Will Wetline

Please, don't anyone get spooked by Eastern philosophy! "Zen and the Art of . . . " has been so overused as to become meaningless, much like the overuse of the word "awesome." What meditation does is calm you down and helps you focus on whatever it is that's in front of you at the moment. You don't need to put on a robe and chant in a foreign language. The great Rick Clunn understood the value of clear thinking - a mind uncluttered by all the hype and hoohah that we're exposed to on a daily basis - back in the '70s and investigated different means, different schools of thought to put the mind at ease so he could more fully concentrate on the conditions at hand. My friends in fishing, we're not talking any sort of mysticism; we're talking mental clarity.

Congrats to you, sir, for a trophy catch (and release) and a well told tale.

I don't quite understand your gripe - a 4 -14 smallie is welcome in my net any day! Study smallmouth behavior and be on good waters under optimum conditions. That 6 lber. could swim by at any time . . .

I'm thinking about my annual last-week-of-October trip to New York's Salmon River for steelhead. During the hard water season in western Mass you'll find me at the bench pouring bismuth/tin into molds for next season's jigs and weights and rearranging tackle boxes.

I go for the challenge of finding and catching fish, but underlying that - and more important - is the opportunity to get away from hassles and obligations and just plain "be there." Makes me smile.

What a guy! What a Bassmaster!

I fish very clear water for smallies and often use my lightest outfit which is a St. Croix 7' ML Avid and a Shimano Stradic 2500 filled with Berkley 6 lb. Sensation. I've caught a lot of fish slowly swimming an 1/8 oz. tube over the bottom and I also like this combo for dropshotting. Slightly heavier gear I carry is a St. Croix 7' M Avid, and a Shimano Stradic 3000 filled with Berkley 8 lb. Sensation. I'll rig a RI Smallie Beaver with a 1/0 EWG standard wire Gamakatsu and sink it with an 1/8 oz. tungsten bullet. A 4" wacky rigged Senko is well balanced on this too. Re finesse fishing in general, think slow and subtle.

Let's say your bait has hit bottom and your rod tip is 45 degrees to the surface of the water. Simply lift the rod and slowly drag the bait until the rod is close to 90 degrees. Reel back down to 45. Repeat. You are literally dragging the bait along the bottom. You might pause occasionally between drags, give the bait a twitch, let it sit for a bit and resume dragging. The bait I most frequently use with this retrieve is Yamamoto's 5" hula grub rigged on a 2/0 thin wire EWG hook. Use either 1/8 or 3/16 oz. bullet and a 4mm faceted red bead. 10 lb. mono. Casting and dragging a dropshot rig works well too. Here though, you want to keep your rod tip up at about 45 degrees at all times and maintain line tension. Don't "over-twitch" here - you'll get plenty of action transmitted from the bottom and the built in action of the little bait itself.

Great intro and great fish pics! Welcome to BassResource.

The Spinshot hooks have worked just fine for me but I have heard from a friend that he was having difficulty getting a fish all the way to the boat - they'd come unbuttoned. When I feel a tap or weight on the line, I reel down to get any slack out and then firmly sweep the rod back and start to reel. You want to be mindful that you're using a thin wire, extremely sharp hook and, as you stated in your last post, 6 lb. line. You do not want to set too hard nor do you need to. I suspect the problem lies with the way the angler responds to the bite, not the engineering of these hooks.

"Chunky" is the description for those bruisers!

There were three wardens (EPOs, I guess we call 'em now) that spent time on both days of the HG & E Shad Derby below the Holyoke Dam. Seemed they were checking licenses but not lead. It may be that they are letting this new regulation slide for the first year - but I doubt it's going to go away. I've changed to molding jigs and weights from a bismuth/tin alloy which is 6x more expensive than lead but I am in compliance with MA regulations.

The Missile Baits Drop Craw in watermelon/red nose hooked on a size 4 VMC Spinshot hook took two 3 1/2 lb. smallies out of clear, rocky Massachusetts water for me this spring. I've been using Lunker City's 3" Slug Gos successfully for smallies for years, mostly C-rigged, but this year found they worked just fine drop shot. Love their rainbow trout color.

Mitch, thanks for another "happy" post; clearly good catchin' and good eatin'.

The original 3 1/2" Gitzit does the job for me with smallies.

I've been very pleased with Shimano's Stradics and Curados and St. Croix's Avids for a number of seasons. Performance is excellent and the price points don't whack my budget too far out of line.

I love smallies, but there's nothing in freshwater that's as fast and acrobatic as steelhead. "Berserk" is the best word to describe their behavior on line. To fully understand this, stand in one of the tribs and hook up . . . Here's an 11 lber. from New York's Salmon River:

That was quite the bite! Congrats on a bunch of good bass.

It's as easy as turning the dropshot swivel end-for-end in the mold. I first tried this to eliminate a step in making weights for Jika rigs; with the ring end of this specialized hardware up, there's no need to widen the line gripping end to attach a split ring. To eliminate my use of strong language, I use fine point tweezers to position the hardware in the mold.

I own both Premier and Avid rods and am well pleased with both. I'm willing to pay the extra $$ for the Avid, though, because they're lighter and this no-longer-young bassmaster appreciates that over the course of a 10 hour day. The AS70MLF teamed with a Stradic 2500 does for me what Gandalf's wand does for him (I say modestly).

The above is all good advice. I like #3 and #4 willow leaf blades. Understand that I'm tailoring my presentation for smallmouth in clear water and using a fairly zippy retrieve. If you're dropping that 3/8 oz. spinnerbait on top of a LM sitting under a laydown, I'd use a single 4.5 Colorado blade. Experiment. Have fun. Catch fish.

I got a good lesson recently while fishing familiar water with a new friend. Dave had been on this big, clear reservoir a few times before; I was in my 19th season here. It's post spawn but I expected the smallmouth we were targeting to be in the vicinity of the flats they had occupied a few weeks ago, only deeper. Dave started out with a 5" soft stickbait, wacky rigged. I've got a Plano 3700 filled with Senkos and more in old tackle boxes in a closet, but for some reason rarely throw them. Yamamoto's 5" hula grub has long been a go to bait and I've got reason to like Ikas as well. But not Senkos. I dunno, maybe it's contrariness on my part since so many other bassmasters love 'em. At any rate, I scoop Dave's first smallie about 8:00 and within the next four hours he boats three more - and I'm talking decent fish, 2 1/2 - 3 1/2 lbers., not dinks. Meanwhile, I'm throwing a bit of everything. We had partly sunny conditions with a ripple on the water. I took a topwater for a walk, expected a smallie to slam a crank, was surprised that they passed on a tube. I did finally get a 14" fish to inhale a small offering on a drop shot rig I had been dragging. Around noon, we headed to a different section of the lake. I'm rotating the above lineup as well as watching the flashing blades of a tandem spinnerbait to keep me awake. I took time out to net Dave's fifth decent smallie which he had interested in a - you'll never guess - a 5" wacky rigged Senko! On the way to a steep break at the end of a large flat I was having an internal argument: Did I care to continue demonstrating my great perseverance by tossing baits that I like to throw but today's bass don't want to take . . . or do I want to catch fish? We anchored on the break and as the boat was settling I tied an Owner #2 wacky/dropshot hook on 8 lb. mono. I stuck this hook through the middle of a Slim Yamasenko and cast into deep water. I engaged the reel and as I was lifting the rod, noticed the line moving out steadily. I lowered the tip and when the line tightened, set. This photo op came several minutes and three magnificent leaps later: If I were a superstitious bassmaster, I'd say that this smallie was a reward for overcoming my stubbornness. I will say that I'm making room in my box for more Senkos. 6 lb. smallies like 'em.

This is exactly right. I'll add that that it's helpful for the netman/woman to be agile and sometimes to be a coach: if the fisherman is overexcited, tell him/her that the fish is not ready for the net yet.

I enjoyed this story. Thanks.