Will Wetline

Felt good about the likelihood of late prespawn fish activity today. Finally, after a week of unseasonable, cold, dark and damp weather, we had several days of sunshine and increasing warmth. When I arrived at my favorite Outside flat I checked the water temp: 56º! I wasn't quite ready for that, not having had as much of a jerk bait bite as I would've liked for this season. In denial, I made a dozen fishless casts. Alright then. Maybe it was time for the Duo Realis Spin Bait 80 to work its magic. Two years ago almost to the day, I took my first smallmouth on this odd lure design, a bait made of plastic and steel that sinks, wobbles and sports a whirring prop fore and aft. The first fish weighed 4.5 lbs. and, if I may borrow a phrase from the late, great Yogi Berra, today it was deja vu all over again! This 4.52 lb. smallmouth was followed by another which registered 3.96 lbs. on my Accu-Cull Digital Scale which is so user friendly it says "hello" when you turn it on and "bye" when you shut it off. See the guys in the boat in the background? They're looking for fish on beds in about 10' of water. I'm in 15' - 20' retrieving along a line that separates a sand bottom from a dark bottom. And it's my delight to watch sizable smallies cruise by. Here's my third which I did not weigh. Would you go along with 4+ on this one? The day is warming and the water is going flat. Not good in water so clear you can see bottom 20' down. I'm off to find a ripple. Worked a couple of sandy and rocky areas ("Inside" The Pass) but found no takers for the Spin Bait. Motored to another rise and fan cast from shallow to deep. Still no response. Then I anchored on top of this rocky rise so I could present to the far side which dropped quickly into deep water. No love for the Spin Bait here. Maybe they wanted something moving even more slowly - and right on the bottom. A small, hairy snack. I plucked an 1/8 oz. bucktail jig from the box. A 2" Strike King ElazTech chunk trailer looked about right and would give it a tantalizingly slow drop and a wiggle across the bottom. It got heavy at one point during a retrieve so I set the light wire 2/0 hook with a firm sweep. Mid afternoon I moved again. Water temp was now 60º. Made only a few casts with the Spin Bait and then put the little jig back to work, letting it drop to maybe 25' and dragging/twitching it back. Here's a 3.99 lber. wearing a hair jig mustache: I took one more, smaller fish from this area and called it a day. Thank you, Quabbin! Let's have a look at the stars of today's show: The Duo Realis Spin Bait 80 is 3 1/4" long and weighs 3/8 oz. A St. Croix Avid 7' medium light rod flings it way out there and has the shock absorption you need when battling bruiser smallies on light line, specifically 6 lb. Seaguar Tatsu. This stuff is top of the line fluoro re both quality and expense. The jig set up is the same except for rod length which is 6 1/2'. You do want a reel with a smoooth drag. Shimano's Stradic 2500 fills the bill for me. Keep your drags light and your line tight! WW

Fabulous! Congratulations!! What was the water temp?

That's a well told tale and a pic of a fine fish.

It's 4:15 a.m. and I"m on the road to meet Eric at the Q. The air temp is 43º and it's raining lightly. The past week had been gloomy, unseasonably cold and leaves me feeling under enthused. Good numbers of smallies should be cruising the flats by now, looking to set up housekeeping for the spawn. I barely kept the skunk off last trip. Harumph. But really, who is confused? Not the smallies. They're doing exactly what Mother Nature hard wired them to do. They're not much brighter than a bag of hammers of course, equipped with a brain the size of a smallish chickpea. I'm anthropomorphizing again, a fun game but not helpful in a search for smallmouth. A realistic assessment is, considering the continuing blah weather conditions, the fish will still be relatively deep and reluctant to jerk the rod out of my hands. Met Eric at Gate 43 with Scott N.'s boat in tow. (Thank you, Scott!) Eric, always deferential and showing poor judgment again asked, "Where do you want to start?" I suggested a mid lake rock hump and flats. Here, as at other locations we fished, the water temp was 51º - 52º. It took several hours for the air temp to reach this and it never got a whole lot warmer. Was hoping for a blade bite at the upper end of this bait's effective range. Didn't happen. A jig on the bottom didn't entice them. What did work was a suspending jerkbait retrieved at a moderate clip. Here's Eric's first fish: I followed not long after with a smallie that measured but was below show off size. We continued drifting and casting for a while and then decided to try different water. Blade baits again did not work nor did suspending jerks or a bright red crank. The rubber skirted, twin tailed jig did, however. The bottom was a field of rocks and boulders like the shoreline above and, since bass didn't intercept my hair jigs quickly enough, I sacrificed two to Mistress Quabbin and decided not to waste more. It was getting gusty (20+ mph) at this time anyway and, conscious of Scott's generously loaned hull, we cautiously made our way back to the big flat where we started. "Bassmaster Eric," I said resignedly, "We could be doing worse, but they're not exactly active. Why don't we use the electric for controlled drifts along the deeper areas of this flat and see if we can fool a few that are moving up?" We did this for several hours, hooking up now and then. When it's slow going I tie on a Lucky Craft Pointer 78. Eric stayed with a lightly weighted X-Rap in the 4" size which netted him 6 smallies and several lakers for the outing. Among them, the patient and persevering Eric hooked his second 4+ lb. smallmouth of the season. To sum up, I think we can fairly say we did okay for a cool, gray, Quabbin day.

Yup. Those will get bass out of heavy cover.

By my lights, this is the natural, healthy evolution of a fisherman's "career."

I've always been pleased with Barlow's bucktails and their other tying materials. Have a look around here if not already familiar: http://www.barlowstackle.com/Jig-Tying-and-Fly-Tying-Material-C19.aspx

Weather Underground predicted sun, 60ºs and 10 -20 mph NNW wind which I know meant 20 - 30 mph howling over the wide open spaces of Quabbin Reservoir. Did I want to subject my 63 year old self to the punishment these conditions would provide? Was set up on the Way Offshore Flats (WOF) at 7:00. First spot was too shallow at this time. Moved further out, anchored deep - 30'(?) - and settled at a depth between the dark and the visible bottom, the break where the flat drops into the deeps. Breeze was only about 10 mph at this time so I started with the 1/8 oz. hair jig, casting with the wind onto the flat. That's a blurry smallie of about 3 3/4 lbs. It could be a good day for fishing if not for photography. 8:00 now and I'm facing a wind that's whitecapping the waves. Control of the 1/8 oz. jig was impossible so I went to a 5/8 oz. vibrating blade bait. The tackle used was a 6 1/2' medium power, fast action St. Croix Avid with a Shimano Curado spooled with 10 lb. Silver Thread AN40. I'd cast at an angle to work 20' - 30' depths. When the blade hit bottom I'd pull - not rip/stroke - 18" - 24" to get good vibrations, a tune that sang, "Eat me!" to the smallmouth in the neighborhood. Five sucked it off the bottom between lifts. Here's another 3 3/4 lber. and a solid 5. A more filled out than most laker of about 4 lbs. liked the blade too. By mid morning the fish had either moved on or wised up and I explored other steep drops. They should be liking suspending jerks with the water at 48.7º. One small laker whacked a Duo Realis jerkbait 100SP after the first sweep of the rod. Among the several Lake trout I've landed this season, this one was the fins down winner of the twist-in-the-net competition. Aargh. Northern smallie anglers know exactly what I'm talking about. Noontime found me working my favorite early spring shoreline. The wind had backed off to 10 - 15 mph which is where I like it. Water temp here was 52.8º. I've got fantasies of ripping 'em up. Big ones. My rich mental life was grounded by three 1 1/2 - 2 1/2 lbers. and a number of follows. Also checked a sweet spot for largemouth. Here's a 2 lb. LM with the head of a 3. It continued its poor eating habits by snacking on my crawfish colored jig with a GYCB Double Tail Grub trailer. 3:30 now. Enough. I'm beat. Back home I left the gear in the car, ate, and washed down a couple ibuprofen with a Steel Rail Pale Ale. Was this level of exhaustion worth it? I'd bet I'm singing with the choir when I say: "Yes!" I'll close with a photo of this day's tools for fish trickery:

No surprise to see a bunch of hawgs from you guys! Well done indeed.

I like a football head in rocks with a brown hula grub. Try 1/8 oz. - 1/4 oz. jigheads so you can adjust for depth and current. Don't overlook tubes, by the way.

That's a fine start to your season, young bassmaster NEJ!

No. Not mine. I care enough about my own thinning hair to take it to the barber's every couple of months and say, "Chet, do what you can to make me pass for a gentleman." Grooming the hair from a buck's tail holds greater interest. I usually add a few strands of Krystal Flash or two lengths of grizzly hackle. The latter material is always expensive and, in recent years, increasingly scarce. Apparently, fashionable women like to wear it in their hair. Don't they know that it belongs in a bass's mouth? Be that as it may, let's go fishing. I found myself 13th in line when I arrived at Gate 43 at 5:23. A glance at the reservoir revealed how low it was - some say it's 4' down. That changed my plans. Not wanting to modify the rental boat's propeller by churning through mud or whacking rocks, I took a deeper water route to my planned first spot. To get there I had to cross the WOF (Way Offshore Flats). I decided to set up here, dropping the anchor and lashing a mini tripod for my Canon PowerShot D20 to the front bench seat. Now, what bait for starters? The morning was bright, cool, calm. Dipping a fingertip into the water, it felt like mid forties. (My thermometer needs a new battery.) These conditions indicated a slow and subtle presentation provided by the baits you see in the photo. And how do I deliver them? With a St. Croix Avid ML rod on which is mounted a Shimano Stradic 2500FJ filled with bought-on-sale Seaguar Tatsu, 6 lb. Great stealth is required fishing calm water so clear you can see bottom in 20'. I worked these baits at a slower than mosey speed - I downright dawdled them along. I imagined the mindset of a baitfish: cold, lonely and fearful that it was about to be eaten . . . I worked this pattern from 7:45 to 11:00 and during this time landed (no misses) five fine smallies from 2 3/4 lbs. to better than 3 1/2 lbs. And two lakers chewed on my hair, too. When the bite slowed I checked other areas of this flat at depths of 15' - 25' with abrupt drops from there. Then I set up at what had been my planned first stop, the edge of a flat that falls off into 30' or more. In seasons past I'd find plump largemouth here hanging out with sizable smallmouth. Today I rigged a 1/4 oz. crawfish colored rubber skirted Poison Tail jig on 8 lb. Sunline Sniper which a 1 1/2 lb. smallie tapped at the bottom of the drop. On the way back to the dock, I stopped at the Bald Head Ridge. No fish here.

Thanks! I missed this detail, probably because I grumble when I have to work with split rings. Thanks to you bait makers, I won't miss it again.

Expecting water temps to be in the high 40ºs on my first trip to Quabbin, I'll be offering hair jigs and blade baits to sluggish smallmouth. These vibrating blade baits are assembled from Barlow's components. Note the modifications made to reduce the frequency of hanging bottom. If I find I'm missing fish due to a scarcity of hook points, I'll follow up with a jig or wave a wacky rigged Senko at 'em. New to me - and from a new mold by Do-it, are these Herring Head underspins. The smallies may select a dressing. My ride, a 14' open aluminum boat gets seriously bounced around when the wind's up, so I laid these baits on a 1" foam mattress with a covering of 1/2" foam. They won't feel a thing crashing through white-capped waves. I will. Do I need three boxes of hardbaits? Yes! No! Yes! An assortment of Duo Realis, Lucky Craft, Rapala, Strike King and Storm These are mostly 100 size but a few are 78 and 110. And . . . a few more. I bought only five Shadow Rap Shads to start. Not sure if the smallies are gonna like the slow rise on these if the water is below say, 50º. These will all get wet first trip out. L - R: Duo Realis Spin Bait 80. This will be my third season with this great bait. Next are two LC Pointers, a 78 and a 100. The LC Bevy Shad 75, new to me, comes highly recommended. How about a sexy slender Pointer in Ghost Minnow? Yum! Finally I've gotten a Staysee 90. Here's another bloated looking Shadow Rap Shad in a color that caught my eye. There's room for one more Plano 3700 here and that will be a combo jig and spinnerbait box. (Three 3600s fit in a large dry bag along with other stuff.) Have a look in the Fishing Reports forum Tuesday to find out what worked.

Very good report and clearly, your game plan was right on. Thanks for the detail on how you worked the jerk.

Use a teflon pin and push it right up to the edge of the cavity.

Been filling in the jig box for my first trips to Quabbin Reservoir next week where I expect the water temps to be in the high 40ºs. I'll be using vibrating blade baits, suspending jerkbaits and rubber skirted jigs with low-action trailers, but what I really get a kick from is a smallie slurping up an 1/8 oz. hair jig crawling along the bottom. Let's have a look at the bench set up to make them: Last year they sure liked an 1/8 oz ball jig with a couple lengths of grizzly hackle on top. I treated myself to a saddle of Metz #2 Microbarb Grizzly when on a steelhead trip years ago in New York. No reason a smallie shouldn't have a taste of this select stuff. Three scissors? Yeah. The fine point black handled Skeeter II is used only for thread and stays sharp. Above it is a Fiskars which has titanium coated blades, very good for bucktail. The elegant, gold plated Dr. Slick's have dulled over the years and become my "beater" scissors which I use after I've adjusted a clump of hair just right and find a few wayward strands over the ball. (Yes, I agree - that's up for an OCD award.) UTC 140 denier is used for 1/8 oz. jigs; 210 for heavier. The scraps of paper towel on the lamp base are not in case of a nosebleed . . . Let's go to the next photo. Instead of traditional penetrating head cement (Wapsi, Orvis) I've been using readily available super glue (cyanoacrylate). And I like it better because it takes less time to apply and is at least as secure. You can apply a drop as you wrap and continue or simply saturate the collar after you tie off. You want a scrap of paper towel handy if you have a heavy thumb on the tube or, simply to sop up any excess on the finished collar. This adhesive is formulated for tight-fitting parts; it's not a top coat. Pulling on the bucktail, I'd still get a few hairs loose but fewer than with traditional cement. All the jigs above have been pull tested and I have no doubt the bass will pull on them too. Here's another view of the hair and hackle bucktail: Want to try slow rolling a Herring Head underspin by my northern smallies, see how they respond. Like CJ, I see bucktail dressing the product of Do-it's mold. I had difficulty closing the swivel loop by squeezing with needle nose pliers. Then I figured out an easier way: Grip the fitting firmly and then rotate your wrist to close the loop. Here are a few 1/8 oz. bucktails in the color that Henry Ford always fished: I'm thinking now that fewer strands of Wapsi Black/Red Grizzly Accent would have been better. I pulled out a small drawer that I had labeled "hair" some time ago and found a piece of what I'm fairly certain is bear hair. (Munkin, what say ye?) It would be nice to own a fancy rosewood handled comb to pull out bear's underfur, but this no-frills plastic comb that came with my beard trimmer works just fine. I'm thinking that this thick hair will make for a slow drop on these little jigs . . . Float like a butterfly, sting like a Mustad 32746 BLN 2/0. Oh my. I'm up past my bedtime. Look for a Quabbin report next week.

I don't have a gram scale so cannot give you an exact comparison between pure lead cast in say, an 1/8 oz. cavity and 88% bismuth/12% tin. I only have the vague description from rotometals.com that this alloy is "as close as you can get to lead." Last year's on the water experience showed me what I needed to know - that my gear was fine re casting distance for 281 alloy (58% bismuth/42% tin) because I wanted to effectively approach smallmouth in very clear water with hair jigs molded in an 1/8 oz. cavity. I think that you're more inclined - and more knowledgeable about how to calculate this comparison. I did come across specific gravity charts but being much happier dealing with grammar than mathematics didn't pursue exactitude any further. May your line be tight. WW

Dopey, I wasn't sure of the oven temperature so I baked it longer. No being a metallurgist or a Ph.d anything I often use the time-honored trial and error method of figuring things out. Also, I'm not sure that you got the point that every alloy has a different melting point. From the info I had available, This alloy melts at 295º. Powder paint fully cures at 275º. So. I haven't bothered to make weight comparisons. My approach has been to adjust with a rod/line combo on the water - and this has worked out. After much muttering about the MA lead regulations - and I do believe the fisheries biologists' research - I'm accepting what I need to do re weights and jigs to be compliant with the regulations and figuring out what I need to do to continue with the bait making materials and processes.

Yes. Check out http://www.rotometals.com/

It's been an expensive and somewhat frustrating trip making the transition from lead to lead free alloy since Massachusetts prohibited the use of lead weights and jigs under 1 oz. in 2012. However, a few months ago, www.rotometals.com introduced a new lead free alloy with a high enough melting temperature to permit a full cure of powder paint. http://www.rotometals.com/product-p/leadfreebulletalloy.htm?utm_source=Thanksgiving+Sale+2015&utm_campaign=tk5&utm_medium=email I decided to go for it and gear up for powder painting. At this point I want to say, "Thank you!" to smalljaw, a valued contributor to BassResource.com, TackleUnderground.com and YouTube, who offered advice, encouragement, and tipped me toward tjstackle.com. TJ's makes a fluid bed which sells for less than half the price of the two other online component suppliers I regularly use. Let's get started: An aquarium pump keeps the powder in the fluid bed fluffed up so you can get a thin, even coat in seconds - and by seconds, I mean two. Longer than that, you've applied too heavy a coat. To the right of the fluid bed, see jumbo and regular paper clips and a #55 drill in a pin vise. the paper clips work fine to clear a hook eye filled with paint. Do this immediately, before going on to next jig in the batch. In the 84 jigs I painted (in two batches) I had to clear fewer than a dozen eyes. I had locking forceps on hand for the project and they worked great holding light and medium wire hooks. A home made jig container/rack left over from my vinyl painting days still serves well. A Wagner HT3500 Heat Tool works perfectly as a heat source. $39.00 from Home Depot. 2 oz. containers hold Pro-Tec powder paint, packaged by CS Coatings for TJ's who sells it at a better price than most outlets. Understand that I have no commercial interest in TJ's Tackle - just an entirely satisfactory first experience with their products. These instructions are posted with permission. Take the time to read them and refer to them if things aren't going right. In a photo, the powder paint looks like pimples on a ghost's face. Take my word for it, it's bubbling. The jig rack is easy enough to make if you've got a hacksaw and a brad point drill. You'll find Sterilite 4 Quart containers (12" X 7 1/4" X 4 1/4") at dollar stores and lengths of 10-24 threaded rod at hardware stores. Don't forget to buy a box of hex nuts. I heated the first batch of jigs at this setting and went to 750º for the second. Rotate the jig slowly and count: "One smallie . . . two smallies . . . three smallies . . ." You know because you've read the instructions that you have to experiment with heating time - for each size jig - to get it just right. Same for "swish" time. Don't forget to clear the eye if you took a too-long dip. After I got done with brown Brush Jig #6 I had a forehead-smacking realization - I had forgotten to block the fiber weed guard cavities with the teflon pin! I'll either glue in a thinner guard on the 6 or go without. When using a pin, pull it as soon as possible. If it lifts paint around the hole, reheat it and it will lay back down. Now it's time for the curing process. You do know that you can't use a toaster oven to broil burgers and cure powder paint, right? I decided on Eastwood's oven and bought it on sale, direct, for $89.99. Shipped from PA to western MA the cost jumped to $113.20. Internal dimensions are: 16"W X 14"D X 8"H. As you see, there are two racks. That's more than enough capacity for this hobbyist. I placed it on a table in the middle of the tackle room because the safety information stated that there should be "a minimum of 4' of adequate cooling space around top, rear and sides of oven." There was one hot spot in the back but this heat dissipated in a couple of inches. I'm guessing that Eastwood's lawyers wrote this instruction. Think I'll still use this arrangement because while the baits are baking I'll just swivel around and work at the bench you see in the reflection. Eastwood didn't have bismuth/tin jig molders in mind when they put temperature markings on their oven. I approximated 275º best I could and watched the thermometer in the oven. Clearly, something was off. The oven thermometer read 225º after 25 minutes. Testing this thermometer in the kitchen oven set at 295º it read 300º. Hmm. Two more tests had similar results. Well, "It is what it is," as they say. I baked the jigs for a full hour. Now, time for a durability test. If I tossed a handful into a tub of Marshmallow Fluff I wouldn't be disappointed. There's nothing comparably fluffy in a smallie's habitat however, so I took the jigs to the loading dock at work. I tossed a handful up into the air and collected them where they had scattered on the concrete. Repeated this test three times. Hey, not bad. These results are acceptable. I tried to enlarge the chipped areas on the Pumpkin Brown and the Watermelon using a fingernail and could not. That tells me the adhesion is good. I was particularly pleased that the Crinkle Copper was hardly bruised at all because there was a label on that container that read "cure at 400º for 10 min." The heat was nowhere close to that. Trials on pewter come next . . . especially since the larger bismuth/tin jigs are very difficult to remove from a hot mold. Questions and suggestions are welcome.

Centralinfinnesse - . . . I'm worried about you. All of the above posters know what they're talking about and none like your do-it-on-the-cheap-your-own-way ideas. Please, if you're determined to mold your own baits, make the approximate $300.00 investment (which includes a Lee Production Pot IV, safety goggles and gloves) and read and follow the instructions that come with it and the mold. This is not an activity that you rush. And it takes time and patience to learn to do it well. Okay? Be smart and be safe.

The ball jigs are molded from a lead free alloy and weigh about 3/32 oz. They worked well on cold water smallies last year as is - no trailer. The white jig at the bottom is also bismuth/tin alloy and was cast in the 3/16 oz. cavity of Do-it's tube jig mold. The trailer is Z-Man's Elaztech Split Tail Trailerz. The smallies liked this offering too. I throw the 3/32 oz. jigs on a 7' ML rod and, using the 6 lb. Tatsu, get surprisingly good distance. Sunline Sniper is also good and less expensive. Re trailer or no, in cold water or during a tough bite, try your little jigs first without a trailer and if you get no takers, try shortening a larger plastic bait and attach say, 2"of that.

That's a well made jig . Here's a video by Paul Mueller about fishing craft hair jigs:

The Bomber Suspending Long A has worked well for me on a number of trips.