Top 3 bass caught this year were on swim jigs.

Top producer by an astounding margin was Spinnerbaits.

Keitech swimbaits on underspins were also surprisingly productive.

 

When I slowed way down, drop-shot roboworms did the trick.

Mine this year was 6'8" spinning conquest paired with exsence 3000 CI4+ reel and 4.5" gitzit tube with 1/4 oz tube head.

All my biggest fish of the year came on a Custom Fat Ika on a ALX Zolo Deputy (7’1” MH/F) paired with a Zillion SV.

Wacky 3 inch senko on a ML  with 1000 series nasci..

Tex rigged worm.  BUT! This year I really 

went small on my sinkers unpegged. Nothing over 1/8th.  Unless I mess in ripping currents. 
 

I had a good time. 

Loon-colored 130 Whopper Plopper cast by a spinning reel spooled with 17 lb. mono, as well as spinning reels with 12 lb. and 10 lb. mono.

 

2nd place: Either a wacky-rigged Senko or a wakebait.

 

3rd place: jerkbaits, Mepps #3 brass-bladed spinners, Rage Swimmers, and lipless crankbaits.

 

 

 

It's fascinating how we catch bass so differently. I favored the Whopper Plopper because it's fun and casts a long ways, plus its retrieve is fast so I cover a lot of water with it. 

20 hours ago, Darth-Baiter said:

Tex rigged worm.  BUT! This year I really 

went small on my sinkers unpegged. Nothing over 1/8th.  Unless I mess in ripping currents. 
 

I had a good time. 

Light is right when it comes to worms IMO. I fish 1/8 a lot, and rarely go over 3/16.

This year for me was moving baits or tiny finesse.

 

Spinnerbait 

Custom colored fluke

Bandit 100

Baby 1-

TRD Bug

2.5" tube

 

Honorable mention was two days I wrecked them on a Vision 110jr in Fine Art Wagasaki. Need to buy some more baits in this color. 

 

Allen 

Numbers wise it was probably the ned on a few different spinning combos. No idea what the numbers are but they have to be over 100. Mostly on the orange pumpkin/green/black flake senko. Next is probably either chatterbait or lipless followed by the same color senko.

 

Big fish though, was no-contest the 1/2oz red eye shad in various shad colors, thrown on a 7'5" medium heavy Academy brand Tac40V rod/Daiwa tatula CT spooled with sufix elite 14lb mono. My biggest of the year so far is 5-13 which I've hit twice, one on the above and one on a c-rigged brush Hog. Including those two, 8 of 9 bass between 5lb and 6lb have been caught on some variant of a sexy shad colored red eye shad. 

 

Lucky me, my friend/guitar player/fishing buddy booked a trip on my home lake on my birthday with the guide who helped land the lake record. My birthday wish is to catch my best of the year if not a PB. Fingers crossed lol 

On 11/18/2022 at 9:56 AM, T-Billy said:

That Carolina spinner rig is interesting. I could certainly see it being productive. I've considered doing something similar with an original floating Rapala, but never got around to it. I should probably give it a go one of these days.

 Same as last year, a Sweet Craw on a flippin rig is king, with a green pumpkin chatterbait coming in second.

Honorable mention goes to the Yumbrella rig. I've been hammering the muskie with it lately, and catching a few bass on it as well. Still learning this one. It's gonna take awhile to really realize it's full potential for me, but it's a cold water must have rig for sure.

Carolina rigging a Rapala was one of the first techniques I ever tried when I first started fishing. I didn’t know anything about this rig or that rig. I just knew that I was fishing from the shore and needed to get those light floating minnows out there so through thought and necessity derived and devised what I later learned was called a C rig. 
 

Don’t put it off. It can be very effective.  Lastly, it doesn’t have to be on the bottom if your using floating minnows or husky jerks or what not. The Carolina rig with such cranks in effect turns any of these baits into a count down lure. 
 

To the topic, I think I went fishing only about 5 times this season and only caught 6 fish. Two with skitter pop poppers, two with t-rigged senkos, and two with the drop shot. 

Bagley B-2 Squarebill was the ticket all year for me. 

On 11/25/2022 at 9:57 PM, ol'crickety said:

Loon-colored 130 Whopper Plopper cast by a spinning reel spooled with 17 lb. mono

Huh? I’m completely baffled by this. Not only is 17 pound mono very thick diameter line, but the 130 size WP is a massive lure to be using on a spinning setup.

Just a note on using spinning gear for top water baits...USE THEM!  For me...casting distance is the KEY factor for top water lures.  The boat puts off tons of top water bites.  I wing my Whopper Ploppers, Spooks and Jitterbugs with both an 8'6" steelhead casting rod and an 8'6" spinning rod. Distance, distance, distance.

1 hour ago, gimruis said:

Huh? I’m completely baffled by this. Not only is 17 pound mono very thick diameter line, but the 130 size WP is a massive lure to be using on a spinning setup.

 

I wrote that "the Whopper Plopper...casts a long ways...." and one of the reasons I can chuck it so far is that it's a big lure. It's not massive, though, for a recovered muskyhead. Have you seen musky lures? Many are billy club-sized. I used a bait caster for those, but my spinning outfits handle the Whopper Plopper. 

 

I cast farther with a spinning rod than a bait casting rod and as I shared in another thread, I catch most of my fish at the ends of long casts.

 

I used 17 lb. line because I couldn't keep bass out of the weeds with lesser line. One of my first threads was about my struggles with bass in weeds. The 17 lb. test mainly solved that. 

 

I was at the dog park today throwing a ball. A young man was there throwing a ball. He was throwing three to four times farther than me and it didn't appear he was even trying to throw it as far as he could. I was trying. Plus, I'm sitting in a canoe, which makes casting harder. I'm going with what works best for my old bones.

 

Still, what do you suggest? I don't want to give up casting distance, but I am open to alternatives if they match or surpass the numbers, both quantity and quality, that I average. 

 

31 minutes ago, Bartableman7 said:

Just a note on using spinning gear for top water baits...USE THEM!  For me...casting distance is the KEY factor for top water lures. 

 

 

Quote

Distance, distance, distance.

 

Ditto, ditto, ditto. 

9 hours ago, ol'crickety said:

Still, what do you suggest? I don't want to give up casting distance, but I am open to alternatives if they match or surpass the numbers, both quantity and quality, that I average. 

A spinning reel, unless its a large high capacity one (like they use for saltwater fishing), really isn't going to be designed to use super thick line like that.  The first thing I would do is switch to braided line.  It will have less than half the diameter and an even better quality would be no stretch.  Mono stretches like a rubber band and you get that effect with long casts and long hook sets.  Braided line will mitigate that.  Plus if you're fishing bogs and swamps with a lot of weeds, pads, etc, braided line will knife through that much better than any mono too.

 

I'd also switch to a bait casting setup.  You will have much better hook setting power.  And when you do hook a fish, especially a big one, you'll be able to control it much more easily in those weeds.  Its like using a wench.  I don't know what length rod you're using but a longer one will help with distance.

 

The combination of a bait caster and braided line will significantly increase your hookup percentage, increase power, and reduce snags compared to a spinning setup in this situation.

 

The weight of the WP 130 will do the work on the distance because its such a heavy lure.  If you were using a lighter lure then the case could be made for a spinning setup.

 

My primary spinning rod is 7' 6". I'll try the braid, but unless I can one day cast as long with a baitcasting reel as I can with a spinning reel, I'll stick with the spinning reel. 

 

I have used braid with muskies and on my froggin' outfit. 

 

Quote

I'd also switch to a bait casting setup.  You will have much better hook setting power. 

 

It's my thinking that hook-setting power comes from the rod, not the reel. My surface lure rod isn't as stout as my froggin' broomsticky rod, but it's no pushover. I caught about 20 bass in the 19-21 inch range with it this past year, mostly in slop. Those are four-to-five-and-a-half-pound fish according to the length to weight chart I consult. And they were caught from a lightweight canoe that gets pulled around in the fight, so I can't hold my ground, but that rod still worked most of the time.

 

I lost some big fish, of course. One ran into wild rice reeds and I just couldn't turn it, not even with my drag cranked way up. You're a northerner. You know that they're like bamboo. Another time I was blown into thick weeds, inches below the surface, and the bass burrowed into that.  

 

Anyway, I'll switch to braid and we'll see how that goes and if I ever increase my casting distance with a baitcaster, I'll be open to switching to that!

Big TRD and Ticklerz in Coppertreuse on a 6’6” ML spinning rod. 

2 hours ago, ol'crickety said:

It's my thinking that hook-setting power comes from the rod, not the reel.

It comes from both.  You have more control over the lure/fish with a bait casting reel because you can reel it in faster and the line is on top of the rod.

 

Bait casting setups are specifically designed for purposes like this.  BC = power, spinning = finesse.  You could use a flat head screwdriver to put philips screws in too, but a philips screwdriver will work better.  That's all I'm saying here.  Its just a better tool for the job.

@gimruis

 

I'm assuming you're thinking about gear ratios when you state that a spinning reel lets you "reel it in faster."

 

There might be more in play than gear ratio, such as the distance from the hub of the spool to the outermost line. When it comes to radius, a little more makes a big difference, as in a 12" pizza being 113 square inches, whereas a 14" pizza is 153 square inches. That's about a 35% difference in total pizza for a mere 14% increase in diameter.

 

I'm wondering if a crank of a spinning reel with a 5:1 ratio and a deep spool might be closer than you think to a baitcasting reel with a 8:1 ratio and a shallow spool. 

 

I'm just guessing, of course. Are there any engineers or mathematicians in the house? 

I don't want to hi-jack this thread on a discussion about gear ratios, line, and other setups so I'll just leave it at that now since this is about what lure/presentation worked best for each of us during the season.

14 hours ago, gimruis said:

Huh? I’m completely baffled by this. Not only is 17 pound mono very thick diameter line, but the 130 size WP is a massive lure to be using on a spinning setup.

 

I've thrown a 130 sized Whopper Plopper on spinning. 7' H/F rod rated 5/8-2oz, Shimano Sahara 4000 spooled with 40lb braid. Handles them great in my experience. Not all spinning gear is finesse just because it happens to lean that way in the bass world.

On 11/18/2022 at 11:22 AM, Bartableman7 said:

6 lb test fluoro carbon leader

You might lose less baits with 15lb mono, and it might be more effective too.

I've thrown large lures on spinning gear pre baitcaster. The heaviest spinning rod you can find spooled on a 4000 series reel with 30 lb braid was always my go to. 

 

It's not at all optimal, but it's doable. I've thrown 130 whopper poppers, 1oz + swimbaits for pike and muskie etc. Catching and landing isn't a problem, but it's a pain to cast and reel in. 

 

A 110 whopper plopper on that setup isn't bad at all aside from being forced to fish a topwater on braid (which isn't that bad in the grand scheme of things).