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after getting 10 inches of rain in the last 5 days, I was itching to get out on the water. A cold front and 15-20 mph were not ideal conditions, but i was determined to go out anyway. spent about 5 hours riding the waves and cranking rip rap, with a kvd 1.5, on my favorite power plant lake. caught 7 bass these 2 were the biggest. 3lb 14oz. and 3lb 6oz. of course a day of crankbait fishing, in Kansas, is not complete without a couple drum hammering your bait and taking off like a freight train.

Took advantage of the warmer than normal temps. to head out for some smallies. Took a while to find them but did OK. Looks like they are starting to fatten up for the winter. Nothing too big, but boy what a fight.

My wife rarely has a hair out of place which is what made this photo so funny to me. It was windy on the Big G yesterday and it was hitting her right in the back of the head. She’s a fan of Guy Fieri of “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives.” I told her she looked like Guy’s twin sister, whom I called “Guydean,”

Because it flat catches fish...? Only a hundred or two bass caught on this one so far...

With Ike's new show premiering tomorrow night on Nat Geo he decided to hit the streets of Philadelphia to do some sewer fishing. Love him or hate him Ike is a marketing guru. He's pretty funny too. https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/City-Fishing-Catfish-Broad-Street-Center-City-Philadelphia--496731971.html?_osource=SocialFlowFB_PHBrand

My PB NY largemouth came from a drop off from a weedline that ended at 15', dropping off to around 35'. For what ever reason, instead of reeling the 12" T-rig worm after getting out of the weedline, I let it tumble deeper. I'm not sure how deep, but more than 20' for sure. I felt something mushy, so I set the hook, and reeled in what felt like a waterlogged boot. Turned out to be a 7-2 LMB.

So a good friend of mine nearly lost his life yesterday. He decided to head out to a local river after work in his kayak for some evening fishing. He gets out on the river near a bridge and drops anchor upsteam in about 30ft of water. The anchor lets go unexpectedly and he begins to drift towards the strong current in the middle of the river and then snags on something hard and pulls the entire front of the kayak under water. Before he could even react the entire kayak was pulled under water and flipped upside down with him inside of it. His leg was caught on something and he had to rip his leg free then float back to the surface and attempt to swim across the current to a boat nearby. Luckily he was able to get the boats attention and they pulled him out. They head back over to where his kayak was and they couldn't even find it, the current was so strong that it pulled his kayak so far under water that they couldn't see it from the surface. And he was trapped inside of it that far under. He shows up to work today with a terribly lacerated and bruised leg and a horror story and telling me he is so grateful that he had his life jacket on because without that extra flotation there was no way he would have been able to stay above that current and call for help. The boaters nearby said they didn't even see him go under and never would have noticed had he not been yelling in their direction once he resurfaced. I know folks say it all the time but seriously, always wear your PFD. They really can and do save your life if you find yourself in an unfortunate situation like my buddy did and currents can often be a heck of a lot worse than they may seem on the surface. He ended up losing everything in that accident including the kayak itself as well as all of his gear, keys, phone, etc. But he walked away with his life.

...or Seven Muskies in Seven Days, The Way to a Happy Heart. Wasn't quite a musky a day, I zeroed on Thursday after loosing a mid 30's fish at the boat, but I'd caught two on Wednesday, so I kept my average up. Nothing huge, started with a 37" right away Saturday night, then a 22" on Sunday, then a 30", a 29", a 27" and 9", skipped Thursday per above and finished with a 34". All were fat, healthy fish, only managed the 29" on a fly, but it was one of mine, and my fishing partner caught a 37" on one of my flies too, so that was cool. No, the 9" isn't a typo...and that was with the tail pinched...cutest little toothy fish I've ever seen. Typical Canadian weather: got clobbered by a storm on the way to the island and soaked everything in the boat that wasn't wrapped in plastic, including me and my fishing partner. Sunny, muggy and hot Sunday and Monday, with buckets-o-skeeters at night to match. Temp dropped 20 degrees and rain and wind kicked us around Tuesday and Wednesday...smallies turned off hard, but musky follows came way up. Had 11 fish follow on Tuesday, 9 on Wed. I can live with that... Sunny and warmer on Thursday, which slowed things down, and about the same on Friday, but more follows. At one point on Wednesday we had two muskies taking turns following everything we threw at them for about 45 minutes. We saw a low 30s fish first, got it to follow a 2nd time, then a high 40s mama came out to play. Tried 4 different flies, spoons, inline spinners, top-water plugs and flies (thought my fishing partner was gonna fill his pants when the big girl came up and stared at his musky popper. No love though, moved on to other spots. Another cool thing - we were working a spot where a tree had fallen off a point - musky city to anyone who's fished for them and a mid 30s musky followed a #5 Mepps out to the boat...we worked her on a big orange fly, a red/white Doctor Spoon and red/white fly. No love (went back and caught her Friday, that was my 34") but at one point we lost sight of her and I went to move the boat off the tree further...and she was hanging off the bow, staring at the trolling motor. She actually tilted down and followed a bit when I bumped it to move us. Proof they're not afraid of anything... My best fish of the trip was a 38" pike that looked like it'd just eaten a bag of bunnies. Caught her on my 2nd cast Tuesday morning in a spot we'd had a follow on Sunday. Our most productive pattern was to approach a spot, work it with gear, working up in size to see if we got a follow, then try flies. We might have done better on flies if we hadn't done this...but I'm glad we didn't. Switching back and forth is lot easier on my 55 year old body that either chucking gear or flies for 6 days straight. Mixing it up when stuff starts get sore made a difference. I'm happy to report that Humminbird's SmartStrike works exactly as advertised. Cut out a lot searching through unproductive water once you got on the pattern for the day. Biggest fish for the week was a 49 1/2" monster caught by our one of our cabin mates on Friday afternoon. Weird catch...the fish was feeding on something on the surface and Ron saw her, fired a topwater muskie lure in front of her...and she ate it. Got real exciting after that to hear them tell the story as she wasn't real interested in coming to the boat...she tail-walked on him twice, went under the boat once and tried to head into Sioux Narrows once. I've got no idea how many musky were boated, but it was a bunch - 4 cabins with 2 boats each with two mostly experienced musky guys can put a lotta fish in boats in a week...the most "total inches" by one guy was just shy of 400". Number of follows was nuts. We were the least experienced guys there, and we went 3, 7, 5, 11, 9, 4 and 6. Anyone who has chased these things will get that. Pike were consistent, lots of 30" plus fish, buckets full in the 20s and a few hammer handles. Smallies were a crazy hot bite Sunday and Monday, but shut down hard Tuesday and Wednesday and came back up to decent fishing Thursday and Friday. LOTW is a lot of fun...I'll be back.

So I went on my trip over the Columbus Day weekend, here is a recap for anyone interested: I was able to fish for about an hour on two separate days. I ended up buying 2 different packs of 5" stick baits: First was the Greg Yamamoto Watermelon with Blk/Rd flakes and the second was a pack of 5" Yum Dinger Black with red Flakes that was on sale for $2. I started out using the Yum Dinger (since it was the cheaper of the 2 I bought). I used a Texas Rig (1/8oz bullet weight and a 3/0 Hook) and texas rigged (wow that is confusing) the bait onto the hook. Being my first time no idea was to expect so I sweep dragged about 10" then reeled in some slack...rinse repeat. I had TONS of problems with my line on my spool so I spent a good 30 minutes trying to let out line and reel back into to get out twists and avoid birds nests (never had this issue years ago). I finally got that sorted out and threw my line out and as the bait sank i felt a tug...gave it a good yank and pow! Caught my first bass. After that excitement, I moved around using the same method (and same stick bait after re rigging it) and within 10 minutes caught another bass! So 2 bass in about an hour after some technically difficulties with my equipment and I was a happy fisherman! Next Day I tried my luck again (Same stick bait from the day before, still looked in good condition). I spent about 45 minutes casting in all sorts of directions, moving around the lake and nothing was really happening. I decided to move over to by a metal dock that extended out into the lake and figured to cast by that. I read somewhere bass liked cover and figured maybe they were hiding out there. My first cast over I got a bite and snagged a bass! some kids around the lake got super excited and came running over to see. Another few casts over by the dock I caught another bass and my fan section of kids went wild again ? All in all about 2 hours of fishing and I caught 4 Bass and had 1 hell of a time! best part was I used 1 piece of bait for 4 bass and the thing still looks like it could be useful. That seems like $2 well spent and I have plenty of bait for next year! I don't think the bass were that large but I added some photos below. I appreciate all the help and advice you all gave! I am now hooked on bass fishing and I am going to want to go and find more lakes to fish!!

A lot of the lakes I fish don't have 30' of water in them. They also lack any kind d of offshore structure to hold fish or bass populations to have a need to move offshore. For those reasons, I don't catch many bass deeper than 10' all year.

The lake I like going to the most, diamond valley lake, is a very deep lake. I'd call 30ft+ deep but I also routinely fish in 30-50ft of water especially in the summer and winter. The structure I'm fishing that deep is rocky humps or points usually with jigs and drop shot but there's a fair amount of bottom contact baits that are successful. Sometimes you can get them swimming a little underpin over it but usually bottom contact for me. Forgot to talk about approach. For me fishing that deep I'm almost always positioned on the shallow side of the point and working uphill, almost always uphill. The points are often not the classic tapering points but will have a little saddle before rising up with a hump/knob on the end. I like to have the boat in the saddle firing out over the end of the point. Sometimes I'll sit right on top of the hump, let's me fire casts off the side of it and work uphill and also lets me fish the drop shot vertically if thats the way they're moving.

Whatever depth they are active feeding in. Our western reseviors are very deep well over 100' on average. With the exception Clear lake and Juaqin/Calif Delta we don't have shallow natural bass lakes or rivers. During the cold water periods with no thermoclines the bass can go as deep as the baitfish are located, during warmer water periods with thermoclines the bass stay above it, average in most deep structure lakes is around 35' and bass can be anywhere from near the surface to the thermocline depending where the bait is located. My personal depth limit is about 40' do to air bladder expansion issues. My deepest LMB was a structure spoon fish at 60', I was pulling some loose loops and the spoon was on the bottom, reeled in the loose line the spoon moved up about a foot and the bass grabbed it. Deepest smallmouth was around 80' caught fishing for lake trout on a Sonar lure bouncing it uphill from 100' the bass loaded up at 80'. My PB 5 FLMB were caught between 15' to 25'. Tom

End of fishing season???? I couldn't handle that....... If you make it south we can take you fishing in shorts on Christmas.........

You haven't even scratched the surface if you think those are overpriced. Don't expect to get a lot of bites on big baits. Just doesn't happen like that often. But when you do get one it's usually a good one. I gave up on big baits for this reason. I don't get to fish often so I don't want to waste the little time I do have. The overall best retrieve for me was always just a slow and steady with the occasional pop/directional change.

Leave the skirt band on. Then hand wire tie with two wraps of wire (ahead of skirt band) , cut rubber skirt band off. Never worry about it again. Initially leaving the skirt band on before you wire tie, helps keep the strands from falling apart before you wire tie. Or like mentioned, use small plastic zip ties.

I'm not sure they specifically look at it that "hey that's an injured baby bass should I eat it or not". You know it's all reactionary on the fishes part. But baby bass is pretty productive pattern. The color in soft plastics is right there in the heart of other similar plastic colors that also work well. It's not like it's night and day different than others. In crankbaits I throw that pattern in Rapalas, Cotton, Bomber and Bandit. Was one of the first colors they tell you to get when you were a kid starting to throw crankbaits. I will say that my more recent purchases of a few real image type crankbaits are no where near as productive as the old school patterns put on Crankbaits. I would have thought the Rapalas real image largemouth and smallmouth pattern would have been far more productive than what they are. I really believed they would kick butt. Might be a mental block I have now with them. I found this this to be true with the Rapala old school bluegill pattern vs. the real image bluegill. Original bluegill is hands down more productive. One of the best bass fishing patterns there is. Just my opinion.

Nope...smallies don't start bitin till here until July..........

I use a 1/4 oz teardrop weight with a 2/0 roboworm rebard hook tied about 10” above the weight. As for plastics, I use a 6” roboworm 99% of the time. Every once in a while Ill put on a Yamamoto shad shaped worm

I've noticed that too about him. That's all that matters to everyone now though! Glad tactical bassin is still true to the game.

If you shake it more than 3 times you're playing with it.

Sure you can. I do it all the time. I once turned down Heather Locklear's invitation to go to the prom. She never asked but I was busy that day and couldn't go. ?

@Gundog I want you to know that I appreciated your words of wisdom to take care of myself after last weeks rib breaking event, but I am in some ways a glutton for punishment, call me crazy, or whatever else might come to mind but somehow sitting in my yak in pain is still better than sitting at home in the chair lamenting the fact that the months of frozen water are not far off. So, I went out Sunday and bagged 5.

How deep is deep? Buck Perry stated (defined) deep water is anything greater than 8-10 ft. It works well for nearly all my Midwest waters, so that's what I go with. That said, in winter, we routinely catch all kinds of fish in 30-35' of water here since the thermocline is gone, but we rately catch bass that deep. Seems like 20-22' is about as deep as I ever need to go for largemouth around here.

People troll downriggers for trout here and routinely catch largemouth all the way down to 55-60 ft. And they are often suspended over water 100+ ft just following baitfish. And people vertical jig smallies from over 60 ft down

Food for thought....all on the trailer hook only. I did change colors that day, but the blue/white produced around 25 fish from shore. A very memorable pre-spawn day.

In these two specific lakes, yes. The weeds extend up to 10-15' from the surface. In one of the lakes, it just keeps dropping to around 90'. If you can get a bait down there in the weeds around 15-20', you'll eventually get bit. It's a deep jungle down there. There's shallow fish, too. They are usually around wood.

Its white on the bottom. dark on top, and some blotting and splashing in the middle, what's not to like? I don't know (or care) if they actually think they are doing the Jeffery Dahmer thing or not, they bite it, so I throw it.

Buy wire tied jigs

Both fish were caught directly under the boat in 15' of water. Do I fish structure that shows no bait or bass on the screen? Absolutely ?

A little smallmouth barfed this little smallmouth into my boat two days ago. They are cannibals

Former Marine here (Amtracker...not the trains), I joined the Marines and graduated boot camp 9/7/2001. Boot camp at MCRD San Diego was the best and worst time of my life. You’ll accomplish more than you ever imagined possible as long as you push yourself into that uncomfortable area and fight your way out of it. The fleet Marine Corps is what you make of it. Choose a job you could see yourself enjoying post Corps life. I’m in law enforcement now and the biggest things I took from the Corps was honor, courage, and commitment. Doesn’t matter how cheesy it sounds or how much crap I get for saying I try to live by those words, I’m not changing it for anything/anyone. Hit me up if you have any questions about the Corps boss.

I've been experimenting with a paddle-tail and no skirt . It hasnt produced but it looks good .

But it made for a darn good click baity video and that’s what really matters nowadays to Scott it seems?

dude

Center weight distribution is used by Lund which contributes to their ride quality. Fuel tank, remote oil fill and batteries are all placed parallel with the keel.

Tell the little lady it could have been worse. You were thinking of having her sit in it on the way home. ?

Plastic never trailer hook always for me.

The only trailer on my spinnerbaits is a trailer hook.

As men, we all have select hearing, lol.

Thought this sauger was a catfish in the dark

Fall fishing at the canal and it was a great multi-species day. I was fishing with a light action Kastking Calamus rod paired with a Lew's Mach II size 100 reel. All these fish were caught with Berkley Atomic Tubes in Grasshopper color. Redbreast Sunfish Fallfish Rock Bass

Whopper Plopper is a straight retrieve bait that does very little to activate any internal rattles. Rattles are extra weight for the bait to carry over waves. I honestly don't think it matters though and couldn't tell you if I own any rattling or if they're all silent.

I bet they are closer to the bottom on sunny days, looking down in the direction of your craws. Sun probably helps them see stuff being carried down by those rapids too. Cloudy days they are probably being mean smallmouth and marauding.

The problem with grease in an exposed application is that is collects debris and contamination. It'll work but be diligent in maintenance and refrain from adding new on top of dirty. Heavy oil works best imo.

Went to BPS to spend a $50 gift card I purchased for $40 and used a $10 off $30 or more coupon. I wound up spending $5 and some change out of my pocket. Everything on the bottom row was on sale at least. Needed some more variety.

Been pretty busy lately at work and haven't been able to do much fishing. However I have been feeding the bait monkey...lol. In the past couple weeks I bought a bag of Zoom sapphire blue Z Craws and 6" lizards, a bag of Gene Larews sapphire blue Wheeler's Hammers, a bag of BPS sapphire blue river bugs, swimming elite chunks and black sapphire chunks, a new, smaller tackle bag H2O Express to condense down what I beat the banks with, a pack of Z Man bad shad and the deal Razor Shadz, a Strike King neon bluegill and a natural shad 1.5 squarebill cranbaits (3' to 5' diving) and a blue craw Red Eye Shad and today I got my 1/2oz sapphire blue and junebug Jackhammer style chatterbaits I ordered from @Bluebasser86. Looking forward to trying all this out, especially the Jackhammer style chatterbaits. Very nice workmanship and quality. Thanks a million Clayton, I'm very appreciative for what you made for me. ?

Stuck a nice one this evening on a 10 inch curly tail worm. First time night fishing for bass and I don’t know why I never thought it would work well. Anyways...

Been dinkin it up lately. Not much time to fish either with strange weather and other goings on. Last weekend made a poor Saturday fishing trip into a decent Sunday on Briery Creek. Sandy Res Saturday did her typical Sandy disappearing fish act. Marked bait everywhere. I caught 2 bass in 9 hours. My buddy got a decent one kinda early but it was same story for him the rest of the day. Couple dinks was all we could muster. Briery turned the weekend around pretty well. My buddy snagged a 5lber right off the bat, too bad it was short of citation size by 1/2”. The rest of the day we found pockets of bass in some shallow coves but not in others. And a few scattered around in deeper water in main lake. Both of of us missed hook sets on a nice sized fish which we assumed to be the same fish since it was on the same tree. Ive been fishing a Keitech 7.8 for about a year now off and on and had yet to get a solid bite on it until a 3.5lber smashed it! First fish on the big ol paddle tail, had to get a pic of that. The bigger one of the day, 4.5lber, came on a 4” Keitech, along with most of my other fish that day. This weekend a friend of mine got married Saturday and that meant no good chance for fishing. Today around 4:00 I managed to ease off the hangover and waddled my way to a pond about 15 minutes walk from where I live. Caught a dink, then made a cast to a lay-down tree top out in a cove in about 3FOW. Tiniest little tick and then the line started pulling. Set the hook and knew it was a good fish but she was swimming towards me so didn’t get the full picture until she came up just in front of me and flashed that big belly! She made a run under a log and dragged the line around across it for a few very tense seconds! Then I almost fell in the pond trying to get closer to the grass line so I could grab her! 6.0 pounds on the nose and she went 22-1/4” Citation baby! Fall is here and I feel the big bass fever!!