JHoss

Have you ever tried the frayed rope trick? I haven't but heard that it works. I caught a couple on jerkbaits last year, though I'm not sure if they were actually biting it or I just happened to snag them.

I'm with you on that. For me, a ned is even more frustrating than a drop shot because it's slower to get down and harder to maintain contact.

Man, I don't know how you can hate the drop shot but love a ned.

Weightless wacky, drop shot, or fluke for me.

Mostly just trying to translate traditional wisdom to small water. There's a million videos on Youtube of pro's breaking down a large lake, very few where the break down a small body of water. If I had more time to fish, I could explore and test these things. But I'm fortunate to get out once a week and the club I fish with fishes 8 different lakes/rivers during the 12 event season, so it's hard to really stay on top of what's going on in a particular lake. Going in blind is when it would be good to know if a lake will fish by traditional logic or behave differently due to its size. Only time and experience will tell, but learning from other's experiences certainly shorten that learning curve.

Agreed, just seemed like folks were keying in on only the spawn. I'm curious how it effects post-spawn, summer, fall, etc. Assuming if a small lake affects how fish behave around the spawn, it would also affect how fish behave in the middle of summer.

Exactly

I just picked up the Bait Fuel injector kit. Curious to see if it seems to work better than just rubbing it on the bait.

I try to fish all year, but usually slow down considerably from November-January while I'm focused on deer hunting. This year I lost all of January and February to a new puppy and list of honey-dos needing to be done before tournament season started.

I was more referring to variance from one of the lake to the other. Yes, a smaller body of water will warm or cool faster. But what I was getting at is the weather being much different on a large lake. I think its more likely one end of a 20 mile long lake receives heavy rain than having one end of a 1 mile long lake receive drastically different weather than the other end. I'm not looking at spawn specifically, just seemed like a seasonal pattern that would be the easiest example. But you did answer what I was getting at- a larger lake will have more variance than a smaller lake. This is what I would expect, but was curious about other's experiences. This is very true. A lot of the smaller lakes we fish only have 20ish docks on the whole lake. Can't really make a pattern out of that like you could on a lake with 2000 docks. I try to approach the patterns generally like you mentioned- maybe I'm looking for any wood cover in the first third of a creek vs docks in the first third. It sounds like from your experience up there, "patterns" are more replicable across the entire lake on a small lake than a larger lake. I didn't intend to make this about the spawn, but that seemed like an easy example to use. I've certainly noticed on even small lakes where certain sections are firing when others aren't. Do you think that conditions cause an area to fire, or it's more about that particular population of fish going off. Not sure if you caught the part about the Coosa River study on the last episode. Essentially, tournaments bring in more "young, fast-growing" bass than electrofishing. So with delayed mortality we're accidentally selecting for slower growing bass to reproduce more. I think that goes into why you only catch big fish on a bed- they're old and they've seen every bait and trick out there. You need some crazy hormones going on to make them dumb enough to fall it- just like a big buck being easier to harvest during the rut when their hormones are going crazy and they're trying to sow their oats. This is something I have to remind myself of regularly. Get on the lake and see a major change in the temp reading on your graph, but in reality the water the fish are living in has likely barely fluctuated. I absolutely agree with you on there being resident bass. And it makes sense they may go first- they're likely in warmer water and have a much shorter road trip to the nursery than a main lake bass. I think having a better grasp on this with the lakes in my area would help with planning a tournament strategy when I haven't been on that lake recently. I just fished my first derby of the year and hadn't been on the water since October. Going in, I had to make a plan to check a bunch of different stuff in different parts of the lake early and quickly. I found them in a certain section of creek all the way up lake. The challenge was then deciding if that pattern would hold up elsewhere and if it was worth the long run to check out.

I was always told that was called a "Navy Hammer". I'm not trying to say people can't become as accurate with a spinning rod, I just think a baitcaster is easier to be precise with once your somewhat skilled with one. I was reminded how much harder it is to land a spinning reel softly this past weekend when fishing with my dad. He's got twice the fishing experience as me and his accuracy with a spinning rod was fine, but he could not land a spinnerbait quietly to save his life.

That's fair. There will always be fish doing different things. But let's consider the spawn. We know that the bulk of the population will push shallow at some point in the spring. So let's say it's prime spawn time and you find bedding fish in the back of the uppermost creek on a lake. If that's a 1,000 acre lake would you expect to find fish at the back of most creeks all over the lake or just certain sections of lake? Would you expect the same or different in a 20,000 acre lake? Let's say the two lakes are identical, one's just scaled to 5% size of the other. Do you think they behave the same or do things change because the distance between sections changes? A lake a mile long probably experiences less weather fluctuation than one 20 miles long?

A ned bait and a googan bait. Guess this is like the double negative rule that turns it into a positive? I would've figured it would be the ol "two wrongs don't make a right".

The bulk of my bass fishing experience has come on lakes that range from 500-2000 acres while the bulk of the information I see online caters to traditionally larger lakes. It's common knowledge that different sections of the lake will behave differently. My question to y'all, is how much of a difference is there in conditions/seasonal patterns on a small lake (we'll say 1,000 acres for this argument) vs a large lake (20,000 acres for this argument). Bonus question: Do you think patterns hold up over the entirety of a small lake? Example being if you're catching fish on chunk rock in the first channel swing of creek arms in the top third of the lake, can you go to the middle third or lower third of that lake and expect to do the same?

Is the healthy food in the room with us? lol

I don't think a spinning rod can possibly be as effective as a casting rod for most powerfishing presentations. My main reasoning is a decreased ability to control your lure splashing down and a hard time controlling accuracy. Yes, you can thumb a spinning spool, but it's much harder and less precise than casting reel. I'd also say that a casting reel is more efficient than a spinning reel. While minor, the act of flipping a bail twice a cast adds a second or two which may add up to an extra few casts over the course of a day.

Finally got on the water and had a chance to use these. Looked really good on a Range Roller jighead, but didn't catch anything on a minnow that day. I also used them as a trailer for a spinnerbait. It looked great and had nice action, but I was unimpressed by the durability. Seemed like the tails ripped off much easier than other plastics, especially other elaztech type baits.

Jerky, a couple granola bars, and a couple energy drinks are non-negotiable. Anything more is a luxury.

This is the only way to get confidence in a new bait IMO. I know myself well enough to know that if I go an hour without a bite on a new bait, I'm going to pick up an ol faithful and use that. So when I want to gain confidence in a technique, everything else comes out of the boat. I will, however, usually bring two techniques I'm trying to gain confidence in so that I can not be entirely screwed if the fish aren't doing what they need to for a certain technique. Right now it's a jig and jighead minnow for me. My primary focus is getting better with jighead minnow, but if I get out there and can't find any offshore, I'll pick up the jig and go flip shallow cover.

I wouldn't say I'm superstitious, but I'm definitely a little stitious. (bonus points to anyone who gets the reference) I'll definitely keep wearing a piece of clothing that gets some luck on it- usually without washing it between trips. It's much preferred when it's a hat than underwear. There was one rec league softball season in college where I found "lucky socks" in the first game, so of course, I couldn't wash them all season while I was on that streak. Wound up batting .800 for the year but those socks could stand up on their own by the halfway point. Guess I'd have to agree with @TheBaitMonkey about ball players being overly superstitious. On the same note, I'll repeat a meal or something if I have an epic day "because" of it. I believe in the one where you won't catch another fish all day if you catch one on the first cast. Fortunately, I cast a lot and don't catch many fish so the odds are in my favor here. No bananas on my boat. I won't even tolerate Banana Boat sunscreen. On a really slow day, cracking a beer is like ringing the dinner bell for the fish. I'm sure there's many more.

Quick update after the first event for those who had asked for it. Fished the first event of the year with my dad. We ended up 8th out of 21 boats with 16.56. We only caught 5 all day, but they were all good fish. He set his PB with a 4-0 and I landed a 4-3. Winning boat had 26.20. I hadn't been on the water since last season's Classic in October, so my expectations were low. Going in, my goal was to catch a limit for at least 15 lbs and make sure my dad had a good time. Between casting off a carolina rig, which I had to stop and retie, and him missing two bites in the first few minutes, I was nervous how the day would go. Things were uphill after that though. He retied everything else the rest of the day and started to learn some of the basic rigs. It was certainly interesting having someone fishing a 1/2 oz C Rig and 1/2 oz spinnerbait on spinning rods, but it worked. He'll be practicing with a bait caster now- I think that will make a big difference in his results when he can have a little more control on where he puts a bait and how quietly he does so. I had to bring extra rods so I could put a few things on spinning rods for him, but will need to cut down before the next event so we can move around the 1448 a little easier.

I certainly wouldn't beat myself up about not catching anything behind the MLF guys. They're some of the best in the world and they just out immense pressure on those spots for a week. Something to keep in mind, there will always be some bass on shallow cover. Maybe instead of stressing about finding the bulk of the population, you spend a couple days just covering water up shallow. When I first got into bassing, I struggled to understand the seasonal patterns and would often blank when I fished where I thought they should be. Things changed when I put a trolling motor on my yak and could just run the bank endlessly casting. I've evolved from that now, but there are still occasions when I just can't put it together and default to power fishing shallow and covering water. Like other guys said, see if there's a local tournament trail that accepts coanglers. My area has a couple fishing FB pages- if you had something like that you could post on there looking for fishing buddies and maybe learn a thing or two.

They actually talked about Christie and the Classics on Grand. Those get announced even earlier so he had a couple 380ish day periods where he had to start every conversation like that. BTL summed it up well, it may be awkward for these guys, but no one is making them fish the Elites.

I think his point was that they should be able to find a pattern and the right spots to beat a local hammer without needing to "buy dots" from them. I haven't listened to the one with BP yet, but sounds like that'll be next after I finish the BTL I'm in the middle of. It does seem like there's a large portion of Elites who are supportive of the DQ's. Listening to the BTL with Blake Capps right now and he was saying how careful he has to be with friends and family when it comes to talking about his home pond, Tenkiller. He even went so far as to not fish any of the local derbies this winter to avoid any chance of info violation or the optics of a potential violation. So if these DQ's effectively scare guys into following the rules, then maybe BASS did get it right. I'm just not convinced it's gonna stop the cheaters.

With a gas engine I assume? Makes sense. Guys shouldn't be able to cheat a poly as easily when its cut and dry like that. I'm not sure why they haven't moved on to a more modern lie detector like a voice stress test. I'm with you on practice. Feider made a good point in that Mercer podcast - they're supposed to be the best 100 anglers on earth. They should be able to go to a lake and be able to beat the best local guys after a few days of practice. If they can't do that, they shouldn't be on the Elites.