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So I posted a public mea culpa for showing off in sight of a bank fishing dad & his sons the other day and decided to do something to balance out any bad karma. My buddy's sister was in town for the day & he couldn't get off work, so I offered to take her out fishing in his place. She is an avid fisherwoman, pretty skilled at most power techniques, so while it wasn't a complete act of charity, I figured it was a good deed nonetheless. We launch before daybreak & I get her off a point with some isolated cover. She gets a blowup on a topwater immediately, so I tell her to toss a wacky Senko to the same spot (she rarely fishes soft plastics or jigs). She hooks up, ridding herself of any possible skunk minutes into the day. Now I am fishing as well, but not so much to catch fish in front of her, but to figure out what is going on and then get her into a position to catch more. She is switching between a Jitterbug, a square bill and the wacky Senko (which she has quickly fallen in love with) while I am throwing a Ned rig to try to determine what depth most of the fish are at. I make a cast up to a seawall that hasn't produced a fish in 3 weeks, when my line starts to go sideways. I set the hook & it keeps going sideways. This massive head & shoulders come out of the water & my passenger's jaw drops. She has never seen a bass this big and is stunned, to the point that she doesn't reel in the senko and it gets tangled with my line. With the fish at the boat, I undo the tangle and lip this 8 lb beauty (http://www.bassresource.com/bass-fishing-forums/topic/155892-uh-yep-the-ned-rig-is-awesome/?page=2#comment-2010527). My guest is going nuts, she really doesn't care that I caught the fish, she is just so happy to see a big fish. It gives me some solace that she is happy for me instead of being jealous. As the morning progressed, it appeared most of the fish had moved deeper or under the shady docks, so I spent a few minutes showing her how to skip cast. She did okay, some of the casts went awry and probably spooked off fish, but it didn't matter. She caught 7 bass skipping docks with the Senko while I kept the boat in position & made casts out to deeper water picking up fish here & there. After a while, she told me she had to make some business calls, but didn't want to get off the water. She asked if it was okay that she get on her cell for about an hour while I continued to fish. No problem, in fact I though it might be worth while for her to watch me skip some more docks, maybe there were things in the technique she could learn by observing instead of me telling. Yeah, you guessed it, I hit a hot stretch of docks with 6 fish on successive casts. While on the phone, she is giggling as I shrug my shoulders. I finally make a cast that results in no bite only to have the next cast hook up with a 5 lb, 5 oz brute (picture below). As I landed "her fish", she rolled her eyes at me, shaking her head and smiling as she chatted with a client. As soon as the call ended, she said "The hell with business, I can't let you catch any more of my fish!!" She ended the day with another dozen fish, one just under 3 lbs. The Senko is now her favorite lure & she told me she had a wonderful day, even though her "guide" took all the big fish.

I also did a good deed today, i was out at the lake unloading my boat and there was a kid around 18 years old fishing, all he had was a handful of lures and his rod. He was mexican just like me so we had a nice talk and got along really well, good kid. As i was about to head out i asked if he wanted to join, he couldnt beleive it. He had never been on a boat. Got him on some fish he caught a nice 6 pounder his new pb. And now i have a new friend and fishing partner, also he took my advise in a very good way and changed lures as i told him what the fish wanted. I feel good and im glad i made his day. Next time i head out hell get an invite

As the title says, it's been a bad week. I'm a blessed man, and certainly blessed more than some I know, and I really shouldn't complain given my mistake week were due to very trivial things but I digress. It's good to keep in the back of my mind that I'm heading out in the kayak Saturday morning to do some fishing. For all the granular details we put into fishing, sometimes it's about the simplicity. It's fun to debate the best colors for a craw trailer, or get opinions on the best and latest rods available to swing, and I'm not minimizing the importance of having a reel that fits you perfectly and helps you land your personal best..... But sometimes it's nice to go fish someplace hidden, no cars, no computers, no people, a pond where it's easy to catch them, and just sit back, listen to the birds announce the rising sun, and just let a bad week dissipate like the wake of your boat or plop of your Jitterbug hitting the surface. It's almost like you can take the cares of a workweek, tie them to the end of your line, cast as far as you can, and if you're lucky.....you'll get them hung on a treebranch

Hooked into this bad boy today using cut bluegill for bait. Bass fishing was slow so I decided to toss a line out and let it sit. Took awhile to get it in but man was I stoked for this fish. I've never caught anything over 6 pounds. This flathead weighed 23 pounds 14 ounces. LC

You cant do much about it but you did the right thing. Its insane how heartless some people are towards their dogs. I wouldnt have started a fist fight just because I'm not that kind of a person but I definitely would have said something along the lines of "if you cant treat a dog like a loved one don't own one"

When I find bass doing that, I use a carolina rig with corn. Gets them every time!

Nope. Now that basspro owns cabelas they will have less competition, so there already crazy prices will likely go even higher. Luckily for us there is still tackle warehouse, but I am going to miss Cabela's bargain cave.

To the bank, to the bank, Raider's going to the bank. Superintendent on the job I just left, got in my face and cussed me the other day. He had been threatening everyone out there for the better part of a week. Anything you did/do he is gonna fire you eventually. We hadn't had a stewart set up yet, so he just constantly violated the contract and ran his mouth. After conferring with some other brothers, we decided to handle it through the proper method and not use, "the old ways" also known as the "Chicago methods". Anyway, I'm not getting into the specifics. I was dog cussed and fired, I was polite until the firing. I gave him a piece of my mind and told him where he can go. Then I went on my merry way. Well, ooooppps, I was terminated with no union representation, I also had my personal space violated and was cussed by managment(who isn't supposed to speak to me anyway). Well friends, Raider gets paid the duration of said job and can go work else where while still getting paid. All because I held my tongue and didn't shatter his jaw, for yelling at me.

This one put a big ol smile on my face! Caught on a lucky craft sammy, my favorite topwater lure. It was tough fishing today and i didn't have access to any of the deeper water. Only caught this one and lost one. It was still a WONDERFUL DAY!!

My best for today came at noon. I was deadsticking a palm tree out 100+' and 20fow. While that was resting I was throwing paddletail with another set-up got 2 casts in when I noticed other line going tight. Dropped set-up in hand grabbed resting rod and set hook on a 3#10oz 18"+. My Fenwick World Class 7'6" MH/F rod didnt skip a beat handled it easily. With this rod I could feel every movement the bass made coming up sideways shake rod performing extremely well just a bit too strong, maybe.

Just used Expiditor service last month. They sent the new rod, I sent the old one back in the same tube and they paid shipping. It cost $100 total! Jeff

Right on brother. Sounds like you got it going your way. I'm happy for ya. Work is nice when you enjoy what you are doing, and the people you work around. It took me awhile to figure that out. I also found a group to travel with, and work at home with, that raise as much hell as myself. It makes it very pleasant and fun. Why work somewhere you hate and be miserable all the time. Life is too short for that. I am Nomadic as all hell with the way I work. I prefer 2 week short calls. I swoop in, work my tail off for 14 days straight. Then leave with a fat wallet. Then I go do it again. There's nothing wrong with long calls, (anything over 2 weeks). I just prefer not to take them unless, as currently, I need money for some kind of expense that savings won't cover. I love my work life and love the massive amounts of family time I get right now. I mean how else can I work for 9 months out of the year, spend 3 months off work, and still cover my expenses, bills, and 4 children? I got this game figured out.

Here is an example of that occasional larger fish, I caught her yesterday. She weighed 8 lbs even, hit a California Craw TRD on a 1/15oz Shroomz head. It is amazing how such a small, simple lure convinces so many big fish to munch down. I imagined her cruising past the TRD & just opening her mouth to filter it in like a Baleen whale...

This is a no brainer. Keitech swing impact fat.

Please please TW....DO NOT SELL!!!

Nice Michigan bass. 5.5 - 6 lbs on that scale.

Spent the week on HHI again and got out with my guide buddy, as I tend to do The wind made it tricky to get to the good tarpon spots so we chose Plan B, which was targeting schools of monster Jack Crevalles with surface presentations. I'd caught Jacks before but not like this. Someone really needs to explain to my why people look down on this fish. They roam in voracious packs, they eat both live bait and artificials, you can target them on light tackle, watching them eat is an adrenaline rush, and they fight like crazy. What's not to like? And it's much cheaper to target these guys than to fly halfway around the world to target Giant Trevally We went 3 for 4 after I pulled the hook on one of them. The big boy was 33 lbs, the other two were 24-25 lbs each. Not a bad consolation prize after the silver king didn't cooperate!

I were a little faster with the camera. I was replacing one of my docks on Tuesday when a pickerel beached itself on the floating dock while chasing a dragon fly. The fish ie there for about 10 seconds as if it were figuring out how to remedy it's situation. Then twitched into the water before I even thought, self, get the camera and film this. This is morning, while out flipping some lays downs, I pitched my craw imitation into a lay down. While it sank and I anticipated a 15lb monster to inhale my bait a starling landed on my rod. About 4 feet from the handle it perched. my first reaction was to blurt out, you gotta be kiddin. After staring at it for a bit, self remembered camera. Problem being.... Rod was in right hand and phone was in right pocket. I pondered for a second... Do I change hands with the rod or reach around with the left? Not being much for reach arounds I opted for the hand switch. Bird didn't like that. Though I have no photographic evidence of either event I have neat stories. The old man witnessed the the pickerel beaching but I was all by my lonesome with my new feathered friend. maybe self will be bettered prepared with camera in the future.

In regards to the Ned Rig, to quote the Monkees & Smashmouth, "I'm a Believer". My lake is in post spawn, water temps in the low 70's. The last few weeks, I haven't done a good job imitating the fry that many of the bass seemed to be keying on. I'd catch fish, but I knew more were in the area, much more. So I decided to give the Ned rig a shot and in a fit of unusual common sense, bought the 1/16" mushroom jigheads & ZMan TRD worms to use. I figured to give it a fair shake, I should use the recommended version, not some rig I threw together with parts that were "close enough". I started off the day like I often do this time of the year with a topwater bait. In the first hour, I caught 5 bass, 4 on a Pop-R and one on a small swimbait. As the sky lightened a little & it seemed like the bass were starting to move a little deeper, I started in with the Ned rig. Now, going against my original plan, I used a 3" Senko (Green Pumpkin) instead of the ZMan bait. Why? Because I'm an idiot & I like Senko's more than ZMan baits when wacky rigging them. In the next 2 hrs, I used up all 10 Senko's in catching 11 bass. The results were good, but the fish would just destroy the Senko every time. All of the strikes were on the drop, most likely because I was trying to swim the Ned Rig like a fluke, which wasn't producing. So I finally give in & rig up the ZMan TRD, also in Green Pumpkin. Since my only strikes had been on the drop, I decide to stop trying to swim the rig & instead hop it on the bottom. I didn't realize it until later when i was done fishing, but with the TRD, the Ned rig stands straight up off the bottom. Hopping it makes it look like a small minnow picking food off the bottom. BINGO. Over the next 7 hrs., I caught 53 bass (up to 3 lbs) and a 7lb catfish with a beer belly larger than Billy Carter. Even better, all 53 fish were caught on the same single TRD, which I finally had to retire at the end of the day (I think it earned its keep). There were a couple of things about this rig that I wasn't expecting. First, the hook up percentage is very high, I only had about 6 bites that didn't result in a fish. Second, the hook placement in the fish's mouth is deep. Even the smaller fish really choke this bait, most of the hookups were halfway down the mouth in the roof of the mouth as opposed to in the lip. Third, even though it is only 1/16 oz weighted bait, with braid (Nanofil in my case) & a fluorocarbon leader, I felt most of the bites. Part of that may be my experience of using a small weight when fishing Texas rigs, but I think the other part was that the fish pop this bait as if it was a fish that could potentially swim away. I am now a convert to the Church of the Ned Rig, although the name Dookie rig does makes me smile. Below are pictures of the fat catfish and one of the bigger bass with little Mr. Ned sticking out of his mouth like a cigar.

I must be the luckiest guy in the world! I catch more tree limbs than anybody I know!

Go earlier or stay after dark, mid day summer pond bass fishing isn't easy. Tom

I haven't used a cart but i am thinking of getting one for the same reasons. I do know i am not getting a scupper cart as i know it puts added stress on an area of the kayak that is already a weak spot. I do like that one @A-Jay and I might give it a whirl.....hopefully the local cabelas has it in stock or I can do a ship to store. Do you have the aluminum or steel model? The aluminum one is actually cheaper which is what i would want anyways.

The only thing better is a tube sock covered in treble hooks.

That'll work great in the weeds.

man there's some big fish on here this week!

Has been a successful way to keep the stress down since I started fishing a couple years ago.. my wife now suggests to me when I get home that I should go fishing... I love it and her best part is I wasn't even I to fishing when we met so this is all new to her and I still get the freedom a lot desire (brother in laws)

Grab the core and run or give me the name of that shop.

They fall right off and the frog fills with water worse than other brands. It's a shame because it really does look like a real frog and the action is great for a couple minutes. Booyah Pad Crasher for me.

That's horrible. Should've thrown someone off the pontoon and made them tread water for an hour.

Absolutely right on.

Usually when all else fails its best to slow down. Hop a jig along the bottom. Flip a creature or craw bait in the gaps of the weeds. Maybe if you drop somethingon their head they will bite for desert. Have you tried a wacky senko or a shakey head a long the edges? I'm thinking slow and bottom during this phase where the bite slows down.

Snag Proof Ish's Phat Frogs are probably my favorite, but the Booyah Pad Crashers and Popping Pad Crashers are up there, too, and they're cheaper. The Snag Proof Bobby's Perfect Frogs are also quality, and so are Live Target. I guess I don't understand the love for Spro Bronzeeye Frogs. 10 years ago, they opened up the world of frogging to a lot of us, me included, but the design has been improved upon, again and again over the past decade. I have a box full of at least 20 Spros, but I never use them. I hate having to squeeze the water out of them every few casts.

Hit up Miola after work tonight- after a couple weeks of really struggling with some new lakes since moving to the Kansas side, it was really nice to get something figured out. I ended up with about 15 or so (plus a few chatterbait catfish) in a couple of hours biggest being around 18" with at least one more lost of similar size. Fish were on senkos and Neds drifted past the water willow edge switching to a chatterbait as it got later... Threw a buzzbait through sunset without much action, but seeing the moon rise at the ramp tonight had me half tempted to relaunch. Despite the heat it was a good evening to be out. WT 87-90 -Jared

Scumfrog Trophy series Natural Black/Green. 5/8 oz. Learn it.....know it....live it. Not worth a darn at what I call "Finesse Froggin". Light Lilly Pads, lots of open water. It is NOT a substitute for a spook, BUT......if, like me, you throw frogs into the deepest, nastiest cover. This is your man. I Do absolutely nothing to them. I chuck em in as deep as I can them and start bringing them back. I'll usually pause after they land for a few secondsto let that *PLOP* reverberate through the water and then givem a twitch. If no blowup...bring it in a ways slowly and stop. Give a twitch or two. Do that all the way back to the boat. More often than not, I will get a blowup....and about 80% of the blowups equals a fish in the boat. I like other brands but when the slop gets heavy...THIS is what I throw. ps...on sale at Cabelas right now for 4 something. AND...if you use the coupon code 16cave you get an ADDITINAL 10% off and free shipping. They are backordered but yesterday I bought 10 of them.

Here on the Chesapeake Bay we do not have the problems with stumps but we do have a changing tide. Sometimes that can cause a situation that you go to leave a creek and do not have enough water to motor out, or the lily pad field gets too low to motor back to free a stuck lure. Here is my solution. Do a web search for the DotLine Telescopic Pole and the duck foot that goes on it. I keep that pole in my rod locker since it collapses down to 58 inches long. It takes just seconds to snap the duck foot on and then it extends out to 12 foot long.

From Texas used as brood stock. Beautiful fish!! From the site where I found the picture: " This is a 15lb+ fish caught earlier this year by a fellow TFFer "Bassbuster". Since Justin caught the fish, Mike has had it in a small brood pond with another similar class fish also caught earlier this year. Even in the small brood pond he was unable to entice this fish into biting again and had to remove it via sein to relocate it to a larger body of water. He successfully bred one or both fish this spring and now has fingerlings. Talk about genetics!! In any case, I thought I'd share the picture of this rare beast. To the best of my knowledge only a few fish of this size are caught annually across the globe, and a large percentage of them are coming right from our own backyard!"

1st Keitech 2nd fluke twitched

Holy Smokes Dude ~ That Bass has a FREAKISHLY LARGE HEAD ! Congrats on the Frankin-Bass . . . A-Jay

Thank you for the report Bassin225. I fished Housen and 6-mile Friday and Saturday nights. We caught 3 fish Friday and 13 Saturday night. All were good quality fish with the biggest being 7.5lbs and several 4s. I should have caught more but was using a new tungsten bead on my CR and finally determined it was the cause of me braking off 10 or so times. (I do not recommend using tungsten beads) Anyway we fished points and humps in 8-15 fow adjacent to creek channels. The majority of the fish were caught on CR green pumpkin baby brush hogs and TR green pumpkin 6" thumper worms. I will should be up next weekend and will report. Good luck and God Bless...

Wow, reading all these and I just look over at my random needle nose pliers

Irrelevant considering the question at hand.

Mike I wanted to read that heading as "Caught a 13"

When you catch a 15lb bass you get to hold it any way you want!

First off, I wouldn't use my reel to snap a line. A few bad things can happen. If I can't get my lure loose and I have to snap it I would rather give the line slack, wrap it around my hands (with glove) or around my arm with something to protect my skin from getting sliced from the line and pull the line until it is free or snaps. Doing it this way avoids damage to my equipment. As for the original question, I agree with the previous posters.

went to cabela's last night and found some evergreen baits marked down from like $17 to $7.88 and the squarebill was $3.88 so i had to snag a few to try them out! while there, might as well grab a few other things i had on my list....

Overstockbait just got in 20,000 more yamamoto bags. Senkos are marked down to 3.99. They had tons of the popular colors. I got in on quite a few. There's still some good ones left.

If I went a year without a bite I think I'd jump in after them with a broken bottle and a heart full or rage haha

True, I would say for on-the-water knot tying it may be the better choice. But setting up your gear at home before a trip I like to the use the FG. I do not wet the knot at all when tying or cinching it. Reason being is you are not worried about the knot burning itself due to the friction. All the strength comes from the braid digging into the fluorocarbon. I would say wetting it could actually inhibit it from effectively doing so. It seems to me that your issue may be coming from how you finish the knot. All those fingertrap lashings are useless unless the knot is finished properly. The finish is the only thing stopping the tag end from unraveling and undoing every single one of those lashings. Experiment with what works best for you, but what I do is this. After the main lashings I tie a single overhand knot, AT THIS POINT I cinch down the knot. Once you have done this the knot is as strong as it's ever going to be, anything you do afterwords is only going to be to prevent it from unraveling. What I do afterwards is 3 more overhand knots going around BOTH the braid mainline AND the fluoro/mono tag end. Then I do 3 more overhand around JUST the braid mainline. I cinch each of these down individually as I tie them. This builds a kind of "ramp" so that the knot goes through your guides easier and is less likely to come undone. Then I clip the tags.The reason you want all those extra overhand knots is say you only tie one or two, if those overhands come undone the entire knot is compromised and will unravel quite easily, which I suspect is what is happening in your case. If you have 5-6 then if one or two come undone it's not a big deal and the knot is in no danger of unraveling. Watch some videos on how people end the knot, it will probably resolve your issue.

What part of Washington are you in? I'm in south eastern wa. I catch a lot of largemouth on frogs, spooks, rat L traps, jigs. You name it. Depends on your lake. Water color. Conditions etc