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Second large mouth trip of the year. We had a good day. Overall we landed 20 fish or so with the smallest around 2lbs. My buddy caught a great 3.5lb bass and I hooked into this 7.4lb momma. Great great fish for this area. We hooked all but a few on M3 Roboworms, but all the bigger ones were on a jig rig with a Rage Space Monkeys.

Than pictures of fish in the sink must be horrifying

I agree. Lucky craft ruined the bait market by posting big sales with ridiculously priced baits. Now it's almost at the point where they've got us believing that if a bait isn't expensive then it's somehow inferior and won't catch fish. A spinnerbait is a jig with a blade on it. You can shape, bend it, put rubberbands on it, bullet head it , bobble head it and make it sing holy praises out of it's ass, but it's still a jig with blades

What y'all like? Skirts with flakes Skirts with tinsel Skirts with flashbou Skirts with colored tips Skirts with layered colors Personally I use em all & find no advantage one way or the other!

I got a bull shad in the mail a few days ago but I hadn't had the chance to throw it yet. Today I hit up my usual pond for 15 minutes so I could try it out before work. I was just trying to get used to throwing it and testing out retrieve speeds. Before long I got a bump and soon I saw a small follower. Nothing came of it so I kept casting around at different spots. Suddenly, bam... A 4.5 pounder crushed it. I was super surprised to get a bite so soon, especially being my first time throwing the bait. The fish fought hard and jumped a couple times but I cranked it in because I've heard that they throw those big baits easily. I had to leave for work immediately after releasing it... It's safe to say I've been itching to go back out and see what else is interested in the bull shad. Beginners luck... I'll take it

About 25 years ago I discovered Barlows Tackle in Texas who offers every known jig skirt material and went crazy making jig skirts. Lots of fun and gets expensive, some worked great some not so good. Every year new materials come available and tempted to try em out. There are several places to buy jig skirt materials today, Fishingskirts.com has some good sales for example. I have settled on the natural silicone strips with barb wire patterns in crawdad colors, brown, purple, red, green and black in living rubber and bucktail hair....oh yes need a little flashabou now and then. Did I mention there is a shad bite now...where is my pearl, chartreuse, blue, lime green with copper flake? CAUTION making jig skirts is addictive! Tom

I fished yesterday from daylight until 3. Ended up winning my club tournament with 20.51lbs. Caught tons of fish and had a blast. My biggest was 6.89lbs.

Fished from 1pm Saturday to 1am Sunday. Caught 5 bass, 1 catfish, and one sac a lait. Caught a 9 pounder dragging a jig up a ridge from 20 plus to 14. That's deep for me. Progress. Thought I had my 10...

Fished this afternoon for about five hours. The bass are up extremely shallow in six inches to four feet of water for the most part. The majority are on there spawning beds preparing to spawn for the most part, with a few still under deeper docks on points. The total numbers was fifty-three bass, with the sizes being everywhere between under a pound and a chunky 4.1. Most of the bass were caught on the Ned rig, but about a quarter of them ate a 3/8 ounce black blue jig with a black zoom super chunk trailer. The jig was dragged along the bottom over spawning beds and the Ned rig was skipped under dock and dragged slowly across the bottom. It was just an all around fun day with the bass biting so well and the warm weather to boot. I should be able to get out fishing tomorrow afternoon. Several of the fish I caught coughed up crawdads, and one had a large shad tail sticking out it's mouth. I am surprised the bass ate the big shad, the bass was about fourteen inches and the shad was at least seven inches long. After breaking a trd off in a bush on the shoreline and watching it fall out of the Bush into the water, I retied and and went back to fishing. A minute or so later, I caught a small bass in the same area that was badly hooked in the gills so I had to rip it out. I kept the bass as it was legal and would have died anyways, and later when cleaning it I found my trd in the basses stomach! It must have been mine, since the jig head had the wire keeper that I make. I have never before caught a bass with a lure in it's stomach, let alone my own.

Seems like if you're a beginner, you buy a swimbait, and go test it out, you'll catch a big one. It happened to me too two years ago when I bought my first swimbait. Definitely have to winch them in and keep their head down, swimbait fishing is high risk, high reward. Keep up the good work, bull shad swimbaits get picked on a lot but I like mine and have caught PLENTY of nice fish with it!

If you like to take pictures of your catch when fishing alone, invest a couple of bucks in an inexpensive, small tripod like a gorilla pod. Set it up on the ground, a rock, a tree stump, wrap the legs on a tree branch or a fence. Set the timer, and take your shot. No need to lay the fish on the ground.

Picked up a Megabass S-Crank in GG Bass. Also an Imakatsu Flappin' Sonic and an Imakatsu Wind Killer Bill in pearl white. I guess the the surprising news is that I've been awake for over an hour and haven't bought a trick darter yet.

Put down the bass stuff and went for some gills this morning. Caught a ton of really big gills!! It was fun! Jeff

No I didn't lose it haha Anyone else have photos of fish that really wanted that crankbait/jerkbait/lipless etc?

What were they biting on for you? As for river smallmouth, I managed this hog in the river this past friday. Pre spawn belly with huge shoulders on her. Very healthy fish, she's covered in foam, I didn't get a chance to wash it off before the picture but the colors were amazing.

Well if you're talking soft body paddle tail, Keitech reins supreme.

I do a mixture of both flake and no flake, I just look at the color options before I order or craft a skirt and try to visualize what would match what I am trying to mimic the best. I haven't mixed tinsel type material in yet but may in the future. What may be more interesting is trying some EP fibres or some holo fusion from my fly tying stash, it may give the jig some more bulk. Attached are a few of my creations. The swim jigs are to match a spinnerbait that has worked well for me and perch. The other jigs are to match minnows, carp, perch, and the bucktail jigs were just fun. The obviously not bass jigs are examples of the materials I pull and may use in the future.

Hello Ron and Welcome to Bass Resource ~ Stripers are a Good Time A-Jay "Pity me. That’s my wife. Those are my kids and I sell women’s shoes. I was dead before I got here. A-Jay

My avatar is Al Bundy. What's your point? Welcome to bass resource

That's an old pic. This one is from yesterday, no bass in this one. Nothing like cold water panfish. Point I'm trying to make is a little bit of dirt isn't that bad. Watch the way some of these showboaters hoist their bass and swing them around for a photo op. I'm surprised I don't catch more fish with broken jaws. On the other end of the spectrum you have these fly fishermen who handle the 6" brook trout they catch like they are fragile eggs. What would be hilarious is to watch one of the fly fishermen do everything he could not to touch the fish during the unhooking process and then immediately after the release see it get eaten by another predator.LOL OP, Nature is not a friendly place

Key thing about braid, is to wind it onto your reel really tight. You want to pack it on so that you can't wedge your fingernail in it. That way, it can't dig into itself when you snag something, or get a backlash. I use 50# Smackdown for most braid applications. It's extremely easy to cast, so the switch over from mono should be seamless. Hope that helps!

Got this nice female last night at my little pond

Heading down for a 4 day adventure this afternoon. Air Temps already mid 80's and if the wind is not between 10-15 the Hydrilla gnats carry ya off.

First two good ones of the year.

It's been corrected over, and over, and over, and over again, and in the description of the video, and then again about 4 dozen times in the comments section of the video page on Youtube. I'm surprised people are still mentioning it, given it's mentioned and corrected dozens of times.

Thank you for the response, nice bass. Jig fishing can be addictive! Tom

A 6 ft deep pond in South Dakota will winterkill most likely. ClearCreek

Blackwater Toray BAWO polyimde mono and Sunline Armilo Defier Nylon mono are both premium lines that meet your needs. Tom

Most probably, the bass will shake the lure and lose it. Or, worst case is the lure may block his throat and he may not be able to feed. You'll never know.

That's great to know. That is true I have never found one either now that you say that. Thanks for the reply.

First pic is pretty much all of what I was throwing in but i am sure there will be a few extras. The other pictures are some closer up ones. If there is something specific you like to use let me know I might have some. Please PM me your address and i will try to ship out Monday.

I like to see the glass half full. You hooked the fish and lost the battle. The Bass does win its share of the battles. You have learned from the experience and the next big one is in the boat. I feel your pain. It's happened to me too. Might again. Have a great evening.

Drop me a PM with your address. I've got a SpiderWire tackle bag I no longer use. Give it a good home.

That may be the definition of "oxymoron".

Tournament today. Caught fish all day in a channel swing by the mouth of a cove. Saw tons of buck bass preparing beds with females not far off. Water temp 60-62. Didn't finish inn the money but caught more fish than anyone else so had a great day! Tight lines

Quick delete this so your boss doesn't find out

These were caight on long lake this morning

Raider kept showing up on our doorsteps naked and covered in motor oil begging us to spank him with a stolen ladle. We had to put an end to it.

A few spinnerbaits for the Rebel collection!

BBQ Melon. A-Jay

Hmmmm, 30 lb braid .......... ain´t that a lil bit too thin ? But what the hell do I know ? in my neck of the woods I wouldn´t fish a jig with anything less than 50 lb braid, that is, if I were to fish with braid. Do I fish with braid ? yes I do sometimes in some places, but to me 30 lbs is light fishing and I use 30 lb braid because it´s like 6-8 lb monofilament diameter which doesn´t kill the deadly action some baits have that immediately dies when you tie them to something thicker.

I've been a long time fan of MegaStrike. It's probably just confidence thing for me, but I never use soft plastics without it.

Items in your order Qty Price Daiwa Tatula 100 Baitcasting Reel TATULA100P SKU: DTATULA100P 1 $149.95 Dobyns Champion Extreme HP 7'4" Heavy Casting Rod SKU: DX744 C FH 1 $349.99 Subtotal $499.94 Earn Points 350 Points Shipping & Handling $0.00 Discount -$149.95 Grand Total $349.99 Been drooling over that rod for some time....when they said 'Free Tatula' with purchase....well....it was all over...the monkey wins

I think the best rod under $150 is the Ugly Stik.

I say this in all sincerity, fishing a jig is the easiest thing to do but the hardest to learn. When I was teaching my grandson how to fish a jig, we started with small jigs, I suggest something like the Strike King Bitsy Bug with the bitsy craw trailer. The reason they are hard to learn is that they aren't a numbers bait, they tend to get bit by larger fish on average and during a tough bite smaller fish that would bite a worm will often pass a jig by without as much as looking at it. Bites are going to be one of 3 distinct ways, the first is the "thump", that is the one we all like, there is no mistake on whether it was a bite as it just about rips the rod from your hands, these are the ones you get the least. The second type of bite is the "tap-tap" this is one you get most of the time and there is no mistake, you will know when you get this type of bite. The 3rd type, and the one that is the hardest to detect, is the "extra weight" or "weeds" bite, you'll often get this type of strike when dead sticking (letting it sit still for a minute or so) a jig, you begin to move the jig slowly and it feels like it is bogged down with weeds of something else that feels "mushy", these are missed by the novice jig fisherman but once you catch that first fish on a jig, that is when it gets much easier. I remember when I started fishing a jig, it was with a 1/2oz Arkiy style jig and I remember thinking that the fish in my waters won't eat that since it is so big. I fished with it for a full day and nothing so the next day I decided to only make a few casts and then forget about it, and on my second cast I felt the "tap-tap" and I set the hook and it was my first largemouth on a jig and we didn't have hand held scales back then but we did have a tape measure and it was my first bass that was over 17", the fish went 20" and I was a jig fishing fool since, that was 1981 or 82.

The ozark river smallmouth are gonna hammer these babies

Have y'all seen mikeybalzz fishing on you You Tube? He's a young guy with a lot of style, and catches a lot of big mamas in the thick stuff on Lake O in Florida.

American LegacyBee American Legacy

I would say in general if I am fishing to release yeah I try not to touch or mess with the fish no more than necessary. Unfortunately for the decent eating size ones I am like the bad dream for them as they end up on my table.

I agree as some call them your confidence baits would be first as you know you will use them. And I agree with loudcherokee a LTB or MTB subscription would be a great way to get some nice lures for a reasonable price. Also search around the flea market here. I have seen some nice deals here and in the clearance/sale section of many of the bait websites. Sebile clearance priced baits Cabelas Footloose, Bandit 100, and 200 Series I also find a lot of lures on clearance at my local Walmart.