Hamlet

Wow. You think a dog can judge a persons character? I think I know what you really meant but the way you put it was a little overboard. A dog can pick up on subtle cues from people (especially its owner) and can repsond accordingly. There is a real story of this man who seemingly taught his horse (clever hans) how to do simple addition. The horse would give the right answer by stomping his foot. Well, sane people checked it out (actually, it fooled a lot of sane people) and showed that the horse was taking cues from the owner. The owner wasnt even doing it intentionally, but nevertheless it was happenning. This is an example of "hidden persuaders" that are rampant in fuzzy thinking (including my own). Some animals are like living robots (compared to humans), but I don't think you could say that of the higher animals. I would include dogs and cat in the higher animals category but certainly not bass. The thing that kills me about people who think dogs and cats are just short of human is that they don't really like dogs and cats for what they are,..instead they turn them into "defective humans". A dog is something special all on its own, there is no need to anthropomorphize them into little friends for yourself, thats what other people are for.

Even if the knock off lures work just as good as Yamamoto's, there's still all the reason in the world to stay with the Yamamoto lures. The main thing is that it's a great company with great customer service, everything is top of the line, the magazine is great, the man himself is as nice a human can be, they offer so much knowledge not just lures, and they have make you feel like its all one big family. I have been infinitely impressed with this company and I reward them with my purchases. I ordered some lures online and I didn't get a confirmation email and so I emailed them, well before I could even get a chance to check my email they called me and told me about a small problem that they were having and then sent a thank you note with my lures in the mail. good stuff. I have like 4 or 5 more stories just like this about GYCB and thats why I continue to fish with them even though I do use the knock off lures as well. In fact it has been a while since I made a GYCB purchase (I only buy them over the internet), I have been buying the tiki sticks lately. I had to edit this post to say that if I fished ALL THE TIME and I was using bags and bags of soft plastics, I would switch to cheaper versions in a heartbeat. But thats not what i do, so i fish yamamoto style biatch.

I have a great pond that i fish regularly. When people ask me if the fishing is good I aways downplay the fishing to the point where hopefully they will never be back. BUT, if I see a good fisherman, (and by good fisherman I mean someone who doesnt keep fish and obviously knows what he is doing) I will start a conversation with them and talk all about the pond. Just last week there was a guy fly fishing at this pond and I walked up and started fishing on the same side that he was. I noticed he was slowly fishing down the bank in my direction so I walked over to the other side to give him some room. He appreciated this and we started a conversation, he told me how just before I walked up he had scolded some dude for taking a couple of nice bass out on a stringer. This was my cue to let him know how good the fishing is at this pond. Well, thats my strategy.

I agree with the guy who said that if you fish a pond every evening you wil soon have much more company while fishing. Fish it in the morning when no one is around and occasionally fish it during the evening.

stacey king.

for the last year and a half i have been fishing small ponds almost exclusively and i have never moved up the bank to release a fish, and I have never seen anyone using a bucket or anything like that. i remember one day last winter when i caught probably 15 bass in this little tiny pond and i never moved more than 20 ft. it seems to me that it is very important to take care of pond bass, much more so than lake bass simply because theres not as many. if i would have put all the bass that i caught in a bucket and then dumped them out after i was finished fishing i would have ruined the 3 or 4 ponds where i fish.

I like the middle ground. By that I mean fishing big lures but not huge lures and never small lures. That bassmaster magazine T.V. show had some guys on there last weekend that only fish huge lures, it just seemed weird to me to see what those type of guys do, it looked like they were casting a butterball turkey into the water. I think you can fish big lures and catch a trophy bass while at the same time catching some really nice non-trophy bass and even some suicidal small bass.

What's your opinion on the types of lures that catch big bass? Everything that I have read, and it seems intuitive to me, is that fast moving reaction lures are not going to catch the big bass very often. I'm sure the next post will be from a guy who caught a 10 lb'er on a crankbait or spinnerbait and I know that that happens all the time but if you're talkin odds, it seems to me that the quick reaction lures are not the way to go, even though you can catch monsters on them.

My experience is that Cabelas customer service is ten times better than BPS, it's not even close. If only they had the selection that BPS has,..I would never go to BPS again.

Just take a paperclip and poke the toothpick out of there.

When you said "I am referring to Velvick" , I didn't know who you were talking about, but from the posts I see that you're talking about the Basscenter guy. I don't give a rip about competitive bass fishing so I can't comment on that, but the impression that I get from watching the show is that he is a really nice guy,..seems really upbeat and happy. Do people actually dislike this guy?

Hey roadwarrior I got a question for you about those ikas. I have read on the yamamoto website that some people will use these like an underwater spook, have you ever worked the lure that way? one other thing, on the horizontal sweep do you just drop your rod to the side and pull the lure forward and up about a foot and then give it slack so that it can do its little shimmy backwards? I just bought a pack of the kinami version last week and i have only used them for about 30 minutes with no sucess.

Great picture, I'll be checking that out next time I buy a crankbait.

RW, you should be writing for an outdoors magazine, your posts are always very clear and instructional, you have a good writing style. Some of these articles I read in magazines have lots of words but they're not really saying anything. You could be the big fish guru! 8)

me to.i hop them along like a worm. the double tail has a really good swimming motion

awesome article, thanks for the link. 8)

I would explain to the guy who is doing this that he's gonna get the lake shut down. You can do this in a very nice way without him getting defensive. If that doesn't work then you tell or don't tell, I don't know. Maybe you could show him how you're catching 1 or 2 each time and that theres really no sense in going to the dam.

That was pretty impressive how he tied the knots and casted a baitcaster.

i've had the same question as you. like the others said, i like to watch the line closer to the fish but if i cant see it the only other option is watching the line near the tip.

Wow, that was a informative post. I was under the impression that cover was far more important the structure. It seems like you have to have a depth finder to really be on the fish consistently. I only fish ponds at the moment but i'm gonna be stepping up to the huge lakes in the future and it just seems like a whole different ballgame,...the bonus being that the fish are consistently bigger than they are in these small ponds.

When you stop the lure, do you just stop reeling for a second or do you bow the rod to the lure and really let it sink? I've also read some articles where they say you should move your rod side to side to make the action more eratic,...ever do this??

Theres no question that I would have given up on fishing if it wasn't for this site. You can only catch so many fish with a spinnerbait and I wouldn't know how to fish most lures without some shared knowledge from this site. 8)

oh, my problem is I don't know the difference. :-X 8)

what about a rivet gun.

I have to agree. This is easily the best bass fishing site in existance. Its not even close. 8)