WRB-2.0

Use a drop shot style hook like Owner #5133, size 1/0 for 6" worm. Tom

There are very few fresh water stainless steel hooks and I don't know of any that are worm hooks. You may be referring to galvanized or nickel plated steel worm hooks? Premium worm hooks are made from heat treated carbon steel and plated/coated black or bronze for a good reason, they are less visible and blend into the soft plastics better than a bright hook. Tom

This Video clearly shows us how difficult strike detection can be when big bass engulf your lure and reject it without the angler knowing what happened. Amazing underwater footage of bass striking lures. When you use a crank bait or a spinner bait and the lure stops vibrating...set the hook. When you are fishing bottom bumping lures like worms or jigs and they feel lighter, heavier or loose contact with it....set the hook. I believe most anglers miss over 75% of the strikes that occur on a regular basis, especially with big bass. If you take nothing else from this video learn there are school bass and home body bass, 2 different groups of bass in the same ecosystem. Excellent video! Tom

Welcome to SoCal. Bass fishing here is very different than anywhere else, the difference being very high fishing pressure on very small deep structured lakes with little cover. Right now we are suffering from a long drought period and our lakes are down about 50% in water levels. We are also impacted by Quagga mussel infestation in some lakes that create fishing in multiple lakes a problem for boaters. Where in SoCal are you? A good resource for local fresh water bass fishing information is Western Outdoor News, a weekly paper. Another good source is our local tackle shops where meeting bass anglers may be good opportunity for you. Joining a local bass fishing club is another choice. Bass anglers are just as tight lipped here as anywhere when it comes to tournament anglers. Finesse presentations and big swimbaits were both born here in SoCal, got to go north to find flipping and pitching which were born in the delta area. Good luck, let me know how I can help you. Enjoy your 4th of July Holiday! Tom

Schooling bass as a separate group of bass than home body bass isn't the same as a group of home body bass schooling to take advantage of baitfish at that moment of time.I will go back and read the entire thread when I get some free time. Your experiences are different than mine, mine differ from yours. I know little about shallow Florida natural or man made low land coastal impoundments having only fished there a hand full of times. California doesn't have any native bass, they all have been transplanted and adapted to the various ecosystems from the delta to a wide range of rivers, deep Colorado river canyon and highland water storage and a few power generating type reservoirs. Clear Lake is the only large natural lake with a good bass population in CA. NLMB, FLMB, Alabama and Kentucky Spotted bass, Shoal bass, Smallmouth bass are non native bass to California and they behave differently then in their natural range, they had to adapt. Enjoy your 4th of July Holiday. Tom

You lure selection is good and as mentioned location is important. The key to catching big is being at the right place at the right time with the right lure. Catching big bass consistently, instead of relying on luck alone, takes dedication, learning what those big bass where you fish prefer to eat and where they are located takes time and patients.Tom

What was suggested was a perspective on bass behavior that may have been helpful to others that read this post. Nothing was mentioned about school bass verses home body bass in this thread, the Glenn Lua video was good opportunity to bring this up without creating a debate. Tom

You need enough weight to maintain bottom contact. If you thought you were on the bottom and wasn't how do you expect to detect a strike? Shaking a T-rig or doddling is letting the weight stay on the bottom and shaking the weight against the worm, good deep water presentation. IMO you are fishing too fast. Tom

You might want to take a minute and watch the old video that Raul posted in know your prey. You may think you know more about bass behavior the Glenn Lau but I doubt it. Bass that group up or school are a separate group of bass sometimes referred to as wolf packs. The feeding Roger experienced may have been a wolf pack feeding in the area he was fishing. Was it a pattern or a group of active bass that would have responded to several different presentation or lures, you never know. Catt is a successful tournament bass angler and knows first hand that several patterns are successful during a tournament, you hope your pattern wins. Tom

Raul thank you for posting the link and sharing the video, got to love it if you are a bass angler. Tom

Shad patterns come in many forms, school bass feeding on shad schools that are following phytoplankton brought towards to surface by sunlight or zooplankton in cover. Shad hiding in cover, shad spawning, deep shad near structure and/or the thermocline are all patterns of bass behavior when feeding on shad. Feeding activity often sets off a chain of feeding behavior with bass and bass group up to take advantage of some prey types like herding shad schools. This activity may be only happening in 1 location because the same set of circumstances are not present elsewhere on the same body of water at that time. Tom

You can look up largemouth bass tracking studies, several available. It's a myth thinking LMB stay within a small area, they move around, how far depends on the ecosystem size, the nature of the individual bass, the prey they prefer, they are not all the same. LMB rely on their swim bladder to maintain neutral buoyancy at a particular depth range, so they tend to travel horizontally within a comfortable depth range. During the summer there is usually several groups of bass at different depths, all moving around from location to location, staying close to their food sources. If the food is good in one specific area, the bass tend to stay in that area until the food is gone or moves. Where I fish the LMB go into feeding areas and move back out over deep water and suspend there to rest. Our reservoirs tend to fluctuate several feet in depth (10'-50' or more) seasonally, the bass must move and they do. In small quarry lakes I use to watch bass cruise around the perimeter in small groups of 2 to 3 bass all about the same size in each group. These bass would stop at a good ambush area and stay there for awhile, then move on to another area, other bass would come along and repeat this behavior, they shared feeding areas depending on size of the bass. This was a daily routine. I believe bass set up similar routines on big reservoirs, traveling within a "home range" that could be a few hundred yards or a few miles, depending on the prey source, seasonal period, density of the population and fishing pressure. Tom

My favorite trout swimbait is a 6" Huddleston 68' ROF 12, dark rainbow. 8" Hudd, ROF 5, 12, 16 in light ghost and dark rainbow, hitch, brown tout colors. Century 22 Triple trout 7", 8" & 10" rainbow. Black Dog Tail Wagger 10" rainbow. Huddleston original 8" wooden trout, no longer made (eBay). Deps 250 "BB" Slide swimmer trout, 10" Basstrix 8" trout, no longer made. Little Cripper Trash Fish 8" trout. Castaic hard head-soft body, 8" & 12" trout, no longer made (eBay). ABL Dirty Donkey 6" & 8" trout top water. Black Dog wooden Lunker Punker, 6" & 8" trout, top water. Tom PS, if I had to pick jointed hard swimbait the BD Tail Wagger or Butch Brown Slide Swimmer gets the nod, these are good big bass baits, heavy about 6+ oz.. Tom

Rago rat, CL8 rat, Mike Shaw MS rat and Deps raton are all good rst swimmers.Tom

Bruce Sampson, doctor sonar, is a good source for instructional DVD's for Lowrance units and Don Iovino's book on Finesse Bass Fishing and the Sonar Connection ( dated info ) handy little book.I rely on my sonar whenever fishing deep structure, which is most of the time. You still want to give a good area a try even if you don't see fish the sonar signal return area is same and fish move. Tom

Sonar is your friend when working deep structure, you can meter where the fish are relative to the structure. Fish in shallow water, less than 5' are more difficult to use down looking sonar, side scanning sonar helps. You can determine a lot by knowing what active feeding bass look like verses inactive suspended bass on sonar. Big mistake most bass angler make is the belief that you can catch inactive bass, the bass are there but not biting anything at that moment in time, the angler keeps trying various lures and gets frustrated. Leave and come back an hour so later and give those bass another try, this often saves the day. Location and timing with the right lure at the right place and time. Tom

Small quick tie works. Check Barlows tackle online store for skirt collars, they also require a tool to install. Very difficult to reinstall a skirt with a broken collar....replace the skirt. Tom

Westy worms

Big bass kill big rat swimbaits, awesome strikes at dusk! Tom

How to approach points depends on where the bass on the point are located. If the bass are up in shallow water on the point you want to be positioned to make cast, catch bass without spooking them. The shallow bass got to where they are by traveling along the sides or ridge of that point and that is where they will go when spooked or done feeding shallow. If the bass are holding on the sides, on a saddle or on the deep end break you need to be positioned to cast to those bass with lures that the bass are interested in eating. The isolated structure elements that the bass have found and are located on become a pattern for other similar points. You don't want to start fishing by spooking active feeding bass, they will shut off unless they are in deep water and not pressured. Tom

Although bass under 17" or 3 lbs may strike a big worm it's not likely. Using giant worms you are targeting larger size bass and these bass are not school fish or grouped with smaller bass. The bass you are trying to catch are located somewhere else. Worm water to me is a area where big bass can move into from deeper water to search for prey, then move back into deeper water. I use giant worms in these areas where the bass can find the slow moving worm, usually softer bottom with isolated stick ups or submerged brush, some rock piles or other hard structure, flatter bottom with a ditch or road bed. Summer nights are good, during the day if the boat traffic is low. Tom

Capt Bob, If you took the time to read what I said, the Berry amendment etc., then you would know things have changed the past decade. 1990 was nearly 1/4 century ago, (24 years) I know that is hard to conceive for our generation. To say I am out of touch when my carrier is R&D Aerospace isn't accurate. My company purchases rail car loads of aluminum from Reynolds, All SST from domestic sources controlled by DFARs and composite materials like PEI and PEEK are my specialty. We are a manufacturer using these materials on a daily basis for military/aerospace industry, making high-rel products. Accurate and Avet are salt water reel manufacturers in SoCal who make low production state of the art reels, not fresh water bass reels. The reason these companies are successful was Penn wasn't making high reliable reels. Today no fresh water bass reels are made in the USA, not because we can't, the production costs are too high. The reason Daiwa and Shimano dominate the fresh water reel business is because their products are superior at a competitive price, Tom

Standard 1/2 oz jig with guard uses a heavy (.055-.060D) wire 3/0-4/0 hook and difficult to get a good hook set using 10 lb FC or copolymer line. IF the jig doesn't have a weed guard and uses a 3/0-4/0 medium (.040-046D) wire hook than 8 to 12 lb FC or copolymer line is OK. I make my own 7/16 oz jig, Gamakatsu #114, 5/0 hook and use 10 lb FC a lot for giant bass in deep clear structure lakes. Right hook and line combo work great. Tom

AC plug, lots of fruitless hours of casting the dam thing. Chatter baits, until I learned to use a 5" paddletail swimbait as a trailer! Tom

With spinning release for finesse bass fishing the smaller diameter super braids perform very good with or without a leader. Baitcasting reels are a different story, 30 lb braid is about as small diameter (.010) as you want to go with. The problem besides the level wind speed not designed to fast wrap thin line like a spinning reel bail does, the line weight is too light and wind loops during the cast. Have ever had a bad backlash using braid? nothing like it! To me there isn't a good reason to use braid on a baitcaster unless you are fishing in heavy cover, weed mates etc, than you should use it. The no stretch is true but that isn't a good thing. High strength is true and that causes problems trying to break off snags, so anglers add a leader that has extra knots to fail. Braid has it's place and so does both mono and FC lines. Tom