Randall

The bowstick is a good bait. It has a side to side glide to it more than a walk. I can turn it to get the action just by turning the reel handle and changing speeds. Much easier on the wrist.

Mattlures!

I once caught a 5lb smallmouth on a fake plastic peice of corn when I was trout fishing as a teenager. Just a yellow thing moving in the water and it actually smelled like plastic but both trout and smallmouth will eat it. When I click on a you tube video and see Facts of Fishing pop up I go to something else real quick.

Only way I have caught fish on it is with fast quick pops like a modified Pop-R or Rico on the floater. My floater actually casts a little better than the sinkers I had. ::)I sold all the sinkers for cheap and kept one floater.

Here our old buddy doghouse with two over ten in the middle of winter. Fished like a jig on the bottom. My biggest almost 16 lbs hit one swimming it. My favorite bait for beds this year was the hard gill fishing it over beds. Even though I have caught more and bigger fish on Matt's soft gill the hard gill is my new favorite.

I catch one and two pounders on it all the time. Nothing wrong with going to the JR chunk if it gives you more confidence though.

My guess would be upper sixtys for water temps. It can vary a lot though depending on the weather. In that part of north GA the air temps are up and down until you get into May.

Huddleston Deluxe ROF 5 in the 6 inch and eight inch is what I fish there. Mattlures makes a small trout bait that is good there also. Mattlures also has a new larger trout bait but I haven't fished it yet.

I would have a big slow sinking 8 inch trout swimbait as well. That's what the big ones there eat. Lots of big largemouth in the lake as well. Should be a good time to sight fish for bedding fish.

Ben, go with George Welcome. I would never ever consider going with the guy you asked about myself. Some of my clients have fished with both and I often hear the good and the bad about most guides. I have heard nothing but good about George. Can't say that about some others.

I will throw them anytime the water is over 48 degrees. My favorite time and conditions would be midday , bright sun, with 80 degree water with a slight breeze blowing. Under these conditions I usually fish it fast and cover a lot of water.

X2 I have also glued and removed the lead and steel balls and used other quieter things to add weight.

I use a low power unit (Eagle Cuda) most of the year for this reason. I think it makes a difference at times. When I fish deeper water I go to a more powerful unit Eagle 480 since I don't think it matters as much in deep water. If I don't need them to catch the fish I turn them off.

My favorite for bass, hybrids pickerel and stripers is called a crease fly. You can fish it like a pop-r type bait and skip it along the surface at faster speeds. A lot of fun on schooling fish feeding on shad.

I was disapointed in the bait. Little action, dull hooks and I could think of other baits to throw in the same situations that were better.

Other than a swimbait like a Mattlures Bluegill when bass are chasing away Bluegills or other swimbait that looks and swims like a fish I have rarely seen the type of bait matter much as far as getting a strike because of the way the bait looks or what it imitates. It's all about the angle that the bait is fished and the fall rate of the bait and retreive matching the mood of the fish. Alll bass aren't the same or in the same stage of the spawn so no one thing works for all fish.

My best tactic for big bass in clear lakes with hydrilla is to fish a hard swimbait like a Triple Trout, Mattlures Hard Bass or bluegill or sebile over the grass that is growing near the surface. Just choose the swimbait that best matches your forage. The swimbait casts farther than almost anything you can throw keeping you well away from the bass and it can be fished fast to cover more water than any other bait. It doesn't catch many giant bass over eight pounds for me fished this way but the number of four to eight pound fish I catch is way up there. There is no other bite more fun than this bite since the fish will hit the bait burned on the surface hard. For either flipping/pitching or fishing the swimbait target any areas with holes or scattered patches of grass. The fish rarely use the thickest grass unless it is a thick mat with space for the fish to live underneath.

For swimbaits the six inch Storm Kickin' Minnow is way underrated. It catches big bass for me on almost every lake I fish but most who use swimbaits overlook it.

Get in touch with Warren Barnes. He is a friend of mine that guides on Weiss. Whether he is the guide you are using or not he can tell you when the fishing is generally good. www.warrenbarnes.net

Looking forward to the new shows. I will be watching in HDLunkervision.

I agree. Here are two fish from that school that I posted the photo of. We also had one larger than these that broke off at the boat as well. All caught on the spoon.

You can take the larger sizes and drill a hole in the lip right in the center of the most forward part. Add a split ring to the hole and it wakes right on the surface with better action.

If you want a bait that small I suggest a sebile. It's the only small swimbait that's held up for me. It will also wake at faster speeds much better than the TT. The figure eight wires that hold the joints in the TT get lose after a few good fish and the bait want's to roll and come out of the water when it's waked since the joint's aren't lined up properly. The 95 size Sebile is deadly waked on the surface and you can't make it roll or blow out of the water.

In summer, fall and winter when the fish are stacked up often I don't use a bait or lure so much to cover deeper water but just use my electronics to scan deep water spots. I can ride over a spot in a few minutes and tell if its worth fishing. I covered a few miles of a Lake Horton yesterday under trolling motor power just riding over deep water areas yesterday and found only two spots of probably thirty I went over to hold active fish. When I found them I already knew I would get bites and could fish a slow moving lure on more specific spots since the depthfinder looked like this. Most of the fish in this school were crappie but we hooked two big bass and a few small bass out of it as well. If the fish are more scattered in deep water a heavy jig, big spinnerbait, swimbait or a crankbait are my favorites.

My advice is keep the rod you have and change to a single larger 2x Owner (4X is a little over kill and doesn't penatrate as well for me) on just the front treble. Just leave the rear treble off. EWG's miss way more fish but hold better. Round bend hook more fish but lose a few more in the smaller sizes. Upsizing to a size 1 or 2 hook on the front takes care of this problem. Since you have what many people use for a swimbait hook on the trap you can reel the fish in like a swimbait fish with a swimbait rod. As for my feelings on long and short shanks short shanks have an advantage in the way I see them. The longer shanks on long shanks can be used as a longer lever with more power to pry lose in some situations where a fish turns away, rolls, etc. Just think of your line and hook eye just out side the mouth of the fish with a point of the hook set into the jaw bone area as you pull your line behind the fish as it pulls away. The longer hook acts as a lever to free the point that is in the fish when pulled in this direction. I always use the shortest shank possible for this reason.