Randall

It's hard to say since I made it in steps a little at a time and didn't pay attention to how much time each step took. But I would guess three or four hours and maybe more total time.

Also, if you want a quiet gliding type of walking action when you need a subtle quiet type of bait the gunfish is perfect. For me its the best use for the bait instead of the noisy franitc action decribed above and most people throwing the bait don't know the bait will work this way. My favorite on slick water with no wind on a bright sunny day or when the fish are spooky. You can get a bunch of different actions from the bait depending on how its used. There are better noisy splashy baits and better walking baits but not many that are versitile enough to do both then glide quietly along on the top without making much of a splash at all. The glide action is more like a fluke type of action. For me its perfect when fish want something quiet but also works as an ok substitute for when fish want a Pop-R type action or a Sammy type action without having to change baits. It also is a great bait to see what the fish want without having to try a bunch of baits since it does everything. After I figure it out I switch to a sammy or Pop-R or if they like the quiet glide of the gunfish I leave the gunfish tied on.

I have ultimate bunkboards on one of my boat trailers. It is much easier to load and unlaod the boat but you can't unhook before you start to back down the ramp or the boat will slide off. They dont cause any other problems as long as the boat is straped down. They also last forever and don't have to be replaced like wood and carpet. I will be putting them on my other trailer next. With out the ultimate bunkboards I wouldn't have been able to fish a lot of lakes this year due to low water. The ultimate bunk boards allowed me to push my boat off into the water with out backing all the way into the water. I am friends with the owners of the company but I never thought they were that great and didn't have them on my trailers until one of my buddys bought a boat with the ultimate bunk boards already installed that I borrowed. After trying them out on his trailer I have decided to put them on all my boat trailers.

My question is can they be paired together tomorrow? Would make for an interesting day on the water if so. Would also be funny if she out fished him from the back of the boat. I bet TMZ might be there with a camera just incase.

Quantum used to make some quality reels for the price at $40. I am not sure if these are still in their line up but I have a few of them that are six or more years old and still get everyday use from them with no problems. The name they used to be called was the Profile series but I think they are almost the same reel as the Quantum pulse. They may or may not be as good as they once were though since many companies are not making good low end reels any more and I havent tried one.

Al I just saw on another website that you live in Athens. If I lived there in the fall and winter I would fish the lake at Sandy Creek Park with a rattletrap, jerkbait fished slow, and a jig fished slow anywhere straight across the lake from the ramp. Those three have never failed me there in the fall, winter or early spring. That is if the lake has some water in it.

For a baitcaster a Falcon Original seven feet MH action. For a spinning rod I like BPS Bionic blade seven feet medium action. I have limited space on my boat so I set out a few years ago to find the rods I could do everything with even though there are better rods out there for specifics. You can start with these two and cover most anything with them. If you add a third rod get a Falcon Original seven foot medium action baitcasting rod. I use these three rods and a swimbait rod for 99% of my fishing because I can do everything with these rods although I own over twenty rods. If you find a seven foot rod a little long you can downsize to six foot six inch rods with no problem. I just like longer rods personally. All these rods are in the seventy five dollar range at regular price.

Hard to say why you aren't catching them since you didn't say what you are doing and as far as big lakes where you are fishing. On ponds fish in the afternoon since the water temps are a little higher then. Also pond fish will go into winter patterns faster than the fish on big lakes since the water cools to lower temps on cold nights. I haven't been out everyday like I usually am this time of year but I am catching them when I go. The fishing should be better with the drought if you are fishing in the right place.

The lake Acworth pics are from last Saturday. The Varner Pics are from somewhere around the 15th but can't remember the exact date.

Chris, I told Jake and Roy that you had a tough time out there. Jake said we could have stayed longer and caught more but they had to go watch GA beat Tech. He said that without knowing you were a Tech fan but I got a good laugh out of it. ;D Won't be fishing for a couple weeks since my wife just had another surgery but I will let you know when I am going back.

That's real common here at Lake Varner in GA. My theory, and my catches support it ,is that there are fish that live at depths or locations that are lacking in enough or the right type of forage to grow well and others that live at the right depths and locations to make the most of the right types and amounts of forage. These skinny fish may also be living at depths/locations where they have to compete with other more aggresive fish like stripers or hybrids. You may not see a big difference in the smaller fish at different depths but once these fish get big they need a better supply and choice of forage in the depth/location they live. If the food supply is lacking what the bigger fish need at the depth and location that fish lives then the fish gets skinny and stops growing as fast. If they are in the right locations or depths they grow larger and fatter than others. It could be other things like parasites and diseases but knowing your lake has produced big fish this is my first guess. Here is a Varner fish that should weigh in the teens but was only nine pounds. It had a terrible choice of home range where it lived and had to compete with hybrids for a very limited food supply but probably had the genes to be huge if it lived in the right location. The fish was longer than a fifteen pounder I caught this past spring but weighed nearly six pounds less. Looked young and healthy other than its body weight.

Here is the second photo.

Lake Varner closed just a few days back because of the drought and what they called dangerous conditions :. Before Varner closed I got a good one just a few days before they closed the ramp. It closed just when I was on the big fish good catching three or four over ten pounds in a few weeks. Next best option that was still open to fish after Varner closed for big fish was Lake Acworth so I went out with my buddy Roy Mims and his son Jake to Lake Acworth last Saturday. The lake was at full pool which was nice but it was windy and cold. We got on a good group of fish in one small area and Jake had a bunch of fun catching them on a jighead with a trickworm. We only fished a few hours since the GA-GA TECH was coming on and Jake didn't want to miss it. But, we caught them pretty good once we found them. I guess we caught between 10-15 fish. Here is a photo of Jake and some of his fish and Jake holding his biggest fish of the day. The second photo is an eleven pounder and another good one we got at Varner right before it closed.

Lipless baits like that one can be pretty tough to make. There are a lot of varibles that can totaly mess up the bait or make it swim great. I just posted one I made and I was shocked I got it all right on the first try. Ones that use a lip to swim are not near as hard to make from my experience.

Here is a new lipless wakebait /swimbait I made. Made a plan on paper and just took a piece of basswood and grinded it down to the shape and size I wanted with a Dremel tool, cut the joints and added the weight. Sealed it up and added the hooks and screweyes. Used a broken Storm Kickin' minnow tail attached by a wire screw thing as the tail. Worked on the very first try with no adjustments. Either I got lucky or I am getting good at this. Swims better or as good as any swimbait on the market I could buy. Swims at a very slow speed as well as fast and does a 180 back at the fish when stopped on a follower as well as some other tricks. Added the paint, eyes, and clearcoat and it caught a 5lb fish on the first cast when I was just watching it swim for the first time. Here is a video http://media.putfile.com/Swimbait-slow-retrieve . And here is a photo of the bait. Now I just got to get me a slow sinker made to go with it.

I would say per acre Lake Varner may be the most heavily bed fished lake in the Southeast. It's nothing to see 10 or more boats in a line going down a bank looking for bedding fish in one area during April. It also produces more big fish per acre than any public Lake in GA. I personally think that all the bed fishing pressure and fishing pressure in general helps the lake produce more big fish by limiting the spawn some. Most that have the ability to catch the bigger fish release the big fish there as well. I have also learned by fishing with hundreds of different people during the spring that there is a very, very small number of people that have the knowledge and ability to catch many if any big fish off the bed. There not as vunerable as most people think they are. Good article with a few good tips that most people don't know.

Went out there on Sat and froze my hind parts off. Cruised around for a while to the left of the ramp and we found no depth, no structure, no dying rass, and most importantly, no fish. However I did run into stump full bore and popped my transom mount motor up When we finally went towards the rip rap, that's when the cold set in and we called it a day. Figures, as that's where I finally found some structure. I was out there Saturday for about four hours freezing as well. Took about an hour to thaw my hands out after we finished but we had fun. My buddy eight year old Jake had a great day despite the cold and wind. He got about ten fish with a couple of good ones on jighead with a trickworm. Here is his pic with his dad holding some of his fish and him with his biggest fish of the day. I caught a couple and his dad caught a few as well. The lake is really almost like one big shallow flat and hard to find very many big depth changes in it. Alot of the better structure is in the deeper half of the lake toward the dam.

;DThat explains it. I thought flippin bug was flippin out for a minute. Nope, never fished a machine.

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Here is a bottom view of the weighted hook inside the bait. The weight is barely visable when viewed from the side of the bait and the tip of the hook comes out at the dorsal fin of the bait making the bait weedless. A few of the pics are a little blurry but I hope this makes sense. I was trying to explain how I was putting the jighead in weedless without pics before and nobody could understand so maybe this will help. Also in another post it seemed like the concept of a weighted hook in the bait might have confused some people.

Here is a top view of the bait after the jighead is inserted in the bait the eye of the hook is just behind the eyes and the tip of the hook comes out at the front of the dorsal fin. The bait is now weedless with a jighead inside. When you set the hook the hook comes up out of the top of the bait and hooks the fish.

Here is a photo of a bottom view of the bait rigged on the Lucky Strike jighead. I just stick the eye of the jighead through the slit in the bottom and out the top of the bait just behind the eyes in the front part of the slit.

I had a couple people ask how I am rigging Matt's new minnow so I took some photos with both ways I have been rigging it. Here is a photo of the bait with a Lucky Strike jighead I buy at my local Walmart and an 4/0 Owner rig'n hook with a crimped on weight. These weights are hard to find and I bought all a local tackle shop had a few years ago but you can get the weighted Falcon hooks that have the weight already on the hook at a bunch of places online and rig it the same way. I like to add the weight myself since I can vary the weight myself without carrying so many hooks since I use the Owner hooks anyway. I use 1/8 oz and 3/16 oz crimp on weights.

Throw it on a heavy rod as long as it has some bend in the top 1/3 of the rod. You don't want a crankbait type of rod when throwing swimbaits or trying to catch big fish. You have to think differently when throwing swimbaits and catching big fish than you do with small fish and crankbaits. First you have to have a rod with enough backbone to move the bait in the mouth of a fish after it has clamped down hard on a big bait. Second the goal when you have fish hooked on a larger swimbait is to bring the fish to the boat before it can throw the bait. You never want to give the fish a chance to throw the bait while playing it and trying to wear it down. The trebles on swimbaits are big enough to bring the fish straight to the boat. If the hooks tear out (sometimes they will) then the fish just didn't get hooked well enough and I just forget about it and go on to catch the next one. If it isn't hooked well then it most likely will throw the bait anyway no matter which rod you use since the bait is heavy and easy for the fish to throw due to the weight of the bait.

When it breaks or wears out I replace it. The rod I catch most of my fish on is a BPS Bionic Blade that is 7-10 years old. I have repaired or replaced every guide on it. I also have a reel made from parts of three different reels that is probably just as old. I spend all my money on new baits.