" swimbait trailer 10" ribbon tail worm on t rig Trick worm weightless Mag speed worm on t rig

That's fine/I think I even agree completely - but that 10% of the time is almost too irrelevant to care about in general and my success rates don't seem to depend on that 10% most of the time. If that 10% is the difference between me catching fish and not catching fish, I'm fishing the wrong bait. Not the wrong color jig.

Again I posit that is entirely in your head as weird as that sounds. And really I think color in general is pretty much in our heads. The bass around here are as difficult to catch as it gets - I mean that - they point and laugh at jigs not because of the color but because they've seen too many jigs or it's not the right day for the jig - not the color. False equivalency. We have zero confidence in a color and suck when we throw it, we believe in a color and care when we throw it - we attribute our success to the color. False equivalency. Guys say all the time - me and my buddy were fishing and I start whacking em on a black and blue jig and he can't get bit on his white one! Well what rate of fall. What trailer. What profile. How good of a caster is he? False equivalency. You fish a white jig for the first 2 hours and figure they don't want it and tie on bluegill and catch 6 and the bass didn't send you any memo but they started a bite window that wasn't happening when you showed up. False equivalency. The point I'm trying to make is it's really hard to know how good a color is on your home legs until somebody who fishes it with confidence fishes it there. Color pretty much doesn't work first and foremost in the fisherman's head. I've never thrown a jig color that did not catch a fish when they were in the mood for the jig and my casting is on for the day. Human beings are weird like that.

@Jar11591 summed this one up pretty perfectly. I very very rarely it ever use an EWG and my hook points are buried 100% of the time.

My uncle got a giant out of St. Clair this morning on a number 3 aglia! My son regularly salvages incredibly tough days on a mepps!

Happy birthday - thanks for being an ever flowing fountain of juice for many generations of eager bass heads!

I throw junebug color plastics on green pumpkin and white color jigs sometimes. Just some nice contrast. I'm not really necessarily sure they care that much about the color so much as they need to be able to see it OR they need to have a harder time seeing it etc.

Greenish whitish

For what it's worth - I believe firmly that it's user error for me - so with that out of the way: Deep crankbait. I love squarebills. I LOVE lipless crankbaits. I can't connect the dots and make deeper cranks work with any sort of consistency for me around here. It sucks because I really enjoy cranking shallow wood and rock and grass and flats etc When I start to target any fish deeper than about 8 ft with a crankbait - I skunk.

A great way to save money and support small builders and get high quality jigs is to buy untied jig heads and then to tie your own skirts from scratch with braid or something like that! I do it all the time!

I rotate a plethora of challenging and alluring bodies of tiny to small size water with smart big bass in them. Wouldn't change any of them And each one gets its own unique 5 out of 5 Stars!

Right there with you and also very excited about the new scum frog bass rat and compact frog! It's going to be a froggy year which is always a good thing.

That's the interesting question, isn't it!?!? 🤷🏼‍♂️🤷🏼‍♂️🤷🏼‍♂️🤷🏼‍♂️🤷🏼‍♂️ Definitely lots of reasons at different times of year under different conditions and circumstances for different fish. But I guarantee they don't think your crankbait is a shad LOL.