whakx

Havnt had a bite in the past 3 days, starting to get discouraged. Cant find the fish, resevior with no creek channels and I dont have a clue where the fish went.

i've been doing well on topwater but its still feels transitional to me and not full on fall conditions. Having a great day followed by a day like today where its blue skies in the 70's and I cant seem to get bit.

No hate here, I kind of agree with you. Putting megastrike on it was more of a joke on my friend who refuses to use the stuff. I missed a few fish that spit it out extremely quickly, even with megastrike on it.

Hello I was hoping we could share our favorite techniques for catching schooling bass. This is something I picked up today bank fishing with a buddy on a point that transitions to a rocky hump. We were having difficulty catching them and were starting to get irritated as the bass were really keyed in on baitfish and were not keen on artificial baits. I took my Duo Realis Popper 64, (if you are unfamiliar its a small 2.5 inch popper that can be walked) and rubbed some megastrike on it as it sits nearly vertical in the water. I discoved if i slowly dip my rod on a semi slack line, the bait with dunk itself underwater and come back up with zero spitting/popping, very subtle. Whatever it is about the dunking really excited the bass and I got tons of strikes. My theory is that is looks like a dying baitfish convulsing on the top of the water, easy meal! I would dunk the bait 3 times after the cast, walk it alittle, pause, dunk 3 times and continue. The difficult part about fishing it this way is the popper is very small and it sits nearly vertical. On a long cast you can barely see it, ontop of that the 90% of the strikes were extremely subtle. There is often no boil, you will just see the popper disappear, or on a dunk the popper just wont come back up. So I missed some fish, but caught a good 6 or 7 schoolies fast! I think the megastrike helped, but the dunk was the ticket to enticing strikes most of the time. I'd like to hear what your techniques for schooling bass are as im sure this won't always be the ticket, we had pretty good topwater conditions today.

Baught some new trailers, zoom speed craws or something, not impressed with them but I caught fish on them anyway lol. Got a tube of original megastrike scent and I like it... alot.

I've also been learning jigs. Unfortunately I havnt caught anything exceptional on them yet but I'm happy that I've been catching fish with them without tremendous difficulty.

Havn't ran into a northern yet but we catch chain pickerel here all the time. Anything with flash seems to get them really excited, they tear cheaper spinnerbaits to shreds lol. We've also discovered they have a taste for soft plastic lizard baits.

I like to use rage tail shellcrackers and menace grubs. Also if you search this forum for swim jig trailers you will find a ton of information on them!

You might remember my last thread where I was asking about the 723 Powell Endurance. Well I got it and I love the thing so much I need another specifically for jigs. The 732 does okay with 3/8th jigs in light cover, but I dont fish light cover that much and the 723 doesn't have the power I need to rip clumps of milfoil off my bait. We are talking serious heavy cover here. I am looking at an Endurance 725 Mag Heavy and would like your opinions. Is the 725 going to be overpowered for this application? I don't know a whole lot about picking the right rod for the right conditions, I'm worried that the 714 Powell offers will not be strong enough to shake vegetation. Thanks for your help!

Went to a new spot today, fishing from the shore with a ton of emergent vegetation along the bank. Ran a bluegill pattern siebert outdoors spinnerbait along the edge of the vegetation and slayed them. They were holding to the vegetation but seemed willing to get aggressive with anything that passed by. Im talking vicious, rod rattling strikes. It was a one heck of a time. We went to our typical shore fishing spot later on in the day, this spot is a rocky point that we are able to get to from the shore with some bushwacking. The fish weren't as active here as they were the last couple of days, but I still managed to bring a couple fish to the bank using a siebert bluegill pattern swim jig with a rage tail shellcracker trailer(I think roadwarrior turned me on to this in one of the threads on swim jigs). Steady retrieve wasnt working for me so I tried a slow retrieve-pause-pop cadence on the bottom that ended up working well. Every strike was on the pause and the strike was the typical hard thump. Today really made up for a pretty uneventful week fishing, great fun. Next time im bringing my camera! I'd also like to give a quick shout out to sieberts blade jigs. Blade jigs are a real confidence bait for me and after using sieberts blade jigs my z-mans are being left at home. I like to pair them with zoom flukes and the action is unbelievable. The Elite blade jig has a sort of shield type blade that moves a ton of water and produces an a sort of snake-like action with a fluke trailer, I've had success burning it over submerged milfoil that is everywhere here. The fogy blade jig action is closer to that chatterbait shake, but without the quality issues chatterbaits have. I don't see much about them here so I figured I would throw my review in.

Have you encounted in your research anything on team lews rods?

Glad to see people are using the RT menace grub as a trailer, I just ordered some to try on swim jigs.

snipatuit pond in rochester

Thanks everyone! It'll be here tomorrow, cant wait to fish it.

This season I got back into bass fishing after a few years hiatus, I picked up a field & stream combo from dicks with a field & stream rod and shimano caius reel. Fishing from the bank today I snapped the tip off my rod rushing to get a fish out of the water that I thought was poorly hooked. Don't know what I was thinking as I never ever rip a fish out of the water by the tip but whatever, time to go rod shopping Loving the sport more than I ever have, and was planning on getting a Powell Endurance rod in a few weeks anyway. The Model I am looking at is the Endurance 723 CEF. Its a 7'2 MH/Extra Fast, Is this a good rod for all around fishing? I will be throwing texas rigged plastics, spinnerbaits, spooks, buzzbaits, just all around fishing. I plan on getting another setup, but for awhile this will be my only rod. Im asking because 7'2 seems to be a few inches longer than the average "all around" rod, and I have never fished with an extra fast taper or anything longer than 6'10. It will be paired with my shimano caius until I have the funds to get the pinnacle im drooling over =D -Eric