Crestliner2008

LedgeBuster - I have several of these spinnerbaits on my boat, but rarely use one! DUH! See, that's the problem....sooooo many lures..... soooo little time! RW, I guarantee, I'll be giving them a whirl next time out. Thanks!

First of all, these environments can hold some really large bass. But with the water clarity, your approach must be paramount. Remember, if you can see them, they can see you! Wear sneakers and walk softly. Take your time approaching. Stay as low as possible and/or keep your profile broken up by your background (trees, brush, boulders, etc.); do not silhouette yourself against the sky, in other words. Wear attire which matches/blends with your surroundings. Once you are in position, sit down and relax a bit....allow your environment to "settle down" so-to-speak. Your approach, however careful, will be felt and known. Believe it! Use fluorocarbon line on your reel. I'd suggest using a natural presentation; with much more emphasis on "triggering" vs. "attraction" qualities, such as a plastic worm. Senkos would be ideal. Wacky rigged, even better. Use a 1/0 Gama In-line Circle Hook with the 5" Senko. Use natural colors which match the bottom content, such as Pumpkin (brownish) or Watermelon (greenish). JMO, but I do hope this helps.

Smallmouth Bass, hands down. I hope you get an opportunity to catch one at least 3 lbs.. Then you will understand.

Outstanding catch! Wish we had smallies that big in my state!

I fish a deep, clear, hill-land lake here in MA (Quabbin) and mostly fish off-shore. Been doing this for quite a few years now. Fishing open water is all about location and food. Find food on a drop-off or side of a point, or creek channel and you're golden. Anchor and start fishing. It can be a pain to anchor and pull many times during the course of a day, but the proof is in the pudding, so-to-speak - as you will see. Now it comes down to presentations. I'd pick the drop shot as my No. 1, followed by Senkos (wacky-rigged) and hard jerks. I haven't tried the shakey head yet, but that should work well. I also try tubes from time to time to give them something different. Yesterday we hit the Quabbin early and the fish were co-operating nicely. The best part is that we were all alone...fishing out in the middle of the lake and catching one after another. Not sure how many we actually caught, but at least a doz. & 1/2 each. All very respectable smallies. No dinks. Some folks claim to catch 30 or 40 smallies on this lake in a day. But they're beating the banks and most are a pound or a pound & 1/2. We don't consider those bass. We even got a 4.3 lb. salmon and a 3/4 lb. white perch, to round things out. Only the salmon and the white perch were taken home for the table. We always CPR our small mouth bass. A religion with us. Here are a couple of pictures of what we caught yesterday and what you can expect if you put in the time and the study: This is a sample of what you can find off-shore, if you use your electronics properly and don't beating the banks: Hope this is of some help to you.

Lake Champlain for smallies! ;D

Great video! Thanks for sharing.

Have you ever considered that the rapid "tap..tap..tap.." you are experiencing is NOT a bass? Take my word for it, gills love to chew and chomp on senko tails. A bass will tap once....maybe twice...more than likely, it'll just swim off with it. Bass don't just sit there and chomp repeatedly. Fishing some small local ponds, I often use a 6' light action spinning rod, 6# test mono and a 4" Senko on a small Gama EWG, size 2, worm hook. Deadly combo, on which I've caught a lot of LM over the years. Never needed a heavy action rod, even around brush. Just keep tension and the bass will work their way out for you. I even crush down the barbs on my hooks to make extraction easier on the fish. Yes, I've lost bass, but never with the hook still in them . Most of the fun is in the catching, as all my fish are released anyway.

Northern Bass Supply in NH has a great selection of spinnerbaits. They even carry "Fleck's", which has been around for over 30 years and still a great fish catching bait.

Just a follow up to what rw said. I slip a river. I put the boat in forward gear with the bow upstream and slide back just a bit slower than the current itself. This gives me great boat control and I can present my jig in a natural downstream direction and not having to worry about using a 1 oz. jig (some folks advocate this in current). Nothing wrong with heavy jigs mind you; I just have had better luck with the lighter stuff while slipping. Just another way of poking the pig.

Wayne P & boatnik13 - O.K., great...then tell me how you set your sonar to see it? I always set my ping speed at max and my chart speed at about 70%. My sensitivity is about 80%-85% normally. If I'm anchored I'll reduce the sensitivity and if I'm running, I'll increase it. I keep the ping & chart the same regardless. What am I doing wrong?

I totally agree. For me, that's off-shore. Less pressure and competition and much more productive - IMO.

In such a situation you need deploy one technique and one technique only: STEALTH. Take my word for it, if you can see them, they can see you. And you are sooooo ugly, it shuts them right down! ;D Seriously, I would only fish it during the mid-day hours. Yep, that's right. That's when the biggun's are most active. I would SNEAK up on them; slowly and carefully. Wear "sneakers" and walk softly. Take your time. Move SLOWLY into position. Sit down and wait awhile. Then cast out a 6" (smoke w/black flakes) Senko, wacky rigged with 2/0 red circle hook. Let it sink slowly of it's own free will. Then wait some more as it sets lifeless on the bottom. If nothing happens after 15 - 30 min., twitch it off the bottom a bit and let it set some more. Before you know it, your line will start to slowly move off. Do NOT set the hook....just reel until you feel pressure. Now you've got 'em - these hooks set themselves. Just keep reeling. Stealth has paid off for me on a number of occasions and it can for you too. Just give it a chance and have patience. This approach works! Good Luck!

I fish a large (7 mi. x 15 mi.), deep, hill-land type reservoir here in MA (Quabbin). Some areas go well below 100'. The DNR says this lake stratifies and the thermocline sets up every year. Three years ago, when I bought my boat, I had the marina install a Lowrance X-135. The book that comes with this unit clearly shows how you can set-up and "see" a thermocline. However, regardless with how I change settings, I've never "seen" a thermocline on this unit. I think I agree with what has been previously said, in that you probably need a high-end, color unit to see and find it.

I think you may need to get back to the basics. Answer the following every time you set out. 1) What time of year is it? Spring, summer, fall, winter? 2) What species (of bass) is my target? Smallmouth, largemouth, spotted bass? 3) What is the water temperature? Am I fishing a lake, reservoir or river system? 4) What stage would the fish normally be at, at this time of the year: pre-spawn, post-spawn, summer, fall patterns? 5) What structures (structures are NOT logs or weed beds!) are most likely to hold this species, this time of the year? Points, deep drop offs, stream beds? What is the bottom content like on that structure: rock, muck, sand, weed? 6) What are they feeding on? Shad, smelt, perch or crayfish? Once you answer these questions, then you need to find their food source on the appropriate type of structure and proceed to try various presentations which most likely replicate that food source, i.e.: Tubes represent crayfish; cranks represent baitfish; etc.. Join a local fishing forum like this, or join a local club. Above all, remember, patience is a virtue - especially in fishing!

BPS makes a very decent rod. I've been fishing with those rods for years. I have NEVER spent more than $100. for a rod in my 40+ years of fishing. And you know what? No fish ever complained! ;D

Welcome! And Hello from Western, MA. Been fishing for bass in these parts for nearly 40 years too. (Older than dirt!) Anyway, this is "THE" place to be. Ask your questions and be prepared for the real answers.

Outstanding job out there! WOW! I wish I had an opportunity to fish Erie. What were you using, if I may ask?

How were you fishing this lure when rigged normally, weedless? Did you cast it out and crank it back fast? Slow? Jerky? Just curious, cause I just bought some similar baits and found that depending on how you hook them, the action changes dramatically. Tried casting it some yesterday on the Quabbin, but the wind drove us off by early afternoon. Downright brutal out there! >

Great job on the Q! Don't mean to hijack your thread, but I'd like to share some observations on the Q with you. Conditions there are pre-spawn to spawn right now, with the water temp at 54 degrees. We hit it on Sat., 5/24 and did pretty well ourselves. The wind was heavy from the NW and kept most boaters hugging the shorelines and coves - and going fishless! These smallies definitely require an "on-bottom" presentation this time of the year. And if you find bait balls in the area you're fishing, anchor and your golden. The fish we caught were on offshore structures in 25' - 35' of water. We used tubes, drop shot, senkos and even tried some hard jerks (which didn't work out btw). My buddy had the hot rod on Saturday with 8-9 smallies between 3 and 4 1/2 lbs., along with several smaller fish. Walt maxed out with a 3.9 salmon (only fish we kept for the day; all others were released as usual) and a 5+ lb. laker to boot! I only got 4 good bass and a couple of dinks. Here's some pictures of Walt's fish: And here's a couple of mine: Walt was busy fighting the laker, which is why I had to fend for myself with that photo! Another decent smallie with me in the picture this time: Quabbin can be a perplexing body of water, but it's also one the finest in the northeast.

I totally agree with the article cited here; however, there's one more step you might also consider taking. Crimping down the barb. I've caught a lot of bass in my day. Some pretty big ones too. All my off-set worm hooks are barbless and I've lost very few fish. And so what if you loose one occaisionally? The point of fishing is to have fun, not hurt the resource, right? Even deeply hooked bass can have the hook easily removed this way. Better yet, if you get stuck, no big deal extracting that either.

X2

Now if I can jog your memories a tad, Doug Hannon use to use a swimming worm to catch some pretty impressive bass back about 20 years ago. This worm was rigged such that a size #1 offset beak hook (with bait holding barbs and straight or ringed eye) is threaded onto a straight tailed worm; just the hook point itself comes out just below the egg sack, creating a bend in the worm. A quality ball bearing swivel is tied about 2' ahead of the worm which is cast out, allowed to sink a bit, then slow rolled back to the boat. If rigged properly, the worm would do consecutive 360 degree turns as you retrieved it. The worm would undulate provocatively in the water which both attracted and triggered the bass into striking. My question is, does anyone ever use this technique anymore? And if so, what are your experiences with it? I'm going to start using again this season and was curious.

Cruise around off shore structure until you find some sort of break (stump, cut or anything else different around the structure) with bait associating to it. Then put down a drop shot.

To quote you, "Every drop off I find, there is no structure or weeds..." A drop off IS structure. Structure is defined as bottom variation such as depth, points, humps or bends. What's on that structure, such as weed clumps, stumps or boulders are "breaks". You did not say if you were fishing from a boat or from shore? If from a boat, your job would be to find bait (use your sonar) relating to some structural feature first & foremost. When you find bait, note the depth and fish that depth along similar structure lines. Since the fish have obviously undergone a serious stress with the removal of the weeds, I would treat them as always in neutral or negative moods. Try drop shotting or vertically suspending Senkos, etc....there are sooo many finesse-type presentations you can use. Good Luck!