Randall

I know many of you long time members here have been wondering why you haven't seen any posts on here about Lightninrod's trips. He hasn't posted here for the past year but is a long time member here and had had some health issues. I know he has a lot of freinds here so I am posting this to let you guys know about Dan. Dan hasn't been feeling well for the past year or so and went in to get checked out by the doctor and found out he had some blockages in his arteries. Well, I am glad to say Lightninrod just called me from the hospital and he has had a triple bypass surgery and is doing fine according to his doctors. He still has a few days to spend in the hospital and it may be a while before he gets back to fishing and posting some more great reports but he wanted all his freinds here to know that he is out of surgery and doing fine. I just wanted to ask everyone to say a prayer for Dan's speedy recovery.

There have been several 15lb+ fish caught. Here is a link to Fort Stewarts lakes. http://www.stewart.army.mil/DPW/fish/FISH%20CONCL2.htm One guy has several 15s. I know of a few not reported to anyone that were over sixteen. I know of only one eighteen that wasn't reported that came from a very reliable source. Some people here just don't want the hassle that comes with telling someone you caught a huge fish. 15lbs seems to be where most of the big fish here top out at now though. GA fish just don't get fat enough shape now to get over 15 in most cases. Length is no problem. Once you get into our few lakes that have any trout or good amounts forage left you have mostly northern strain bass. Most of our lakes have spotted bass as well now. Biggest reason you don't see any real giants here is the huge amount of hybrids or spots stocked in the lakes that have the most potential to produce one.

Although I don't keep any big bass I will not put down Otis for doing so. He was fishing a private pond that he had permission to fish. He was fishing for food and didn't know any better. To him it was food and nothing else. Now if he would have released it on the spot someone else would be saying that he never caught one that big and that Otis is a liar. Well, plenty have called him a liar also. I will try my best to release every fish possible alive myself but can't really blame Otis and it sure isn't going to bother me enough to get mad that he caught a big bass out of a private pond and kept it not knowing any better. I have also talked to a few people who have talked with Otis since this fish was caught and everyone said he seemed like a real nice guy.

If you go down the lake towards the dam there is a big rock bluff wall on the left side of the lake with deep water up against it. You can't really miss it and it is way down closer to the dam than the ramp. Thats the only place I would fish in winter for bass myself. Just pitch a jig right up against the rocks and let it drop down the wall. There are a few more banks down that way that the channel runs up against that might be ok. The water will be real cold. To give you an example of how different that lake is, most of the bass there don't spawn until June and sometimes July. This time of year the trout or perch might bite much better.

I don't use the fish dope myself but all my freinds swear by it. The problem with vasoline is it is almost to thin like a liquid and not a soft solid so it don't last a long time or stay on as well. Something more like a wax like chapstick would do it though. I usually have some chapstick in my pocket anyway in winter.

The float is fixed in place attached to a swivel. I use a two way swivel myself with the braid and and bobber attached to one end and the leader attached to the other. Everybody else likes the three way but I see no need for it since I have never had my line damaged by the bobber. I like the fixed weighted bobber. It is more sensitive to bites where the fish eats the fly coming up and taking the weight of the fly off the bobber causing the float to lay over. You can also give the float little twitches which just barely shakes the fly on the fixed bobber on calm days. The braid line makes all the diference in the world. It floats on top better and makes a much better cast. As far as flies/jigs the duck feathers are light but have very little movement in the fly in the water and work better in colder water like low forties. Craft hair jigs have more action and most use them in warmer water like upper forties. I use many other things myself alot like tiny flukes, and flukes on 1/16 oz shakey heads, and wacky rigged flukes on dropshot hooks with a splitshot just above for weight. We had ice out this year. :(The pond in the video was completely frozen over a few weeks back and most of the small lakes I fish were more than 1/2 to all the way frozen over for about a week or two. I don't know how you guys make it all winter with no water to fish.

I know all the guys who are in the DSM videos. All are great honest and good people. I have been in the store where some of that equipment is sold and heard them tell people it's not all that complicated. I have heard them tell people to just get a cheap flyrod to start if they don't want to invest alot in it. My F&F rod cost me eight bucks. ;D They are promoting some products though they think are best. I have seen the color as well as type of fly make a huge difference in getting bit or not. In the case of Red Rooster fly in the video it has a larger hook and I feel I land more big largemouth on it and it matches larger bait fish better since it is cut longer. Still not rocket science but I don't think all baits and bobbers are the same.

That's my buddy Matt Driver. Craig Miller and his partner Charles started winning a lot tournaments on the F&F on Lake Allatoona and started the F&F craze here on the local lakes. We got Craig to do a seminar on the F&F last year when I was doing a swimbait seminar at the local tackle shop he runs. After it got out that he was winning tournaments with the F&F and everybody knew how he was doing it everybody here was fishing it. Now it's the main pattern for winter and everybody seems to be fishing it here.

Best bass fishing is in Bull Sluice just downstream from the Roswell Road bridge. Not the best time to fish there by any means but if I was going this time of year I would fish nothing but a black and blue jig for bass.

Swimbait, jerkbait, jig, crankbait, flukes, topwaters and about anything else you can throw at them. Some baits are better baits for spots but they will eat almost anybait.

I have freinds that use it but I will not. It makes no sense to tie on a jig where you have to use a weaker knot than others you could tie with another jig just to tie it on. Just an overrated gimmick to me.

Weightless fluke (the flat one) on light fluro line 4lb just cast it out and let it fall flat side down. When it hits bottom or you think it did just reel back up and cast again. Sometimes you will tighten up to reel in and the fish is just holding the bait. Below fifteen feet I add a small split shot up the line or insert weight in the middle of the fluke. It's painfully slow fishing but it works better than anything I have tried in a big shad kill. A really well balanced level or tail first falling slow sinking shad type swimbait or crankbait will work also at times. I just count it down and give it a twitch or two as it falls through the water. You can weight a shad rap to fall tail first and sink like this. A light flutter type spoon will do the same thing. I have found that super slow falling baits like this do much better than suspending baits like jerkbaits or float and flys once the shad are dying in large numbers. I think the bass key in on the natural slow falling action of the shad and will not hit much else.

dealing with the days you don't catch them and figuring out what you could do better or different next time to try to keep it from happening again.

I don't know if he still does but Porter used to spend time in my home town of Waynesville NC (I believe he has a house there) and fish some of the mountain lakes that I fished growing up and still do when I get a chance. I have seen some of his reports from those lakes and they don't reflect the size or numbers of the fish the lakes hold and I have caught on a regular basis with the exception of the crappie.

I use Mattlures hard and soft gills for the most part. My year goes like this in general. In the winter I use tht soft gill fished like a jig on the botom and the slow sink hard bluegill around suspended fish that will hit shallow jerkbaits. I can fish his hard gill like a jerkbait after it is counted down since it has a true slow sink and has a nice action when twitched after a pause. In spring during the prespawn I use the hard crappie around crappie that are on beds and the hard bluegill off shore as a jerkbait substitute. I will also slow roll the soft gill in deeper water. When the bass move to spawning I use the hard slow sink bluegill fished in spawning areas and casting at cruising fish, and the hard floater fished slow, or deadsticked over beds. The soft bait is used fished on beds for fish that are spawning. Post spawn I fish the floater and slow sink hard gill around bluegill beds trying to match species colors. I also use the bait in place of topwaters using a twitching action on the surface to get topwater strikes. Summer and fall I use more shad, herring, and baby bass type swimbaits where I fish but like the hard gills fished slow with twitches if I see more bluegill around or near the surface on calm days. I also keep my eyes peeled for strike on the shorline since these are usually bluegill getting busted. On lakes and ponds without shad and herring I still use the hard gill since bluegills are everywhere. I have also caught some big summer and fall bass slow rolling the soft gill in deeper water. That's a general overview of how I fish bluegill swimbaits over a year. They pretty much work all year but used in different ways.

River2sea has become my frog of choice as well. My second choice is the Boze Sumo frog.

Fast sink. Almost would call it very fast sink. Good baits fo the money though. I have caught some fish on them.

Silver single blade with a clear skit with silver glitter. No paint on the head. I like 3/8 and 1/4 oz baits. No skirt works well also.

Just got back from a pond here in Douglasville this AM. No fishing it's frozen.LOL. I am guessing yours is the same.

To get a tighter kick and take out some of the rolling action you can cut the lowest portion of the tail off where it it rounded on the bottom. Just cut staight across. It works more like the original bastrix that way. Or you can just buy the basstrix and be done with it.

Winter time bass are not lethargic. They simply digest food slower in cold water (cold blooded) therefore they can feed less often. They still have almost the same ability to make a short burst of speed. Reaction strikes on fast moving baits, most of the time, depended more on a reaction that is triggered rather than how hungry a bass is. So,reeling a crankbait fast is often a good option in cold water.

To the book's credit, they do mention this later in the chapter: There are two primary exceptions when speed reeling is not necessarily the best choice for crankbaits. These occur at either extreme end of the temperature scale, when the water is either too hot or too cold. The reason is simply that in such conditions bass do not move as fast and won't go after a fast-moving lure. Or to it's discredit. : My favorite times to burn baits is in water over 90 degrees and water under 45. It gets strikes often when nobody else is catching fish. In July and August in the heat of GA I do almost nothing but burn swimbaits, buzzbaits and crankbaits in hot water. Not just burning them but reeling as fast as you can turn a high speed reel. Bass still have the ability to make a short burst of speed in both hot and cold water. Rattletraps being burned in cold shallow water is one of the most common winter patterns in lakes where bass stay shallow.

I drive people crazy who fish with me sometimes because I either fish painfully slow or as fast as possible. I rarely fish anything at a medium speed because I find it the least effective speed to fish anything. I am the same way when selecting lures. I want baits that can be reeled as fast as possible or as slow as possible. Even better if they do both. If a bait just works at a medium speed you will rarely find it in my tackle box. I even have a lot of baits (maybe 1/4 or more of my tackle box)that I have either designed or modified to either work at a blazing fast speed or painfully slow speed because I couldn't find any that would work the way I wanted.

YEP. I also have the Cuda. It works if you know how to read it. Most people who fish with me are shocked to find out their cheap depthfinder was working right all along but they just didn't interpret what it was telling them correctly. Very good info in these posts. Some of my best spots are just one and two foot breaks on a flat that is the same depth for a few hundred yards before the one or two foot breakline.

It better than Vanish but still not as good as Seguar.