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Got out for a couple hours before winter decided to come back in a hurry. Glass to whitecaps in about 5 minutes.

Thought this might be a fun wintertime thread. I love baits that are worn from catching fish, they have a story to tell. Love looking at all the scratches, missing paint and eyes, thinking of all the fish they've caught. I'll start with a pair of discontinued Xcalibur XR50's, and a 3 year old Strike King tungsten 2 Tap.

I never understood this type of question, I mean do you plan on being shot down behind enemy lines with only one lure? Personally I bought a bigger boat so I could carry as many lures as I want. Allen

6th Sense Crush Flat X75 & the Strike King Red Eye Shad ~ A-Jay

Bridge pilings are hard on wood lures .

Either need a better camera or photographer ?

Smithwick' factory rep swears they never made a Rogue in this color...got 2 of em!

I'd definitely have to go with my pink drop shot rigged deps 250, it's killer year around. Rig it with a 5lb weight and you can smash it straight through ice in the winter, or punch with it in the summer. Go with a 1lb weight for a more finesse approach.

I just got “THE CALL”, my ship has arrived!

Lipless crank for sure. Cotton cordels super spots are like 3$ at Wal-Mart. They look like a rat-l-trap. Chrome/black is my go to.

AND, I still have a couple older round reels:

Went out to New Orleans City Park yesterday and saw a ton of fish on beds. Still very skittish and hard to get em to bite, but had a blast sight fishing. Caught the 12 inch male off the bed, flipped back in with my next cast, and this little female came from about 10 feet away and walked all the way to my sinking baby brush hog.

i went out for a quick trip this morning after a job interview. wanted to see if ole faithful is open, 90% open some skim ice on a protected shore. only had one rod with the lure i had on, no gear. 2 pickerel. not bad for a 30 min trip

Helicopter lure.

Round reels you say ~ I love them. A-Jay

Just saw a convoy of the heritage boats loaded on the back of semis heading north on highway 49 just south of Harrisonville, MO.

UPDATE: So I just signed on to view my claim and it looks like it’s been approved for the full insured amount! I was very surprised to see a resolution so quickly after hearing about some of your personal experiences. I was expecting a long, drawn out process so I was relieved to see this today. We’ll see how long the check takes to arrive. I appreciate everyone’s input on the matter and hope that anyone who may have to go through this process in the future receives the same, favorable outcome I did.

I'd quit fishing.

Is it that time of the year again? ?

New addition to the family

Ned-1/16 Slider-1/8 Shaky-1/8 Grub-1/8 Also fish an ultra finesse skirted jig that I make that is 1/8 that is a killer in the spring when all the little craws are everywhere.

Pedal drive and Rudder system installed. I will get out this weekend to try it out. Only 36 day until National championship.

The two words between catching bass and fishing for them is active and inactive behavior. Bass are like most predators and some people, the don't live where the eat. We go to the restaurant or market to find or buy food, we don't live in the parking lot waiting for the meal. Active bass are in the market or at the restaurant, not in the den. Inactive bass are in the den resting. The key to catching bass is offering them something to eat when they are hungry and active. Knowing the difference between inactive bass that are resting away from where they eat and active bass looking for something to eat will save you a lot of time. How bass are positioned on structure or cover and baitfish tells you if they are inactive or active. How they strike lures tells you if the are active or not. The location of the bass tells you if they are active or not. You could be fishing in the restaurant, but it's not open and no bass are there. You can be trying to get bass in the den to eat and they are not hungry. Trying several different lures isn't going to open the restaurant or interest the inactive bass. If you know where the restaurant is located, waiting for it to open is a better use of your time, then trying to catch bass that are resting. Spend some time on the water and learn where the markets and restaurants are located and whats on the menu. Active hungry bass are easier to catch then inactive bass. WRB

Well....finishing the coffee and a Nature's Bakery blueberry bar and it's off to Chic for our first club tourney of the year.....so looking forward. Could be muddy but am looking forward to the challenge. Will hopefully have a good story for you all.

I bought some small zip ties that are 1/8 in width and 4 long but what makes them really nice is the tag end lays flat against the bait instead of sticking up. Now the bass can't pull my skirt down ?

You must be popular with the ladies...

Doubtful. "Sales" at BPS just means they got prices down to were they normally are a lot of other places with an occasional exception.

If your wife is happy, she might buy you more tackle

12 lb Lb Big Game or 13 lb Diefer Armillo Nylon. Tom

5" Senko #194 Green Pumpkin.

Here she is ready to go 7'6 Seth Feider neko/hair jig Elite AGS Tatula LT 2500 spooled with 10lb red spectra braid. It Is so light maybe 9oz total weight Wish we could do more pics lol

Make it a specific dark alley, explain that you won't be wearing pants, and that if they want the price they need to refer to you as "The Alley Cat" followed with a pronounced purring sound. From that point on, speak of yourself only as the third person as "The Alley Cat". Actual conversation about seriously selling stuff aside, you can run with this as far as you want to make things awkward. Explain that you'll only accept exchange of obscure foreign currency like Icelandic Krona or Chik-fil-et sauce packets. Require they wear bathing caps. Refer to them as "The Rooster". If you're going to make it weird, go hard.

Imma gonna go with a 4" Senko or Bass Pro Stik-O. Watermelon Magic coloration.... Maaaaaybe

A good braid in the 30lb. test range will work for all treble hook applications. If you’re concerned about tearing hooks out of the fishes mouth, you’re over powering the fish when fighting it. Set your drag correctly and use the rod to bring them in by pumping it up and reeling in the slack when you drop it back down. If you don’t think you can transition to doing that, Go with a quality hybrid like Yozuri. It isn’t the best choice for top waters if you’re working them slow, but will get the job done on most if you work them with your rod tip up.

Abu Veritas Spinning Rods now make a winch model. That would be my choice.

I'm surprised not one of you hillbillies suggested dynamite

Seeing as, according to your signature, you won't be purchasing your boat for another 87 years, I think you're good.

I have a rod I use for basically the same thing- squarebills, jerk baits, spooks, etc. I use 20-30lb braid tied to a 10lb mono leader. I like braid because it’s considerably easier to manage, cuts through grass, and sensitive. The mono leader is for a little extra stretch, and won’t wrap around the trebles as easily. Normally I use an Alberto knot, but I’m learning how to make an FG knot quickly and consistently. I don’t know why, but knots are just not my “thing”.

Last time I seriously respond to a topic like this

Thoroughly tested it to my satisfaction and determined XF was a big mistake, at least with shallow diving and squarebill type baits. Do what you want, but I won't be revisiting the idea anytime soon

Could discus threadfin Shad behavior and how LMB target these pelagic baitfish separately. When bass are juveniles they tend to school for protection as do Shad. Finding a active school of juvenile size bass chasing a Shad school is common. When the Shad school comes to a location that compresses the school and the juveniles bass are pushing the bait onto structure adult bass often use this event as a response triggering feeding activity. Big bass learn from experience being deeper under the Shad school picking off injured Shad is more effective then chasing the school. Are all the bass on the same activity time table...no, bass are individuals that sometimes group together to take advantage of a feeding opertunity. Definately a repeatable pattern. Tom

In today's 'fast paced' world of bass fishing a good bit of what is accomplished by anglers in the public eye is often credited in part to the recent 'advances' in electronics. With good reason in fact, as there have been some effective & useful gear introduced in just the last few years. That said, and the reason I chose to bring this most excellent thread back, revolves around it's title; "Active or inactive". With the advent of Xtreme Depth Sonar, Chirp, 360 imaging, SwitchFire, Dual Beam Plus, Mega Side & Down Imaging, Precise GPS, Smart Strike, Panoptix, real-time underwater 3D mapping; (much of which I do reply on most every trip), to date, and as far as I know, there's only one way to determine this most crucial factor - and that's to go fishing. There are occasions when we can 'predict' when & where it's going to happen. Sometimes we're right - sometimes we're not. In my experience, there's not a replacement for time on the water - especially one body of water. Where if & when one gets on them, by being there through the changes (and there are many) we have some chance of 'staying on or following' the bait & or the bass. But fishing a place once a week or only 2 or 3 times a month, can often make consistency a tall order. Despite it all - the Challenge & the Hunt is addicting. Clearly none of this is even remotely new or earth shattering information, I offer it as a friendly reminder that being in the right place at the right time is just as humbling as the often experience alternative. A-Jay

Bringing it back ~ Because its Gold. A-Jay

Here’s the biggest LMB of the 10 I caught yesterday (2/14) in my neighborhood pond. I caught 6 and missed about 20 on Monday, but you had to pay very close attention and wait for your line to twitch or move. Never felt a single bite Monday. Not the case yesterday. Felt that good THUMP for every fish

Little TW order. Some items on back order though.

Bass are simple creatures, and they stick with a good situation until something turns them off of it. When feeding they normally pick a good area and come to that area all the time. A break line can be a weed line on a glacial lake in Wisconsin, a subtle hard-bottom on a shallow lake in Florida, the edge of a timber lined creek channel in Texas, or the base of a rock pile in a deep California lake. Whatever the bass use to move into a feeding area. Where the bass go when not feeding is anyone's guess. Bass are also individuals and may roam great distances and be spread out in some lakes or bunched together in other lakes, they are rarely far away from their food source. If you look at early pioneers like Perry who formulated a theory that bass move as a group from deep to shallow during periods called migrations, without the aid depth finders, or biologists like Mike Lembeck who conducted telemetry studies on California deep structured lakes proving bass were not affected by wind, bright sun light, cloud cover, rain caused no significant change to their position on structure. The bass would hold on structure for some time and transient bass would hold for less than less than a day. Lembeck was never able to identify groups of big bass moving together. When individual fish leave a popular holding area, they go in separate directions. It's the saloon theory, according to Bill Murphy; you have a local saloon you always go to, there's a bunch of people there, and once in a while the same people are there at the same time. WRB PS: Lembeck implanted 200 bass with transmitters, the bass ranged from 1.2 lbs to 14 lbs., a 3 year study with over 800 observations on San Diego county lakes.

In my view, it would be a costly misconception to believe that bass in all lakes live the same lifestyle. Almost without exception, the lifestyle that forces bass to shuttle between lounge and foodshelf is that imposed by a manmade reservoir where bass are forced to adapt. In "natural lakes" the living is easy, where bass are highly residential to say the least. More than one telemetry study has clearly demonstrated the stay-at-home behavior of largemouth bass in natural lakes. Weed-beds are their home in a natural lake, where you may find bass all day long and year-round. To be sure, when bass are inactive they are exponentially more difficult to catch, but they're still there nonetheless. Given adequate dissolved oxygen, bass tend to cling to the best weed beds year-round, regardless of water temperature. Tracking studies on "natural lakes" have additionally shown that even during cold-fronts, bass did not move laterally but burrowed down in the heaviest cover within the same water column. Roger

By setting up between the kitchen and the living room You will have 2 opportunities; coming and going Coming to the kitchen they are hunger Going to the living room they will stop for a quick snack