Rucksack

Helpful and I will put it use soon! I'm mostly confined to the bank, unless I'm at a lake with a kayak rental, and this recent cold snap (first freeze was last night) has really thrown me for a loop. We also have had rain, so it's cold muddy water, and I think I might just need to wait until the weather stabilizes to get back out.

Long story short, my wife's job is unexpectedly moving us to the North Carolina Outer Banks for a year. I'll have access to both the sound (brackish to fresh-ish depending on where you're at) and the ocean. Anything from the standard bass toolkit I should be throwing for these new fangled species? My first thought is a soft plastic jerkbait or spinner on heavy mono to deal with oysters.

Same on loving pictures of smallies and bummed I can't get them in my part of NC. I keep thinking about getting out to the western part of the state and trying my luck. I am worried that Helene might have really disrupted them though.

This is great! I was wondering if somebody made a tool, because I was thinking it had to be a common issue.

I swore I'd be a mono only guy. It's what I grew up fishing. I thought things like fluorocarbon were just too fancy for me. This year is my first year back after a LONG break of only fishing inconsistently. I had never even heard of braid before, and leader was just something you tied to a Carolina rig to me, but decided to give it a try after seeing some Youtube types use it. I love it and use braid to a leader exclusively now. Great to be able to choose different weights, types (mono or fc), and lengths of leader depending on conditions. Great to be able to easily break off. Love the sensitivity. Love not needing to do a massive hook set. Love not having to worry about line jumping off the reel. I will say I was intimidated by the connection knots. Started using the Alberto, but found that I couldn't consistently tie that, and now exclusively use double uni. Settling on a connection knot you can do well seems to be really the biggest complication I foresee for folks.

Great explanations. Also, you all have sold me. I'm going to have to pick up some D-Shads. I'm a big senko fan.

I've also totally depriotized hookset. My water is full of snags. If I swung for the fences every time I felt what might be a tug, I'd be constantly retying after break offs. Everything from trees to old coolers is lurking down there. My mainline is braid and I mostly run tex-posed soft plastics. I'm rarely missing a fish, but it of course does happen occasionally. However, I'm also not spending all of my time getting steamed about getting hung up from the bank. 😅 Though I wish the other anglers on my lake would take the hint. I'm constantly pulling what feels like entire spools of cut off 60 lbs braid out of the water around sunken trees, which I of course find when those braid clumps snag my own bait.

This autumn I've really focused on learning the ins and outs of the soft plastic jerkbait. started fishing by fishing Super Fluke, with which I had very little luck. I chalked this up to my inexperience, but the last time I went to the tackle shop I picked up a pack of Caffeine Shads and now I'm regularly catching pretty good sized (3-5 lbs) bass. I'm also better able to skip it under trees and through laydowns. I don't think I changed my retrieve or suddenly became more skilled, so I'm thinking there's something different about the manufacture of the bait. I kind of assumed soft plastic jerkbaits were interchangeable, but that's clearly not the case. Can somebody walk me through what the difference here is? Maybe suggest other fluke-like baits similar to the Caffeine Shad that I might enjoy? Are there terms I should be looking for?

Updating the thread for anybody interested. R&D is continuing, I'm keeping detailed logs, but I do have some initial findings. I have tried Swim Jig (Strike King Hack Attack), Finesse Spinners (Bass Pro Crappie Maxx), and Underspin Swim Bait (1/0 Flashy Swimmer with Keitech). Finesse Spinners (3/16 oz) caught the most fish (multiple 2-3 lbs bass), but hung up and were lost by the end of the trip. I was fishing them in pretty ideal spinner conditions (overcast, misty, and choppy). I wonder if a heavier head would help them get through cover. I can source some older, heavier inexpensive ones from a nearby gas station. Swim Jig was highly enjoyable to fish, but was lost to a submerged snag. This specific snag is some sort of Cthulhu level eldritch monster, because it's eaten Texas rigged craws in the past, and I have no idea what it actually is. The swim jig hung up several times before this, but I was able to free it. I think the exposed hook, even with the brush guard, is not viable in my conditions. Underspin Swim Bait seemed promising, but the underspin would get caught in brush piles. I have lost four flash swimmers now fishing around laydowns and brush. I am going to move to a simple keel weighted hook and swimbait combo in the future. Additionally, the Keitech themselves seem too fragile for the conditions as they get beaten up quickly. I may need to source more robust swimbaits. I am returning to the water this week with a version of @A-Jay's rig. I have high hopes for this. Based on the performance of the other lures, I think its streamlined texas-rigged profile will get through this mess. By the way, if you're interested in why things are so gnarly where I fish, the answer is hurricanes and tropical storms. The lake I'm fishing is heavily wooded and has just continually filled with storm debris over the year. I'm also fishing the side the wind generally blows into, it's the only bit I have easy access to, so lots of stuff washes up there. Bad side is it's incredibly frustrating to fish, but bright side is there are 1) some big fish available from shore and 2) it's a good lab for brutal snag hazards that will hopefully help answer this snagless question.

I do want to hear more about this. I was just in Chicago looking at the water front and wondering how the fishing was. Where downtown?

My fishing spots are urban lakes close to my house, so very little gas cost, and I'm really only paying in lures. I'd say I spend about $60 a month. Like the others here, my main expense is time. My job has crazy and chaotic hours, and I try to spend most of my free time with my family/friends, so I squeeze in my fishing in the mornings before the work day really gets going.

I almost exclusively run finesse presentations, and only fish a spinning rod. I also fished the Ned Rig a fair bit this year. My guess is you're probably correct on hook penetration. Though food for thought. I recently lost a smaller fish on a Ned and it was in a situation where I had to point my rod tip down to bring the fish in, which is something I never do. I always keep my tip up, because I rarely see aerobatics where I fish in North Carolina. I think it was just enough of a loss of tension that he wiggled off the Ned. One instance a pattern doesn't make, so take that with a major grain of salt.

Thanks for all the suggestions! Life got the better of me (got sick, dog needed surgery, etc) that I am just now getting back to this thread. I've collected your responses, sorted by frequency of lure type mentioned, and I'm going to work them in order of most suggested. I'll fish the top ones for a few outings and report back on this thread on results, which hopefully will be helpful to somebody in the future looking through the forum. Top suggestions are swim jigs, @A-Jay's homemade rig, topwater (buzzbait, whopper plopper, etc), swimbaits, flukes, and jika rig. Speaking of the homemade rig, @A-Jay do you have a suggestion of the best place to buy those materials? I live reasonably close to a Bass Pro, but I feel like they'd charge a premium for something that is designed to save money. There were some questions on my equipment. I'm fishing a 6"6' medium-heavy, fast action, St. Croix spinning rod with a 2500 Shimano Reel. My main line is 15 LB Berkley X9 braid with 8 LB to 10 LB fluorocarbon or mono leader. I remove the leader for running stuff like my Whopper Plopper 90, otherwise it's on there.

I thought the same thing, but I literally just read about "meteorological fall" on our local news site this morning.Totally new concept to me as well! Via NOAA: "Meteorological autumn (different from standard/astronomical autumn) begins September 1 and ends November 30." I guess it makes record keeping easier for the meteorologists? Link: https://forecast.weather.gov/glossary.php?word=autumn

I'm new to the world of bass forums, so you're new to me, so nice to meet you! Sounds like you've got some fun gear ready to go

It's been awesome to see NC represented so well here. Makes me excited to try more places in the state for bass!

I agree with the others here. I think you might have gotten hooked on something on the bottom. Maybe a rock or a log. It can feel like you've gotten a bite sometimes when that happens. It's a bummer when it happens, and it happens to me a lot where I fish! A good test is to stop pulling or reeling, take tension off the line, and wait. If the line doesn't move, it's almost certainly not a fish. @Glenn is right, throwing a Texas rigged worm is a good way to make that happen a lot less.

The waters around me are full of submerged pine trees, have less than two feet of visibility, densely wooded banks, and muddy bottoms. Just about anything with an exposed hook gets stuck in a few casts. I'm currently confined to the bank. Any suggestions for search bait(s) that isn't going to get hopelessly stuck? I feel like some sort of texas rigged swimmable soft plastic might be the ticket, but I'm so new to this I really only have have experience with t-rigged stick and creature baits.

Thank you all for the warm welcome! Looking forward to being part of the forum.

Nice to meet you! Pretty new to targeting bass. I fished a ton when I was much younger (mostly panfish and some saltwater during vacations), but as I became an adult, I found it increasingly hard to carve out time to throw a line in the water. I imagine this is probably a pretty standard story. This year I started going fishing a couple of times a week at some local municipal lakes (they're closer to ponds) because my computer-based job was driving me crazy, and it greatly improved my quality of life! Bass has become my target species, mostly by accident. I hooked one during one of my early fishing "expeditions" and, well, I think it might have hooked me as well. I've become obsessed with them ever since. And luckily, where I live in North Carolina (The Triangle), they seemed to be fairly plentiful. I recently took a road trip through the upper Midwest and was introduced to smallmouth. Those are awesome as well! I'm here to learn from much more experienced anglers and share what little knowledge I might glean in my fishing adventures. I'm tinkerer by nature, and mostly a bank fisherman (though that may change in the middle future), so my current project is building a fishing kit that breaks down for car rides, sets up quickly, and is lightweight so I can walk the bank until I find some fish!