Bluebasser86

Got some new paint and a new mold I needed to try out. Finally poured a bunch of assorted jig heads the other day and getting around to tying a few up. First is a black/red chatterbait, think this one will be a really good night fishing bait. Next is a black/purple/blue with a junebug head, really like how that paint looks . Should be a good night fishing/stained water color also. Last is a finesse jig with my new round head mold. I know the top of the skirt is a little long but I like it to help slow the fall a bit even though it doesn't look "right".

That's how I usually end up looking when the old man and I are jigging for walleye He loves it but it's like watching paint dry to me.

Some fish will stay shallow all year round, more will stay shallow the warmer the climate. A good way to find fish is look for the first deep water near areas where you were catching them late in the fall, they shouldn't be far from there. Wintertime fishing can be slow until you find the fish but once you find a school it's a blast!

Most small ponds like that seem like the fish really like to hold very near the shoreline. With little to no cover the shoreline is a good place to chase baitfish to so they have fewer escape routes and are easier to catch. Spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, swimjigs, and chatterbaits fished right along the edge of the bank should catch you some fish. Dark colored jigs or soft plastics fished slowly along the bank or around any visible cover should work also. One trick I like in small ponds is to take a 10" worm and rig it on a 3/8oz or heavier bullet weight and cast as far as I can, usually across the pond. They I just slowly reel it in. I catch a few fish doing this but most importantly it acts as my depth finder and helps me find any pieces of cover that I can't see from the surface. Try it and you might be surprised how much stuff just might be in that pond.

Yeah I don't start seeing any light in the sky at work until about 6am now.

I've owned both and was far more impressed with the St.Croixs. They offer great rods from their lower end rods that most anyone can afford to their top of the line rods. You really can't go wrong with either and if I got a great deal on a Loomis I would have no problem adding it to the collection to go along with all my St.Croix rods. Right now with so many of St.Croixs last year models of their higher end rods being in their online bargain room I don't think you'll find a better deal on a high end rod from either company than what they're offering right now.

Used to have a 22.250 that I used for predator hunting until my ex talked me into selling it because I didn't use it often. She was the main reason I never had time to go and now that she's gone I have the time but I don't have the gun I loved shooting that little gun even though it was a bit expensive. If I were to get another gun I'd probably go with a .243 just because they are less expensive to shoot. We get some awfully long shots around here so have to have something to reach out there and touch them

Bandit, Bomber, and Norman all build great cranks at reasonable prices. Colors will vary a little by region and model will vary by body of water. 12lb will work just fine for most situations. I like a stop and go retrieve, banging them off cover, or slowly crawling them along the bottom with an occasional pause.

I usually match my trailers or at least make them close but I've seen times where a mismatched jig and trailer will far out catch a matched one. I think the smaller baits may be easier to start with because they tend to get more bites so you can build confidence in them. Get a couple jigs in natural colors and basic sizes and just go fish them. Watching Flukes video will help your learning curve a lot too.

Like Snook said, good baits, bad hooks.

3" berkley power minnow on a jighead or dropshot or a Zoom meathead on a slider head or dropshot. The meat head is 4" but has a tiny profile and I'm sure it will still work.

clear water-watermelon,watermelon magic, watermelon purple flake, watermelon red, watermelon jelly, motoroil chartruese, GP, GP red, GP magic dirty water-candy bug, red bug, junebug, black, GP You could get by most situations with watermelon, GP, and black though if you want to keep it simple.

Bigger than any smallie I've caught this year

Probably going Wednesday and I have an empty back seat if you're interested.

It does a great job softening up stiff line to make it more manageable. I don't use it often because of the price but it can make life a lot easier if you're having line problems.

Only thing I can add to that is if you do jump one up and don't get a shot off just back up a little bit and hold really still and keep quiet for 10 or 20 minutes. A lot of times rabbits will circle around and come back to almost the same spot you just jumped them out of.

Gambino's is my favorite chain pizza, Papa John's is pretty good too. Not many good pizza places around here. I love deep dish pizza but it's hard to find and places like Uno's that do make it mess it up so bad I can't even eat it. I guess that's the trade off for having great BBQ places all over. I'm not picky about my toppings and don't really have a favorite but it's hard to beat a good supreme pizza.

Probably the wrong knot or a poorly tied one. My other thought is why did you lose those baits? You didn't say what the second one was other than a crankbait but the DD22 I know floats for sure, why didn't you just go pick it up? I've cast baits off a time of two when the line got frayed or wrapped around the tip but I always just go and get them when that happens.

How many times have we seen that one on here? It always makes for a good joke for the first coupe people that catch the mistake though. I know my spelling and grammar aren't great but I do my best because it irritates me to see misused or misspelled words. Your and you're, to and too, and they're, there, and their are the ones that bug me the most. I can let that stuff go just as long as no one is using text speak. Every time I try to read something written in text speak I can feel brain cells dying, u no wat I mean X)

Like others said try changing colors or speed of retrieve. I prefer to speed up over killing my retrieve. A baitfish in it's natural environment isn't going to stop swimming when it's being pursued, it's going to speed up and try to get away. It may not take much, just a couple quick cranks or a lift of the rod can do it at times. Also, if you can see those fish they might be seeing you too so making as long of casts as possible might help too. A little bite of oily baitfish scent wouldn't hurt anything either.

Ghost and Rayburn Red are my 2 favorites but I have almost every color they make By far my favorite lipless bait.

Not a fan of the original traps but they do catch fish. Get some SK Red eye shads or Xcaliber XR50's instead. Stick with natural shad colors for starters or the standby chrome/blue back. They're great for pulling fish off wind blown points and backs of pockets in the fall when the shad school up, but you don't have to have shad for them to work. I catch lots of fish on them out of ponds that don't have shad. Probably my favorite use for them is burning and ripping over submerged weeds. The rattles call them out of the weeds, the bait doesn't have a lip to bury in the weeds and can be ripped free easily, and the fish just crush them as the bait scoots by. Usually a pretty fast, straight retrieve is best for me but I've caught them all the way to almost fishing them like a fast jig retrieve, just popping them and letting them fall. Don't give up on them, you'll be giving up on a great fish catching bait if you do.

I bought 2 new LTB out of the bargain room myself, can't wait to get them out and give them a try! I'll be lucky to get anything as big as the last one you got on the palm tree, our bass just don't get that big either!

Wow I bet that was a scary fight in a canoe! That thing is a pig, congrats man!

Yeah that thing has more than 8" girth around it's tail The girth is all the way around the fish, usually measured just back from the pectoral (side) fins. I did the weight calculator on here and at 28 inches length I did a extremely skinny girth at 15 inches and came up with 11.5lbs. Whether that fish is 28 inches long I'm not real sure but I'm sure that it's in the 25-26 inch range which at 26 inches and the same 15 inch girth would still put that fish just shy of 10lbs. Either way I'm pretty sure you beat your PB if it's 6-7 pounds like your avatar says and it's a heck of a fish. Go get you a decent digital scale for 20-30 dollars so if she comes around again you can get a better weight than what I'm guessing the cheap spring scales you used gave you