Pat Brown

My answer is still the same. Sometimes I'm searching with moving baits and sometimes I'm not. It just depends on the mood of the fish. 🙂 If the bass are in the mood for a moving date, I like a lipless crank bit or a swim jig or a spinnerbait or a buzzbait or a fluke or a frog or a swimming, worm etc etc. It just kind of depends on the type of cover they're in and the water clarity and the mood they're in etc etc Sometimes I'm searching next to trees all day with my search baits and that's when I'm searching with the Texas rig LOL. Point being I search with everything that I'm catching with. I'm not going to search the lily pads with the same bait that I search a ledge with. I'm not going to search a saddle in 14 ft of water with the same bait i'm going to search shade lines with. Just offering a perspective on the matter.

Searching for LMB is probably 90% of what I do when I'm bass fishing 😉😂 I search with all the same stuff I usually end up catching with. Jigs, plastics, topwater, spinnerbait, lipless etc. What I'm searching with is usually determined by the depth and type of cover im finding them in on any given day.

Hardly any baits in here that don't catch a ton of bass. We just all have our areas of expertise etc

RIP - encountered his wisdom many times diving deep into the forum looking for answers to this and that. A kindred spirit and an observant angler - always quick to share. He will be missed.

I would NEVER boat flip a 6 + lber. I'm too poor and I've broken way too many rods trying to do silly things like that. 🤣🤣🤣 In all seriousness I like a more moderate action on a longer heavier rod because you get the power and the tip to fight and land the fish. Big game also seems to help and not having my drag super tight.

This is something I recently had to do a crash course on Katy! Fishing from a Jon Boat in a small tournament alone with no Meagan or Jake and catching a 7 a 9 and a 10 in practice with my dinky Walmart rubber net was quite an experience! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I know EXACTLY what you're talking about with regards to the big one coming up and you gotta decide if you're still fighting the fish or if you're landing the fish. Completely the peak of adrenaline in bass fishing.

Awwwww man - get back out there and find her grandma! That's bass fishing! If we caught every single one that bit - wouldn't be much of a big deal when we caught and landed a big one!

Very sad day for bass fishing. Prayers for the families of those who lost their lives. Hopefully some good comes of this and tournaments are more careful about conditions.

Mayor 2.5 or 3" I just now saw that's what you're using LOL If the hook is not exposed enough, perhaps you need to rig the bait differently.

Like all fish they taste really good when you fry them up and put some salt and butter and lemon on them.

Katy - I just got done with the longest coldest hardest winter since I started fishing and I sincerely feel like I gained some appreciation for what our northern bass brothers and sisters endure every season and I must say - I'm not a fan! Sorry it's still like that in Maine - but I feel like for you - there's gonna be 8+ lbers with absolutely stuffed bellies this year. Just a hunch! 😉 Stay curious and keep poking at em. Try a split shot rig or drop shot with a live worm on a mosquito hook just to see what's shaking down there and then maybe switch to a tiny hook and a slender plastic worm nose hooked and go from there? I feel like next year I'm gonna try some super outside the box stuff when it's super cold - I'm dying to figure the whole thing out. For what it's worth, I feel like I was never around them and they were always probably almost exclusively in the absolute deepest water available to them all winter long and that was probably part of my problem. If you know what's your deepest water I would definitely start there.

Honestly all branding and specificity aside - you could basically make the case that I fish topwater and plastics. I dress up how I attract the fish with the plastics and on the surface a variety of ways through various rigging and presentation techniques but really I fish basically two types of baits - if you cut through the tackle industry language. I sometimes also fish a hard bait like a lipless or a jerkbait or a glidebait but it's probably 10-15% of the time tops. So yeah - REALLY - plastics in various shapes and sizes rigged weightless or on various hook + weight or jighead/jig + blade/skirt configurations and then surface based lures like buzzbait or frog or buzzing plastic (d'oh! That's just a plastic ☝🏼😏) are mostly what I throw. 🙂

I think a lot of people misunderstand the buzz bait and I'm very okay with it. ♥️😂 It definitely took me awhile before I started to consistently feel like it was almost cheating to throw it sometimes. But there are days every single year where it feels like if you're not throwing that you're not catching fish. People who think it's just a sinking metal Whopper plopper don't understand and that's fine. 🙂🤫

Red Eye Shad is my favorite if I'm yo yo-ing it and trying to keep it higher in the water column/retrieve it more slowly and this lipless is ideal for that application. I've caught my biggest lipless fish on the red eye shad and it's accounted for the lions share of 5+ lbers I've caught on a lipless also. 1/2 oz is my most used size. The Bill Lewis Rat L Trap is my favorite for burning it in /making bottom contact throughout the retrieve/deflecting off of cover. It's my "ATV" lipless that I throw when I have no idea what I'm fishing my bait through and just want to see if they're chasing something moving and loud/flashy. I use the 1/4 oz a LOT. 6th sense suspending Quake - the most slept on lipless on the market and easily one of the best ever made. If you fish shallow spots from the bank - it's a must have. I have caught a 9 lb bass and many smaller fish on this bait and the only reason I haven't had more success with it is not fishing it more often. It's a stone cold killer! You can even catch fish just letting it sit like a topwater or Jerkbait. Absolutely unreal bait. Really I think between these 3 lipless baits I'd be content but I love many others - it's one of my favorite things to throw in dirty water and heavy wind!

New PB with no pics!?!? Dang @Bazoo that's gotta hurt! Congratulations on all the good fishing! Yeah, come on Katy, you need to catch a bass so all these fish down here realize it's spring. Ground hog - shmound hog. We know it's spring when a Katy catches her first bass!

Oh yeah - ned rigs. I have lost 100% of the Ned rigs I have thrown and caught exactly one bullhead catfish that stuck me with his spike and then on the next cast I lost the Ned rig. I don't throw Ned rigs 🤣

It's funny - on my local Lakes, it's a lot like this tournament. Very, very rarely is everyone catching the snot out of the bass. Usually 10 boats are struggling but still getting enough bites to stay on the lake and 1 or 2 boats are catching all the fish. I see it every weekend. I definitely think catching the big bass in NC, you've got to be pretty dialed in on exactly what it is they are doing and wanting or you will struggle.

I fish pretty traditional lures in pretty creative ways probably is the long and short of it. The details and minutia and nuance of presenting a bait well enough to get a bite can be gleaned in a day of fishing but the skill level necessary within each bait category to trick big fish consistently in lots of different scenarios can take a lifetime to dial in.

1. Spro Bronzeye 65 - clear chartreuse 2. Strike King Red Eye Shad - Blue Gizzard 1/2 oz. 3. 1 oz grass jig gizzard skirt with 4" swimbait trailer (Siebert Grass and Storm Largo) 4. 7/16 oz tungsten sinker pegged 3/0 offset worm hook - 10.5" ribbon tail (Power Worm motor oil red flake) 5. Zoom Super Fluke weightless on screw lock hook. 6. 1/2 oz white chartreuse Nichols Impulse buzzbait with a rage menage trailer. 7. 1/2 Oz Tandem Gold willow silver Colorado TN Shad Bizzbaits spinnerbait. No trailer. 8. 1/2 oz drop shot weight 2/0 offset worm hook Zoom Trick worm - green pumpkin 9. Weightless Magnum UV Speed Worm Green Pumpkin - 3/0 offset worm hook. 10. 3/0 offset worm hook weightless weedless rigged Gary Yamamoto Senko green pumpkin.

I'm a big fan of the bronze eye frog. Just caught my biggest frog fish of 9 lb. 3 oz on the 65! I've caught a lot of fish in the 6 to 8 lb range on the popping frog. You really can't go wrong with any of their colors, but I'm a big fan of freak and tropical white and the clear bait fish colors.

You heard it hear first : deadly on the back of a jig after it's toast on the t rig!

Yeah I've ALWAYS been positive it's just gonna be used to catch fish off deeper beds. Fish basically don't bite lures assuming it's food very often - much more often it's just in there territory and making them mad and their territory is just basically somewhere around their bed. I've always assumed the stigma against bed fishing is a convenient one for tournament anglers and guides alike - it's pretty much the only thing that they can do that's a secret trick average anglers might not have tried on any given body of water. Don't get me wrong plenty of people sight fish - but those are the ones - as ASH pointed out that basically never bite and are aware of you.

A bladed jig works fished a variety of ways but I vastly prefer a lipless or spinnerbait or swimjig or squarebill etc.

Seeing him break records in NC would make me and Jake and @FishTax smile really big while we are catching bass for FT's birthday tomorrow on a small NC lake 🤫😎🎣🎂

I really hope this trend of people not using or believing in my favorite lures continues. 😂😂😂🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙂🙂🙂 For me it was the bladed jig a long time ago and will probably continue to be the bladed jig for the foreseeable future. I like em fine - they catch fish - I'll throw just about anything else first though.