WRB-2.0

Lamiglas and Loomis are located in the same town and have similar rod making talent, exceptional customer service. I am not familiar with the new Excel II, however from the photo, specs and price point the rods should be good. Give Lamiglas a call and ask if the rod can be returned if you are not satisfied or if there is a retailer near you. Touch and feel helps a lot! Tom PS, I have been fishing Lamiglas rods over 35 years.

About 1946

Lakes Success, Isabella and most southern or central CA lakes; 227 White ghost, 277 Grey ghost, 113 Black- red flake, 135 Chilli bowl. Good luck. Tom

Now all we need to know is what Denny knows regarding appealing to most of all the basses senses. We know bass use their sense of sight, feel ( lateral line ), hearing, smell ( water odors) in approximately that order of importance. 1. Sight, big eyes located to see all around, except under there chin and directly behind them. Both lure movement ( action ) and color. 2. Feel, bass have a highly developed lateral line nerves to pick up underwater sound waves. Lure movement ( action ). 3. Close range hearing. Lure movement making noise. 4. Smell, close range odors, not highly developed, neither color or action. So we know action is important in 3 out of 4 senses. Color is important for the basses #1 sense, sight. Sense of smell is low on the totem pole for bass, but still a sense factor, however isn't action or color. Do think Denny rates sight as # 1?, may depend on water clarity and available light. Tom

Agree with Matt and have been preaching the reel set for decades for lures fished horizontally, casted over 30 yards. To key to this technique is keeping the rod tip pointed towards the lure, cranking quickly to load up the line whenever you feel a bump, then sweeping the rod back hard to one side to hook set while contineuing to reel. You also need to rely on your reel drag, so set it based on 1/3 of the leader strength or based on your rod and 40 lb braid, between 4 to 5 lbs with a scale. Also take a look at Owners weighted Twistlock hook and Moaner weighted keel hook for hollow body swimmers. Tom

Consider this;.the Florida strain LMB in Florida appearently eat buzz baits, spinnerbaits and brush hogs regularly. The FLMB when transplanted in San Deigo's deep rocky structured lakes will rarely look at those same lures. I belonged to the Pisces bass fishing club back when FLMB were first introduced into lakes ( mid 1960's) and the members believed that it was nearly impossible to catch FLMB on lures, live bait (crawdads) was the top producer. The lakes that have populations of northern LMB the buzzers, spinnerbaits and softbplastic creatures worked great. To this day if you don't carefully match what the FLMB strains are eating with your lure choice you will catch very few bass. For this reason handoured natural looking soft plastics and swimbaits were developed in Califorina to increase catch rates of the FLMB strains that are now prevalent. You are all welcome to bring your preferred lures and give them a try. Tom

I would put speed/ depth under the lures action. Tom

What is more important with bass lures, action or color? It appears about 1/2 of the anglers on this site believe color is the key factor, the other half believe in a lures action triggers more strikes. Crankbaits, deep or shallow divers with or without diving lips are a good example. The early crankbaits called plugs were made of wood and each lure had a slightly different action due to the density of the wood and shape varied slightly because they were made one at a time by hand and not mass produced. If you bought 6 crankbaits the same exact color, one would out perform the others. In this case action was more important than color. With today's automated manufacturing and injected molded plastic the lures do not vary as greatly as the wooden plugs did, however a few still out perform others of the same make, model and color. Sometimes a lure company retools their lures or makes changes in paint suppliers that have an impact on how the lure performs. The Wiggle Wart is a good example, Rapala bought the Wart and retooled it, changing it's action and the original Warts became a hot item because the new Warts didn't catch as many bass, the action had changed slightly and the colors changed. I am in the action group, action is more important than color. However, color becomes important when a lure has the right action. Good examples of the right action, wrong color are lures that move slower underwater. Swimbaits come to mind, Matt's Hard bluegill in female bluegill color is more popular then the male color, same action different color. Could it be that Matt produces more female colors and being hand made wooden lures the odds of a good action lure are higher with female coloration? My favorite color discussion is black/blue jigs and green pumpkin red flake worms/Senkos. Jigs and worms have little action of their own, so color seems to be important as long as it's black/blue or green pumpkin, except when you add RageTail, now action becomes a major factor. Is action first or is it color or the combination of both? The fact is where I fish you can't get bit on black/blue jigs often, it's a poor day light color combination and smoke/purple out performs green pumpkin. The crawdads are reddish/ brown, the shad are closer to smoke/purple tones. Tom

Buy direct from Canyon Plastics Bait company maker of the Gitzit. Tom

Fun fishing is when you are not fishing for money, just fishing for the fun of it. Tom

Nothing is the basses ecosystem happens in isolation. Example the bass are feeding on threadfin shad. What that can indicate is some of the bass population is feeding on threadfin shad and other bass may prefer eating crawdads or both. I have caught some very big bass using jigs when the bass are feeding on shad. The reason may not be obvious to everyone, bass don't feed on school fish neatly, they injure and kill shad that end up on the lake bottom. Crawdads are scavengers and eat dead fish and jigs that imitate crawdads often work good in locations where bass are feeding on shad. You can fish by trail and error going through your tackle until you may or may not find a lure the bass react to. Thinking bass don't know or recognize prey because they don't have any intelligence or the brain the size of a pea is a big mistake. Bass that can't determine prey from sticks never make beyond a fingerling. Adult size bass have learned life lessens and know instinctively what prey is, it's alive and moves and looks like prey to the bass. There are always exceptions and bass strike a wide variety of lures and that is what makes these fish so interesting to catch. Knowing what prey bass prefer where you fish is a big advantage. Tom

You can ignor what the bass prefer to eat when you are on the water and might catch a few or be aware what is going on where you fish and consistantly catch more and bigger bass. Tom

Terrestrial animals are everything that lives about the waters surface and a few that start the lives underwater and can get out of the water like amphibians and crustaceans. Mouse lures go back over 100 years, rats are more recent in regards to bass lures, mice and rats are everywhere. Today there are at least a 1/2 dozen popular rat lures, some are very big and heavy that require special rods to cast and retrieve properly. Like low production hand made swimbaits, rats can be expensive! Deps El Raton is a good example. There are a few good bird lures and like mice, birds date back over a century. The modern birds like Flip the Bird and Pursader baby duck are both good. The old Jitter Bug could easily be a terrestrial swimming creature and same with a Buzz bait. Most wake baits could also appear as terrestrial swimmers to bass. Tom

Welcome to the BR site.Learning to fish jigs for nearly everyone is difficult and thinking a particular jig trailer will be the panacea to catching jig fish is misleading. RgaeTail is a site sponsor and they have good soft plastic jig trailers that cover both crawdad and bluegill shapes. There are dozens of soft plastic jig trailers on the market to choose from and suggest you limit yourself to to 1 or 2 brands in single and double tail design. My choice is Gary Yamamoto because that is the brand that has proven to work where and how I fish. However my first choice or jig trailers are not soft plastic, I use pork rind jig trailers 90% of the time. However pork rind is a poor choice for novice jig anglers, messy and must be kept wet. What is more important is the style of jig you choose to use and how you fish it. Tom

See aquatic vs terrestrial prey in general fishing forum. Tom

Bump this up reference. Tom

Use a net or plastic bag to put the fish into, with a net zero the scale before weighing the fish. You can also use a sharp fish stringer clip. Tom

Fishing reels do not benefit from ABEC rating higher than 5, 7's and 9's are very close tolerance for 10,000 rpm applications, they don't spin more freely than a 5. Tom

Bassmaster Jan/Feb 2014 issue, Go For Reaction question answered by Elite angler Micheal Simonton. According to Simonton he gets reaction bites in water 33 to 35 degrees slow rolling spinnerbaits. I don't dought that his surface temp reads these temps, however bottom bumping deep structure, the water isn't that cold. This type of Q & A misleads bass anglers to think bass live in 33 to 35 degree water. Bass breath dissolved oxygen DO and can't servive if the DO levels are lower than 3 mg/L or higher than 12 mg/L. 32 degree water the DO is 14.6, too high DO and the water is solid. At 40 degrees the DO levels can be 12.7 mg/L a little above what bass can tolerate, however decaying aquatic plants and matter can lower the DO levels to a comfortable level. There isn't any reason for bass to locate in 33 to 38 degree water for more than a few minutes. When the water temps drop below 45 degrees, the bass will try to find the warmest water they can servive in. Tom

The fact is that bass doesn't look 27" long based on your hand size, closer to 23" to 24". Based on the fish lean* body the girth is maybe 18", this bass = 8 # +_ 1/4# , nice NLMB. At 27" the lean body bass would be 12# approx, Tom PS, you don't need a tape measure simply use a length of your fishing line and cut to length another for girth. A good scale resolves all these issues. * lean body girth = 75% of length.

IGFA formula is good for tuna, not bass; L x L x G / 1200 = weight in lbs. L = length with mouth closed.Tom

Bass are opertunist and eat what is available. There are 2 basic categories of common prey bass rely on for food, aquatic and terrestrial animals. During the warmer months the prey sources are nearly unlimited so a wide variety of lures will work. During the spawn bass don't eat, they protect nest sites. Cooler or cold water the prey sources are limited, fewer lures work well. The key to catching bass is locating active feeding fish that will strike your lure of choice. Learn what the prey sources are where you fish, takes some investigation on your part. Learn where the bass are located, takes time on the water and some trail and error. There are lots of information regarding bass behavior and seasonal periods, good luck. Tom

Different schools of thought on black light verses white, green or red light . Black light cuases some mono and FC line to glo in the dark and attracts fewer bugs. Black light doesn't illuminate long distance, poor for navigation and accurate distant casting. Some anglers prefer no light at night, others prefer colors or bright lights.We don't have many bugs in SoCal, white light works and so does black light. My preference is using underwater light at the back of my boat for indirect lighting, bright beam light for navigation. I have fished in boats with Zorro lights and they work great, lots of good features. LED's draw less current. Tom PS, the expert night fisherman on this site is Catt, get his advice!

It's far better to be a skilled angler with good luck than a skilled angler with bad luck. Some days on the water you can't do anything wrong, then we have days you can't do anything right, good luck verses bad luck. Making a cast and getting a backlash doesn't require skill, getting the backlash out and finding a bass has eaten your lure isn't skill, it's good luck! Far better to be lucky than unlucky. Tom

Take a look at Zoro black lights, good quality and adjustable light power. Tom