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Tomorrow I get to take my two oldest grandaughters out on the boat. I don't know who's more excited. My wife's going as well, she's even buying a liscense for the occasion.

I slipped out onto one of the lakes close to home this morning. Our area had a day and a half of heavy rain and last night the air temps dipped down into the 40’s; not unheard of here. Forecast was for some stiff post frontal wind, I was hoping to get in on a decent bite before getting blown off the water. Conditions early were OK and the water had gotten back to the gin clear stuff I’m used to fishing here; despite the rain. Anchored up on a small mid-lake hump and had a couple of small bass right off the bat. The 6th Sense square bill just continues to trigger strikes. Three or four reel handle cranks into a long cast parallel to the drop in front of the hump, the bait got Hammered. The fish immediately came to the top and before I knew what I even had, a very, very stout smallmouth cart-wheeled 3 foot in the air and the battle was on. From the first long distance look at it, I figured I was fighting the biggest smallmouth I’d had on in a while. So I’m looking hard, trying to see how she’s hooked. But I couldn’t see my bait. She had the whole thing choked – gone, no bait. Meanwhile, she was digging, changing directions & stripping drag for all she was worth. Once close to the boat she made 2 more way high leaps for freedom. Not missing a trick, there was the repeated attempts to get into the anchor line. Trying hard not to rush her to the net, and not being very successful, I took a stab at her and whiffed. Part of my lower anatomy might have puckered a little right there. After a half minute steal mate, she finally gassed out and was in the net. This particular fight will be one I’ll remember for a while. At almost 22 inches and 5.66 lbs – this bass is officially my heaviest Michigan Bronzeback. PB’s are always a blast. I caught dozen or so more bass (both brown & green) from a few different spots around the lake before the wind really came on and I had to depart. Got some nice pictures and a couple of videos. I’d say it was a Good day. A-Jay And one more:

LOL ~ It's more of a temporary holding pen than a livewell - and the neat thing is . . . It doubles as a landing net. A-Jay

I forgot to add I am digging your livewell.

My new Michigan PB ~ A-Jay

A bit of advice when it comes to catching really nice fish like this one. Take a measurement, a photo and let her go exactly like you did. She may have weighed 5.75lb. on your scale today, but if you weigh her, how is she going to gain weight over the next 10-20years. One of my biggest fish was 23in. long and I'm not saying what her girth was because she's gained over a pound just mounted on my wall.

Only if you add gin to the tonic

We see these threads all the time what is the best rod. There is no definitive answer, except what's best for each individual. I do believe one has to match the rod to their style of fishing, for me sensitivity and weight isn't much of an issue as I do very little bottom fishing. I've used rods 2-3 times the price of my favorite brands, for what I do those higher priced rods do not cast any farther or handle the fish any better. Having rods that are close to 10 years old still looking like new the question of durability has been answered, not to mention the thousands of pounds of fish that have been caught on them. Not a darn thing wrong with an ugly if it meets your criteria.

I would go to Mondo's. I had been meaning to makes this post sooner....The evening we all met at Johny's I was being robbed back home. That evening I had somewhere around $2000 worth of fishing equipment stolen and my boat motor tampered with. Luckily the boat was parked out at my fathers house and everything was caught on video. Thank to the good men of the Franklin county sheriffs department they arrested the suspect in the video, a step nephew of mine. Most of the items have been returned. He still sits in jail now (for over a week now) on felony charges. Thanks I just needed to vent.

Shhhhhh!

I ignore invisibility to the fish and stress visibility for myself. I'm going to almost all hi-vis. If it gives you confidence, color the bottom few feet with a sharpie. If the water is gin clear and open, I'll tie a fluoro leader sometimes.

The Metanium has X-Ship and Micromodule Gearing, which the Core doesn't. If you really wanted to dig for it, I think you can find the Core and SS SV(basically cheaper version of Steez) for 500 bucks total if you want to try Shimano and Daiwa. I know plat has the SS SV on garage sale for 250 dollars.

Felix is right on. Under those conditions, a bass can take your bait and then spit it out, and you would never know it. Another suggestion is to watch your line. If it moves in any direction other than your line of drift, set the hook.

Pay attention to what the jig feels like when dragging on the bottom. When something feels different a bass could have picked it up. I lift up on it if I suspect a pickup. Feels heavy ... set the hook!

It never stops man, it never stops. Personally, I would go with the Core but only cause I love Shimano. I have not used a Steez but I'm sure you will be happy with it. Not gonna lie tho, I have a Metanium HG and a Chronarch Ci4+ and I don't prefer one or the other, so if you were going to go the Metanium route, you could save some money by getting the Chronarch.

If you think its a bite than stop the bait. If you feel a tick when the bait is stopped, its a bite. If the bait is smaller, the fish will take it in one gulp, so you will have to use feel on that, but with a bigger bait or around lots of smaller bass, they will grab the tail, then take the whole bait, so if you stop it, and feel the tick again, swing for it!

Good day indeed! Congrats on the home water PB.

Giant!!!!!!! Way to go man, always fun to see you catching a great fish.

however, he is holding it close in and it does have that width that could be good. I would guess anywhere between 4.5 to 6. Don't rule out a potential 6 quite yet. Big enough to keep a scale on you at all times, nice fish. I'm just glad you didn't get on here and start talking about how it was 8-9 pounds or the typical, "my buddy who caught an 8 saw it and said it was 2 pounds bigger than he had ever seen" type responses. Great fish, hope you keep catching them.

One differences is that the stocked trout taste like dog food

Love my dredge jigs so much I spent fifteen minutes in 95 degree heat working a snag free instead of just breaking off. It finally came up after some serious pulling with no damage whatsoever.

Sounds like some people use too much hand sanitizer.

big enough to ask out on a second date

I've read a lot of articles and on forums that buzzbaits are best for evening and morning. I just really got into using buzzbaits a few weeks ago and as evening came on we put some Booyahs on and really did quite well at a local lake. We tried again a few evenings later and almost no success even though we were still catching fish with Senkos. A week later we tried again in the evening and crushed them. So it's definitely hit or miss. All of these times were in the same lake and same area at evening. I'm normally never up early enough for an early morning trip. I had a weekend trip planned for a friend's cabin coming up so I ordered some Cavitron Buzzbaits from Cabelas because I had heard good things about them on here. I also ordered some Ragetail Menaces from Bass Pro for my Sieberts Swim Jig since Mike recommended them. Of course neither arrived on time for the trip, although they did arrive the day I got home. Luckily we were able to stop by a small mom and pop place, on our way down South to the cabin. I picked up both the Cavitrons and Menaces while my friend picked up some Cavitrons on my advice. He said they'd better work. I said I hope they do. Well, we got out to the lake in the evening and fished with no success for the first hour as we moved down the shore fishing with different lures. We tried everything, swim jigs, Senkos, buzzbaits, Ragetail Toad, beetle spins, Rapala Scatter Rap, KVD Sexy Dawg, KVD Popper, and others. What we later found out about this lake was if one side was bad you should immediately go to another spot and you'll most likely find hungry fish. As we reached the opposing shoreline we started catching fish on Senkos. My buddy put on his Booyah Buzzbait to no avail. I caught the first one on a Cavitron. It definitely planed quicker then the Booyah Buzzbait. Eventually we all changed to our Cavitrons and caught about 6 good bass on them. We started out immediately with stinger hooks on our buzzbaits because my friend said a friend of ours recommended them. The next morning we went out around the crack of 11am. We caught fish on almost everything imaginable, Arashi crankbait, Senkos, Ragetail Bug Rage Rigged, Hollow Body frogs,KVD Sexy Dawg, KVD Splash Popper, Ragetail Structure Bug, Ragetail Toads, Scatter Rap, and Cavitron Buzzbaits. So I would definitely say it helped that the fish were hungry all weekend. We caught them all day on buzzbaits and into the evening. We did this the third day also until we left at around 12 noon. Weather conditions: Weather was bright, sunny, bluebird to overcast with rain sprinkles with glass calm to slight chop in the water. Most of the time it was bright, blue bird with dead calm. It was bright and sunny 98% of the time and only light rain and overcast on the last morning about 30 minutes before we left. So, bright and sunny and the fish were eating up the buzzbaits all day long. So, do buzzbaits work in the daytime also? Absolutely. Try them out sometime in the daytime, you might be pleasantly surprised. If the fish are hitting any type of topwater, it wouldn't be bad to try one on. *** Next time though we want to try a head to head test with the Cavitron Buzzbaits vs. Booyah Buzzbaits and others. It's just that the Cavitrons caught fish that first evening and the Booyah did not, so we stuck with the Cavitrons rest of the trip. Why change what's workin'? We caught fish from 1' foot of water down to deeper then 44' feet of water with the buzzbaits, KVD Sexy Dawg, and KVD Splash Popper. So topwater can pull fish from nearly any depth. Also, a all rubber net, I have a medium Ego 2 Slider clear rubber, is really great for non getting any tangles or the hook stuck in the net. The Ego 2 is also extremely compact and easy to use. Fish barely hooked. Good he had a trailer hook on the buzzbait. He caught 3 fish like this barely hooked on the stinger hook They would have been missed fish for sure if it wasn't for the stinger hook. I'd definitely recommend using a trailer hook on your buzzbaits.

I recently noticed my local Walmart has a very small section, maybe containing six or seven different items, of kayak fishing accessories. There's not much but the packages do state it's for kayaks - kayak strap handle, some kind of paddle leash, and other stuff. The local Gander Mountain has a new section dedicated to kayak fishing too. More than Walmart. If a small town Walmart starts to carry a few items for kayak fishing and now Gander Mountain has a little section dedicated to kayak fishing, that tells me kayak fishing is becoming more and more popular!

I prefer a 7.3 tatula for the stuff you mentioned, mostly preference though, a 6.3 would work fine...

Word!!!!!!!!! Nice color patterns too. ;-)

YEAH BABY! Congrats on the PB and I hope a bigger one is in your future... I haven't ordered my 6th Sense squarebill yet, but it's on my shopping list

That's a great fish, I'm jelouse!

Nice Catch!

Nice bronze! PB's are always good! Jeff

It could be lamprey eggs were on the spine. If you feel the urge to latch onto something living and suck all the blood out of it you might want to see a doctor. I always seem to get spiked by those crazy white perch while taking them off the hook.

Heat

Awesome!

Man, I gotta move to Michigan. Nice catch A-Jay!

20 minutes to reel in a 4lb small mouth... That's just dumb, that's like ultra-ultralight bass tackle... It shouldn't take you longer than a minute to reel In a bass really unless your long lining or something crazy...

Quick question for anyone who fishes the Merrimack area. Is there any other entrance to the Penichuck near PC connection besides going through the long swamp canal? Heard it's good fishing in there and would like to find an alternative entrance.

Seems like you wont be satisfied considering how much you said you liked the DX in your original post, if you absolutely loved it you won't feel the same with a champion

Congratulations, just got married huh?! J/K, J/K...That's awesome! Good Luck!

I've caught the same fish off the same spot on the same day more than once. Last year my buddy broke a fish off in the morning and I caught it in the afternoon off the same spot with his bait still in it's mouth. Some days they seem very smart and wary, others not so much.

Yeah bowfin. Just a huge muscle, I wonder why people don't fish for them as much.

I will be fishing this again this year. It's a fun tournament.

Not quite, but I'm getting there. Being way past middle aged and rapidly approaching "old", I had been thinking a lot about retirement lately. After 17 years of being a contractor and saving a few nickels every week, I finally pulled the trigger on a retirement home. A not to fancy but fairly new place in a +55 community, and this is the best part, ON THE WATER. We still have a about a decade of paying for college educations, but I can at least start to look forward to something other than 70+ hours a week running a business. Anyone who wants to come and hang out on the weekends and fish a nearly private 1000 acre big fish factory, give me a shout. In a few years we can hang during the week. Here is the view from the front porch.

I went to Mondo Today for the first time. It's big, loaded with great stuff and he was verry nice!!! If you haven't been you need to go!!! I picked up an I-slide from him Today along with a few other things I "needed"?

We should create a Shimano thread and bait him out from hiding.

You guys are referring to people I don't remember seeing that I didn't join till 2010.I have seen a few guys disappear since I've been on here. LgMouthGambler for one. Hootie

Squirmmy...are you off your meds again?

a 5-6 caught using megastrike pro shaky head 2 ewg 1/2 oz green pumpkin with a missile bait baby d bomb green pumpkin purple, middle of the day on a busy saturday at lake casitas

Smart move Lee, I bought my place in Okee in 94 and planned to retire there. And I did.

I make my own shaky heads and use a few different style worms and I can tell you that using too big of a hook will hurt the action on the worm. Bass very seldom grab the tail, most of the time they inhale the whole bait, a 3/0 hook in a shaky head is perfect for 5" and 6" straight tail worms.