Team9nine

Though started in the 1930s in Europe, its move to the US began around 1952; It was 1959 when Ron Weber first got introduced to “the minnow” which would largely start the chain of events. But it wasn’t until 1962 that the lure literally took off due to the fortunate timing of having a small article about it appear in Life Magazine that just happened to feature Marilyn Monroe on the cover and the story of her recent passing - one of the most popular issues ever.
 
Full story here for those interested: Rapala - Marilyn history
 

Florida DEP has one of the more extensive list of aquatic plant resources you can readily access:
 
Resources link
 
Since anglers are often most dealing with submerged aquatic vegetation, this particular presentation is one of the more detailed for identifying a wide variety of common aquatic plants:
 
Submerged Aquatic Plants .PDF
 
 
 

You did good. At least those fish still have a chance. Guessing either the puddle dries and they die, or a heron comes along and eats them otherwise. If the river refloods and fills the pool, it’s no different than what you did, just in reverse. Take the river to the fish, or the fish to the river. I’d have done the same - and have before.

Here's a possibility. This model (EX1000XPHS) only appeared in 1999 ads I found, and while not in color, you can tell it has the metallic handle caps you mentioned, looks very similar to a hooded Curado in design, and carried a combo price tag that matched their Curado combos of the day ($200). 
 
 
 
 

Sometimes they engulf the whole thing; sometimes they don’t. Other times they reject and engulf more than once.
 
 
 

If it’s the same density, due to all being the same temperature, then it clears from the top down, and usually the bank out. How it gets muddy can vary. If the incoming muddy water was much different than the lake temp., then you could have a different scenario. Same goes for wind/current induced muddiness.

I didn’t find such a thread, but yes, use advanced search feature and “search by author” - just enter your own name, then enter your keyword(s).

Jesse Payton with a 10 lb FL bass, circa 1970.
 

 
Here in the Midwest, a popular version of that rig was the pre-rigged 2-hook (sometimes 3 hook) plastic worm. The worms would be bent in half, then the leader was wrapped around the worm to hold it in place and warp the worm, thereby creating a natural kink that would make the worm corkscrew upon retrieve naturally without having to get the hook rigging and bend right like on the single hook version. Have caught plenty of bass over the years on that rig. It was especially popular on the clear water natural lakes to my north, over shallower weed flats, which would be similar to the FL waters where you typically read it being used.

The home of fish is deep water, the deepest water in the area. Please note when I talk about the sanctuary being in the deep or deepest water available I said, "in the area being fished". I did not say, "the deepest water in the lake".
 
The importance of the old river or feeder stream channels cannot be stressed too much. They represent the deepest water in the reservoir.
 
-Buck Perry

My No. 1 producer over the past half dozen years by a long shot - so incredibly versatile.

I use Zoom, Netbait, Zman and Roboworm - that’s it (unless you include bubblegum floating worms as finesse - lol).
 
As for rigging, Slider, weightless wacky, Ned, jighead wacky, shaky, split shot, drop shot, Texas, and even as a trailer on a finesse jig. 

See if either of these old posts help:
 
 
 

Just saw these news headlines and remembered this discussion: L-E-S Acquisition

RkCrawler?

Closest production rod might be this one from B&M. It’s a jigger pole, but could probably double as as a tule dippin’ rod.
 

It can be overwhelming. As you’ve probably figured out;
 
> Every knot known is someone’s favorite here
> Every lure made has caught a fish
> Every line sold has someone who loves it - even Vanish and Fluoroclear ?
> Every person here has caught a PB, as well as their share of dinks
 
Read it all and filter, but I’d recommend figuring out those few posters, authors or sites that you can relate to in some manner; location, type of waters fished, experience, trust, confidence in what they say - whatever it is, and just follow their advice and recommendations for awhile until you have enough time on the water to start developing your own thoughts and opinions based on your experience. Take what they say or write as gospel in the beginning and just run with it. You’ll figure out what works for you and what doesn’t soon enough.
 

Don’t give the fish too much credit here ? 
 
I do tend to pinch off excess  appendages like little legs and such, but that’s only because they are unnecessary and get in the way more than anything. Any soft plastic has a shape and profile, and that has some effect on how it fishes. Removing appendages and such tends to streamline a bait, and makes it fish with a little less bulk or drag, which most days I tend to prefer. That can also decrease profile size, and even affect fall rate.
 
In a muddy water scenario, I might leave everything intact. Same with shortening a bait, removing claws or tails, etc.
 
Removing large pieces like a single claw might make the bait unbalanced, and hence a little “wonky” on the retrieve - similar to why some recommend shortening one set/side of legs on soft-bodied frogs. That may help, hurt, or make no difference in terms of bites. My general rule of thumb is to just keep fishing a bait until the bites slow down or stop coming, or until I don’t like the way it fishes. But often that’s left me catching fish on some of the worst looking, pieced-together-on-the-hook pieces of plastic imaginable - but the fish obviously didn’t care. They’re not counting things like how many legs my bait has left, why the glued on eyeballs fell off, etc.

Don’t over interpret this. It’s just a hand drawn diagram. I marked the two points in red; “A” and the point on the other side of the feeder creek. Both points are formed by the merging of the two channels. Points come in all shapes and sizes - some long and narrow, others more rounded and wide sweeping, and everything in between. Think of it as an upside down capital “T” if that helps - two points formed where the two lines meet.
 
Edit: I think I get what you’re trying to point out - is what we would call the inside turn of the main channel not also a point? And yes, you could make the argument there are 3 points in this diagram because of the bend in the river channel. However, the diagram shows no breaklines leading to the shallows on that inside turn, so that is why they are just focusing on the two. A ‘structure situation’ has structure, breaks, breaklines and deep water all related to each other and the shallows.

Sounds like this is a spinning outfit, not a fly outfit. No need for tippets with spinning, just leaders (and those are even questioned by many - lol). A more advanced 'fly guy' can come along and explain better or correct me, but with flies you need that step down in line diameter via leaders and tippets to help transfer power from the line to the fly in order to cast properly. With spinning, the lure has the 'weight' or 'power' and just carries the line with it. As such, no need to have that decreasing diameter (or the additional knots).

I’ve suggested everyone try doing this a couple times before on this site. As you saw, bass will often hold and not let go for a minute or more. As to moving or not, just speculation, but I’ve often thought the ones that take off with the bait are in the company of others, and it’s a natural reaction to be first to the bait and then run away from the others so they can’t take it away. Right or wrong, I always slow down and make more casts into the same spot under the assumption there is a good chance of another bite or two. I also suspect depth might play a role, but who knows.

Similar to @Deleted account, I don’t buy into the theory. Numerous studies have documented successful feeding rates of between 80-100 percent of the time for largemouth bass under a wide range of conditions. They’d starve to death if it was much different, otherwise. Under poor conditions, success does decrease though - high turbidity, heavy cover, extreme darkness, even how full a bass already may be - but none of these tie directly to prey camouflage.
 
Along a similar line, while I’m just as guilty with having some personal color nuances and variations I like, most studies don’t support that these things play any role in overly attracting a basses attention and causing preferential feeding - but it grabs our attention, and helps keep tackle sales high ? 

What you may be seeing are actually algae mats that rise off the bottom, mostly on sunny days due to oxygen production which “floats” them. On cloudy or rainy days, or at night, a lot of these mats end up sinking back down since they are no longer producing the trapped bubbles that caused them to rise initially. If so, this is very common in ponds, but will vary from pond to pond depending on amount and type of algae growth, treatments, etc.
 

Black lights emit UV-A "long wave" ultraviolet radiation, and we now know that in most waters, UV light is quickly dissipated (attenuation) by organic matter, often within the first 5 feet of the water column, though very clear waters with low organic content can have penetration much deeper. So as just a general guideline, if you're fishing in water deeper than 5 feet, odds are good the line isn't "lighting up" much, if any below that depth, and visibility to the fish is probably a non-issue. I'd just keep fishing the line straight "as is" unless you feel a real reason to change things up. The advantage to being able to easily see slight line twitches, etc. at night using the black lights likely more than offsets any negative effects from potential "light up." I know fishing like that is very popular around here through the summer.

'Opportunistic feeder' is just a biological term for generalist predator, which is defined as "an animal (that) feeds on a wide variety of prey and is able to adapt to whatever food becomes available." I would argue that use/meaning outside of that context by anglers is either misleading or inappropriate. Studies back this up; for example, when smallmouth and largemouth inhabit the same body of water, LMB typically show 3X the variety of species consumed in comparison to SMB, which appear to be much more selective or focused on single prey items, especially in goby inhabited environs.
 
Ralph Manns, biologist and longtime bass writer, sides with your argument about not 'fooling' a bass into eating your bait, and has long argued against what we typically call 'reaction strikes.' He states, “When anglers talk about a reaction strike, they’re really describing a feeding reaction. It’s not in their genetic makeup to get aggravated with a lure, unless they’re defending a spawning bed. They may display territorial behavior, but that’s solely when interacting with other fish."

“To strike effectively, bass often must react quickly to nearby prey,” he says. “In that situation, fast-moving or erratic lures may work best. But it’s still a feeding response. If the fish bites, the angler has succeeded in fooling it into mistakenly biting a fake. When weather conditions or prey abundance improve feeding opportunities, active lures score and results often are spectacular.” (from an In-Fisherman writeup)
 
Again, looking at diet studies, bass, especially largemouth, frequently have empty stomachs, usually 45-55% of the time in most of those studies. The other half of the time there is something there, but in various states of decomposition. Split evenly, it would suggest that 3/4 of the time, a bass is either hungry or getting hungry, which might then lead to the various 'levels of activity' others have mentioned, especially when combined with 'opportunity' such as optimal weather patterns, water conditions, or bait/prey abundance (large-scale or random/intermittent).
 
Interestingly, and somewhat in support of this argument, is one study that shows that triggering neauromast cells (components of the lateral line) on the face of a bass can elicit a feeding 'bite' even when food isn't within reach or physically available, but it was within site (partitioned through glass) where the bass could see it. However, they couldn't elicit the same response to bass that were either frightened or well-fed, suggesting again that even this 'reaction strike' to a water pulse is primarily triggered by an anticipation of feeding (intention), or 'hunger' on the part of the fish.  

From Bassmaster:
 
The somewhat fictional characters were the stars of the longest-running feature in BassmasterMagazine — “The Adventures of Harry ’n’ Charlie” — lasting from their debut in the July 1971 issue through most of 2006. The feature lived on in digital form on Bassmaster.com into 2010, but somehow the dateline of Swampgas Corners didn’t quite fit its new online environment.

Great book! I looked at a chart of popular lines and their diameters from 1980 as determined by an independent lab, and compared it to those same lines that are still available today using the diameters listed on TW and one other site. Generally speaking, they are very similar,  but some have changed over that period of time. For example (diameter in inches);
 
Trilene XL - 1980 (.0116);  2022 (.011)
Trilene XT - 1980 (.0127);  2022 (.014)
Stren - 1980 (.0124);  2022 (.012)
Ande - 1980 (.012);  2022 (.012)
Maxima - 1980 (.0141);  2022 (.012) both Ultragreen and Chameleon