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Last year with the baby being due in early August, I decided not to do any tournaments as it would be really hard to commit. I missed doing them, but certainly dont regret it. My wife actually went into labour at a time when I would have been fishing a tournament, so it was probably best that I wasnt. This year, I re-joined our local B.A.S.S. chapter where I got my start. I missed the first tourney due to a work commitment but was able to get out a couple weekends ago for a club tourney on Lake Couchiching. I work overnights, so I skipped a couple hours early to get to the ramp on time. Apparently, they had changed the launch location, so I had to hook the boat back up and drive another 20 mins. Anyways, we go to my best early summer spot and wasted 2 hours catching nothing but rats. Time to keep moving... It was really tough fishing for us, we couldnt put together any pattern. At noon, the boat felt heavy, so I flipped the bilge on and nothing. Reach back to pull the pump out and it was all water. Uh oh. I have an aluminum hull, so I pulled the plug and ran for 10 minutes to drain it, before putting the plug back in. It kept us fishing and we managed to put some decent fish together for a 3rd place finish, including this nice smallie below. Couchiching is one of my favourite lakes, but I really couldnt put it together. Our club has a different system, where each person in the boat keeps their biggest 4. Our individual bags go towards AOY points and our combined weight is for the tournament placing. I had 11.75lbs and my non had 11.10lbs. Not bad, not great. So I get the boat out and I'm looking for leaks. Cant see anything. Once I got home, I put the plug back in the boat and filled it up with a hose to see where it was leaking from. There was a small 1 inch crack underneath the trailer bunk which is why I couldnt see anything. A good friend of mine riveted a plate over it and got me back on the water just in time for my next tournament. Wednesday we fished Simcoe. When I got to work at 9pm that night, it was 27C (80.6F) and when I left work at 4am, it was 8C (46.4F). Crazy front had rolled in, with 45 km/h (28 mph) wind gusts on big water. I figured we would tuck into some bays and look for largies. By noon, we had 3 small largies in the livewell and decided to brave the wind and make a long run. We would have about an hour and a half to fish. It was the right move as we started crushing good sized smallies, throwing dropshots at isolated boulders and rock piles. My big 4 were over 17 lbs and I took first place and big fish with a 5.30lbs smallie. Simcoe is capable of way more than that, but under those conditions, and having spent just 3 hours bass fishing out there all year, I was happy to get what we did.

Caught in a neighborhood pond in the Kissimmee area on vacation on a 4'' swimbait.

When I retired I promised myself.... No more getting up before 6:00 am Only shave when she starts yelling Throw out all the ties And find a kid to cut the grass!! Mike

That knot is a PIA, a Waste of time and Complete over Kill for Bass fishing. I fish at night a ton and I can't imagine trying to tie that mother in the dark . . . I just use a uni to uni. Simple - Easy to tie & it works. A-Jay

Can't buy a bite? Rent one. Sorry, it's just one of those days Hootie

The blade bait is an awesome summer time bait as well. When smallies start going deep after spawn the work very well to cover 20-50 fow. I fish them vertically mostly using 10lb braid tied to a small spro swivel. I then attach about 2-3 feet of mono for abrasion resistance. You can also cast them or drift with them. The better baits have split rings attaching the hooks to the bait body. On baits like the silver buddy I add split rings so I can change out hooks as needed. This is a blade bait smallie from last October.

I started throwing them last fall for the first time in several years - I was reminded very quickly just how much SMB like them And you're right, that LC bait does look sweet. I've only used blade baits very early & very late in the year - cold water. Doesn't mean they wouldn't work other times, just that I haven't really fished them. I had decent success with casting gear but much, much better success with spinning gear. Seems like the smallies like to follow / chase these baits a bit before they commit. So a longer cast has proven very beneficial here. A 7'4" spinning stick, a reel loaded with 10-15 lb braid and a longer 10-12 lb mono leader works well for me. Here my last trip of 2014 - all blade baits. Silver buddies & the Damiki Vault A-Jay

Found a little nugget of gold hiding in my fishing folder. Thanks to WRB/ Tom Young. // START QUOTE Have ever wanted to know where the big bass go after the spawn? During pre spawn and the actual spawning cycle we read about and catch big bass, however following that period the lake seems to swallow up these big bass until next season. Occasionally one is caught, usually at night. The answer to that question is both simple and complex. Big bass are never far from their preferred prey and depends on the lake classification and of the type of bass you are targeting. Where I fish in highland deep reservoirs, big bass establish home zones in 15 to 35 feet of water. The reason for this is that is where the thermocline is located and big bass seek the most comfortable water temperature that has good DO levels and offers both security and prey. Where is this location on your lake? Outside water with structure and cover that holds prey and gives the big bass the advantage to easily catch the prey they seek. The big bass hold in there home zones and move up toward the shore line at dusk and roam at night. Largemouth bass will move up to shallow water 2 to 10 foot depth, smallmouth tend stay a little deeper on isolate structure near break lines and spots tend to move up to gravel or rocky breaklines. All big bass like to locate near wood on deep breaks. Where do you fish during the late spring, summer and fall? if it is not outside, you may not be fishing the right locations. Only a few lures can work below 15' depth and represent the prey bass are targeting. Swim baits, jigs, slow rolled spinner baits and big plastic worms are the type of lures that catch the majority of big bass during the off season. Tom // END QUOTE

Too lazy to get the boat out this morn and decided to bankbeat.. in 3 hours of work landed close to 20 fish (lost count) mostly 2-3 pounders but did cap it off with 2 hosses: 21" 5.5 lb and a 20" 4 3/4lb (the 20" broke my flippin stick and ended my day) Even Mattlures got into it .. first fish on Mattlures only a 14" but hey its the first on the Hardgill.. gonna use it alil more going forward. Fishin itch is scratched for another week..

I, for one, am totally fed up with the weather this fishing season. Fronts moving in and out almost daily. Most of us haven't seen three days in a row of stable weather since May. I believe it's time to voice our concerns to the Man in charge. I'm normally one that doesn't like to bother him with trivial, personal matters, but, as this affects more than just myself, He should be made aware of our concerns. So the next time you talk to Him to thank him for all his blessings, why not add a little request for a week-end or two of stable weather before Labor Day? If we all do this (I pray that you all do thank him on a regular basis) and maybe mention it to a friend or two, I truly believe He will acknowledge that it is a major concern of his people. I also believe that He has His own itinerary and acts at His own pace, but it couldn't hurt. Could it?

We got back into town this morning at around 1:20 AM. I promised a report, so here goes. Arrived late Saturday the 11th at the lake. Hurried to get rigged and fishing. I don't have our daily numbers in front of me right now. We caught maybe a dozen fish that evening. Throughout the week we caught 272 bass. Still no DD. My best was 8-13. We caught one 7, three 6s, and several 5s. We caught more dinks this year than ever before. There were 3 fish that would barely make a pound. Our most successful numbers bait was a Zoom 8 in. watermelon / red lizard. A close second was the same in pumpkinseed with a chartreuse tail. 10 in. bk /bl powerworms worked well one afternoon. Topwater in the mornings went from sub par to great. 120 Sammy blue / silver and a bone Yellow Magic were both good. A bomber Long A jerkbait in perch color worked after the topwater bite faded. My best success came on big football head jigs trailed by Rage Lobsters in watermelon / red, dropped down steep bluff walls ( thanks to A-Jay for those jigs ). There was a fella there, fishing by himself that claimed phenominal success topped off with one that he said was 11- 4. Another day he had three 10s. One day his five biggest weighed just under 45 #. No one else reported anything even close to those results. Others did say that they had caught a total of four 9s through the week. All in all, not what we had hoped for but the drinks were Ice cold and plentiful. The meals were amazing. We had lobster and shrimp two nights. The steaks were done perfectly. I guess we did well enough to return at a later date. ........ By the way we never ran into " Chapo " anywhere.............

I like a good tip for casting and walking the frog with a strong back bone to bury the hook and get them out of the slop. I use a megabass xx perfect pitch which is 7'2".

I used Berkley 12 lb Big Game mono for crankbaits for decades and changed to Sunline Deifer Armilo Nylon 13 lb, it's the same diameter as Big Game 10 lb., .012. Smaller dia allows the deep divers to dive deeper! Tom

Just got back from the Current River in Southern Missouri yesterday with eight nice rainbow trout. Caught them with Yellow belly Cracklebacks I tied night before. By noon they were smoke cooking in my grill with Hickory chips and a few splashes of Margaritta to keep the fire cool. After a few I decided it doesn't get much better than this and made Isaak Walton and Jimmy Buffet my new mentors.

Only 40? You must be new

Conquest 300/400

Family, a 2 and 1/2 year old boy, and a new born boy. Then there is work, which only makes me want to spend time with my family more then go fishing. Lately I have been at a point where I don't sleep much, but I can make up for that when I die. It's hard to leave momma and the baby at home and go fishing, but she allowed me to go once since my son was born. Once my baby get into a decent nights sleep habit, I will start heading out in the AM for a few hours while everyone is sleeping! No quilt to carry then! Fish on!

For me it's health, I suppose. I've been dealing with chronic illness since before I first started fishing almost 20 years ago. It has cost me a few years of fishing, but I don't care anymore and will fish as much as I can. My routine right now is at the river by 5am, back home by 9am every other day if weather permits.

Man, You need to get your priorities straight! Just kidding. I long for the days when I was young. I could go from dawn to dusk 7 days a week. You can still go when most of us old geysers would rather just relax.

I'd still be fishing! Here these last few winters we've gotten snowed in our house more than once.

LOL.............and that's on casting gear, with spinning reels, you better have a priest, a rabbi, and a union pipe fitter on the boat with you.

I use braid with fluoro leader on all my rods and wouldn't change a thing. I feel the tick all the time and catch tons of fish. I, too, tried the fluoro thing and got tired of doing a ceremony before spooling, heating it the night before, spraying it 14hrs and 17 minutes before using it, reading a story to it before going to bed, trolling with it on the morning of fishing but before your first cast and then doing all these steps over again half way through my fishing day. I just don't believe the hoops some people go through just to use this inferior line. Needless to say I have lots of leader material. #endrant

Using live bait is just as much an art as fishing artificials. It is so much more than throwing out a half dead nightcrawler and drinking beer until a poor fish takes a bite. I don't do the live bait thing (personal choice). Y'all ever hear of Bob Crupi? P.S. Bill Murphy's book has a lot of stuff on crawlers, crawdads and shiners. Read it and you'll see the intricacies.

Just want to say thanks to Mike for the fourth of July sale. Ordered some old favorites and new additions to try. Great quality jigs and the color selection plus the wire tied option make them perfect. Hopefully some of you were able to take advantage of the sale. Mike did a great job with these as usual and had them to me quick despite getting slammed with orders. If you haven't tried the living rubber jigs I would encourage to try them. Great for cold water and big fish bait. Thanks again for the order Mike!

BPS XPS Topnocker. Number 1. Discontinued. Rebel BIGCLAW CRAWFISH crankbaits. Smaller ones in shallow rivers larger ones in lakes.

I agree that the Trokar hooks aren't great for flipping vegetation because it cuts through the bait. I like the VMC HD straight shank flipping hooks and I use a Pit Boss a majority of the time.

Cassidee is with me almost every time I'm on the water. This time of year is a little tougher due to the heat but I just make sure she does plenty of swimming off the boat to stay cool.

Orochii xx extreme mission and perfect pitch

Blame the weather. You won't catch bigger or more fish, but you'll have someone else to blame. It works for me. I, of course, am never faced with such a sad situation. If I were, I'd have to do something about it. Don't ask me what, but I'm on great medications and I don't let things bother me like before. I can't remember yesterday, but it don't bother me. What was the question?

Did a little river bassin' today from the kayak, plenty of bass, green ones and brown ones. Caught fish on: 6" Bullshad, Senko, T-rigged trick worm, t-rigged speed craw, war eagle spinnerbait, KVD 1.0, X-Rap, and a 1/4oz spro bucktail. They were very hungry so I just started experimenting with different baits. This fish ate a spinnerbait that I was bringing through a laydown, she tried to go back in and was rubbing my line on a log, I was so involved in the fight that I didn't realize what I was doing and rolled my kayak over! BUT I GOT THE FISH. Also recovered everything that fell out of the kayak. She was 19" long and spit up a 7" gizzard shad. People still wonder why I throw a bull shad... I put the bucktail on as a joke but I ended up doing extremely well with it, on both green and brown fish. If guys can do it on deep ledges I can do it in a shallow river right?

Well, I can understand why immature pike might be considered a nuisance. That is, the grass snakes that are derisively dubbed "hammer-handles" & "snot-rockets". On the other hand, large old pike are a horse of another color, and behave like a different species of fish. Big gator pike do not spend the summer in shallow weedy bays, but generally inhabit deep open water beyond the outer weed-line. In lakes that support pelagic forage fish, gator pike feed on ciscoes, whitefish and smelt, much the same as lake trout. Gators over 35" are powerful fish (peel line off the spool) and are hard to come by, the stuff that makes a superb target species. Back to the 1970s, Al Lindner confessed that his favorite freshwater game fish is a "trophy pike" over 12 pounds. Al stated that trophy pike are even rarer than muskellunge, the fish of 10,000 casts. I fully concur Roger

I really love the way this bait swims, and I really want it to be a fish catcher, but I haven't hooked up yet with it. Mattlures Hardgill still the king.

Whoooooooooooooooooo caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaares?!?? Y'all are acting like if I eat a spicy burrito tonight you're the ones that are gonna be droppin' lava tomorrow. OH NOES, NOT $13.50!!! lol... I could drink crap beer, drive a POS and live in a tent too while we're at it but that just ain't me. Sorry guys. I do what I want. Fancy pants and all haha

You are fishing history and not the current conditions.

I just started fishing for bass this month, and I caught this one at lunch. It felt like it weighed between 1 and 2 lbs, but that's a guess. Can any experienced anglers tell me what kind of bass this is? This was in Gaithersburg, MD. Thanks!

Here are a couple tips for learning to cast a baitcaster: Practice with relatively heavy weights (3/4 oz is a good start) Set the cast control and brakes and make nice easy sidearm and roll casts. Keep a thumb on the spool at all times. Don't go for distance. Don't cast overhead. Pull off a long cast worth of line plus some (100 ft) and put a strip of electrical tape around the spool. This will keep baclashes from getting too deep. Learn the "Thumb trick" for removing backlashes. Don't pull hard the line tightening the knots. Think of casting throwing : Accuracy is about the release point. Watch the target not the spool and clamp your thumb down before the bait hits the water or ground. Be patient but persistent and it will all come together. Enjoy the learning process, it's all part of the fun.

They are no more trouble than a spinning reel. I started my son and my granddaughter with baitcasters when they were both about six years old, he's over 40 and she's 19 now. They are actually very easy to learn if you don't fall into the mindset they are all the same. The cheap one are a hellava lot harder to learn on than the good ones. I use Shimano Curado's and have about 15 of them. I also feel that's about the easiest reel there is to learn on. I'm sure there are others but since I've never used anything but Shimano and Garcia, I wouldn't know what they would be. First off, if you are going to learn, start off learning the right way. If you are right handed, buy left handed reels and learn to cast and reel without switching hands Second, learn how to adjust it, and run it a tad tighter than normal for the first couple of days. Now, my little secret that makes life a whole lot simpler with them. Pull off just a little more line than you can cast. Then take electrical tape and tape the spool and then wind the line back on. This way it's very hard to get a backlash and if you do, it's usually very easy to get out. As you get better, move the tape a little deeper until you feel comfortable enough that you don't need the tape. My granddaughter is as good or better than most people I fish with and she still puts tape on hers on real windy days. Just the little assurance factor. Stay away from light bait or bait's the slow down pretty fast in the air. Don't even try casting most of the long stick baits for a long while and use a minimum of 14# line and it's easier with 17 until you get used to one. I had a guy a few weeks ago that swore he could not use one, had tried many times, I set it up and he fished it all weekend. Swore he never knew they were that easy. One key point, learn as quick as you can to use your wrist to whip it, and don't use your arms to throw it. Too many times when you start trying to throw it with your arms, you induce a backlash at the end of the cast.

1 Four Loco to ease the pain and a 2nd one to forget the day lol

Don't forget to bring along an ultralight rod with a beetle spin, some rooster tails or maybe even a bobber and some earthworms or crickets. You'd be surprised at what a little panfish activity can do to stir up the bite....... Personally, I'm now carrying my fly rod with a small popper or cricket tied on. Even on the hottest and slowest days, a bluegill fight on light gear can be just the ticket to fight the doldrums.

I use the Silver Buddy, Vault, and Krazy Blade. I only use them in cold water when the fish are on the bottom like this: This is a Krazy Blade catch at a different lake-- 8# 6 oz dink

Rig it up as posted above. Then cut it off, and throw it in the lake. Reel up the extra line all the way into the reel. Break the rod in half. Chuck that in the lake, too. Turn on your graph. Grab your drop shot rig. Fish with that. ;P

I have learned a TON on this forum, but I try to pick up a little bit of info from everyone I fish with.

Advice. But 'put more work in' isn't the most insightful advice. lol That's like saying, "What's the best technique for the fall" and the answer being, "Fish more". lol. Not too helpful.

I once pulled in a nice bass to find that the hook had entered through his gills, out his mouth, and hooked his lip. Strange but true.

Iv'e lassoed catfish 2 times! ~Kevin

Put work in. lol. Works the reason I've only been able to fish twice this year.

I had a 5lb channel cat go for a topwater frog. It missed, bit my line, started rolling on top of the water and I reeled her in with about ten wraps of line around her, lure hanging past her tail.

My girlfriends biggest northern was somewhat lassoed. It blew up on a frog and took it down head first, the line ran through the mouth and hooked around the jaw hinge where it extends past the joint. Both hooks were pulled up tight on the front of the mouth and keeping the line tight kept it locked on. Also, did it with a northern a few years ago. I was flipping a small grass mat and it hit the weight which wasn't pegged. Line went through the mouth and the hook had caught the line coming out the other side of the mouth and both sides had hooked around the jaw bone. Crazy stuff but this was definitely a new one!

I thought by being an eagles fan and thinking they have a chance to win the SB was fantasy football..