Chaz Hickcox

Hey my mistake I meant to direct that to SmokinShad

Chubaka - You're fall for fishing is not the calendar fall. So, you should still be in the late summer pattern. Topwater in the morning, spinners and cranks once the sun comes up. I would also try swimbaits (NOT the 'swimbaits' that look like the YUM money minnow, but the real swimbaits like Castaic or something along those lines). Other people would go with soft plastics, but I am not a fan of that.

So I owe Roadwarrior an apology. This morning I compared the Cavitron with my formerly favorite Strike King Tri-Wing, and the cavitron kicked it's butt. I was only out for a little more than three hours and stuck with topwater all morning. I used the cavitron, and within 20 min of bein on the water I had a fish on, but unfortunatly he threw the hook. Then I switched to the Strike King, and for the next hour had nothing. I switched back to the cavitron and within another 20 min had a nice and healthy 16 inch bass. Not the biggest, but I'm not too worried about that. Unfortunately he got around a fallen tree during the fight and the branch that was sticking out of the water chewed up my Spiderwire. Because of that, my next cast had a small bird's nest, nothing too serious but enough to stop the lure in mid air. When that happened the spiderwire snapped and my cavitron was subsequently sacrificed to the fish gods. Then I switched to the Rage Tail Shad, no lookers so I decided to call it a day. Not the greatest day fishing, but hell it beats working and it was short anyways. Just for the record, I lost a Strike King Buzzbait the same way. With that being said I am going to be ordering a few more Cavitrons. Before I lost it I noticed that although it was faster on the serface than the strike king, the cavitron made a lot more and better noise.

Hey Roadwarrior and Glenn - I never said you weren't being honest. I have a friend that manufactures AK47's (LEGALLY WITH AN FFL). His may not be the best, I have one, it works, and I recommend it to everyone I know. I'm not being decietful when doing that, but I definitely am being biast. It's human nature. Keep on keepin on guys. Regardless of anything y'all have a great site, and I wouldn't keep comin back if you didn't.

I bent a small Gamakatsu 1/0 Octopus hook on a bowfin while fishing with live bait. The bowfin was about 4-5 pounds and I was using 30# braid. I wouldn't consider this bad though. I had an 8lb bowfin destroy a Strike King Tri-Wing buzzbait too. Those buzzbaits are tough as nails, and bowfin are some strong fish.

Right on, now we are getting solutions too! Now, it would only make sense to me that I would have the same issues for the evolution that I do with the football head getting hung up in grass. So, Between Terminator Pro and Legal Limit Lures, what colors are the best? The waters I fish are full of different things, I have access to swamps, Sunken barges, Marsh Flats docks, and a few rockpiles. The water is dingy and on good days I can see a foot deep.

When I was a kid we used to go to Powell and catch stripers at the dam line with cut bait. We would drop the bait about to the bottom and just wait. Usually turned into a party with all the boats tying to each other. Too bad I ain't there now, that would be some good drunken striper fishing. But now a days check this site out: http://www.wayneswords.com/lpfish.htm All the live bait guys - The State of Arizona thinks of Live Bait as CHEATING!!! Not really, but to mitigate invasive species it's very selective on the lakes you can use live bait. However, if you catch it in the lake you use it in with a casting net, that's fine.

I catch white perch all the time down here. The problem with that is that I am usually bass or crappie fishing when I do. Beetle Spins, and anything that mimics a minnow. Those small (<2 in) minnow floaters are awesome too. Live minnows work well. Down in Northwest River on the border the Beetle Spin with the white grub and black dot and the yellow grub with black stripe work real well.

OK all things aside - I think I will try out Roadwarrior's advice and try a packet. What's the worst that could happen? I could ultimately have a few jigheads that sit in the tacklebox. It's not like I don't have any lures like that anyways (And those are lures I know work). Another tool in the box, per se. Also I will be checking out the jigs grimlin recommended. Again, the worst that could happen is that I end up with a lot of stuff that will be there for me to experiment with in different conditions. Roadwarrior - I'm still a bit new and didn't get the memo about the Monitors' word bein gospel! In all reality, at least Roadwarrior gives a viable recommendation and doesn't whine. I've found fishing is more of what works for you to get on the fish. Not what works for the guy in the back of the boat. I can fish buzzbaits and swimbaits all day long, but the guy in the recliner by the outboard can't catch on a swimbait to save his life. To each his own. TIGHT LINES!

I have to be honest, Swimbaits in my mind are the actual shape and size of the fish they are supposed to emulate. I have some of the money minnows. I rig them with a 1/4oz keelweighted 4/0 hook. This is ok, but to be honest, I would see the soft ones working better on a C-rig. The keelweight is good for swimming through somewhat thick shallow cover where you would never throw the expensive nice ones. In open water I go to Castaic Hard Head originals, which are not too expensive comparatively speaking at $14 bucks a pop they're great and much less expensive than the $40-$100 swimbaits.

x2, and the hooks are garbage and bend out. Bobby sent me some for free and I still have 3 of them bend out on fish, 14" fish at that. Ask bassnajr for comfirmation of it, he saw it. Ok, so if you read the first post in this string it was asking for recommendations on what would be a good alternative. This is much like Congress fighting with each other, neither side actually coming up with a viable alternative. Some say it's great, and honestly they are the manufacturers, of course they think it's great it's their product. So Tin man, what alternatives would you come up with? Or are you here just to complain? On another string roadwarrior had mentioned that he likes the cavitron buzzbaits made by the same company. I went to the website, looked at the buzzbaits, and they advertised them as the slowest and fastest planing buzzbaits around. I ordered one, and to be honest my Strike King Tri-wing buzzbaits are slower and plane faster. I'm not saying the company makes a bad product, but I know buzzbaits, and I have to say that I personally disagree with Roadwarrior's recommendations for the buzzbait. What's different here is that I really don't know jigging at all. So, where he has a point, I would like to see a more objective recommendation (I say objective because it is obvious that since Roadwarrior is an administrator, and Bobby is an advertisor, then there is a little bit of a conflict of motivations there. All due respect to both Bobby and Roadwarrior I mean no disrespect whatsoever).

Ok, so I watched all the videos on the website, and they do make sence. I also finally think I got the idea of this jog flippin thing. My next question is, would it be worth it to me to shell out 20 bucks on a few of these jig heads with the skirt forward design, or should I just go with a flipping jig. I can't use football heads too much because they get caught up the the grass too much and I lose interest too fast because of it. Here's a picture of the Evolution Jig:

I have a 7' MH Lightning Rod and I throw big 5"-6" Castaic Swimbaits on them all the time. It's not meant for them either, but I think the specialty rods are more for the fisherman's comfort of having the bait they're using written on the rod. The longer 7'6" may work better as well. Too bad my rod storage in my boat is only 7'.

Good call short basser, the old man wasn't letting anyone in the water today. He did say the winds should shift tonight and that if they hold NW the river should fill back up. Also, according to him, the bass should be at the mouths right now before they move to the shallow flats. I am seriously looking forward to next week when the sun should be out. SHOULD bein the keyword.

That's a good point. It was down about a foot and a half last week.

Micro, you ever get out to back bay?

Ok so in SE VA the weather is changing and it has been raining for a few days. The weather is supposed to clear up tomorrow afternoon. I am hoping the fall pattern begins to work tomorrow. I plan on hitting my normal spots where I generally find the shad/minnows. I plan on starting as soon as the clouds clear and hoping that the sun will draw the baitfish up to the surface. I will probably be throwing a chart/blue buzzbait, poppers and RT Shad (white and silver flake). If that goes bad I plan on hitting dropoffs with lipless cranks. If those don't work, I will be hitting some rocks with some soft plastics (Zoom pumpkin w/chart tails). If nothing above works I should be heading home. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery? BTW the water is North Landing River puttin at Blackwater Creek.

So today a friend and I were skunked. Had a few hits but nothing that actually took what we were throwing. The air temp was 60 with a windchill of about 55. The water temp was somewhere in the low 70's, we just got our cold front so the water temp hasn't changed much yet. We spent the day all over the water column, slow rolling spinners on or near the bottom, lipless cranks, buzzbaits, swimbaits, jointed rapalas, pitching jigs, rage tail shads, and anything else I could dig up from my tackle box. We got on a bunch of shad, but didn't even get hit there. the wind was about 10-15mph. We were on North Landing River. It is more like a long thin lake with a lot of creeks running into it than a major river. There is a main channel that has been dredged out to 15-20ft (depending on where you are), and the creeks average about 5-9 ft. There are a lot of sunken barges in some of the horseshoes, and there are a lot of submerged trees. However, my normal spots were no good because the water is down almost 2 ft from when I was out there two weeks ago. Any thoughts about where to find the fish would be great. My guess is that they are suspended along the main channel, but unfortunately my graph is not working so I have to guess using my flasher where the ledges are.

Also try the Rapala Clackin-Rap. It has one metal chamber with a single ball bearing. It makes a deep clacking noise vice the regular rattle of most rattle trap type baits. Lost mine today, but it brought in a decent 3 1/2 pounder before it was sacrificed to the fish god.

Figure out what your forage is. If it is golden shiners a gold Kastmaster spoon is good to go, if it is shad or regular shiners then use a silver spoon. This time of year is excellent for spoons. Especially as winter comes closer. Because of the cold, many of the forage fish will begin to die. As they die bass, and other species (especially Crappie), will be under the school of baitfish feeding on the ones that are dying off. This generally will occur over some kind of ledge or deep cover. Use your electronics to identify where this is happening then sit on top of them vertical jigging the spoon. Drop the spoon all the way to the bottom, lift the spoon a few feet while taking up the slack. Then let the spoon fall until your rod tip hits the water. You want to keep the slack up as much as possible to be able to feel the strike. Do this until the spoon comes all the way up to the boat, then start the process all over again. As far as size goes, just use something that matches both the fish you are targeting and the forage in the water. The smaller spoons will catch a whole mess of Crappie, while the larger ones will catch less fish, but more bass.

This is what I am waiting for Castaic to produce, their platinum series baby bass is phenominal (the second picture).

I went to Back Bay today. The deepest water is about 7-8 ft. There are some serious grass paddies there. I was only able to fish for a couple hours, I spent most of the time wondering around the bay. First, putting in at Mill Landing Road is good, but along the south side there are about 80 old pilings that you can't see. Make sure to head straight for the white PVC polls and go between them (they're about 100yds out). I did not do this and almost killed my boat. Thankfully I just nicked some of them with the main, and it did no damage. Also, when on a plane, watch for long poles randomly throughout the bay. I think they are old duck blinds. They don't coincide with the reeds like most places do, instead they are out in open water. Just keep an eye out. Once you get up to the north there are a few choices to be made. You can go to the residential area, which is Sandbridge, and fish amongst those, or you can go to the other creek heading north, its called Hell's Point Creek. Seemed like it would have been awesome fishing up there. I took a bass (appx 17 in) near the residential area on a 1/4oz spinner with a gold colorado blade. Then I was fishing a paddle frog on a submerged grassy area. There was a lot of activity on the serface, but I think they were all dinks. That's because I had a bass come up on the paddle frog, but when I went to set the hook I pulled him out of the water, and he was probably between 6-8 inches. Just a little one. Not a bad thing though. That means the dinks have somewhere to hang out. Overall just be prepared for shallow water, lots of submerged grass and some decent fishing. The water in some places has about 2-3 ft of visibility. Where I caught the one and had the dink play had only about 1 ft visibility. I misjudged the weather this morning and thought it was going to be overcast all day. It was actually sunny and bright.

When I have been gone 7 months out of the year for the past 8 years, then I can let her know who spends the money during the time I am in some desert s***hole dealing with 'desert monkeys'. Then the bait monkey trumps everything.

My alarm was broken so I never new what was going on by sound other than the engine. When I would open the throttle it would sound like it would be surging back and forth causing the boat to cavetate in the water. It was just as you described.

I've got a 93 Johnson 150Hp and had the exact same problem. It was overheating and Johnson has a failsafe in place to shut down your RPM so you don't blow it up. All I had to do was replace the thermostat and it works just fine. So in short I can say you're overheating, but that's just a symptom, I can't tell you why.