Randall

You could but its not going to swim straight. It would be kicking along the top on its side with no weight.

I have only fished them for two days over the top of hydrilla where bass were feeding on shad but I probably caught over thirty fish with most being four and five pounders. I fished them on an Owner rig'n hook with a crimp on weight. I also tried them on a Lucky Strike jighead from Walmart that is made for tubes which worked pretty well also. It let the bait run just a little deeper while all the weight stayed inside the slit in the body hidden. I can't wait to try them on tough to catch bedding fish in the spring. Looks just like a shad in the water.

I confirmed today that Acworth is at full pool. Most likely where I will be this weekend.

I have had the same problem when my paint was not completely dry when I applied the clearcoat. It was dry to touch but not all the way dry. Clear coat didn't seem to stick to the paint and my clear coat and paint flaked off. Something in the wet paint must keep the epoxy from sticking. Now I let the paint dry for 24 hours then put on the clear coat and let it cure for a couple of days before fishing. Hard for me to do since after getting the bait done I want to fish it ASAP but I havent had any more flaking issues. I am not an expert at painting or clearcoating but it fixed my issues.

Funniest thing I have seen on the water was a guy who for got to tighten down a 82lb thrust trolling motor on the transom of a jonboat. Motor was running and making big jumps out of the water and back into the water in a circle as his other transom motor also an 82lb thrust was still running taking him down the lake. Nothing was holding the motor except the wires attached to the batteries. He knew he needed to get the wires on the loose motor pulled free from the batteries to stop it but the motor with a spinning prop going crazy wouldn't let him get close enough without taking a chance on getting his head took off. I think he was also afraid of losing an expensive motor. After around five minutes the prop busted and the motor stopped and he pulled it in. I know one other guy who told me he had it happen to.

Fourbizzle after reading what I wrote I could see it could be confusing so I just deleted it. Its hard to explain without photos or showing someone as they are looking at the screen as it happens. The article with photos explains it way better than I did.

Here is a good article on spooning but the info is good for all lures in deep open water since it talks about what to look for on the graph to find suspended fish that will feed. I have just started using a swimbait more often than a spoon. http://heartlandtackleservice.com/spooning.stm

The bait will be a line running up and down as you move the bait up and down. It looks just like someone is drawing a line on the screen as the bait falls down.

My depthfinder is an Eagle Cuda 168. I turn my sensitivity up to 97% in cooler water this time of year and thats all I do. Shows the bait perfectly. Its more suited for shallow water and I like others better for deep water but it still should show the bait and fish.

I have used Mattlures new shad baits verticaly to catch deep suspended bass. I have yet to see a depthfinder made in the past ten years that will not show a bait on the screen. The catch is knowing how to use the settings on the depthfinder. Turn off the fish symbols and turn up the sensitivity and almost every depthfinder will work. Also you have to be able to know which fish are active and which are not active by looking at the depthfinder to be able to decide how catchable the fish are. Fishing for inactive suspended fish is usually a waste of time. Do what WRB says but sub a swimbait for a spoon. Supermats technique will work also but its a little tougher for most people to do and its easier for most people to keep the bait in the strike zone when they can see it on the depth finder. I catch fish doing it both ways. Trolling a swimbait will work as well but I like casting more than trolling

I change all my hooks that are made that way. Add a split ring and new hook.

I carry propane and one of the little screw on heaters that screw on the bottle of propane incase I fall in so I can warm up in the boat. I also have a waterproof box with matches and a lighter. I used to have a rope attached to the rear and front of the boat with a loop for my foot tied in it to help me get back in the boat but this year I am getting a rope ladder that attaches to the side of the boat.

Hudds will work but I have done much better with baits that are a better match for the forage that are in the lake. I try to match the appearance ,size and swimming action of the forage that I feel the bigger bass are targeting most at the time and location I am fishing. For example if I see bass feeding on bluegill I have been able to get more strikes on a bluegill bait like a Mattlures bluegill than a Hudd. During the spring many of the lakes I fish have spawning gizzard shad which swim with a wide eratic swimming motion while spawning. I have thrown Hudds, and a bunch of other baits that swim with a tight action where the head of the bait stays still and the bait swims with the tail and the bass will not touch it. Switch to something with action like a Triple Trout which swims more like a spawning gizzard shad and I almost always catch more fish with it than a Hudd type bait. Sometimes I see gizzard shad swimming more like a Hudd when feeding along the bottom this time of year and I do a little better with baits that swim with more tail than body action bumping them along on the bottom. I am always trying to match the forage as close as possible when I fish with swimbaits just to increase my chances although they may also hit one that isn't anything like any baitfish in the lake as well.

We have filamentous algae on Varner every year from April thru June in the shallows. I fish it at mid day when it is producing oxygen but don't fish it early and late. I can remember fishing a tournament a few years back with a guy I had never fished with. I told him fishing was slow but I knew a spot where we could catch around twenty fish in about a foot of water at mid day. When I showed him the spot he thought I was crazy because it was algae about a foot thick growing on weeds from the bottom all the way to the surface. We caught over twenty fish all from the algae with wacky rigged senkos and trickworms that we fished on an open hook in the thickest algae we could find. We just put the bait in the algae and shook it until a bass a bass would strike at the movement in the algae. There was no way the fish could have even seen the bait the algae was so thick. We caught over twenty fish out of the algae and the second place team only had three fish and everybody else out of twenty to thirty boats had one or no fish. This type of algae will hold fish just like weeds and its best at mid day when it is producing the most oxygen. At night I have done better fishing just outside of the algae and think the fish get out of it at night and move back into it during the day. Now on the other hand I have seen algae blooms in the late summer early fall at Lake Lanier that stain the whole lake and turn most of the lake a greenish color. In this case its not clumps or strings of algae that you see growing on objects but just a water color change. The fishing gets tough and the fish are not very active in shallow or deep water. I have done well in this situation by treating the lake like it is turning over and fishing very shallow or in the back of creeks or up rivers. I am not sure of the exact type of algae that produces this problem but when I thought it was an algae bloom once before I had it confirmed by a biologist on the lake and was told that this type of algae bloom would have an effect on the fish. So , it just depends on the type of algae and in the case of filamentous algae time of day.

Here is the best one of that style I have tried for senkos. I think it is called a Shake Up jig from Strike Zone Lures. It comes through cover better and is the only spring type jig that I have found that has a high hook up precentage. I has a beefy hook, stand up football head and comes through weeds, rock and wood better than others due to the unique design. I havent been able to find it on the web but can get you a phone number if you want some.

If thats a Varner Bass it probably weighed 9.5 pounds. I saw two guys at the ramp showing one off to everyone a couple days back and keeping it out of the water way too long before releasing it. I tried to get it to swim off but it still wasn't doing too well when I left it and didn't look like it would make it. They pretty much killed it just so they could haul it around in a livewell with no pump to show it to the people thay passed and saw at the ramp. They never intended to keep the fish but just wanted to show it off.

I have never even fished a Shimano reel. I used Quantum Reels before but my spinning reels were only lasting a year so someone talked me into trying the Cardinals and I had fished the older Cardinals with good results years ago. My first Cardinal lasted two weeks and the bail broke. I fixed that and the handle part where you hold the crank came off. So , I trashed it and went with the 800 and the handle came off of it and the gears stripped within a month. On the 800 I was using braid at times and catching seven and eight pound fish almost every day but I expect a reel to hold up much better when I pay over $100 for it. I had a guy let me try his US Reel Supercaster on the day the handle came off the 800 and I liked it and bought one. I have been fishing it since June and have not had one problem with it other than it has a small spot between the bail spring and line roller which will catch your line once or twice a day which I fixed with one drop of glue and it performs better than both reels for $80. I may now be a fan of US Reel but I wouldn't have posted what I did about the Cardinals unless I had bought two of them and spent around $200 only to throw them in the garbage.

I am in a one fish tournament next weekend here in GA. One of the clubs here that fishes the small Atlanta lakes took all the big fish winners for the year and made a no entry fee big fish championship. I fished with the club one time on Lake Varner and won big fish but chances are I will have to fish a lake I have never been on before since they are going to draw the lake next Friday and I have never fished or just fished once on the other lakes the club fishes. Still should be fun though not having to fish for anything but one big fish. I have also fished the ***** online tournament at www.bountyfishing.com. They have an ad that comes up on this site. Its a big fish tournament that uses the length of fish instead of weight to fish for $1000. I have fished the tournament three times and won the LM bass tournament twice. The last week I fished I set a new record with a 27.5 inch fish and actually had first through third with three fish I caught but they only let you enter one fish. :(Its for all over North America and has different species of fish each week. Its a neat concept since its based on the length of a fish in a photo but there have been a few people who didn't follow the rules or tried to cheat but they were all caught as far as I know so maybe it will work out since there you can fish all week for one big fish. Its nice to know that you just need one big bite a week to do well there. Maybe there will be a lot more one fish tournaments in the future since it seems like there is a growing intrest in it.

Last two Cardinals I owned (3 and 800) just this past spring were not quality made reels. Both had bail and crank/handle/gear problems. I personally will never own either again. I had a three and upgraded to the 800 only to be disapointed again. I will admit to being tough on spinning reels but neither were worth the money.

Matt, Thanks for just putting my name in there. I did think about trying to enter and had lined up a boat to use and a place to stay if I flew out there for the tournament. But my wife just had a major surgery yesterday and the timing isn't right for me. I may try to get in the tournament in one of the following years though. Would be tough fishing against guys who know the California waters better but who knows what might happen. I always have wanted to fish California why not just start in a tournament. Would be kind of fun seeing the reaction of some of the Western guys if I could actually win the thing and bring that belt to the East coast.

To be honest I wouldn't fish Varner from the bank. I would go to Charlie Elliott instead. There is alot of bank area open at Varner to bank fishermen but its also the portion of the lake I fish the least. The rocks are all dry because of the low water but thats still a OK spot since there is some grass just off the bank before it drops into 20 feet of water. Around the fishing pier and down at the ramp are ok too. All the other banks are just steep banks that you should try to fish close the bank on.

Welcome to the forums. No way to really tell a person what they are doing wrong without knowing a lot more info. You may not even be doing anything wrong. Each lake is different and each day is different so all I can really say is to hang in there and try to learn all you can here. Lots of good info here and lots of good fishermen and people. Many of us are from GA as well.

Nice fish and photos. :)Nice to see you back at it.

Georgia has restocked lake sturgeon here and there are susposed to be some here in the 30 inch range but it is susposed to be 20 years before there is a real fishable population. Your posts about have me wanting to go try and catch one though. Anything that big has to be fun.

I agree with the fact that you have to have the perfect location. I looked at purchasing a tackle shop about five years ago and decided that where I live (Atlanta area) there was no way I could turn a profit. You have to have little or no competition in the area of the store and a high volume of fishermen coming through to make anything. Theres very little profit per item on fishing equipment.