Pat Brown

I agree with @Swamp Girl - you can use live bait to locate fish and even locate the things bass are eating sometimes which can be immensely helpful. Also make sure you troll from spot to spot on big lakes while figuring them out. Sometimes you get clues that pay off for years to come.

One thing is for sure - @IcatchDinks catches nice ones with his sidekick nearby! Great fish there @Team9nine nice to see you getting into some quality! @bp_fowler you're on em dude! You're gonna hammer a great big one getting bit like that before long!

I actually agree with suggestions of - try some small spots. Ponds are great because there's only so many places they can hide - tough because they are well educated. This is where going small can REALLY pay off!

Best post of the week @Mike L

I hate to break it to you but bass fishing got really popular during COVID (and was already popular before that) and any bass that was stupid and easy to catch is now not. Dang. When I hit a wall I go back to soft plastics. Small is good. Smaller line. Smaller hooks. Smaller baits. Smaller casts. Smaller amounts of moving your bait etc. Think small.

@Swamp Girl Lost one off a bridge piling I've fished every time I've been to the lake in question when my drag was 3 clicks too loose on the hook set and she jumped a few times on the way in and came off 1 ft from the net. Surprised she stayed on that long but easily over 7. Lost the one that slipped through my finger tips in the 6 range that I went into the water to lip who then came off. Lost one that sneak attacked my frog at a new spot and lifted her to the surface checking my line in the dark only to see she was an 8 + lb hulking behemoth in a pond I didn't realize had that kind of bass in it - only to have her thrash once solidly and swim away. That one shook me up. I think there's more but those are the ones that are sticking out right now 😂😂😂😂 Thankfully they were biting really nicely before the storm hit this afternoon and I managed a sizable fish on the 1 oz grass jig with the mag speed craw and my first big soft swimbait fish of the year on the Zaldaingerous which was very cool! Another wacky dink and Jake with a mepps bass - a few panfish and crappie in there too! 😉

I'd say mastering the art of holding your boat position in an effective location for presenting baits is basically the essence of fishing in the wind. Anchors can be nice out deep and up shallow and now it is people have power poles things like that make fishing in the wind a whole new world.

It all depends as always. Wind is good if you're looking for Shad activity and such during warmer months and it can definitely make bass eat lures better - probably an even better way of putting that maybe: it diminishes their sensitivity to our presence.

It's just analog shallow live scope from before we had electronics. Osprey Vision ™ You're spotlighting fish if you wear them. 😂😂😂😂😏😏😏😏

Well it was a wild and crazy week last week with the new moon. Sorry y'all I dumped every special fish I hooked this week and I hooked 3 that are gonna haunt me and make somebody who sells tackle a little richer this week. But thankful we did catch a few quality fish and loads of hard fighting dinks and crappie and sunfish galore! I am hoping that with the warming trend - low pressure front and the temps settling into shad spawn territory - the big girls really start to eat for me and not just half heartedly thump.

The paca chunks thump like a bladed jig to me but they're wicked cool. Caught some hawgs on them but I only wish they were more durable - netbait in general went downhill when they infused everything with bait fuel - to me. I tried the ribbon tail c Mac I think it was? One of my staples pre bait fuel - every single one fell apart and caught nothing on casts. Not sure why we need every plastic to be softer and more expensive now but man I miss the old Net Bait a lot. Thankfully still have a few bags.

Oh wow.... This is one of those questions. All the ways? That's why these are staples - they don't really have one way they work - if they did - I wouldn't buy em. 🙂 I fish them any way I can think of to fish them and catch fish doing those things every year. I like weightless and rigged weedless for buzzing or twitching over shallow cover or skipping under docks or overhangs or working grass lines early in the morning or pad fields. Think buzzbait but sneaky. I like them texas rigged, pegged and unpegged with lots of different weights. I like all of them as swimming and casting and pitching and dragging jig trailers. I would use them on drop shots, free rigs and swing heads without hesitation. Really the more interesting question would be how wouldn't I rig them! I don't think I'd use speed craws on a Alabama Rig but now you're getting me thinking 🤔 😂🥴

I stopped using chunks when I figured out how to thread half a d bomb onto a jig. Seems to look better, work well and then I can just buy d bombs which also happen to be my favorite flipping bait year round also. 🤫🙂 I've fished pork chunks. They look incredible. You know what doesn't look like a pork chunk at all in the water? A Zoom Super Chunk or Big Salty Chunk. You know what does? The last 3rd of a D bomb hung on the back. 🙂🙂🙂😉😉😉 I'm not saying that the d bomb tails are 1:1 pork replica on a beaver body but I'm saying they're very very very close.

I pretty much only use chunks when the water is below 50 and even then I really don't use them much. I use swimbaits or craws 90% of the time regardless of season or conditions etc. I've caught Giants on jigs with chunk trailers but it's a much shorter list that Giants with swimbaits or craws on the back. And it's not really for any lack of trying. Speed Craw/Mag Speed Craw/Rage Menace/Rage Craw/Mayor/Largo Shad/Rage Swimmer etc pretty much get it done 365 days a year and cover profiles small to big. Caught a 7.35 lber in 41° water on a 1 oz jig with a mag speed craw trailer in 1 foot of water on a sunny wind blown bank the day before Christmas Eve last year. There's no rules. As others have said profile and rate of fall and location of the cast are probably more important than what the trailer is actually doing. Chunks are cool when you want a bigger profile with a dead action that falls really fast straight down.

Yeah - let the 10 - 16" ones go that look greedy and mildly psychotic and hit your favorite lure categories - and keep the ones that seem overly cautious and bite stuff like ned rigs 5 times before committing in that size range. Selective harvest is always pretty much gonna make a spot bigger on average.

Mayor EZ Largo Shad Rage Swimmer Whale Skinny Dipper Swammer Scottsboro

It's the best warranty in all of the tackle industry. It's airtight. Lately my warranty has been spending 150$ or less on a rod and learning to replace guides. I'm done trying to get rod manufacturers to sponsor my stupidity.

I'll add frog/popper unofficially to the list as the resident topwater fanatic! 😌😌😌

No. Well. Kinda. If it's working for you then you don't need anything else really. But sometimes you might want a smaller profile and that might require a smaller bait which might require a smaller hook and that might require a different jig and the same might be true for a bigger piece of plastic/ profile/ hook etc. But in general, I think you're right on with your observation and bass fishing is 1000% a "If it ain't broke don't fix it" type deal. Tackle sales are a solution in search of a problem. And the ambulance being chased in question is people's inability to catch fish. If you're catching fish, you don't have a problem in need of solving. And even if you didn't catch fish - the real truth of it is - tackle isn't going to start catching your fish for you.

I want to fish a river for 4 lb smallmouth. You're living the dream! Go find that illusive 5 lber now! 😎😎😎

Carolina rig a tube or better yet double pegs - one on both sides of a tungsten t rig sinker -> tube on a EWG. You can even put the two pegs a few inches apart so the weight and line are still 'free'. This rigging has replaced C rig and free rig for me and when you want to its convertible to a pegged or unpegged t rig. Tubes work. 🙂 Try an alka seltzer or piece of foam inside the tube to give it some bubbly or more floaty action!

For skipping under metal stuff - it's gotta be big game and probably at a minimum 10 lb for me. If I lived on a lake where I was skipping docks often with a spinning rod - I could see myself using braid to leader.

So it begins. 😎😎😎♥️♥️♥️

Skipping topwaters into weird places is indeed one of life's great joys. 😍

Mag speed worm and mag speed craw and mag trick worm are amongst my favorite lures of all time.