Basshole18

red hooks also.

7.2 pounds on this past sunday. I was fishing a club tournament down on the Cape. Weigh-in was at 1:00 P.M. It was about 12:30 and we wanted to hit one more spot so we ran across lake and got there with maybe 15 minutes to fish. There was several submerged boulders the size of volkswagën "bugs". The wind was absurd. I threw a few jig and pigs at the rocks, no bites. I switched to a carolina-rigged Zoom Magnum Lizard in Green Pumpkin. The whole rig landed on top of the boulder. I pulled it slowly off the rock, the weight fell first and the lizard slowly "crawled" off the rock behind it and fluttered down underneath the bottom of the rock. I felt nothing but a little pressure, a "mushy" bite and I set the hook HARD. At first I thought I had snagged the rock it felt so heavy then she budged and I saw the flash of her side and realized it was a PIG. I fought her as fast as I could and landed her. I thought she was closer to 8 pounds. Fish of a lifetime. Now, here's the AWFUL and still very painful part...I did NOT win lunker bass for the day. I did NOT even get first place. Somebody weighed in a 7.8!!! I had an awesome bag and thought for sure I had the win. Five fish for 19.9lbs! The winner weighed in 5 fish for 21.7lbs!!! UGGHHH it was brutal. The third place weight was 10.2 pounds and fourth was 3.9 pounds...Most people had 1 fish and some had no fish. People opted to stay deep for a smallie bite and we fished shallow. It paid off.

I am currently fishing a small boat tournament trail and doing well. My only problem is our boat is only 12 feet and has limit space with all of our gear packed into it and it has no livewell so we need to use a cooler with an aerator system in it. Most of the others do the same and most have more intricate systems. We simply have a medium cooler with one spray pole aerator. We have not lost any fish yet but we did have to release on at the last tourney due to it getting very weak. It did not end up hurting us but it could have. I am looking for advice on how to make the most efficient cooler-livewell. How many aerators should I use? How many ice packs should I put in it? etc., etc. Any advice will be GREATLY appreciated. Thank you in advance!!!!!!!

Good story, NICE fish too! It's really warming up in my neck of the woods,(Cape Cod, MA) it's been 85-89 degrees the last 3 days and they are startin' to really "blow up" on those froggys. Just a suggestion on the baitcaster/frog problem; try a Spro bronzeye frog. Or really any hollow rubber frog. They really get thru the slop and they cast a country mile. I know it's not the same buzzin' action of the ribbits but they work awesome especially for HAWGS! And I saw someone else mention the Strike King Rage Tail Frog---UNBELIEVABLE action/bait. They really chug, bubble, and gargle. Good luck on getting that big girl again. Thanx for the good ol' fishin' story! Tight lines!!

I read somewhere once that Picks eat like up to a million bass fry a day. I, too, have no problem with dead pickeral. I have a 135 acre lake 10 yards from my back door and we kill all pickeral we catch and bass fishing has improved. They are useless.

Texas rigged tubes/craws, and flippin' jigs w/ chigger chunk trailers (Berkley) around shallow structure. Lay downs and grass have been good. Lily pads that have just started poppin' up are producing really well. The Strike King Rage Tail Craw has been AMAZING. I've been t-rigging it on a 3/0 EWG hook, with a 3/16 oz. weight. I just pitch it to shallow cover and hop it slowly and frequently. When the bite seems to slow I will hop it even slower but then suddenly do a hard, fast hop/jerk and that seems to trigger big reaction strikes from them. I've also caught some big females off of beds. I caught a 5 pounder off a bed and had to annoy her for about 20 minutes before I found the "sweet spot" on the bed and she bit. The bite has been amazingly good. I am on Cape Cod. I have a tournament this weekend and cannot wait. Me and my partner WILL take 1st. Period.

Over the winter and a little bit of last season I picked up a ton of swimbaits. Some soft plastic/hollow, some hard plastic/wood, and some soft plastic and weighted and pre rigged. I have been throwing them a lot with very little success. How does anyone else do out here on the east coast and what could I be doing wrong? I have had a few days that the bite was unreal and caught several 5 pound fish. I have not been throwing any huge swimbaits either. Most are under 6" or 7" and all are under 2oz. so I doubt they are too big for out here. I just seem to catch much better limits with larger flippin' jigs and t-rigs. I usually go to a swimbait when the wind picks up a lot and I already have a good limit (in a tourney). When do you guys pick up the big stick? I am just wondering what kind of experience everyone else has had and when they believe "optimum conditions" are for the swimbait. Thanks!

That video you posted is actually a "BIG" ika which is a different bait. It is a bit longer and quite a bit skinnier and less bulky. Rigging a BIG ika w/ a weight is not a bad rig at all. A FAT ika I would not reccomend rigging with a weight that often but if yoiu needed/wanted to flip into heavy cover you'd want to. But in that situation I would just go with a big fat tube. My favorite way to rig a FAT ika is to use a 4/O or 5/O owner riggin' hook. (Ultra wide gap hook with a shorter shank for short, bulky baits like the fatika) I rig it in thru the skirt so the skirt is on "top" and then I take a lunker city nail weight (the smaller ones) and use half or less of it and stick it into the tip of the FAT ika. I then pitch it to the edge of brush, mats, lily pads, docks, etc. and let it "swim" away from me on slack line. This rigging will allow the bait to glide backwards under the cover right into the fish's face. It's an absolutely awesome rig. Also works great on the beds, because you can lift it and drop it and it keeps gliding back onto the bed and often right into the fish's face and literally hits her on the nose and they cannot resist it. Hope this helps. Good Luck!!!

I need a heavy or extra-heavy rod for frogging/flipping/smaller swimbaits/DEEP jigs, DEEP c-rigs/heavy cover general purpose. (I know it's a lot to ask out of one rod but I am limited as to how many rods I can fit into the boat between me and my partner) Problem is...I fish from small craft. A 10 ft. Pelican Bass Raider pontoon boat to be exact. My question is does anyone here fish from a small boat similiar in size to this and use a 7'6"+ flipping stick? And if so do they have any problem with room, i.e. hooking your partner or being inhibited during casting. I am looking at 2 rods: Kistler Magnesium TS Jig N Toad special extra heavy 7'0" rated 1/4-1 1/2oz. Kistler Graphite Plus Telescopic Flipping Stick 7'6" rated 1/4-1 1/2oz. (Since this is telescopic I figured it'd help in the small boat). Which rod do you think would be better?

As for the megabaits, in my opinion they are junk. Probably why they are out of business. But as far as the 2 jackall baits go...AMAZING. Jackall is by far one of the finest companies out there right now. I buy a lot of premium japanese tackle and everytime I get a jackall product I am utterly impressed. The Giron is a HUGE go-to bait for me. When those bluegill are swarming the shallows pestering the bedding fish and cruising bass later in the year...nothing is better. I've caught some of my bests on the Giron. The jackall mask is an awesome bait too. I have not used the flexible version but the regular one is phenomonal!

The other day I was out on one of my favorite smallie ponds down here on the cape. It happens to be where the old state-record smallmouth came out of. It was real cold and the largemouth were not biting at all so we decided to go for smallies. They were biting very scarcely also. Well anyway I was drop-shotting a zoom 4" meathead in green pumpkin. We were off a long point right on a break where the water depth dropped rapidly from 5 ft. to about 17feet. I was casting along the drop off and I was really dazing off just talkin to my buddy when instantly i felt like I was hooked into a volkswagen driving away from me. I didnt even have time to set the hook, it was instant. I knew it was something gigantic and my buddy seemed to be able to tell also because of the look on his face and the bend on my rod. I've caught a lot of big fish but this one just felt incredibly stronger I was actually questioning if it was a snapping turtle or something. Then the fish jumped and it was absolutely incredibly and absolutely a BIG fish. When I finally got it to the boat, we were seriously questioning how close it was to a state record. I have a 5lbs, 10oz. smallmouth that I caught when I was 11 "stuffed" on my wall and this fish completely and utterly dwarfed it. We got the scale out and in my mind I was saying 7lbs, 2-4oz. or somewhere around there. My buddy Keith said "that's EASY 7lbs". But I was the one holding it and it really did not feel that heavy. When I looked at it's belly it was skinny. Anyway, I put it on the scale and it was 6 pounds even. I was SOOO surprised because this thing was just so much bigger than my stuffed fish and Keith had caught a 5lbs 4oz. fish earlier in the season and this one was way larger. The length and height from dorsal fin to belly was utterly incredible, but the girth was SO small. As the day progressed we saw tons and tons of dead and floating fish, mostly smallmouth but largemouth also. (Probably just because this pond holds a SM to LM ration of probably 3:1). This made me nervous because this particular pond is part of a VERY productive chain of lakes down here. They are all connected by very small creeks but I am worried if there is something wrong with the water quality that it will spread to all of these lakes. I spoke to another guy who loves to fish these same lakes and he said one of the other ponds in the chain has been producing very strange looking fish. He said they all seemed incredibly and ridiculously thin and their color was way off. These ponds are known for their awesome growth rates as they are fed by alewife/herring runs that produce an amazing forage base. Is there anyway I can find out if there is something significantly wrong (i.e. contact enviro' rangers, etc.)? And does anyone have/had any similiar situations? And does anyone know what it could be?

Now, there's a man that knows what he's talkin about. Kistler, IMO is the best rod, hands down. And I've had/tried just about ALL companies. I also have a carrot stix and it is pretty nice!

THANK YOU INFIDEL!!! I am sponsored by the TACKLE shop, nothing at all to do with Kistler. He is not an official Kistler dealer or anything like that either. In FACT, I convinced him to bring in Kistlers he did not even carry them because I loved them so much. My buddy hooks me up from his tackle store, and like infidel said, I can choose whatever company I want. I was trying to give useful information and help someone out. I will say it again: I AM IN NO WAY AFFILIATED WITH, WORKING FOR, OR SPONSORED by KISTLER!!! I just think they are the best rods I've ever used and would like to pass that on to the next man.

wow...A rage craw on the back of a chatr....that action must be just plain RIDICULOUS!! gotta try that one

Shimano Curado 100D or Shimano MG50 definately amazing reels that are super user-friendly and super sturdy and super light!!!