Crestliner2008

10. Get the best that you can afford. Every penny you put into your sonar is money well spent. Even fishing shallower lakes & ponds, it can tell you a lot about bottom content and contact points, such as old railroad ties, downed trees, etc.. All of which will put you on fish a lot faster than not having this capability. The Lowrance HDS series is a fine piece of electronics...in my opinion.

Welcome aboard!

O.K....here's my take on this situation. First off, bass are sight feeders and feed more readily during the daylight hours than not. This is a fact. This is why your largest catch seems to always be around the mid day hours. Larger specimens don't want to expend a lot of energy to eat and become more ambush feeders than their smaller brethren and use their superior sight capabilities during the lightest part of the day. That being said, the reason you normally catch more bass during the low light periods is, in reality, because this affords you an opportunity to make more mistakes without detection! The fish won't pick up on those errors as readily in the dawn & dusk hours, being the visual animals that they are. It's not that they are any more or less active (feeding) throughout the day. The activity levels (feeding instincts) are regulated more by the weather conditions, than the light conditions. Of course, there are always exceptions to every perceived rule we anglers dream up, but this theory parallels with majority consensus of the top professionals in our sport. The original question is hard to answer, based on the lack of information, but these guide lines may help.

More than worth your time. You will be way ahead of the game if you study his writings. Ignore the supposed scientific data to the contrary. No one knows more about structure than Perry.

Supposedly this suppose to work!

Laws are currently pending to tax all online purchases for states. Get use to it and count your blessings with those companies that currently don't add the tax. It won't be much longer.

Been using it for 6 years now with no problems, no worries. Use it in my outboard, lawnmower & snowblower. Great stuff for this ethanol crap they've forced down our throats.

Very tough fishing. We've had similar conditions here as well. Next week things suppose to settle down and we might get a few days without rain! I agree with the above...fish close to cover or shoreline and use something that you swim slow, like a Chatterbait or variations there of. These put out a lot of vibration and swim very slowly. Good Luck!

Very tough fishing. We've had similar conditions here as well. Next week things suppose to settle down and we might get a few days without rain! I agree with the above...fish close to cover or shoreline and use something that you swim slow, like a Chatterbait or variations there of. These put out a lot of vibration and swim very slowly. Good Luck!

Some kind of swim jig to search with. Then slow down with a hard jerk to strain a productive area. Some folks advocate lipless cranks as an effective search bait. I've just never done well with them for whatever reason?

Great time for blade baits, i.e.: Silver Buddies. Jerkbaits usually come into their own once the water gets above 50 degrees. No reason why a swim jig or football wouldn't work either. Lots of ways to do it. The most important thing now is location. It's tough using a jig as a search bait, unless you use it swimming style. And oh yes....Chatterbaits!

This is the one I use regularly:

Thanks for the suggestions guys. The sock I have is the "Large" size pro model (black) - 38" I believe. Much larger than a 5 gal. bucket. I'm going to try to temporarily close the end and give it another whirl a time or two before I give up. But it seems to me, for the amount of money they cost, there's just too little R.O.I. for my liking. I'll probably end up selling it on ebay or a local forum. I just can't imagine have two or more of these cumbersome devices in the way while casting and trying to maintain boat control. They might work for some experienced folks who are use to using them, but do not appear to be a value added accessory for my kind of fishing. Thanks again folks!

There are a ton of great threads here on smallmouth fishing. Check the library above. That being said, get yourself a bunch of 1/8 oz. plain lead jig heads and an assortment of 3" curly tailed grubs. Make sure you have smoke, white and chartreuse at least. You'll do about as good as you can casting points and humps with these. A few bags of 5" Senkos and Gamakatsu Finesse Weedless hooks. Wacky rig the worms and you're good to go with a back up to the above. Make sure you have some watermelon w/blk flake. Good Luck!

Are you fishing from a boat or from shore? If a boat, do you have a sonar? If you do, then use that to find structure to fish, i.e.: points, humps, drop offs, etc.. The sonar can be invaluable for finding baitfish on structures. Once you do that, you've narrowed the playing field tremendously and the odds will be in your favor. If you are shorebound, it's going to be tough. Do as previously suggested and get a good topo map. Fish those points or cuts where the deep water comes close to the shoreline. You will still have to do a lot of searching and walking!

Never heard of that pond, but there are tons of great waters to fish in Mass.. The least of which is the great Quabbin Reservoir.

Truly an awesome bait. My sure-fire "go-to" when things turn south. I rig mine weightless and reversed. I never leave home without a couple of packages.

Excellent! And very accurate. Thanks.

Any idea why it's not working for me?

I always use Startron in my gas. Not only for the outboard, but the snowblower, lawnmower and sometimes in the car. Does a great job of keeping this garbage gas, shoved down our throats, at bay. Just took my lawnmower in for service and the mech asked me why I wansn't using the machine! I laughed as I mowed the lawn at least a couple of times a week last season. Then I told him I use Startron and he said, "Ah...that's why!" End of discussion.

Walk into any BPS shop or google "fishing lures" online and you will see a vast array of baits, most of which have and can catch bass. Some are $4.95 each. Some are $40.00 or more each. (Some triple that!) As fishermen become more and more educated and experienced, they start to pick & choose those lures which, 1) have reliably caught fish for them in the past, or 2) gives them the anticipation and excitement of possibly catching more. When you come right down to it, that's what our sport is all about. You've got to think about lures as tools to control your fishing situation. If you buy them because they pretty; well, you're going to spend a fortune and get disappointed more often than not. I've paid some serious bucks for some of my lures. But I've done so with a purpose of attack in mind for situations I normally come up against. Most lure companies today spend awesome amounts of money and time in design, function and finish of their offerings. As I said previously, most will catch their fair share of fish - if presented as the manufacturer intended. But don't believe for a minute that you can buy fishing success. You must think of fishing in basic terms (depth & speed control), not hype. Just my opinion - you asked for it.

Thanks for information guys. It just bothers me that these companies put out information and specification on devices which may not be true (i.e.: this size sock is intended to be used on a 16 - 18 foot boat). If I'd have known that I'd need to buy two or more of these, I wouldn't have bothered with any of them! The video was very informative. Apparently, the sock is used to control direction, not drift speed. Not a good solution to my problem.

Awesome start indeed! Wish I had those kind of water in this neck of the woods.

Frisky bunch of folks we've got here! What a wonderful site this is.

You'll get yourself bogged down unless you learn something about structure and structure fishing. Get the bass fisherman's bible on structure fishing for starters: "Spoonplugging" by Buck Perry. Study it before you read anything else. Then add presentation specific books and other authors as you deem necessary. Follow the previous suggestion as well; hire a guide. Unfortunately, there are guides....and there are guides, if you know what I mean. So I always recommend beginners start off with Perry's book. You'll be ahead of the curve in no time, if you do.