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My friend has a cast on his foot so we camped out on the dam of a pond in lawn chairs and finesse fished. 6lb test and hyrdilla doesn't mix well, but I was able to land this fish, measured 20"! Weightless 6" roboworm wacky rigged

My daughter "The Wacky Woman" is in town til the end of this month - so we got out in the West metro this morning. Holy Hanna! She caught a PB 5.91 lb largemouth - just an ounce shy of 6 pounds. Dad was just honored to net it for her

Today must of been a slow day, I couldn't catch a thing Senkos,Real Worms, Frogs,etc. However, right before heading home something told me to use a frog and try said spot on the lake. I'm glad i did because look what i got

All the different wire forms serve a purpose. The reason you don't see many coiled eye wire forms is because they are usually made for jig spinners like the beetle spin. In other words they are used on light wire for the most part and it is because it is a vibration killer. When you have a closed loop you get a stronger bait with a little bit of vibration dampening, the problem with the closed loop is if you are using a line that is limp, it can get wrapped around the loop and cause the line to break. The "R" bend is the best for vibration but it also is the least durable because the line tie is open it allows the blade arm to be pulled open when fighting a fish. The coiled eye doesn't have any areas for the line to wrap and is a durable design but if you are making a bait to handle pike or anything over .031" diameter wire, it will have very little vibration, even with a large blade. If you use a large blade you'll get more of a list to one side or the other and if you slow it down the bait will rock more that vibrate because that doubling of the wire really stiffens the blade arm up but it does make for a durable bait so if you are fishing in clear water the coiled eye will work for a durable bait but if you need any vibration it isn't the best choice.

I'm curious as to why it matters? All I care is that a rod performs as it should and how I expect it to.

I love old school!!! If you look in my 17 1/2 foot long "tackle box" ( lol ), you will find plenty of modern day fishing lures, but lures like a Torpeedo, Zara Spook, a gold body/ black back floating- diving Rapala, Rebel Humpy, or a Cotton Cordell Big O. I still have some of all of these. A sinking jointed Rebel minnow still works, like the blue and chrome ones in my tackle boxes. I wonder how many fish have been caught using a Hula Popper? Grubs are killer baits and they will always be that. Some anglers today may think the Shakey head is a hot new technique, but how many years ago were the Charlie Brewer slider heads first brought out? Remember "the do nothing worm" technique. Sorta fits the image of today's finesse worms.

Get a poppin pad crasher. If you cant walk it at least you can pop it lol

Thank you. Will be my first. I'm older than I look. I have a son who is 27 a step son 24, and a step daughter, who is having the baby is 28. It's going to be a boy. I'm fortunate I still have hair on my head. My brother who is 4 years older than I is bald. If I let my beard grow, it comes in grey.

Older? I'm going to be a grandpa in a week or so. As far as being grumpy, life's too short. Being an a-hole is a different story. I've perfected that.

If y'all really wanna learn how to cast here's ole school way that still works today. Put a 1/4 oz bullet weight , 2/0 hook, & any cheap 6" worm. Adjust your tension knob until your t-rigs hits the floor with zero loose line. Roll up a newspaper till it's about 2 1/2" in diameter, place it under your arm pit. This will force you to keep your elbow tucked by your side & keep you from casting to hard. I guarantee if you practice daily for at least an hour you will master casting!

Had one of the best mornings spent fishing in my life. A friend of mine from church took me out to the local powerhouse chucking wire flies beneath bobbers and it was a blast! In 5 hours we hooked probably 27 fish and landed about 20 of them. Roughly 6 steelhead ranging from 12-18 inches, 9 whitefish ranging from 10-17 inches, 1 dink Atlantic Salmon, and 4 brute Atlantic Salmon in the 20-26 inch range. This guy has these fish dialed in! We threw all fish back besides two whitefish and my first true Atlantic pictured below. This guy weighed just over 6 lbs and measured 25 inches. Literally took 15 minutes to land this beast! Can't thank that guy enough for an unforgettable experience. Will definitely be back for more bobber take-downs in the near future.

Who needs crappie minnows when you have a jerkbait?

When you get out fished by your nephew and lands a 6.2

Hello, I have been lurking here for the last week or so trying to get some reviews on different gear and I finally decided to join up. I currently live in Georgia with my wife and 2 children and am looking to get back into fishing. I grew up in Tennessee and my grandfather had a camp on the Tennessee river so I spent a lot of time there with him fishing from an early age. I quit fishing for quite some time after he died, not for any particular reason other than I did not really have anyone to go with on a regular basis. I moved here in 2000 and my aunt and uncle live on a lake so I would go there on occasion but never really got back into it. My daughter is 6 now and I got her a pole a few years ago and she has enjoyed the trips we have taken so far. My son is 2 and I just got him a little pole and he has taken to it pretty well so far, he likes to press the button and reel it in and I am sure casting will come in time. My grandfather never fished for bass so neither did I so I am trying to learn as much as I can and dive right in so to speak. A friend of mine and I are taking a trip down the Flint river next week and I plan to try my hand at catching some shoal bass, hopefully we will have some luck. I just wanted to say hello and I am including a picture of my daughters first fish, her first words were "Can we eat it?"

Geez it's been hot out lately. Temperatures have been in the mid 90's with the heat index 105+ here in the South Carolina Lowcountry. To make matters worse, the best fishing the past few weeks has been late morning and early afternoon. We bike 1-2 miles out to our favorite lagoons and that gets real old real fast in the heat (I need to buy a bike trailer). On top of all of this, we fish on a golf course that has shut down and all of the banks are overgrown and thick with weeds and the lagoons are all out in the open. It makes it a pain to fish. I did buy a machete to help with that, but last night got stung by a wasp hacking a clearing and that put a damper on the evening. So at 6 a.m. this morning we mixed it up a bit and drove to Jarvis Creek Park on Hilton Head to give their big lagoon a try. The nice part was not having to fish through a thicket and foliage. They had an elevated dock with a walkway down to a slab dock that we were able to fish from. The slab was about 10 inches off the water and there was no railing to have to cast over. The water was a bit stained and had that beaded type green algae throughout so I fished with topwaters while my son tossed a Zoom trick worm. Immediately we noticed we had company. A small gator was hiding in the algae under the elevated dock. Then a 7 footer joined. Then a five footer. Then a six footer. Soon there were 5 alligators around us, but they mainly sat there or cruised a bit. Sometimes they'd swim by the pad reminding us they were there, but it was no big deal. We just fished around them. They didn't even take an interest in my big Whopper Plopper 130 splashing and ripping on the surface. That soon changed. I saw a bass jump in deeper water and with my WP 130 it was easy to get the lure close to that area. Within a few casts a bass hit the bait and I could tell that it was a decent sized fish. The only problem was that it was a L-O-N-G cast and two of the bigger gators immediately noticed the commotion. It was now a race to land my catch. It was a 50 year old man and his Pflueger Trion versus two prehistoric throwbacks. I wan't worried about losing a fish to an alligator, but there's no way I want to lose a new $16 lure! It was close. I'm reeling, the fish is fighting, the gators are closing, and my 11 year old son is panicking. I've got one eye on my catch and one eye on the gators. "Daddy - look out!" Matt is shrieking, as if I needed the added pressure. Fifteen feet to land the bass. The gators are picking up speed. Ten feet. Matt has the net but he's no where near the landing zone. Five feet. There's no way I'm reaching down for this fish. Lift the rod, bring the fish up onto the pad - and TWO gators crash into the pad. Suddenly I'm thinking that this pad seems a lot smaller and not quite high enough to stop a gator from climbing up. I hear a noise off to my left and see another gator doing a death roll with something just of the slab. OK, Matt's still behind me. That's good. I'm trying to work the treble hooks out of my 2 pound catch while the first two gators are right up near the slab eyeballing either me or my fish. At this point I can't be sure. I'm really hoping beyond hope they can't climb up. At that moment I'm reminded of the Magnum P.I. episodes when Higgins' dobermans are chasing him while he's trying to get inside, "Work the lock. Don't look at the dogs! Argh! You looked at the dogs!" Work the hook. Work the hook. Please don't climb up here Mr. Gator. Finally, I get the hooks free and release the catch quietly away from the gators. But it's not over quite yet. That catch flipped a switch with the gators and they started getting aggressive. Really aggressive. They were no longer meandering around us, they were on the move surrounding us. Every time I made a cast they went full speed at my Whopper Plopper. They didn't stay their customary 5-10 feet away either. They came right in and nudged the slab every time. Thankfully it's a stable, anchored, concrete slab. And they kept eyeballing me, almost daring me to make another cast. I decided it wasn't worth it and we packed it in for the morning. We deal with gators all of the time and some try and go after your catch and hang out a bit, but it's usually solo gators or a couple of juveniles. This was a pack of adult gators all working the same area. My guess is that since this is a public park there are idiots that have tossed their catch to the gators, so once we landed a fish they instinctively thought it was dinner time. That's too bad because there are probably some decent sized fish in there. But for me it's just not worth the aggravation. The next time we try a new spot I need to find someone who lives in Hilton Head Plantation so I can fish in there. I've seen pictures and video of people catching 9 - 14 pound bass in there. Here's one of our "friends" in Jarvis Park today:

What happens when you snag your fishing partners lure on your back cast. I think this is the only backlash I've ever had to cut completely out.

I don't post pics but the site has been very slow for a couple of weeks.

Don't why it should ever need to be said, but the old school stuff --the grubs, tubes, torpedos, slider worms, hula poppers, floating minnows and what-not-- have never stopped working.

It depends on how aggressive the bass are! I've seen em explode on a buzzbait knocking it plum out of the water & I've seen em quietly suck em under. The latter is when the Cavitron shines

Welcome aboard! Go Bills! Can't assume every WNYer is a Bills fan... I knew too many Dolphins fans when I lived there.

He's a sneaky bugger. A-Jay

Haven't made it out with my dad yet, but I did get to give one a test run Thursday, it's an impressive bait.

I use one with the coiled wire and have saved tons of baits as well as retrieving lots of other people's lost lures out of trees. The biggest benefit I can see of the coil over that one, the hooks often catch on the wire and allow me to pull the lure free. It seems with that one, if you can't push the lure free, it's still going to be stuck. So when you catch a ball of old fishing line, or bury a crankbait hook in a stump that felt like a fish, it's not going to do you any good most likely, but the coiled version could catch the hooks and you can pull hard enough to straighten the hook and retrieve the bait.

I got to enjoy the bright moon on my drive into work tonight

Had some luck on the new Sprinker frog on Thursday. I wouldn't spend the crazy money some folks are for them, but for the $14 I paid, they're pretty awesome.

It is "the more things change the more they stay the same" I am 55 years old this month. The only truly new invention" that I remember taking the bass world by surprise was when Bobby Garland brought out the original "Gitzit" tubes. That was a whole new animal.

Just wanted to add in case J.C doesn't know Zman and standard plastics don't play well together. They need to be stored separately. Fishnkamp, one of my favorite dock rigs lately is a 1/2 Zinkerz on a slider head, I call it the sled rig;) Old school finesse meets new school finesse.

Like Fishnkamp I have been using the Kalins 5" grub for years, cheap, durable, and flat out catches them. Ron's Craw is a color I have done really well with in both dingy and super clear water. Other colors work well too. The second bait I would suggest is a tube, you can imitate anything from a craw to a baitfish with it. You can fish it weighted or unweighted. For both I rig up with slider spider heads. I have used both the light wire and heavy wire hook models the sell. Realistically though if you have a box of just tubes and 5" grubs, you could go to any lake that has bass and catch em, sometimes the old school simple stuff can be the best.

Lake Okeechobee this morning at 6:31.

Ok, so it's not your setup, it's you.

Hastings...on the Mississippi, just upriver of LaCrosse? Are you fishing the river? Check this out: the top 10 lures from the recent FLW tournament that was held in May on the Mississippi at LaCrosse: https://www.flwfishing.com/news/2017-05-22-top-10-baits-from-the-mississippi-river EDIT: Ah, I checked the map...Hastings is farther up than I remember it being.

Wow, congrats on the upcoming grand baby!

I always imagined you older, possibly grumpier, like Al Bundy

Jerkbait crappie

With 50% cloud cover and air temps is the low 60's here ~ Could be good but will be comfortable either way. . . A-Jay

While I agree with Catt we need to consider type of bass LMB both Florida and northern strain, Smallmouth and Spotted bass, all have different behavior traits. Electronic tracking studies clearly show bass have individual and group migration habits and can change locations for sanctuary reasons and prey preferences. Tom

I haven't used the aldebaran...too rich for me, as I got a good deal on the sv105. Although, I haven't heard a bad thing about that reel and it's hard to go wrong with a higher end shimano. TW used to let you try reels out before you buy. I don't know if that's still the case or not. As far as pros and cons...i don't really have anything bad to say about the sv105 (except the small handle). Performs perfect for weightless and ned rigs. I also throw micro hollow body frogs with it. The drag is smooth, it casts great, and handles heavier lures well too. I prefer it to my chronarch 50. Just make sure you pair it with a rod that is designed to accomplish what you're looking for. I've heard people complain about the sv105, expecting it to cast 1/16 oz lures 50 yards while paired with their flipping stick.

had to get my wife to get this one out. shes good at stuff like that.

5 pounder on a 5" Kailin's grub and that is about as flat as you will see Lk St Clair

I'd love to share a pic of my worst backlash, but I'm still cutting my cell phone out of the tangle.

Leesa Mattress? Can't you buy one?

Yep

Yes. A-Jay

I am a St Croix guy and all my back ups are Cabelas Tourney ZX or Arachnid. Wait for them to go on sale and pick a couple.

I agree with everything you say. Regarding weights, I used to try balancing by adding weights to the butt with a BPS system, and by the time I got one old rod back then balanced, it almost left my hand when casting once. I build my own now and use hi performance blanks (light, expensive usually-the basis of my comments on expensive and power are that expensive will get you the lightest blanks and lower power will do the same, as will shorter) and I build as light as reasonably possible for the job to be done, and I never add weight to balance. The length of the rod below the handle is dictated by what I've found works FOR ME without hanging up on my clothing. I know that YOU can tell handling a rod without the reel that it will be good or not for you. But you are a pretty experienced, expert, evaluator of what works for you. I think the reason that one can say that reel and lure weight don't seem to play a major role is that the equipment most of us use is pretty light, and the lighter it is, the less important balance is. IMHO. Good discussion.

Setup your reel properly & educate your thumb

I can tell you that on my worst balanced rods (long, heavy sticks) that I have added butt caps and weights to to balance them, while you end up getting the desired balance, you can definitely feel the effect of having the added weight on the back end of the rod when you cast. Additionally, since most casts aren't simply wrist rotation, but also involve some arm movement, the momentum/inertia feeling just made things seem really awkward for me. Add in the loss of sensitivity, and I have since removed and stopped using any of the aftermarket add-ons for rod balancing. You are correct that the longest rods I own (7'3"-7'6") have the "worst" balance (relatively speaking), but not so much on the price point aspect. My best balancing spinning rods range from 6'2" - 7'0", and have a price range between $49 (Berkley Lightning Rod) and $270 (Loomis & Custom builds). My best casting rods range from 6'0"-7'0" and have a price range from $40 (Lightning Rod, again) to $230 (Loomis). On the balance point, if you start with just a rod blank and give it to two different builders/manufacturers, you can end up with two very different balance points for the same rod based on the components used and things such as guide number and spacing, materials, reel seats, butt length, etc., etc., so I would say you can have a big effect on that balance point, which goes back to my point of the best balanced rods are already built toward that end. By measuring several parameters of all the rods I own, I have come up with a formula that lets me know pretty well how balanced a rod will be before I even buy it, assuming I can get those parameter measurements in advance. Not too difficult in a store, but much more challenging if buying online. It works for me... and things like reel weight and lure weight don't seem to play as big a role as some might think.

Finally a good day for me and my long time fishing buddy. We hardly had any success together as fishing partner since last year, it either him or me(mostly him) or both got skunked. We started around 5:30AM, he caught one fish and lost one on his walking dog(R2S), I got two blow up on my frog but no fish. Then we both switched to chatterbait and both caught a few more bass, including double(first ever for us). I end up caught another big catfish also with chatterbait. Good to have fishing buddy even once in awhile.

I got out on the water with my partner at 5 AM on the morning of the 4th of July. I was reluctant to go that early whenever my buddy mentioned the idea of it. However, we were rewarded. We caught around a dozen fish, all in the 14-19" range, which for western PA on an over pressured lake, is a very good day. My 3-4 caught on a Cavitron buzzbait. My buddy caught this 3-7 on a Frog. His first ever frog fish.