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I took a trip up north with some buddies to catch some smallies. This was our first time at this lake and it for sure won't be our last. Air temp was 45ish, water was between 47-50, winds were 10-15 everyday. We targeted wind blown banks and points. I was throwing a Megabass vision 110 magnum in sexy french pearl on 10 lb flouro with a 7'2" poison adrena. I caught more 4-5 pounders in 3 days than I have in my whole life combined. Biggest fish went 6+ on the boga. These we're the most flawless smallmouth I've ever seen. This was the kind of trip that has me searching for a cabin up there to call my own. Also caught a 22 inch 5 pounder that we we're told was a male.

Aaaaand the topwater season begins for me...a not-too-bad one on the LC gunfish:

Hand feed them the fish you catch to befriend them, then you can have them attack anyone fishing your spot due to their loyalty to you.

You are correct about the X-Fast being better suited for jigs and t-rigs. It should also be good for just about any single hook application. As for another combo. You seem to be set on the CT in another gear ratio, you're on the right track here as well. I think a good idea would be a CT in 8.1 ratio and pair this reel with your existing rod. The extra IPT will be a good idea for this combo. I would then use the current 6.3 and pair it with a rod more suited to moving baits, maybe a mod-fast action. This will give you a good start to cover just about anything you need.

Short video from Gardner last week. Everyone in the group caught fish pretty well with a few nice ones mixed in. We caught them on variety of baits, the big fish was caught on a jig and was just shy of 4 lbs.

Around here 5'-9' feet of water is usually covered in thick milfoil, coon tail, or other assorted grasses, so any thing that dives down into it is an exercise in frustration and futility. Early in the year when it's only a couple feet tall, I use a lipless crank that I let sink into the grass and "rip" it out or a suspending jerkbait that hovers over the top of the grass. Then later, once the grass starts getting near the surface, I use a squarebill that will dive down a couple feet, tick the top of the grass, and use a pause and pop retrieve to trigger strikes. I will also parallel the "wall" of grass on the deep side with a 5xd, letting it bang bottom, and/or get hung on random clumps of grass out side the main weed bed and again use a "pause and rip" to trigger a bite. I'll do the same on the shallow inside grass line with a squarebill, or an ultra shallow diving crank that only goes down a foot or so. In rocky area's of this depth zone, or where the grass is a little more sparse, a 3xd gets the call, I'll toss it right up to the bank and let it bump and grind all the way back to the boat. Some guys like flat sided balsa bodied baits for this in cold water, like a shad rap, etc...but I have found the 3xd to out fish them on my home lake, no matter what time of year. My favorite baits/colors for each situation listed are: Lipless: 1/2 oz Strike King Red Eye Shad in Chili Craw for stained water, and Natural Bream for clear. Jerkbaits: SK KVD 200 in Yellow perch on sunny days as it's translucent, and Natural bream on cloudy days, as it's a solid color. I tend to reserve jerkabaits for clear water conditions. Squarebills: SK KVD 1.5 in spring, in natural bream in clear water, orange belly craw in stained water. I switch to the 2.5 when I am looking for a big bite, or if this bite is on fire. I'll alternate between the 1.5 and 2.5 all year long depending on the mood of the fish. During our summer algae blooms, I switch to Chart. black back on cloudy days, and Chart. Sexy Shad on sunny days. 3xd's + 5xd's: I like Sexy Ghost Minnow in clear water, Chart. sexy shad in stained water on sunny days, Chart. belly craw on dark days in stained water, and Rootbeer any time smallmouth come out to play. That's my K.I.S.S. approach to cranking from the inside grass line (usually 4-6 feet) through the grass, and then the out side edge (usually 8-12' feet)

Finally get to take a picture without the Huk jacket. That one had the length of a 5 pounder and the belly of a 3 pounder. Looks like the spawn is underway on Lk St Clair. Another swimbait fish.

Today I had a few hours to walk the river .. my buddy and I got into a few river smallmouth .. some bed fish !!

Sooooo...I don't think I caught the fish that shook me off the other night, but I did catch a nice one! My best friend was here for this catch as well and we both agreed that this probably wasn't the fish we saw. It could be, but to me this fish didn't come close to the sheer size I saw when the other one jumped. Even in the case that this is the fish I lost, it's still the second biggest fish I've ever caught at 7 pounds even. When we got to the pond this morning, I offered to let my best friend and my brother take the canoe out since it doesn't fit three people very well. I walked down to the dock while they were getting the canoe, and caught a nice three pound bass on my second cast, using a Castaic BD gunfish imitation topwater. A three pounder is a nice fish any day for me, and the other guys were super jealous that I had caught one so early. They launched the canoe, and I kept fishing. They weren't twenty feet away from the dock when I fired a long cast to an opposite bank and got slammed. Not only was it a topwater blowup and on a long cast, I had a spinning rod with 8 pound line. It was an incredibly fun fight. After I landed her, the bite shut off like light switch and the other guys never even had a chance to set the hook. I realize that I caught her on a small private pond, but I still had a blast doing so even if it wasn't quite as hard as catching a 7 pounder on a lake. Annndddd I can't get the pictures vertical ?

For me it's still the venerable little 'ol Pop R.. It's been around for years for a reason. Mike

In most cases, no management is the best management because 'man' is the spoiler, not Mother Nature. Having otters is a natural indication of a good fish supply. If the fish population became depleted, the otters would have no choice but to move on. Simply put, a high otter population indicates a high fish population. On a low note though, the problem with the Wallkill River is not the fish population but the health of the fish. By all accounts, the Wallkill is sky high in phosphorus as well as fecal coliform, which are both man-induced. One can only feel sorry for the otters. Roger

Cast to catch video of a nice Wisconsin bass, caught on a 8.3" Mr. Zorba perch glide bait.

I remember an older kid who stopped me in the hall and asked, "Do you want a piece of abc gum?" Immediately, I was suspicious - upperclassmen don't deign to speak to those beneath them. "What's abc gum?" "Already Been Chewed!" he yelled in my face. Then he spun me around and gave me a wicked noogie. Chalk that up to a rite of passage. Let's fast forward fifty years and float me on Quabbin Reservoir. The weather had been kinda funky for a stretch and this day was supposed to be cloudy with variable winds. Maybe the smallmouth would like an abc TRD. One great feature of Z-Man's proprietary plastic, ElaZtech, is that dozens of bass can chew on a piece before it needs to be replaced. It's likely the jig will be lost long before the appeal of an ElaZtech bait is gone. I've read that you can remove a TRD from a Ned head jig and put it back on bassackwards for a few more fish. Game plan for the day was to check my milk run of flats, ridges and humps, but I wasn't expecting particularly active late pre spawn smallies (water temps: 55.4º - 56.1º) without sun and wind. At the first location, a sandy, rocky ridge that drops off into deep water, I tried a deep Shadow Rap Shad, a T-rigged Hula Grub and a Biffle Bug on a football swing jig. What they wanted was a TRD on a 3/32oz. Ned head cast from Do-its Midwest Finesse Jig Mold. At another spot I was really ready for them to go nuts over a Super Fluke Jr. walking the dog a foot under the surface. They ate a Ned rig that was dragged, paused and made to tremble on the bottom at depths of 10' - 20'. On a long time favorite rock hump with a precipitous drop off one side, I hoped the smallies would be on top looking for prey. That meant the Fluke or Duo Realis Spin Bait 80 would get 'em, right? Wrong. There were a couple of good fish here but I needed to go over the deep edge to show them a bait. The first took the TRD differently than most of the other bass' bites on this bait: during a pause, I saw the line jump. I reeled down and swept the rod to the side. Remember, when using fine wire hooks (.031) and light line set firmly but don't overdo it. She weighed 4.89 lbs. I lost a second fish, another good one. I had been bumping rocks and hadn't taken the few seconds to check the hook. The point had turned. When I got home I stripped to bare skin and gave myself 40 lashes with a 7" Senko for this lapse of diligence. So, in all it was a fun day. There were five smallies landed beside the ones who got their pictures taken. I would have preferred the fish to have been up and active enough to have taken a livelier presentation than the drag-and-pause, but I'll tell you this, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: When the fish are non-aggressive . . . Ned rules!

After hearing @roadwarriortalk about the power of the rage tail menace on the Tennessee river, I bought some over the winter. For some reason I have only thrown it once until yesterday. We started fishing around 10 am with the water temp around 56. Current was moving pretty good but not as bad as in the afternoons. First fish was a dink smallmouth that hit the rage tail hard and wouldn't let go. Then got a nicer one that bit the same way, maybe 17 inches or so. We got to a deep hole and I was just sitting down dredging the bottom and THUMP!!! Set into the slowest fish of all time but it was heavy. Up comes nice flathead cat, turned into a handful after it saw the boat

Found some river smallies today ... was hard to tell if they are staging or actually spawning. 62 water degree temps. Most were between 16-19 inches on wacky worms... one 20 incher.

It's as tough as I've ever seen it right now. Out of 244 teams yesterday, it only took 14lbs to get a check. Only 4 bags over 20lbs. We had 12lbs or so, didn't weigh as we knew it wasn't enough. Never got a big bite all day. The worst part is I'm pretty sure I found the winning school, but I couldn't make them fire up. Missed one on a jig first cast and caught a 2.5lber out of them then that was it. And by what I saw on my graph, I'd be willing to bet there was 30lbs swimming around down there.

I use 50lb braid and fish it on my frog rod. It's a heavy bait that needs stout equipment.

Over 58,700 members on BR - perhaps only a few will "get it"... So - the explanation: How to get the classic offset-handle style BUT with a modern blank? AND, keep it all in the family? Easy - start with late-60s/early-70s Garcia Conolon rods, salvage the handles, add modern Abu Veracity blanks - presto - form AND function! How to do it? Buy some old Conolon rods off of eBay that look like this: cut off the fiberglass blanks, strip the original handles until they look like this: send the lock rings in the photo above over to Hawgtech for anodizing, repaint the handles like this: THEN, send the handles and a couple Veracity rods to DVT for some "hybridization" ! So, what did I end up with? Well, with the slow IPTs of the Ambassadeur reels, what is their niche? For me, that would be cranking and slow-rolling spinnerbaits and bladed swim jigs. To accomplish that, I started with a 7' Veracity Winch Med-Mod, and a 6'6" Veracity MH-F. Due to how the handles turned out and getting the Veracity blanks married up with the handles - we are left with a 6'10" Med-Mod and a 6'7" MH-F. Perfect matches for the Ambassadeurs. MY THANKS to Mike (DVT) for taking on this very weird project ! I have a whole bunch of classic Ambassadeur round reels that will be rotating on and off these Conolon/Veracity rods in the future...

We all have developed our own methods of hook setting and timing when to hook set. I have been fishing bass jigs since the late 50's, before soft plastics were popular. When you consider that I never had a bass of any size get gut hooked fishing a bass jig with a skirt and trailer of any type. Hooked in the back of the throat past the crunchers, yes. Down the throat in the stomach, no. I had bass pick up a jig while working out a backlash and watched the line moving off and reeled in all the slack line and got a hook set with the jig still in the mouth. Soft plastics fished with a sliding bullet weight, split or slip shot, drop shot, fly lined Senko with no weight, nail weight, I have had hundreds of bass get gut hooked, the hook out of sight down the basses throat. This happens regularly with new bass anglers until they develope hook set timing. Bach in the 60's it was common practice to let the bass run with the worm for a count of 10 before hook setting. I am in the camp you can't hook set to fast with jigs or worms. One exception is Spotted bass that tendency to peck at jigs with big soft plastic claws trailers. If you bring back a jig with the trailer ripped or plastic worm pulled down or off the hook, you may need to adjust your timing a second or two. Tom

LOL. I don't purposely shake fish off very often. I'll defer to you guys on this one.

Decided to do a larger bait in that foiled perch pattern. This is a 6 inch version, again done in cedar. It will have fins when finished, but I paint in stages between coats of epoxy. That way, any mistakes can be wiped off with alcohol like a dry erase board, and you can start over without painting the entire bait again. For this one, I carved gill plates and used a mesh material under the foil for scaling. It's highlighted in transparent green, which turns a cool antifreeze/Mountain Dew color over the gold leaf. Pics before and after paint.

ROF12 for sure unless it's really shallow. Like it's been mentioned, you have to reel painfully slow to keep a 5 anywhere other than on the surface. You can still crawl a 12, but you can reel it a little faster also. Get the 50 Spro rat, I like Hippie rat (morning dawn). The bigger baits just have more drawing power, especially with surface baits it seems.

Get the ROF 12, I got both and the ROF 5 is ..... made for people with more patience than Jesus Christ.

If I could only use one bait it would be a 40 or 50 rat. All times of the day and by best large fish producer

high 50s in the morning over the last week. Keep in mind, these are mostly small eutrophic inland lakes.

Love the Spro Little John MD. Citrus Shad kills in my lakes.

I got out this morning right at day light here in arizona. Almost to hot now to fish during the day. But i started off throwing a 9" MS slammer with nothing to show for it. Saw a few small shad bust out in the middle of the river. So i was like hmmmmm thought to myself that i should tie on a lunker punker. Well glad i did. Tied on the 8" punker and hit two nice ones. They were randomly busting every 5-10 minutse and both that i caught were right in the general area i saw a fish bust. Caught over 13 ft of water right dead center of the river on long casts Got both fish on video which i will be posting later.

Just got done with a weekend trip to lake seminole, Didnt catch anything the first day and my boats motor about flew off the transom, so I had to get towed back and fix that.... but the next day I caught four banging a sqaurebill off stumps! That lakes awesome, for sure gonna go back this year. This was the biggest one I lucked into, sorry about the picture being flipped sideways...

Curious what you guys have as favorite mids. I think overall mine would be the Rapala DT Flat 7 and the old #7 Fat Rap.

X2, you should get a moderate rod for treble hooks. This would cover most situations with these 3 rods. Once you start to get into, while you regain experience you will start learning the power actions you like for each technique.

go with the 50 if there's one thing i've learned about swimbaits you always end up wanting bigger

I like the green shad color in the 68. I fish the weedless model everywhere because I fish it with more confidence and less worried about hangups so I'll put it where it needs to be to get bit.

Fished Chinook fish and wildlife area for the first time today in a canoe. Only fished a few hours, had two bites and caught one small one on a weightless senko:

My biggest swimbait bass to date ate a Slammer in a pond so small I could easily cast across it. Bass will eat swimbaits anywhere they live and as long as they eat other fish.

There are no trout where I live, Hudds catch some really nice fish .... so much for "matching the forage closely"

Cabelas runs some pretty good deals on both their PFD's and Guidewear around Christmas time. Upwards of 40-50% off

Did that, a couple of times... A safer way to bend it back is to place a flat piece of wood on each side of the skeg, and clamp the skeg between the pieces of wood with a heavy duty clamp or two, and tighten it enough to put a lot of pressure on it. Leave it on overnight, and if it hasn't straightened out add more pressure. You can't add to much pressure (within reason). The wood and clamps spreads force evenly over the entire skeg, which has less chance of breaking it than pounding on it with a mallet. Worked for me a couple of times, and I have yet to break a skeg.

It's not his job to make her happy. She needs to find that within herself. OP should throw her a bone once in awhile and go fishing.

Sunglasses are touchy.Ive tried on 100 pairs and have liked maybe 3 pairs.Best fit for my face are Maui Jims

I'd have to go with the Bomber 6A (citruse) followed by the Rapala DT 7 (parrot) Roger

Looks like you're only bent and not broken, though you might end up at the latter trying to straighten it. I had a much worse scenario, but can happily report that the Skeggard works fine, just as advertised.

Rapala DT6 Storm Wiggle Wart Bandit 200 Norman Middle N Bomber 6A

No.

I assemble my own using BOSS swim jig heads, and skirts I make my self. Usually in a pattern to look like a bluegill or a yellow perch. But I make and use some black and blue ones, and white ones too, as they work well at times in certain conditions. I am pretty simple in my trailer use. I like a SK Rage tail grub, a 3" chigger craw (the 3" flaps more than the 4"), a Yum 4" swimming dinger, and a new to me experiment with trailers this year that has produced very well so far, is the tail of a 7" Power worm cut 4 "ribs" up from where the curly tail portion starts. So far, it's out produced the other trailers combined, and bonus...it's a cheap way to find a new use for power worms that have the head all torn up.

I'm goin' with "perfect" for top water :-)!

Dwight, I know why you liked my post. You want to know where I caught my smallmouth so you can catch some to use for bait to catch your smallmouth!

Bandit 200 Rebel Deep Wee-R SK 4 series Allen

Been out of Lake Ridge a number of times. (Renting and kayaking.) Sandy Run very accessible from there. Loading is a pain unless you are renting their motor and battery. I usually row to the ramp and load there if it isn't busy. Spent a few hours Friday on Gunston Cove. Only open water fish were from throwing traps into bait balls. But the bigger girls were very tight in laydowns. Pulled four bass out of one tree. This was the fourth one.

This is my second year using a culling system. I really like it. It takes very little time to put the tag on a fish and, at least for me, it saves a lot of time when I go to cull. Honestly my favorite part is how easy it makes getting the fish out for weigh in. I can grab the float, follow the cable right down to the fish, lip them, and pull them straight out. No chasing them around the livewell.

I highly doubt that but ya never know.. some people are idiots. I'm going out Sunday evening somewhere in the North Metro, probably George. Happy opener everyone!