jhoffman

SWEET! I caught a smallie today that looked like a football. We only caught one fish on a visible bed, a lot of fish today were out deeper. The largemouths we caught them mostly in 4ft or less.

You really gotta remember what you have in your hands. I lost an absolute monster yesterday when using light line with a circle hook when I had a brain fart and cracked her with a flipping style hook set on six lb line. Dropshots will fish any bait, theres nothing you cant throw on it. I fish some really really small baits at times and catch some big fish.

I fished the same conditions as you in the same state over the last two days and absolutely put it to them like I havent in a long long time. Hook size was a game changer for me. I was throwing a 3/0 and went to a #2 and my rates went ballistic. I couldn’t throw the wrong color. I was crossing their eyes at the first tick of a pick up.

I choose a pile of other knots before going to that one and it depends on how much of a hurry I am in. 1: Double Uni 2: Snell/Polomer 3: Improved

I wouldnt run any of the gas it came with, id dump that in a car or old tractor. I doubt its fuel injected correct? A can of seafoam wouldnt hurt. Is it a two stroke or a four? Id guess a two.

There used to not be a left handed baitcaster. The guys that dont use lefties are switching hands mid cast most times.

Whatever you buy, get an amber lens. I have three pairs, two gray and one amber. The one pair of gray ones is going back to solar bat to get amber lenses

id like to see them alternate seasons. the actual water i dont care too awful much but it should be all over the US. There shouldnt be say the same lake in a 10 year span. If theyre as good as they claim, they should catch a bass in a mud puddle with a cold front.

Someone on here posted something the other day that stuck well. If a lure is worth less than say $6, if I cant get it easy, Im not shutting down a bite over $6. Buy that same crank and send it to a custom painter.

Left central PA Friday at 10am and drove to the lake. We stay in a cabin at Camp Prendergast which is just off a public launch on the lake. We get there friday and head out and it once again looks like the ocean. We fished mid lake and caught one or two but the water was just borderline insane. It was also a front moving in so that didnt help the cause at all. Saturday morning up and launched bright and early. We wanted to fish the southern end but couldnt get there due to the weather the day before, we headed there first thing with glass like water. Upon arrival, it looked like boat city, to my surprise they all appeared to be fishing for crappies. I hooked into a nice smallmouth on a jerkbait and then we started to fish the opposite side of a hump when WHAMO... musky number one. Im the guy with the winter hat, if you cant tell it was COLD. No sooner did I release my fish and my buddy creamed one too! After that I started to recall what happened last year and we decided to head to the north end. Im not gonna bore you with an hour of details. From Saturday mid day until we left this morning we caught over 50 fish combined. Some nice smallies and largemouths with the majority of fish being LM. We had to fish super slow to do anything worth while. My buddy likely has most of my pics but we didnt take a ton, too busy catching fish. I didnt see anyone lay into them like we did. At times we had doubles, other times we caught ten back to back. Once you got that school activated it was on like donkey kong. We just flat out laid it too them. Had we been in a tournament, we couldve probably won it. Heres one good bass I had on my phone he caught. Every year we get slammed by a cold front, I think next year we might go even later. Im talking brutal cold fronts, it was 31 degrees last night, friday night it was 37. Friday the water was 63 today a whopping 54! I tell ya what we caught em on, but then Id have to kill ya.

hes been doing well, wouldnt surprise me if someone had an axe to grind. some people just cant stand to see someone out do them in anything.

the lure is fine

i have a gas grill and a gas smoker lol. i use an amazn pellet smoker for both. you get wood taste, without the work

blue bird sky = high pressure = tough day. try it in the middle of a downpour.

I definitely use both. Sometimes on the smaller lakes I can sorta get the idea by looking for three stationary objects to line up with on shore.

1 more day of work then off to the promise land

put me in the it doesnt matter camp

PA is rough on the tournament bass angler for sure. Ive seen them at weigh ins too. Ive also seen them walk a fifty boat field and check vins to make sure no one is running a 25 hp on a 20hp lake. Then turn around and blow up the middle of a lake with a 150 wide open.

with the keurig, id never go back. i get up to fish or hunt, 30 seconds later the coffee is done.

im a firm believer that even with tight tolerances and getting a good batch, you might get one out of ten that will have something just enough different that it catches fish like a mad man.

Only five people on this forum know how to cast properly, the rest of us are still too dumb to figure it out. No one is saying that directly, but thats what theyre basically implying. There are lines that dont manage well. How exactly does one spool a baitcaster backwards, the spool only spins one direction. Its not like you can take it out and turn it around. Id honestly, not being a wise guy like to see how thats done. I find it amazing that you can take the same exact rod setup, change line, not change anything as far as brakes or spool tension and suddenly you dont have any problems. Ive tried every fluoro under $20, I never went as far as sunline. Odd that I can manage some of the heaviest mono on the planet without feeling the line grenade off the spool mid cast. Even when youre not backlashing you cant feel the stuff come off the spool like crazy and tame back out before the end of the cast? None of my mono or braid lines do that. The only time I could get the stuff to be reliable is with extreme braking or spool tension. Im out there to fish, not see if I can spend all day making micro adjustments every time I change a lure for what minimal benefits flouro might offer. I can pick up a rod, wing a heavy spinnerbait, turn around and tie on a 1.0 and make the same casts with no need to adjust the rod much if at all. Problem is, until someone figures out a way to mount a camera on a rod, show the brake settings with no editing of the video then we will never really know whats true. Me personally, I dont have time for the headache, it makes me not even wanna fish so I join you in your frustration and I didnt just start bass fishing yesterday. Ive seen flouro make a difference in ultra ultra clear water where I am fishing size 18 or smaller nymphs on fish that have been stood over all day(artificial steelhead fisheries). Ive never seen it bass fishing. Ive also seen good flouro leader turn to crap after being exposed to sun. Theres so much around flouro its hard to find what to believe. To answer: I like the following McCoy Mean Green Berkley Big Game Suffix 832

Im confused as to your point? I assume its in reference to standard spools coming in 150 yards?? Easy solution, use backing if the line diameter cant fill it. Ive got 15lb on both of my bb1's and I buy bulk spools. The MG has a full spool of sufix 832 in 20 which is the diameter of 8, with no backing and its fine. If you can cast 450ft with any lure on the market I will give you a big ole atta boy. But reality is, you might get 50-60 yards(150ft) on a good day.

I bought my third lews today. A BB1 Pro for the second time, such a nice reel. I really like the MG series too. I wish all their reels had either MG or External Centrifugal brakes cause id probably own more other options in the line. The only company im willing to deal with internal brakes is shimano and if they ever get away from that I wont own any reels that have them. That magnetic braking system works excellent. I love daiwa for that reason too, but me and daiwa had a bad run that I still can taste.

You can control any fish much better if you turn so the belly faces the sky while taking the hook out. Its like it throws their brain out of whack for a minute. Usually they dont even flop.

If they made a 3.1:1 id buy it, I can burn even the slowest reels.