Team9nine

Greer - most of these smaller reservoirs are hp restricted and perfect for kayakers, plus several smaller waters that are kayak only access. Many even have kayak rentals at the parks, and/or specialized kayak launch ramps/docks.

Option 2 Been here just over half a year, but have several neighbors (more than a handful) that pulled the plug on FL and moved here. FL is too hot in the summer, and quickly becoming a financial disaster from what everyone is saying (ins premiums, if your company hasn’t already pulled out of the state or dropped you, HOA fees doubling, etc.), plus the never-ending threat from hurricanes. Nice mix of bass options (good LMB, SMB and spots) to target, plus trout in the upstate and N GA and saltwater 3-4 hrs away. Also a lot of smaller community reservoirs within an hour or so (about a dozen come to mind) that get overlooked.

Hot and muggy with SW winds 14-20 mph. Really clear water made things interesting. Saw a few bass on beds along with a few roamers, but they were pretty skittish and non-committal. Finally figured out there was a better post spawn bite going on, and was able to put 10-12 fish in the boat, including a good one (over 5-1/2 lbs.). Water temps high 70s, and nearly a dozen rigs in the lot - a decent bit of traffic for a weekday.

Not a fan of Neko rigging. Seems like a technique in search of a problem and/or buyer. Weightless wacky or jig head wacky, or Ned.

Dislike & Can’t stand: ‘Dislike’ and ‘Can’t stand’ are basically the same categories for me. There are lots of baits I rarely, if ever, throw because of those two reasons. Senkos and Whopper Ploppers are at the top of this list. Maybe throw them in the ‘Dislike’ category since I pretty much won’t throw them at all, but I own a couple of each. ‘Can’t stand’, add the Texas rig, spinnerbaits, lipless vibrating baits and Carolina rigs to this list. They get tied on maybe once or twice a year, do catch a few bass on them, but they are all extremely situational for me. The Bass just don't want it: Underspins - have owned them ever since they came out…what, some 30 years or so now, and never even got a bite on one, let alone caught a bass. I’d gladly throw them all the time if bass actually showed a modicum of interest in them - lol.

There is no more guaranteed bass catching situation in life than fishing the immediate area where water is pouring into a lake/pond right after a huge downpour in my experience 😆 😎 @The Bassman

These ^^ I used the ones from Field & Stream. Used a pair of 1x2’s as a base, mounted to studs in the wall, then painted to match. Then used the included hardware to attach the base and holder frames to the 1x2’s, giving you the flexibility to space as needed, or alter easily in the future.

Agree with scheduling in-state guide trips with ‘trophy potential’ during any known time off. Sounds like the ideal option in your case to maximize your odds, time, efforts and money expended.

What is this “desired depth” you're trying to achieve? Most traditional shallow billed jerkbaits run 3’-6’, and the ‘plus 1’ versions run 6’-10’. Since you’re using 12# copoly, I’d expect you’re just hitting the shallower end of both ranges depending on model. I’d drop line test to something thinner, consider fluorocarbon, consider SuspenDots and strips, and also work the baits slower, with shorter twitches or longer pauses - all those things seem to increase effective running depth.

Rain held off, winds were calm, so squeezed in a few hours this afternoon. Managed a limit of bass and a couple bonus crappie. Water temps now in the upper 70s.

Lol - nice fish, and a good picture showing off her size We're already post spawn down here now.

Yep - at this point, you’re just a pawn in a game of financial chess, waiting to be built up and sold off to bigger and bigger private equity firms. It’s all about the 🤑🤑🤑 This is actually what the Milliken video was about, but it was Al Lindner who first ‘went off’ about this trend in the fishing industry.

A little birdie told me the site police will be more lax with enforcement going forward, so I figured I could get away without having to photoshop the pic this time 😉

Half a dozen green ones to hand today on a pretty nice post front day, along with about 60 crappie. Lots of swinging given the conditions.

With good line selection, near equivalent knot strength; equivalent stretch (to mono); equal or better abrasion resistance; near equivalent casting/handling; better refractive index; better density; better sensitivity.

Baitcasters: all fluoro except a few top waters (not all) and every once in a while a heavy flipping outfit. I simply prefer all the attributes of fluoro over those of mono/hybrids when I can get away with it, which is most of the time. All the supposed “negatives” can be offset with ability and proper tackle setup.

My definition of a good problem to have - when your crappie weigh more than your bass 😆

Hours and hours and hours and hours of time with the electronics, combined with hours and hours and hours and hours of fishing areas to figure out which were good and which weren’t, all built upon a structure fishing foundation.

Changed lakes today. Sunny for much of the afternoon with a steady but light breeze. Started on bass and caught 3, but no size to them. After an hour, I checked out a brushpile in the area and found the crappie were moving out and starting to regroup. Nothing but males on all the spots I then started running, but caught around 60 fish, so it was fun doing all that swinging for a change. The jigging rod got a good workout today

The bass didn’t want to play despite some great looking cover on this lake, but found some post spawn crappie (up to 1.5 lbs.) moving back out toward deep water, so still got to swing on some fish. Probably a change of venue next trip though.

Quite possibly the greatest river/creek crank bait of all time, but they don’t get a lot of love by the reservoir/green fish guys. I have no doubt it would still catch fish though cranking around riprap or gravel banks on those lakes. Still have a couple sitting around the garage tackle somewhere myself.

This is pretty much me when it comes to bass (but not crappie 😆). I am focusing a little more on overall better quality bass, what I refer to as ‘the 10 percent,” since I’m on all new waters with a longer growing season, still trying to figure out what makes these lakes tick, but I’m not fixated on that aspect of it. I’m always happy with “bites” regardless.

I once wondered the same thing, so years ago, I did a simple on-the-water test to see what would happen. Here’s the write-up I did at the time: “I pulled up to the boat ramp Friday afternoon to find a tourney about to head out. I hung around and waited for them to blast off so I wouldn’t get in their way before proceeding out. It also kind of changed my plans for the night, so at the last minute I decided to do another of those fun but meaningless on-the-water tests to see just what you can and can’t get away with when fishing for bass. In this case, power vs. finesse on the same stretch of water. I started on a stretch of bank that encompassed 2 small coves and 2 stretches of main lake shoreline. Total distance according to Google Maps was a little over half of a mile, about 3,100 ft., and this lake is lined with docks and scattered shallow weeds. I began with power, picking up a buzzbait and running the entire stretch of bank. My thought was hit the fish first with the fast presentation while they might be active versus making that the comeback lure after already beating on them once. And I didn’t just kick the troll motor on high and wing it either, as I throw a pretty wicked buzzbait. I just steadily worked the entire shoreline area til the end. When I was done with that stretch, I had caught 11 bass and missed 3 other strikes, 1 of which I’m pretty certain was counted in the catch when I threw immediately back to the same area after missing a strike and promptly got another blowup right in the same exact spot, only this time connecting. Next, I picked up the finesse rod with the small soft plastic and immediately turned around and reworked the exact stretch of bank I had just been through with the buzzer. It actually got a little too dark before I completed the entire stretch, but I was able to rework about 80% of it. The result...12 more bass, including the two largest of the trip. That made for a total of 23 bass landed in about 1 hour and 45 minutes. So take what you want from this little experiment. One thing that seems obvious would be that if you move through an area throwing one type of bait, odds are good that you didn’t catch everything, only whatever was prone to hit that particular bait. This becomes a good argument for having two guys in the same boat throwing two completely different baits until they get a pattern dialed in during team tourneys, or for co-anglers to make certain they aren’t trying to work the same stretch of water as the boater up front using the same lure. Use something totally different in most cases to better your odds of catching fish behind him.“ Bottom line, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. If you feel confident or comfortable in a stretch of bank and think there might be (more) bass holding in the area, then definitely rework it with another presentation. It won’t always pan out, but it will sometimes.

Outside of the possibility of having spooled it on wrong, the simplest answer that no one likes to hear is keep practicing to become a better caster. Fluoro is a stiffer line than mono, and much more so than braid - one of the many reasons I don’t recommend anyone starting with braid that is new to baitcasting. It takes some time to get used to. Adjust your brakes up along with the spool tension knob if you have to to start, and just practice making pitches and short casts initially using a little heavier weight until things get comfortable…but double check if you can remember if you spooled it on properly first. Braid doesn’t care, but fluoro definitely will.

I’ve never come across a study that directly tried to answer that question, but you can certainly find a ton of references to that saying, including people like Paul Johnson, who was Berkley’s head of R&D prior to Keith Jones. He was an avid diver and spent a lot of time researching all things fishing while underwater. But if you wanted to literally answer that question in regard to bass, the answer can be determined, and it turns out that 99.9% of the lake holds no bass, and they all live in less than 0.1% of the available water…and that’s just based on surface acres, not volume, and assuming a bass occupies 2 sq. ft. of space at any given time (like I said, literally). If my math is correct, and you back calculate out to bass occupying 10% of the available water, every bass in the lake could have their own 800 sq. ft. playground 😆