Team9nine

This is only my second winter season of fishing here, and it’s been completely different than last year. High level assumption is that water clarity dictates the bite. If it’s clear, they are out (main lake) on shad mostly and feeding up, and if it’s stained, they’re up on structure and cover and feeding down.

Can’t get anything to eat on the bottom. Mostly jerkbaits and swimbaits or ‘jighead minnows’, with a few crankbait fish. Fish have been focused around shad schools on main lake from 1’-10’ ft. If more rain = more stain, I might finally get to catch them on a jig or Ned rig.

Back out on the water after a couple wet, cold days. Over 3” of rain, but surface temps only dropped 4-5 degrees. Fish moved again, but we eventually landed on them and caught about a dozen and a half in 3 hours.

The problem is the FFS/tourney conversations always seem to conveniently overlook ‘size structure’ and go straight to ‘population’ effects. It’s the former where I believe you’ll see the negative effects show up if early studies are any indication.

These big bass threads are always so - what’s the word - Interesting? Entertaining? That’s all. Carry on 😎

Usually just 2”-3” before tying the connecting knot unless the braid end looks suspect, then as much as seems appropriate. If I were to hang up and break off at the leader knot, I’d cut back a little more before retying, also.

We hit 80 yesterday, but struggled to top 50 today under partly cloudy skies and an east wind at 6-10 mph. Water temps cooled slightly, now 53-54 deg. Found bass working shad schools uplake and landed between 25-30 keepers in just over 3 hours. Fun afternoon on the lake. Now we wait and see what 3 straight days of heavy rain does to everything.

I think the question is the wrong one to be asking, because the answer is clearly “ both” depending upon the angler and the catch in question.

To look at a contour map and depth finder of any kind, even going back to flashers and paper graphs, and “see” the bottom of the lake as it would appear without water.

I got my unicorn today. A lot of close calls, but only 2 bites today. She bit a MB 110 FX late under cloudy skies just as sprinkles were moving in. Went 8.20 on the Rapala and 8-1/4 on the Chatillon. Water already warmed up to 55 degrees, but I’m sure that’s just surface. A good 4 days or more of rain next week will probably change everything.

Hard to make ‘em look big if they aren’t, so I didn’t even try 😉 - lol. Kidding. Just 4 cookie cutters today on A-rig on another “too nice” of day. Water clear and floating around 48-50 degrees.

Agree with the advantages/disadvantages. I never ‘long arm’ fish. In my case, being alone in a 16 ft boat, camera propped on a seat or against the side of the boat, I can only get about 5 ft away from the camera, so all ratios of me-to-camera and bass-to-camera get exaggerated, and sometimes even more so depending on exact angle. If you look close at my arms, you’ll see they are nearly next to my body, with forearm slightly extended away from me, and the bass sitting right over my left thigh. It even dripped on my new ‘hole less’ jeans (which everyone failed to appreciate😆), but which I thought I might get a scolding from the wife over - lol. I’ll ‘uncrop’ them later when I get a chance as that probably plays into perspective, too. The bump board ‘kayak’ shots are the best from a true length perspective, and as a former R&D guy, I can appreciate; but from a photographic eye and interest perspective, just one step above a bass-to-foot or bass-to-rod ground shot, IMO…same with holding a fish out into infinity from your wide-angle GoPro. But again, as you mentioned, we are all forced and dictated by our individual limitations in this regard to showing off our catches.

Finally got back out again after nearly 2 weeks of down time. Sadly, two lakes nearby are currently closed, limiting my options. Bluebird day, but a high of 80 and light and variable winds. Only bites I could buy were on A-rig today. Cloudy and nearly 20 degrees cooler tomorrow if I get one more chance to go this week.

I could probably come up with some calculation, but this might give you a starting point…really just have to test.

I agree it’s all interesting, but most of the top guys the first couple days blew up the FFS score that first period so they could spend time looking, searching and trying to establish a non FFS pattern. In many cases when they hit a fish or two in an area, they’d leave them and go looking again. Many didn’t seem to care whether they caught much knowing they could rely on that first FFS period the next day. There was also the big reset on Day 3. So in my eyes, the fact that FFS accounted for 80% of all the catches those first two days is a very misleading stat. It shows how much some of these guys are relying on it as part of an overall strategy, but the lack of non-FFS catches in comparison isn’t really representative of its true impact. The final Top 5 finishing guys were not the best 5 scopers by weight, but instead were the best 5 non-FFS weight accumulators.

The Day 1-3 averages skew the data and aren’t a fair representation, IMO, due to unintended consequences and strategy. The early days were 4:1 or 5:1 in favor of FFS - very disproportionate. Courtesy of their “A.I.” guy? 😉 😁 Always an interesting read…

It’s early, but just ran the stats adjusted for most variables, and the answer after the first event is just over 2.5X better. In other words, for every 10 pounds caught without FFS, the Top 10 guys caught 25-1/2 pounds with it in the same amount of time (per period). Interestingly, the average bass weight between FFS caught fish and non FFS caught fish was nearly identical (less than 1/10 of a pound). That one surprised me.

It probably varies from water to water as to which of those factors listed plays the more important role in big fish decline, and in many cases, it is likely some combination of all of them, but he ain't wrong, generally speaking. It is definitely a factor.

Haven’t found a picture of one (SmartWire) packaged. They later made a Ti-1 titanium spinnerbait, but that was well into the 2000s, so probably not the one you’re looking for.

Blue Fox made a nickel titanium alloy spinnerbait called SmartWire introduced in 1999/2000. It featured "a rugged design, super-elastic frame, silicone skirts and a design that makes it easy to change blades and beads." The Black Flash spinnerbaits shown match your package description, but came out a few years earlier in 1993. I don’t believe they were titanium, but they could have carried the packaging over.

Yeah, but looks like all the big NC bass died off along with the shad due to the Arctic blast 😆 Same thing here in SC, based on my one bite yesterday…🤗 Things should start popping next week with a good push of above normal temps forecasted - at least I’m hoping that’s the case.

Keith Poche

Ned rig and small blade baits cover 90% of my winter pond bass fishing. Add in a small suspending jerkbait and a little hair jig and you've probably covered darn near 100%. If you can find even a small patch of open water, there are bass to be had. Wide open water opens up all kind of options.

Just browsed through the 1979 Top 50 AOY Bassmaster list as well as the Top 25 All-time money winners to that point. TX, AR and MO anglers took nearly 50% (22 of 50) of the spots. GA, KY, TN and OK took another 24%. AL had just 2 anglers in the Top 50. NC was top state in All-time winnings. East TN has had a lot of pro anglers move there, especially around the Chick. It’s probably #2 behind AL. The other states, not sure why. TX and FL have routinely been top destination states for people like retirees and remote workers, but neither seems to draw the bass anglers in much. I think they’re still too far isolated (on the perimeter) when looking at overall tour scheduling, especially now that the ‘northern swing’ seems to be a permanent thing. The west will never see the major tours roll that way again to any degree, IMO. I’m also thinking a lot of the big Ozark impoundments that used to play heavily on tour have also fallen out of favor to some degree. Just guessing, though…

Guess my only qualm might be semantics - not “produces,” but which state do most professional anglers ‘move to’. AL has lots of transports from other areas of the country because of their centralized location relative to most tour stop locations, and great year round fisheries. I’ll have to see if I can find some of the old stats from the tour before ‘moving to fish professionally’ became a thing. I was thinking that TX, OK, MO, AR, FL, AL, and TN were always strong - probably GA and NC, too.