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How long I dead stick depends on how bad the back-lash is .

pretty wired. got my pb lmb for all i know today. only started weighing last season. some of you guys catch this size daily but this is a milestone for me ? bite was slow all day until we went to wacky 4" senkos. bit a gray one. 3lb 11oz

Mixed Bag today ~ A-Jay

The spawn is on at Lake of the Ozarks! Caught this one sitting right outside our condo...

Caught a few nice ones at a little pond in the military training area. It feels like it’s my own personal pond. My wife says it’s because I’m the only idiot that goes fishing at lunch next to the impact area. The artillery can be a little loud at times.

I got this one deadsticking a Slammer. First hint of movement she crushed it. I do it a lot with big topwater swimbaits. Anything to make it look like a big, easy meal. I'll do it with frogs too just because that's how a real frog will do a lot of the time.

Dinkfest yesterday. Tried a lot of different locations and presentations. Nope, just caught more dinks. About 25 of them in ~6 hours.

First Bass of 2018! Air temps reached 80 degrees for the first time this year here yesterday. Warmed up the local pond enough to make the Bass start biting. Gave me a break from Trout and Pickerel. Not or a monster by any means but a great fight on the light action Kastking Calamus rod and 4lb P-Line Floroclear line.

3 year old daughter launched a cast and lost her balance and went into the drink here in Az 2 days ago. Always keep a vest on your kids! We always do and lived why today. Was hilarious watching video that night tho not gonna lie.

Initial plans were to run north to some bigger water this morning. Didn’t happen. I slept through the alarm (an hour) and then it was too late to head up. WIth forecasted wind & rain moving in some time early afternoon – I needed to stay local to optimaize the time I had. Ok, so enough of that mess. Morning started out calm & flat enough, first stop (a mid lake sandy point) yeilded no bites. Second spot (pre-spawn staging flat) gave up a few keeper (probably male) smb; fish came on a Drop Shot. My bait, a nose hooked 4 inch caffine shad (which I called a fluke in the video) was the go to all day. After not seeing any of the fat girls, I moved to another point. By this time the south wind had started to come on and I switched to a jerk bait. Took a few more smallies & a pike in short order. With the wind cranking pretty good now, I made my last move of the morning. Headed to a shallow grass flat at the very north end of this lake. Decided to have “The Chatterbait Challenge”. The two combatants where - The Z-Man / Evergreen Jackhammer vs The O.S.P. Spec II Bladed jig – it’s a Japanese bait – Here's some info http://www.osp-lures.com/product/o-s-p-blade-jig/ Both baits were 3/8 oz., had the same trailer & were thrown on the same rod, reel & line. Z-Man bait was Green Pumpkin vs the OSP bait that included a perch pattern skirt I made. Results ~ The OSP bait killed it. Z-Man couldn’t hang. I explain in the video. A couple of times when the the bladded jig bite would slow down, I mixed in the drop shot and stung a couple of fatties. All in all, a very decent trip that included a few nice sized Brown and Green bass. Here's a few pics and there a video loading I add when it's done. A-Jay

I would give seminars on the tank at Bass Pro to show how dead sticking a senko works. I would toss it in the tank and if it didn't get bit by the time it got to the bottom, the bass would gather with their noses pointing down and their tails in the air watching the bait. I call it "Bird Dogging". I would leave the bait motionless for 30 seconds or more (doesn't sound like a long time but it really is) then I would give it a "hop" and one of them would always dart in for the bite. The whole purpose of the demo was to show how bass react to a dead sticked bait.

You take your friends out, out fish them, and not show them what you’re doing to catch fish? You are right. No one else does that.

In the creek.

I seem to have my personal technique down pat. First, I make a long, usually wildly inaccurate cast. It'll usually end up in the trees, now I've got them right where I want them. Then I spend the better part of 30 or so minutes complaining, scampering around like a drunk juvenile squirrel trying to get my lure back. When I finally get it back, I start back to fishing, albeit with a different outlook on life. After that, those little 8-inch dinks I always catch don't seem so bad.....

Only one good bass bite this weekend, but it was one of my favorite ways to get them. The shad are spawning and the big girls are just getting done spawning and are hungry. A Savage Gear Shine Glide off a dock corner brought this one screaming out and hit it so hard going away from me that I couldn't even set the hook, just cranked like crazy.

Caught my first two carp today. 4 1/2 & 5 lbs, but what a fun fight. Now I see why people enjoy them so much. Won't be my last time that's for sure. Was afraid the gammy #10 octopus hooks would bend out from the fight but they held up awesome. Used a 6'10" MH-XF casting rod and some 50lb braid to a 15lb fluorocarbon leader and a 3/8 oz sinker. Simple corn on the hook and chummed the water with corn. Took awhile to get bit, but wow that was fun. Hope this helps anyone thinking of trying for carp.

The sun is a double edged sword, you need some exposure to stay healthy and limited exposure to prevent skin cancer. SPF 50 means you can extend exposure 50% longer before damaging your skin, it doesn't prevent sun exposure damage. Most people with light skin can tolerate 15 to 20 minutes of direct over head sun exposure without any skin damage, that isn't a very long time! SPF clothing, wide brim hats, face covering, hand covering, long sleeve shirts, long pants and foot covering like shoes all help. SPF sun screen on your hands and face helps to protect light reflections off the water. It's really a combination of skin protection over years of time on the water. Me, I used up all my time long before skin cancer showed up and before knowing anything about SPF skin protection. Is sun protection necessary.......yes, my freind Bill Murphy and author of In Pursuit of Giant Bass died of skin cancer and my skin is very damaged from years of neglect. We simply didn't know, you do! Tom

Take my wife. She is disabled and can't do a lot of things, but she loves being on the water. I won't go with out her. There are days she out fishes me.

I put a few of these wipers in our tiny little pond a couple years ago, never expecting them to survive, but when I drove the whole family back to the pond to feed the fish and toss my throw net a few times to see what had survived the winter, I got a big surprise when this guy was stuck in my net. Not only surviving, but appeared to be thriving. I also netted a large gizzard shad, so he had at least one more big meal swimming around in there for him as well as several 6-8 inch crappie. Lake was really excited about the big "Fwhopper" as he calls any big fish.

Fish for bass on the blackest of nights. Others must certainly be doing it too. I just never see any. A-Jay

Lake Dardanelle,Ar state park.

Dink tamer reporting for duty...I swear I can catch bigger fish ?. Anyways, first smallie of the season, so that’s noteworthy! The river was all kicked up with mud and exceptionally high, the mountains must’ve had some rain.

After reading this thread, I don’t think I do anything unique. The only exception may be that I have an shield 9 mm on my hip next to my pliers ?

That’s funny because my son calls any big bass a bacon. I’m not sure how he made that connection but it cracked me up when I caught a 3 pounder and he was just around yelling daddy caught a bacon ?

I frog in open water alot, regardless of conditions I usually try to get that bite going first before I switch to other techniques.

I wouldn't say I do much that NOBODY else does, but after reading posts here for 5 years, I'd say I DON'T do a lot that the majority of the posters here do. Unlike a lot of the guys who post here, I use nothing but braided line for every lure I throw and never use mono/fluoro leaders. Mostly, I use spinning gear. It's all 10lb braid and on my baitcasters, it's all 20lb. braid. I don't do a lot of largemouth fishing, mostly smallmouth, so I don't do any flipping, pitching or punching. I use a lot of Senko type baits but it's always weightless T rigged, never wacky. I also never weigh fish. If it's a big fish, I might put it on a measuring board for length only. I seldom pay much attention to what many feel is the "correct" color choice for the conditions. I don't own any (as far as I know) technique specific rods. I'm more likely to to use one rod for as many applications as is reasonable. As long as the lure falls within the weight rating of the rod, I'll adjust so it works for me. I "break" a lot of the rules that others live by. Because I'm pretty happy with the numbers of fish I catch, and enjoy what I'm doing, I'm unlikely to change the way I do things.

You should have long armed them.

What are you doing that nobody else is, or that very few people are, that catches you more fish? I have a M/F casting rod paired with a good spincast reel spooled with 10lb fluorocarbon, and it's always got a Texas Rigged Senko attached to it. I pick it up when I need deadly accuracy. I can put that Senko almost anywhere and skip it with absolute ease, and it's great for the wind. It's gotten me bit in places that I can't really get to with spinning or casting setups. I've had buddies laugh when I show up with 5 rods: 3 casting, 1 spinning, 1 spincast. What do you need that thing for? Oh, you'll see. Just another tool for the job at hand that gets glossed over. My second best LMB ever was caught in some nasty weeds with this setup. Couldn't quite get to the spot I needed to get to without it.

Anything 2lbs and up is giant up here.

My experience is when dead-sticking is working best, it means by elimination that bass aren't acting aggressive and, say, biting on the drop or at the "thud." You can't get to the dead-sticking stage unless your bait/lure is first ignored. So, I see it the way Toxic explains it, that non-aggressive (cold weather?) or bass not in an actual feeding mood, that if you throw something into a "fishy" area, and it sits there, it doesn't mean the fish aren't keeping an eye on it. This is where they'll often pick a bait up and drop it really fast, so you have to really be ready to set the hook. And, often several fish are close by and that likely accounts for a lot of fish not all that hungry floating close by, then after the dead-stick, the angler pops the bait and there is some competition or just natural predator response to hitting it. *** This year? What has worked exceptionally well for me all through April was to throw a weightless Keitech 4" Shad Impact soft jerk bait, let it fall like an injured/dying bait fish to the bottom, and if not bit on the way down or at first contact, I have been dead-sticking it. Dead-sticking a jerk-bait. Go figure! I have been so surprised at the lengths of the actual delays before the Keitech is actually picked up and swam off with in the fish's mouth. Up to a minute delay, I'd say. Line watching is imperative. Could be the salt in Keitechs which is pretty strong. I recently bit the head off of one where it was torn. I had been using it for a good while but noticed that it still had a distinct salty taste. Brad

I catch a lot of fish In the summer by reeling a 5 - 6 inch senko on the surface. Talk about some wild explosions ! I now skip a lot of my casts even if I don't have to. I believe the subtle entry into the water has increased my catch rate a lot. I know some of you would sneer at this but, I also fish with live ' gills, with no cork. Almost fish em like I would with plastic baits. Great big bass weapon.

i came up with this technique just. using big topwaters like jitterbugs, and rats. cast out to some shoreline trees. make a big splash. when it lands let the bait sit. sometimes giving it a few slight twitches, then reel in fast. what i think it looks like is a bird, chipmunk other rodents that fell from a tree. it looks injured and stunned, (letting it sit and twitching) that's when the bass is looking at the bait. when they see it panicking and trying to get away ( reeling in fast) they come up and smash it

My 4 year old fishes a Ned rig and a wacky rig just fine. He loses some, but he's having fun, that's all I care about. Strolling a Ned rig works better than actually casting and fishing it sometimes.

With top-water baits, I’ve let them sit motionless for a couple of minutes, especially when I ‘know’ a fish is eyeballing it. With soft plastics, about 1/2 a minute is as long as I can hold off without at least rocking or twitching it in place.

Except where A-Jay fishes ?

Its the Indian not the arrow.

By “belief” I mean that the evidence is not conclusive to prove existence, at least from a perspective of reasonable scientific skepticism. For instance, compare the body of evidence for the existence of bigfoot to that of grizzly bears – accepting the existence of one of these requires much more “belief” than the other. Regarding the footprints, etc. – I do find those things odd. They are very odd. Unfortunately, none of these odd things are conclusive, and many are easy to fake or could conceivably be misinterpreted. What has hands to throw rocks? People do. What made those prints? Maybe bears, maybe hoaxers, maybe pink fuzzy unicorns, who knows? Maybe they’re not prints at all. It’s easy to assign difficult-to-explain sights, sounds, smells, experiences, flying rocks, “tree breaks”, etc. to a loosely defined fictional creature because it has no rules, no standard – it’s made up. See/smell/hear something weird in the woods? It’s bigfoot. How does one argue against that? Suppose bigfoot exists, and we learn that it is incapable of uprooting, inverting, and pile-driving that 30’ tree into the ground from Bigbill’s link. Or we learn that they don’t smell bad, or that they don’t make shrieking howls, or they can’t throw rocks. Lacking an obvious explanation for these phenomena, would we then have to attribute them to some new made-up creature? A bigger-foot, perhaps? Oddest of all (IMO) is that, as I said before, it seems bigfoot enthusiasts have relatively little difficulty finding or experiencing “signs” of bigfoots, even interacting with them, but nobody has ever found even a partial specimen that can be verified. No amount of inconclusive, questionable evidence adds up to legitimate proof. And a large, globally widespread, terrestrial mammal shouldn’t be this hard to prove.

Nothing . One of the things I do that most anglers dont is hold a casting rod in front of the reel then gently squeeze the line between my index finger and thumb . Been doing this since I was a kid , jigging crappie jigs along river banks with zebco 202's .

I wouldn't say nobody else does it but a lot of times in my kayak I will paddle through large expanses of lily pads just looking for swirls from fish moving out of the way to get a better picture of where fish are. Then come back a little later after things calm back down and fish it with a frog.

Went out river fishing in my kayak today and caught this 18” beauty!

My wife and I spent 3 days at Table Rock Lake last week. We caught over 60 bass in 10 - 25 feet of water on gravel points and gravel spawning banks, but nothing huge to speak of. I saw some beds but all were empty, which was kind of surprising with the full moon and surface water temperatures ranging from 58.5 to 62 degrees. I caught a 19 inch largemouth that weighed in at 4 lbs even. My wife had the biggest smallie at 2 lbs 11 oz.

Enjoyed an excellent afternoon of sun & fun today. Waters are warming fast but the Jerkbait is still a major player for me. A-Jay

My buddy and I had a great day on the water Sunday. Could have done without the rain mid day, but we expected it and decide we needed to fish anyway. Between the two of us we put 30 bass in the boat. Handful of dinks and the rest 1-2lb males that were buried up in cover on the banks, right where they should be. Didn't ever hook into any big girls, but we definitely saw some. Saw one that was 4-5lbs cruising on a shallow flat. Saw several other BIG females rolling and crashing on bait on a super steep drop-off bank that drops straight into the channel and 35FOW. 2 were easily 5-6lbs, saw one other that was 8-9+. But couldn't get any interest from them on any of the bluegill or shad colored baits we were throwing. Biggest for me was a 2.5ish that came on a spinner bait in the middle of the first rain storm. We had been running moving baits and spinners and a few top waters early then I decided to slow down and get way shallow with slow presentations. Wacky rigged senko got most of my bites prior to the rain. Got two on the spinner bait while it was raining, but after the rain stopped I fished it off and on the rest of the day and got one other hit which didn't get hooked. The rest of the day was weightless worms and a few on Keitech swim baits.

Got out on the boat for the first time this year and had a great day on a lake where we commonly get skunked. The two nicest fish of the day were a 3 1/2 lb largemouth and a little tiger Muskie! Largemouth was caught on a jig, the Muskie was caught on a senko of all things.

I got 30 LMB in the Everglades yesterday, but none of them were as big as this 3-plus I nailed tonight after dinner from the bank just a mile from home. I caught half the fish yesterday and this one today on the Zoom Ultra Vibe Speed Worm -- my new best friend.

lucky slippers. best day of the year so far. got 9 in a couple hours. most on a denny brauer pp jig with yum christie craw. rest on res 2tap natural bream. biggest was only 2.5# but some big bellies and good fights.

Had my Pixy open last night to swap out the pinion and main gear, as well as, clean & lube the spool bearings. I've been servicing my reels for longer than I can accurately recall and have not lost a bearing retainer spring... until last night! I heard it ricochet off several walls and the ceiling into a dark corner to my right. Somewhere in that dusty space behind the door where I pile a few empty boxes, lean a couple dozen unused rods and hang my waders. A muffled primal scream echoed through the house as I grabbed a nearby flashlight and began to fight my way through the layers of accumulated dust under and around everything. After several minutes of combing through the carpet pile with my fingers I sat back in my chair and tried to choke back the growing swell of tears, partly from disappointment mostly from anger at myself. Oh Lord no... in walks my wife of 40+ years to see what I'd done now and most certainly remind me I should have been more careful -- AGAIN! Yep, I've got to explain the entire excruciating ordeal. With THAT look of superiority radiating from her face (again), she asks if I would like her to look. Of course I said there's no chance in hell of finding that tiny piece of wire, but she closed the door revealing the mess behind it, look intently into the shadows for 3 or 4 seconds, bent over to retrieve something she'd spotted and nonchalantly handed me the missing spring asking "Is this what you're looking for?". I'm here to publicly express... I LOVE MY WIFE! oe

I had a premature sideplate opening during a cast on a citica. I haven't tried with a curado but I also don't want to spend 150 bucks to find out it doesn't work any better. I run my spool tension super loose anyway. But alas now I'm off topic. The point is I have my citica up for sale and now own 2 daiwas that I absolutely love!