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St Clair stud!

Everything I fish with is about as old as I am. My fishing reels are older than most of my lures. I don't use anything but the old Mitchell's.

Not great size, but the first on an 18 ft CB......

I had a rare opportunity to get out on my boat today so I certainly took advantage of it. I hit one of the electric-only reservoirs south of ATL that I've fished a good bit to see what I could figure out. I only got three to the boat, but two of them were over 5.5 lbs A @Siebert Outdoors jig in a custom color was responsible for two of the fish, and a caffeine shad the other. Man, the two jig bites were fierce! Too bad I couldn't locate any other spots that were similar to see if it was a pattern. I think I'm gonna start replacing my flukes with the caffeine shad. I really like the castabillty and the swimming action!

We use that in Florida for flipping heavy cover for bass. Or to hang a side of beef.

Yesterday I took my new kayak out for it's maiden voyage. I brought a baitcaster rigged with a wacky rigged Yum Dinger and a spinning reel rigged with a Trout Slayer lure. First fish I caught was a 2lb, 11oz Largemouth Bass. He took up the whole front tray of my kayak. He was the best fish of the day. I ended the day with 10 fish total, 1 Largemouth, 1 Smallmouth and 8 Redbreast Sunfish (all sunfish were caught on the Trout Slayer) Overall a great day on the water. I am loving kayak fishing.

Boom: Nothing Bust: My entire 2017 tournament season so far. I am just "off" this year. 8 tournaments in and so far I have cashed only once (2nd), flirted with being in the money twice (a 4th and 5th), had one tournament where my execution kept me out of the money, and have laid 4 total eggs. Two of which I was on the trailer and gone home early due to being spun out badly, and two more in which I just couldn't get anything going at all. Either this will continue, or redemption is a few casts away. I know one thing............the getting spun out and giving up is a troubling trend that I have to nip in the bud real quick. I have to get back to grinding when it's tuff, and figuring out how to keep my head in the game when it's not going well. I have adopted a new "positive attitude", and I am getting drive in me again. Mark the date bass resource...7/30/17.....the great ww2farmer tournament funk stretching back to Sept. of 2016 is over!!. Heck, I might bomb the next one, or two, or 10, but this little "getting spun out" phase is over.

I'll stay until I question my physical ability to walk back to the truck... or until the wife sends that text message, the one where you can almost hear her voice in your head? Yeah, that one...

I know this isn't as big as some of you guys, but it's my PB at 6.74 lbs. I think it turned out awesome, opinions welcome..

You can fish plastic worms everywhere . !/2 ounce seems like to much weight to me in vegetation unless you were punching , which it doesnt sound like you were .Fairly mossed over I would go weightless or a light weight . If the vegetation is at the surface twitch it on the top and pause in any openings . A Senko type worm works well for this because they are easy to cast weightless . As far as bouncing on the bottom , yes , you just dont need a half ounce weight .

Longer than 2 hrs

Kind of in limbo as boatless bank trash at the moment, but banked 15 little chunks in 75 minutes after work the other day despite the post frontal clearing skies, stained water and 15 mph NNE winds.

Our haul this past week. Yes that is the Potomac, Virginia side. The rest are home in Jersey.

OK here's what ya wanna do! Pinch your line between your thumb & forefinger about 2" above your weigh & cut it with a pair of scissors. Put the 1/2 oz weight & 4/0 hook up for later use on a Carolina Rig. Re-rig with a 1/8 oz bullet weight & a 2/0-3/0 hook of your choice & repeat the retrieves you were using. I will give you this much if you're dragging a 1/2 oz weight through grass you're a head of most guys!

Oh, my God. Why did they let you in the K.I.S.S. club?

After I sold my gears that I rarely use and wanted to go different direction on the stuff. Those have arrived at my door ready to be adopted. I still have few parts coming in (96mm handles for on three baitcasters) did the monkey get me ?

Caught em at Diamond Valley Lake dragging a 3/8 football jig in deep water

Caught my personal best this weekend thanks to the help I got on this forum. Been fishing my entire life but for trout and salmon. Got some advice on here about bass fishing and tackle. Landed this 4.1 pound beautiful fish on Sunday morning. Caught her with a Yum Dinger Bama Magic color rigged whacky style. Thank you guys for being so welcoming to a newbie!

Most excellent explanation On any given day, almost any of the suggestions given so far work. I've never thought of a Texas rigged worm as a "Reaction" bait, so I don't routinely fish it like one. However, one could look at it from the stand point of the Predator & Prey relationship. Most anything a bass eats is probably trying really hard to avoid that scenario. So doing anything that would draw attention to itself is undesirable and could lead to it's demise. Rather than hopping & popping the bait, there is a time & place where sneaking the bait along every so gingerly works well. Try to move it while imagining that your actually attempting to toss your bait out there and get it back without getting bit. Sounds kind of backwards I know but the bait is in the bass's world, and she knows it's there; without the extra action. You'll find yourself fishing spots slower and more thoroughly while at the same time affording your bait the time it needs to work it's magic. On a side note - this is not a bad approach for a jig either. @A-Jay

Cuz that's where the bugs are and where plankton blooms which maens that's where the food is and bass like food. Wanna know when I've caught most of the beeg mommas ? During the warmest months of the year during the hottest days at the hottest hours. ( in my neck of the woods 90 deg is just a warm day, nothing to brag about ).

There is no "best" retrieve for this. You just need to keep trying different things until you can get a bite. Pay attention to what you were doing at the time and try to repeat it. Some days they will want it hopped along kind of fast and others they wait in painfully slow. You said fairly mossed over pond.. You might want to try a different type of bait instead of the ribbon tail worm. Maybe a beaver or even a straight tailed worm. It will go through the moss better.

Even caught a couple from the Potomac in DC on our family trip. Can you tell which one he caught... Not the one on the left. Those DC fish were tough to land cause the river was on the out tide. The bank was about 6 to 7 feet above the water. I pretty much had to hand line my fish up to the bank so I wouldn't break my rod trying to lift it out, and to prevent the fish from hitting the rocks. Same thing with his fish which he caught from a bridge with no accessible bank. Interesting releases to say the least. The second was at a local lake, and the last was on our boat on Sunday... He's the only one who caught something.

I also have the video of the catch. She drug me around quite a bit lol

Where there is abundant prey source the bass are never too far away. What are the water temps where you are catching very shallow bass? Bass in that skinny of water are usually very skittish unless they are under some type of cover, you should be able to see them or the pressure wave they make when swimming. Cast up onto the bank and drag your lure into the water. Tom

Dog Days of Summer is when the bulk of my Double D's were caught! Anybody can catch em in the spring Ambient temperature means nothing to bass! Thermocline

I will usually not fish a profile for over 30 minutes, an hour at most if I'm not getting bites. I'm just as bad with deer hunting, if I'm not seeing deer, I move. I have talked to people that have been on the same profile for three days without catching or shooting antyhing. I don't know how they do it. I quit when I stop enjoying it.

Cause that's where the bait fish are at How many degrees does the water temperature drop with each foot of depth change?

Here's a rule of thumb regarding weight for a T rig. You want as little weight as you can cast, but enough to keep the bait on bottom and enough to overcome wind because you have to feel the strike. That's usually in the 1/8-1/4 oz range. I usually try 3/16 oz with baitcasting and if that's too light, I will use 1/4. Very rarely have I ever used larger than 1/4 oz with a T rig. I use tungsten bullet weights most of the time now, but it's not necessary. As for the retrieve, Just cast it out, slowly pull a couple feet with the rod, reel up slack, pull, reel, cast, repeat. Sometimes in weeds the bait will get fouled with weeds and feel heavier. Just give it a quick, short jerk to free it up and resume retrieve. Weeds are just something you'll have to deal with. For really weedy, shallow ponds I'd probably go with a weightless Zoom Trick Worm over a T rig. You can just slowly reel it through the weeds or work it like a jerkbait.

No joke! Even 1' marking lines don't show certain things. I found a 30' long trench, about a foot deep, that appears on no maps I've ever seen. At first, I thought the TD was ajar or something, but went back. Dropped a ton of way points, and recorded that sucker.

The only answer is to keep fishing and thinking - have won a tournament or two in the last 30min. after going 7 hrs or more without a bite.

@Milos your tackle is what it is You're gonna have to adjust your style of fishing to fit your tackle. It's called finesse fishing & is highly productive for those who learn its limitations. You will have to avoid big heavy bulky lures & heavy cover opting for smaller lures & waters that have sparse cover. @scaleface & @soflabasser offer some excellent lure choices! Google Bobby Murray, Charlie Brewer, or Roger Moore. Bobby Murray qualified for eight consecutive Classics and won two using lighter tackle. Roger Moore started a streak in 1974 on the St. Johns River," Moore recalls. "I never got skunked my first four years of fishing B.A.S.S., including four BASS Master Classics. Charlie Brewer's Do-Nothing Slider Fishing is legendary.

I bought the Curado I. Thanks guys.

Like Catt said so succinctly, longer than 2 hours as long as there are some signs of life somewhere on the water. If it is a polluted mess with 55 gallon drums of radioactive waste in the shallows and a guy named Guido dumping a body on the North shore, I may leave a bit sooner...

Never bought a true BFS reel. Was told all the cool kids had one and if I didn't get one the bullies were going to steal my lunch money and give me a wedgie. Decided on an Airy Red mainly because of the spool being one of the best. Need to find a rod but hey it looks good with the the furniture so it may be a "couch queen" for now!

First time using a hollow body frog and was rewarded with my first bass! Sorry for the camera noises. I was using a Yi Action Camera and noticed the sound wasn't too great. Caught my 2nd off the Live Target frog. Was advised to use the smallest Live Target hollow body frog from a very wise local. Caught two off the Yamamoto D Shad but just got a pic of one em. Switched to a Sexy Dawg Jr and used it to find an active feeding school of bass My friend and I started throwing these "spook" type lures and got the active school to bite. I think we caught around 7 or 8 off between us off this school. Fun times!

@Turtle135 What a HAWG ! I would love to kidnap that !

If you're punching through compacted hyacinth and pennywort you probably don't want a skirt. 1.5 oz usually is heavy enough. I use a 4-0 or 5-0 snelled hook. And #65-80 braid. I usually use my Powell Max 3D 8 foot mag heavy rod. And some Advil. Seems 2-4 foot depth under the mat works best. It takes time to get really good at punching the heavy stuff and actually hooking fish and getting them out. Personally, I'm still pretty sucky at it, but I keep trying.

Was just settling into a lively evening of frogging in a local retention pond. Caught three 2.5-3 lbrs. in just twenty minutes when I thought I hooked a season PB. After a lot of effort to keep his head from getting too deep in the slop I was greeted with about a 15 lb. snapping turtle! Really had no choice but to break him off and came back with a perfectly good Lunkerhunt popping frog minus the hook. Hope the turtle can shake it.

@Milos I highly recommend you give river/creek fishing a try, its definitely worth it. Right know the water is high in the Fox river/ surrounding rivers so it might be a little more difficult , but sooner or later the water level will drop. Good lures to use in rivers/creeks are shallow running crankbaits, small swimbaits, 1/4 ounce spinnerbaits, inline spinners,jerkbaits, crawfish imitation soft plastics, texas rigged soft plastics, and topwaters. Fishing around the dams on the river can be very productive, so consider fishing these areas as well. Try to find a experienced fisherman who is willing to teach you in person, it will greatly speed up your learning curve. Most importantly, put in your time on the water and don't be discouraged if you don't catch fish on your fishing trips, it happens to the best of us.

Hard to say. Rick Clunn always said the easiest tourneys to win were the tough ones, largely because so many guys get beat mentally when struggling for bites. That said, in a shootout, whoever can get the bigger bites usually wins, but likewise, just one or two big bites can really determine things in a struggle. How much is skill, and how much is luck in either case is hard to determine. I'd initially lean toward more skill in a shootout because you need more big fish overall, or at least better average quality instead of a couple big ones.

Love the trokar tk 130 and im a punching junkie

Not giants, but healthy 2-3.5 pounders, at least the ones I caught. Some say much larger ones there, but hard to tell when they're slashing so fast, picking off minnows.

This new deal for inserting pictures is stupid! When it comed to jigs everyone has their own personal repertoire of confusion! What I look for in a "wood" jig is a smooth transition from the line to the eye & around the belly, which requires the eye to be slightly rolled forward. Shorter more compact jigs are in my opinion the worse choice because your "weed/brush" guard does not have the proper distance to collapse meaning it has be to soft. Collapse the "weed/brush" guard with your finger, look at the distance from the eye to the hook point, that's the gap you have to penetrate the fish's mouth. Probably the most effective "wood" jig ever designed is Lunker Lures Original Rattleback which is why it is still in most Pros jig box. Siebert Outdoors Grid Iron Brush Jig is an excellent jig for fishing brush or laydowns.

It's a great net, one piece construction, and built to last. Probably the last net I'll need to buy.

I fish as long as my back allows me . Usually 8 to 12 hours even if the fishing is bad . Sometimes it takes all day to figure things out .

They were stacked thick today. Could do no wrong.Followed the school around for a couple hours. Probably caught 100. Sorted thru lots of small fish. Gills perch, bass, and a lone crappie

From my summer trip, one of my more satisfying additions to the front line was a buzzbait, but a buzzbait with a horny toad on the back. It made casting a buzzbait easier and skipping it possible too. I love a buzzbait strike and the toad instead of the skirt was a great upgrade for me.

Jerkbait kind of day...Rapala Shadow Rap Shad in yellow perch produced on outside weed edges.