Mattlures

Good job Paul the recipe for growing big bass is not complicated. Keep the small fish, let the big ones go. Soo many people cry about bed fishing well thats the best time to keep them especialy in a small body of water. you will never catch all the males but if you keep some durring the spawn you are helping alot. First you imediatly remove fish that can never grow big. Second you keep the population from outgrowing the food source. lots of food, small populatoin of predators (mostly female bass)=trophy bass. pretty simple. of cource in northern states or lakes where they have a small population of bass they should all be released. But in most southern states bass can out grow their availible food and should be harvested. Dont know if your doing the same thing but what you are doing is obviously working. Good job!!!

the dukes used to be my favorite show as kid. I recently saw an old rerun and the two duke boys were skinny dipping together. That ruined it forever. I will now remember that show for that and it defenatly sucks. The A team WAS cool too but it also sucks. Kids just like different things. I cant stand the shows my 5 year old daughter likes

The hardgill is a little longer. It is used primarily as a cast and retreive bait. I also like to deadstick the floater. The ultimate gill I preferr to use on the bottom like a jig. Slowly working it over and across points making small hops or drags and pauses. I also use it on beds for big girls

what do you recomend? Invest? Sell? Buy? Refy? what does this news mean?

After reading this thread I have to wonder if guys are not using certain baits when they should, or use them for their strengths. I realy do like my rage shads. Now I'll be honest, I preferr a good buzzbait. I am confident in a buzzer and I am good with them. However, there are many times I would like to throw a buzzer but I cant because its too weedy. This is where I use the rage shad. I use it for its weedlessness. Some guys might opt for a frog or toad but I preferr the rage shad as a weedless buzzbait. Now I have to agree with the Dancin eel. I tried but I threw in the towel. I couldnt get bit on it. I have caught fish on the moto chug and it was exciting. Huge blow ups. I havent tried any other TV baits

I hope your not confusing Matt Newman with me. He was using a Huddleston which is a direct competitor of mine. By me saying I have seen the pics should add a little integrety to the story becuase he caught the fish on a competitors bait and I have absolutly nothing to gain. I remember the title of the article. it was "California dreamin" and it was in a bass west magazine. There were many pictures. if I remember right there were 3 boats with full live wells and there was atleat one pic with several guys holding up numerous big bass. I dont think they held up all 28 but there was a bunch of them. He also took some greif for keeping over his limit and holding so many big bass in the wells but as far as know all the bass were fine. They were all released healthy and none were found later. I am sure if anybody wanted to see the pics bad enough they could order a back issue of bass west.

ah the Matt Newman story. I have seen the pictures. I think it was in a Bass West article. Very impresive and I have no reason to doubt it. I have had a couple days where I found numerous big bass stacked up and we had epic days. Not nearly as many as Newman caught but enough to know that his day was possible. The pictures are out there.

Thank you! It looks like a regular soft frog. I think its neat that it croaked. I bet I could catch fish on it. Why did you not like it?

The link is not working for me?

I wanna see one. I googled it but couldnt find a picture. Can sombody please show me a pic of one?

There are plenty of "real" soft swimbaits that have paddletails or boot tails. I am basicaly putting the paddletail tube in its own seperate catagory. When I talk about "real" soft swimbaits, I am mostly referring to larger baits like Hudds ,Stockers ,Old Castaics, my trout, Ospreys and a bunch of others. There are a few medium sized soft baits that catch big fish too like my gills and and tournament ospreys and a few other smaller baits. Again, I am not saying the paddle tubes are bad, they are just different. They are not big fish baits. Maybe they catch a little bigger then average but rarley a BIG fish. And that bait pitured of mine is a deadstick bait. It does not swim. It floats and can be popped and it will dart and even walk a little but it has no action of its own.

In general soft swimbaits are more natural and subtle. Hard swimbaits are usualy more agresive. I also believe hard swimbaits are not swimbaits at all. In geneal hard swimbaits are best as topwater baits. In general soft swimbaits are best as deep water baits. Both are good in the middle. soft swimbait (REAL SWIMBITS not paddletail tubes) catch bigger bass. This also coincides with the suble nature of soft swimbaits and that they are generaly fished deeper. Aint nothing wrong with a paddle tail tube. They work well but they are generaly fished different (faster) then other(REAL) soft swimbaits and they are a numbers bait. They are not consistant trophy catchers. disclaimer: I used the phrase "in general" because there are always exception in fishing. Yes I know that a few big fish have been caught on Paddle tubes and some hard baits do catch big bass. But many more big bass have been caught on soft ones.

Just about any big game hunting is more fun then bass fishing. The greater the ocomplshment, the more fun I have. Now my biggest bass do rank up there.

supply and demand. Maybe walmart miscalculated and ordered 10x as many 1/2 oz and they didnt sell as fast as they thought. Maybe Strike king produced 10x as many and gave a price brake on that particular bait. It happens all the time.

If your fishing against top competition then you could not do it while smoking or drinking. If your fishing half a$$ed then you could smoke and drink. Heck I could throw a football with a bear in my hand and smoking. Weak argument.

KVD fished harder, smarter, and has more desire. He is always hungry. He has more strenghts then his competitors. There are others that are close behind but he is a little better. I dont like when people say there is luck in fishing. Saying he is different then Jordan or Woods etc because there is a luck factor. No there is not. There is no luck Except bad luck in that leval of fishing. Luck is an excuse. And to Captain Obvious. There is one simple reason that Texas has more top guys then other states. BECAUSE THEY MOVE THERE. They are transplants. Texas is centraly located. That fact alone makes it the obvious choice for a pro bass fisherman to live. No nock on TX, just pointing out the obvious

yeah the minnow packaging was wrong. Those baits were outsourced and when they showed up I was not happy. They are very easy to fix. Boil some water, throw them in the boiling water for a minute then take them out and lay them flat to cool down. They will be nice and straight. Also I dont like the cork screw hooks with them. I recomend a 1/4 oz 4/0 hook.

I predict the fishing will be disapointing. We have had a few lakes open up that were closed for a long time and they were all disapointing. They were great when they were closed and most became good after a little while but the intial opening were all busts. Here is why. Those fish have had very little presure for a long time. They are conditioned to it. Now you bombard the lake with fisherman, noise, boats, lures, line etc. This is abig shock to the fish. They go on the defensive. Once they get used to it the lakes fish like normal lakes. Now if nobody showed up for the opener except you then you would probably have a great day

most of those are pretty clear. Swimbaits are whare it gets confusing. Originaly swimbaits were soft plastic baits with swimming tails. As these swimbaits evolved into more lifelike creations, hard baits that resembled fish began to be called swimbaits. Then that evolved into just about any big bait being called a swimbait. Now many tackle manufactures are calling thier baits swimbaits or swim baits because of their popularity. just about everything is being called a swimbait now.

The guy is correct. Just because you cant tell the difference in the bags doesnt mean they are made from the same material. Worm prook bags are a poly material. I dont think regular zip lock bags are. Now this doesnt mean your bags wont work. They will work they just will deteriorate over time. Most likely you wont have any issues. And even if you noticed the bags going bad you could just put them in new bags.

there is nothing wrong with a punker. Good bait. It is a walk the dog bait but not a swimbait just like the huddle bug is not a swimbait.

I do have a Slammer. I dont use it much because I use my own baits but.......Biz is right. The Slammer is a classic and proven. I recomend it just from everybody who swears by them.

I predict a 13lb lmb but what I realy want is an 8lb calico and I think I will get that too.

Well George if you read the original post and my post you would see that I caught 100 bass from 1.5 lbs to 5.5lbs thats pretty darn close. You must have mistaken my opinion for bragging. Thats not what I was doing. My whole point was that just about everybody that fishes has caught 100 smaller bass, just not in one day. Most people have not caught a 14lber. If and when you ever catch 100 in a day, I am guessing you would change your opinion. When its too easy it looses its sence of acomplishment. Yes its fun but it gets borring. Most of the other anglers that were catching like we were, had started using fly rods and ultra lights and strange lures to make it challenging again. I have had more of a rewarding day when I disected a lake, established a pattern and worked for 30 smaller bass then when I caught 117. so maybe you should give it a rest ;D I have no problem targeting small bass. I do not only fish for big bass. I fish for many different species freash and salt. I would always take a trophy over numbers because numbers are just more of what you normaly do. A trophy is a rarety and more of an acomplishment. But trust me, If I dont feel the big bite then I have no problem catching some small ones. I think your answering the question as to what your clients would rather try for(becuase one is much easier then the other) not what they would have been happier with after the trip was over.

The question was not about oportunity. It was about results. Trying for monster is a lot different then catching them. Of course people give up and settle for small fish. The question is, what would you rather catch? Not what would you rather spend your day trying to do. And yes I went back to beat my number because that is what made it challenging. With out that it was only fun for an hour or two. Also the reason I went back was because you had to buy reservations to fish the lake. Between myself and my friends we had bought a bunch of trips.