senile1

Agreed. I enjoyed the full access to all of the Bassmaster stuff before they charged for it. I think this website fills those gaps and its all for free. Thanks, Glenn.

I usually try to not do this, but at dawn and dusk on a smooth surface I have to fight the urge to always walk a Zara spook. I don't think there's a technique more fun than watching a big largemouth crush a spook.

ryanmah, There are many people on this forum with much more knowledge about bass than I, so I'm sure you will receive some good answers to your question. First, are you using a depth/fish finder? If you are, look for underwater points, humps, ledges, channel banks, and channel bends beneath the surface. A channel bend with cover such as stumps, trees, grass, rock, etc. is an excellent place to find bass that are deep. Also, you should be able to tell differences in bottom composition with your fish finder which will allow you to see those break lines where rock turns to mud, and so forth. You should also be able to see baitfish on your fish finder as well. So you're looking for changes in depth contours or bottom composition and you should prefer those that have some kind of cover like trees, stumps, or rock. If baitfish are present, you've found everthing a bass needs. Without a fish finder, you'll have to study a map and observe the bank to get an idea of where possible changes in bottom contour may lie under the surface. In addition, you can drag a carolina rig through an area to get some ideas of the depth and the cover in that area. And as you suggested you can sometimes see cover sticking up from the water as well as schools of baitfish. Oh . . . . welcome to the forum

If other people are catching just as large, and as many fish, on less expensive Yum Dingers, Tiki sticks, etc. as they would catch on Senkos I wouldn't call that skimping. I would call that an intelligent decision. I've had luck with Senkos, Yum Dingers, and the Strike King Zeroes (which seem to be despised by some on this forum). I can't say that one has out-performed the others overall. We all have our favorites due to the minute differences in the way we each fish a lure. For RW, Senkos may be the best for him and the way he fishes. For someone else, that may not be the case.

Agreed. And if I were in his shoes I would also suspect that you might not be exactly forthcoming regarding the ponds if the fishing was really great.

I voted yes. The lakes that I fish are large enough and have enough popularity that it wouldn't make much of a difference in the lake traffic. Truman Lake and Lake of the Ozarks are already known as places to catch larger bass in Missouri. And Smithville Lake is already covered with heavy traffic because of its proximity to Kansas City.

I agree. The o-ring does turn the hook sideways. A couple of years ago I started taking the tiny plastic sleeves that I use with trailer hooks and punching the hook through them, sliding them down against my wacky rigged senko type worms. This keeps the worm from flying off the hook when I cast and the tip of my hook is sticking out.

Hmm . . . . RoadWarrior's profile shows that he is from Germantown, Tennessee which I believe is either a suburb, or is on the outskirts of Memphis. He is also 53 years old. The Mississippi River has had two "once in a lifetime" floods in my lifetime, 1973 and 1993, not to mention "minor" flooding in other years. I would bet that RW has experienced his share of flooding living so close to the Mississippi. I know I grew up near the Mississippi and live near the Missouri river now and I've experienced flooding. I think RW's advice still rings true.

As suggested, a video of the pitching and flipping presentations will save you alot of time learning these. Also, I found flipping to be much easier for me to learn than pitching. I know each of us is different but you might start by learning the one that seems to be easier for you.

I guess if I lived down south, winter fishing would be sweet, but in Northwest Missouri the winter temperatures can be sub-zero at times. Last winter was a warm winter and the water temps were still down in the low 30s on the bigger lakes. When you can't feel your fingers it's difficult to fish, so I have more trouble with extreme cold than extreme heat.

I've heard and read similar information to what njoynlfe stated. As for the bucket, the fish will run out of oxygen quickly. As Flechero stated, if you have a really big bucket or container that is aerated and insulated, you could do this, but what a pain to be dragging that with you.

I've never watched the Bloopers tapes. I laughed until I cried when the trolling motor came loose from the bow of his boat.

That's one wild ride.

What size of Senko are you using? Try a 6 or 7 inch senko or senko knockoff if you're using the shorter ones.

This thread is from back in May but there are a number of suggestions on how to remove decals including the 3M product that GMAN mentioned. http://www.bassresource.com/bass_fishing_forums/YaBB.pl?num=1147112946

Maybe it was a diver with a sense of humor.

I wouldn't know the exact number. Since I'm not a tournament fisherman I never worry about adding the weights together. Over the years, there have been a few times where I've caught a group of fish where the top 5 were each over 3 - 4 lbs with at least one of them being a lunker over 5 lbs, so I guess my best would probably be in the 17 - 23 lb range.

Well, another one of our members made the paper today. I turned to the sports section of the Kansas City Star this morning and an article was published about Greg Harris, aged 13, from Kearney, MO. Some of you may remember his posts about the two monster bass he caught earlier this year from a farm pond. The link to the article is below. Congratulations, Greg. http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/15017223.htm

What is the action on your rod? If it is a lighter action you may not have enough backbone to set the hook properly. You need to be using a medium-heavy to heavy rod for t-rigged worms and I prefer a fast tip. From your description, it sounds like when you feel the fish you're taking up the slack before setting the hook which is good. I assume, from your post, that you are hooking them and then losing them while you are reeling them in. Another possibility is you're setting the hook so hard that you're ripping a bigger hole in the bass's mouth, thus giving the hook more room to work loose.

I think that SUV belonged to Muddy_Man's ex-girlfriend, the one who was messing with his BassResource.com membership.

Friday, July 7th: I fished Smithville Lake from around 5:00 pm to sundown. Water temperature was 81 degrees. I started with a c-rig and caught three fish c-rigging points and secondary points in Rock Creek. Only one of these exceeded 15 inches. Depths varied from 12 to 18 feet. Switched to a white jig with Zoom trailer punching the lilly pads but had no bites. After 8:30 pm, I switched to an original Zara Spook, green back with chartreuse belly and fished it in the wood and lay-downs and lilly pads. I caught four more bass, three of which were over 15 inches. One of these was just shy of 20 inches. Sunday morning, July 9th at Smithville Lake: I was completely and utterly skunked. (Well, I caught one bluegill.) I went back to Rock Creek again and the water temperature had dropped to 78 degrees. It rained last night but I didn't think the front had passed yet. It appears it rained enough to cool it off a little. I threw everything I had, fishing from 6:30 until 11:15 am.

Any California lake for humongous bass would be good. Lake Fork in Texas and El Salto in Mexico would be fine too.

Small, unpressured ponds can be great fisheries, and, as Avid stated, for those who don't have much time, shoreline fishing fills a need.

LBH, I agree with the things you said and I agree with most of what whopper-Stopper said. However, I disagreed with the following quote by Whop-Stop: There are times you can't do anything. Many times you can, but not always, the key word being sometimes. I agree an angler should be alert for those actions he/she can take to keep from losing fish. If you aren't thinking about what's going on you'll lose more fish due to your own negligence.

Whopper-Stopper stated: This is true Whopper-Stopper, but the trouble is how often are you able to see where and how you have the fish hooked until you get him up to the surface and close to the boat? There will always be an occasional fish that escapes, because the majority of the time the angler is using inexact information regarding where and how the fish is hooked.