Randall

I will pass on the tickets. The wagtail had to get a repaint. I painted it pearl white with a glitter clear coat and it catches twice as many fish. ;D

A lipless one I make, an ABT Wag Tail, Jackall Mikey and ABT Titan/ Strike King Kong.

Yep thats a Toona shirt. I was planning on fishing there some this year just for a change but its hard for me not to fish Varner even though "The Dead Sea" is closer to my house.

The past couple of days I have still been catching them on plastics and the Mattshad but I found a new pattern. Wake type swimbaits over grass beds. If you think that nothings better than topwater fishing you haven't had a big fish follow a wake bait then hit it twice as hard as any topwater strike you have ever seen. I got between five and ten fish a day to hit different wake baits. I lost three or four big ones that looked between seven and ten pounds :(but also landed a bunch of four and five pounders like the one in the photo.

Here is the Mattshad compared to a shad a hybrid spit out. Perfect size.

Here is a Hybrid we got on a Mattshad.

Saturday I fished lake Lucas with Adam Stanton (Doghouse here on Bass Resource) in a SJA tournament. I had never seen the lake before but we did OK placing 5th with a little over eight pounds. We caught most of our fish and all of our better fish on topwaters fished over suspended fish in deep water that were off the side of a hump. The rest hit trickworms on a jighead on top of the humps. We also went looking for some big fish suspended out in deep water where we had seen some big swirls on top. All we found were some big gar suspended near the surface. Since Adam and myself can't resist throwing at any big fish we see we had to try to catch one anyway even though it took time away from our bass fishing. Adam hooked into one over three feet long and lost it at the side of the boat and we had a lot of big ones follow swimbaits and topwaters back to the boat. I might have to go back one day and just fish for big gar. Sunday at Varner we had around ten fish fishing a half day with the biggest going around four pounds all on trickworms except one that hit a fluke over deep water. Monday I took two boys and their dad out on Varner. We started fishing for hybrids and largemouth around deep creek channels with a Mattshad and jigging spoon and it wasn't long before we hooked into some big hybrids but most pulled off at the boat. After losing one huge hybrid at the boat the young man in the photo adjusted and took a little more time to get this one close playing the fish perfectly so it didn't pull off. He was happy and got the big one he came after. Later in the morning we caught around seven more bass on trickworms and jigging spoons with dad as well as both boys catching fish. Here is dad and sons with a couple nice bass.

Chucks dad with a big one.

Chuck with another good one.

The past few days at Varner the fishing has been good. We have been catching both bass and hybrids around deep creek channels on swimbaits, jigging spoons, and crankbaits. The best bait for these deep fish for me has been a Mattlures Mattshad prototype that I have been fishing. It's a small swimbait around four inches long that looks just like a shad and swims just like a shad. The great thing about it is I have been able to use it as a swimbait throwing it to fish feeding on the surface as well as dropping it straight under the boat after the fish go back down and fish it like a spoon. I just drop it in front of the fish and it gets hit more often than a spoon does. We have also been catching fish on plastic worms on grass flats. We had a great day last Friday on plastics. I fished with Chuck Norton and his dad. We caught fish all day and had some good ones as well. We each hooked into fish over six pounds and I estimate our best five somewhere between 25 and 30lbs. We only stopped fishing long enough to weigh one six pounder. This is Chuck with a big one.

Should be a good bait. These types of baits have been made and used for years by musky fishermen and fishermen in Europe but are just now starting to be used for bass. I have been using them for years for big bass. ;)It's nothing really more than a downsized musky glide bait. There are already are few being made for bass in Japan with much better action than the Rapala version but they aren't cheap. I also noticed when I was looking for some a few months ago that Whittler from here on Bass Resource has some on his website.

If you are more comfortable with spinning gear then use it. For spinning gear I would suggest 40lb braid and a larger saltwater type reel. I have at times cast my Mattlures Bluegill on spinning gear although I prefer a baitcaster. It worked just fine for me and didn't wear me out at all but I do feel I can bring a fish to the boat faster and with more power with a baitcaster. The baitcaster is a winch where a spinning reel is designed just to take up line.

One more photo.

Another photo.

Fish are now in their summer patterns and fishing will not change much day to day or week to week. bass and hybrids can still be found schooling out on the main part of the lake early and late. On some days they are coming up all day so keep something ready to throw at them at all times. Best baits for schoolers have been small swimbaits but crankbaits, topwaters, and jerkbaits have also caught a few. The other bite and the one that is most dependable is the offshore structure bite on soft plastics and crankbaits. Something else to look for is a bluegill swimbait bite over grass. There have been alot of bluegill and shellcrackers suspended over grassbeds this week and I have had a couple of good fish on a Mattlure's Bluegill fished near the surface. The fish in the photo was caught on a trickworm on a splitshot rig as well as the next couple of photos I will post.

I have always bought plain jig hooks and then put a splitshot on them below the worm to hold the worm in place and it makes a wacky jig. They end up looking something like the ones Brad posted. I guess my secrect is out now. : Only bad thing is that you have to retie everytime you change worms.

Thanks Matt and CJ. Glad you liked it. I guess the only way to see the article is get a copy of Basswest or subscribe to the magazine. www.basswest.com I believe is the website. I don't even have my own copy yet but its susposed to be on the way.

If you like flyfishing for LM you need try flyfishing for spots on Lake Lanier. It's North GA but worth the trip. The guys who flyfish up there use a fly called a coyote. Its a big streamer made to look like a shad or herring. Theres also guy named Henry Cowan who guides for stripers on Lanier who only does flyfishing trips. He mainly targets stripers but catches spots as well. Lanier is a great topwater lake and would probably be the best choice for flyfishing. For big largemouth there is a small lake south of Atlanta that has a bunch of five to seven pound LM called JW Smith. Best time to go is July and August when it is full of grass and the fish will strike near the surface. Its tough landing the fish on a fly rod but they will hit streamers, and popping type flys. Best lake for numbers with a good fish here and there on a flyrod is lake Kedron in Peachtree city. Just like JW Smith its a small lake with plenty of grass and fish that will hit on top but the fish will hit on top all day long at times.

Here is the seven pounder from Sunday.

Here is the nine pounder from Sunday.

I haven't posted in a couple of weeks due to the fact my wife had to have two surgeries on kidney stones and I have been at home taking care of her and my children. She is better now and I am have been back on the water over the past three days. I was glad to find the fish active and biting when I got back on the water on Friday since I had heard that fishing had been tough. Right now fishing is about as good as it gets for offshore structure fishing. The fish are bunched up on offshore structure and feeding heavily. Friday I had over fifty fish fishing alone with mixed largemouth, hybrids and catfish. Saturday I fished the SJA tournament with Doghouse and we got second place. We had no problem finding the big fish getting a six pounder and a fished that weighed 8.29 pounds that won big fish but we caught over twenty twelve to thirteen inch fish that didn't weigh much and had a hard time culling up to some bigger fish for more weight. Sunday I fished in the morning with a couple of clients and kept on fishing in the afternoon alone since the big ones were biting. At the end of the day counting both the morning and afternoon there were over thirty fish caught with five over six pounds and a bunch of fish in the one to five pound range. Biggest fish was a nine pounder. Also had a seven pounder and three six pounders. Also lost another fish that was over seven pounds near the boat. The best baits have been changing from day to day but plastics and jigs have been out fishing faster moving baits. We have also caught some fish on crankbaits and a prototype Mattlures Mattshad that I have been trying out on schooling fish and fish suspended in open water. Here are a few photos of the bigger fish from the weekend. The photo with two fish are two big fish from the tournament on Saturday and the other two fish were the biggest from Sunday.

I wasn't going to reply to this but I just had to. Anyone who want to see what bed fishing will do to a fishery in the South needs to come to lake Varner in GA. I guarantee you it is the most heavily sight fished lake in the whole state and there isn't another lake that comes anywhere close. It also produces more big fish than any other lake in the State and is less than 900 acres. There is no doubt that spawning is interupted by this much bed fishing. There are as many as 50 boats a day on some weekends and most are sight fishing on a small lake. The thing is it don't matter because I don't wan't more fish in the lake just biggger fish. There are too many small ones already I wish someone would take home and eat so we could grow more big ones. The last thing I want to see is even more small fish. Want to talk about economics? Ninty percent of my earnings come from fishing this one lake and will continue to as long as there aren't too many small fish in the lake and plenty of big ones. Just release the big ones after you catch them off the bed.

I don't really keep count of how many I have caught over ten pounds so I will estimate. I can tell you the majority of my ten pound plus fish have been caught on trickworms on a splitshot rig or jighead on offshore structure fished slow. I am guessing around forty on just the trickworm. I have caught four thirteen pounders and three of those were caught on 1 1/2 oz Ledgebusters in deep water around 20 feet deep. These are the only spinnerbait fish over ten I have caught. The other thirteen pounder was caught on a trickworm on a splitshot rig. I caught one 15lber on a Mattlures bluegill swimming it over a dropoff on the side of a point. I have caught about ten other fish over ten swimming different swimbaits. I have caught around seven or eight more over ten pounds on Mattlures Bluegill while the fish was on a bed. Probably around twenty more on other different lures while fish were on beds. Most were on big tubes and jigs. Two on a jerkbait but lost a bunch more on a jerkbait. Three on topwaters also lost a bunch more on topwaters. Around twenty on deep diving crankbaits. Around fifteen on lipless cranks. And probably around five more on other plastics including one on Senko77's big skinny long Senko he made for me last year. IMHO all lures will catch a ten pounder if they are used at the right time in the right way. The most important thing is location and then fishing the right bait in the right way depending on the location and the conditions.

There were two days when we fished almost the entire lake. Seven big batteries only running two motors and the batteries were almost completely dead both days. The swimbait I traded you for works. It ain't got no paint left on it now. ;D

Last photo of a five pounder I caught on a topwater.