Bluebasser86

X2, easiest and most fun way to get a grass carp. If you can find a mulberry tree dropping fruit into the water you can catch grass carp under it.

It's possible the whiskers are just stuck under the fishes mouth. I've caught several missing most of their whiskers. Might be from rooting around in the rocks or log jams, maybe a close call with a snapping turtle or bird. Their whiskers are soft and pretty thin so it doesn't take a lot to get one torn off.

This was honestly my first year of putting some serious time into deep cranking.I learned how extremely important it is to have a dedicated combo. In the past I'd tried to fish deep crank on my same rod I fished shallow runners on. It was so much work to try to fish one that I'd make a couple casts and put it away again. I got a 7' 8" Mojo "Big Crankster" and paired it with a 5.1 PQ and now I can pull a deep crank with ease. Makes sense though, you never learn how to fish a bait you never fish. The bait hitting the bottom is very important. It seems that most of my fish hit immediately after my bait deflects off the bottom. I don't fish many of the super deep runners, no need for them in most of the lakes here. Strike King Series 5 and 5XD, deep little Johns, and fat free shad. I change the hooks out on most of the baits out of the package to #4 or short shank #3 VMC hooks.

I accidentally ordered a pack of bubbler blades instead of regular blades for making chatterbaits but I have no idea what they do differently? Seems like they would just have a little less resistance so maybe they'd retrieve a little easier with less vibration and stay a little deeper but I have no idea if that's the case. Anyone have any experience with them? http://www.jannsnetcraft.com/shaker-blades/330632.aspx#

It has no scales so it's not a snakehead or bowfin. 99% sure that's a channel cat, can see one of the top whiskers just to the left of the bait and it has a serious overbite which channel cats have.

I didn't go because they haven't had crap for fishing stuff the last several years except for baits that looked like they should be on infomercials. Sounds like I should have gone I guess. Oh well, I just spent $150 between TW and fishingskirts.com It's jig building time

I always have a dead pile of used baits in the bottom of my boat, usually throw them all away whenever I stop to gas the boat up. Not sure where you could get lots of used baits though.

I like the Frabill because treble hooked baits you can actually snag the treble hooks and pull a bait loose because sometimes you can't just push a bait loose like if the hook is buried in a piece of wood or a rope hanging from a dock or something. I'd much rather straighten a hook than lose a bait.

I have both a set of Cabela's Guidewear and BPS 100 MPH suit. The Guidewear is several years old and plenty warm, it just seems to have shrunk the last few years? I swear they used to fit. The BPS 100MPH suit is very nice also and keeps me very warm and dry in cold weather. In warm weather I opt for baskeball shorts, Tshirt, BPS hat, Costa sunglasses, and at least 50spf sunblock.

I tie back to back uni knots and haven't had any problems with knots failing.

The 1.0 is a great bait in clear water, with finicky fish, or when the baitfish are small.

Nice! Love those big hook jawed browns! That is a very nice, fat hen brown your wife caught too! Things head looks half the size it should be for that body.

I fish them with a 1/4 or 3/8 ounce weight and a 4/0 EWG hook on a Trig. I use the 1/4oz, unpegged, for pitching to laydowns, docks, and rocks. I use the 3/8oz, pegged, for pitching in weeds.

Good to know. Table Rock and Bull Shoals are the two lake I primarily fish a wart on but my pre Rapala warts are way too valuable to me to fish elsewhere. You just can't appreciate how effective they are on those lakes until you get on a good wart bite and they seem to be interested in biting nothing but a wart. I'll have to give a couple more of them a try. I guess for $4 a bait it isn't so bad if I can get one out of every few baits to run well.

Yes I fish black during daylight hours. Really the only thing that will make me change to white is an abundance of shad in the area I'm fishing and even then I'll usually throw black first. Trust me, it works. All 6 of these fish were during a calm, post frontal afternoon with lots of sun, in a strip pit with lots of shad on a 3/8oz black on black Cavitron.

Well I've told it several times but here we go again. I was camping at a little state lake with my buddy and his girlfriend. My friend and I were on a rock pier night fishing because the game warden had stopped by earlier and told us they'd shocked a near DD bass up out of the very spot we were camping. Of course I had high hopes with that news so I was flinging a big, black musky jitterbug just hoping for that one fish. After about half an hour of listening to that hypnotic "plop, plop, plop" I was about to nod off when I heard a slash like someone threw a brick in the water and the fight was on! The adrenaline dumped immediately and I was standing in the water with my rod buried in the water to try to keep her from jumping. There was a bright moon out but I couldn't see anything where my bait had been because of all the trees along that part of the shoreline. The fish was stripping drag and straining my rod when my rod suddenly broke! I kept trying to pull the fish towards me when I realized my line was heading up. I did what I could to keep her from jumping but my line continued up and up. About the time I realized that my line was well above the water was about the same time I saw a huge owl flying across the sky and my line seemed to be following it?! By this time my buddy had found a spotlight and lit up the sky and we discovered that I had indeed hooked an owl in the foot after it tried to pick up my Jitterbug. So I was holding onto my rod trying to figure out what we were going to do with this owl when it crash landed into some blackberry bushes along the shoreline. We were discussing what to do when it jumped back up out of the bushes and took off, leaving my bait tangled in the bushes with the hook that had been stuck in it's foot straightened. All of this happened in probably 30 seconds but it felt like it lasted 10 minutes.

Black and white are almost the only 2 colors of buzzbaits I fish, and I fish them a lot. The basic breakdown would be 3/8oz black on black 90% of the time, white 9% and translucent with silver sparkle 1% of the time. I only fish Cavitrons except for one home made one with the translucent skirt, white head and white painted blade for very clear water.

I've caught lots of bass out from under docks on Table Rock during the winter time. Of course some of those are over 50 or more feet of water. Huge schools of spotted bass suspend underneath them and if you can find them are super easy to catch at times. A jigging spoon or grub is my bait of choice for catching those fish.

Shake it off and try again next time. It's those days when you catch the skunk that keep you driving to learn and do better next time. This time of year if you really want to ensure catching fish I'd suggest live bait, otherwise I'd be expecting to blank more often than not.

Anybody fished the newer ones? I had a few of the older ones and they swam terrible and leaked water but they're supposed to have that problem fixed. They're supposed to be made similar to the old wiggle warts that work so well in some of our lakes. I'd like to try them again if the problem really is fixed.

I love War Eagle jigging spoons for fishing deep water. It's really effective late fall through winter anywhere there are schools of baitfish with fish feeding on them or concentrations of fish.

I use the same one. Not only great for retrieving my baits when I get snagged up but also very good at getting lures others have lost in the trees Paid for itself many, many times over.

You always have the option of fishing live bait also. Float a minnow under a bobber anywhere in the open water in you should be able to get bit. Not my favorite way to fish but sometimes the only way to get bit in really cold water.

That should do it. Christmas trees aren't really buoyant anyways so it doesn't take much to sink them. Since you're sinking them in a pond it shouldn't take much to hold them down either.

It was a tough year for me because it was so dry all summer that most of the crop fields we hunt produced very little beans or corn. I don't rifle hunt but we have a long bow season so I was out a lot. I shot a doe in December, first deer I'd had within range since October pretty much the only deer I'd seen since then. My buddy got us in on a small 20 acre plot on the outskirts of the city and after a month of having a camera out he had over 400 pictures! I spent the last 3 weeks of the season out there and saw some monsters but none close enough. It got me excited for next year though.