Randall

Yes and this might help with just Seiji Kato's baits. http://www.seijilures.com/biography.html

It all depends on the lake, daily conditions and even where in the lake you are as the depth where the best bite is. This time of year I catch most of my fish anywhere from 5 to 30 feet. I am starting to go deep more each week rather than shallower though.

You got on that bite just in time. Water up there today was only 52 in the am. :'(

There are both Florida and northern genetics in the lake. Fish with Florida genetics were in one of the ponds that was flooded when the lake was built.

Thats a lot of big fish. Nice videos.

I say leave it alone. The best lakes I fish have people taking out small fish. They are probably doing you a favor unless you like catching a lot of small fish.

Here is a photo of the Red Rooster dropshot fly.

I have a good buddy Robbie Dehass who started Red Rooster Baits which in the beginning was high quality float and fly type flies. Last year he started making drop shot flies and playing around with them and now he sells them. I have been dropshoting streamers etc. for a while but Robbie makes baits that are made for dropshoting. They work much better than regular streamers and have become my preferred small bait to dropshot.

Great fish and great story! Great memorys were made right there.

Trout swimbait. Mattlures or Huddleston fished slooooow. It all I woulld use if you are after a big bass. Get rid of the barb use heavy line and don't stop reeling when it is hooked. I would sell something and get a swimbait.

I use Owners 99% of the time. When I switched to the rig'n hook I found I had a stronger hook that took less force to set. It was perfect for catching larger bass on light line. It took less force to set which reduced brekoffs on the hookset and it did not flex during the fight to let the fish get off. It also has the advantage of coming through grass better than other hooks due to the bend coming out of the plastic being rounded.

Yea I know what you mean but the Triton Mike Bucca Bull Shad Swimbait has been out for a while I believe and I've never heard much about it. It's similar to the high power herring but it's more expensive though. I've never used it but I'm sure it's different somehow. I'd much rather get them from Randall though to help out a BR member who's an average guy like most of us on here. Plus it's an awesome bait. I think he will be able to make his bait a pretty big hit if he has the time and wants to. Also it would be neat to see someone start off selling there bait on here and locally then one day start to see it on ever tackle website. Good luck Randall I think you'll do great if that's what you want to do! LOL.. Dude look around. The bullshad is a rip off of a Bullshad. Randall made it after him and mike had some problems. Bullshad is THE bait to have. They get bit EVERYWHERE. Even in lakes with no shad! The bullshad gets talked about A LOT. thats why Mike cant keep them in stock and is working his . off to keep up with them!!!! Mike Bucca is or was a memeber here too. Bullshad is worth the price it is. Ok here comes this stuff again.I was hoping this stuff was over. Alot if people know I don't care for Mike and have plenty of reason not to. I have proven my bait was not a copy of Mike's. You can go back to 2006 or 2007 and see my first baits that I posted here in the tackle making section in two different posts. Those still exist. My bait doesn't swim like a Bull Shad and isn't made like one. I catch my fish and don't use the Georgia DNR to give me fish to hang a Bull Shad in their mouth like Mike did. This DNR guy has admited to giving Mike the fish. I got away from Mike and his bait because of his dishonesty not to copy his bait.

OK here is the story on how the fish was caught. We were on the fish good. Perfect day to go take a shot at some big fish. No rain but windy and overcast. We go up the right arm and were covering water and catching some good fish feeding on grass walls. We were fishing lipless cranks as well as swimbaits. We had a couple good hybrids and a bunch of three and four pound largemouth. So Ben (aka Benito)keeps tossing the lipless crank and I start with the High Power Herring hoping to find us some fish to upgrade the size with. It was pretty much half and half as we continued to get a fish here and there in that same three and four pound size. Then we got to more of a big fish spot so Ben ties on his brand new never been cast High Power Shad. First cast Ben gets a seven pounder and yells like Ike. So this far all the fish were up on flats or on small drops on the outside of grass walls so Ben keeps working that on one side while I start looking for open water deeper fish on the other side of the boat. Ben is still getting them and I haven't seen any thing following my bait yet. Then Ben's bite is slow and mine starts to pick up. I miss a giant twice then we go for a while with no strikes so we move to deep water and we are both getting follows and strikes from suspended fish in open water but they are tough to get a good strike from but the size is looking much better. I finally figure out how to get a big one hooked and it straightens and twists an Owner 2x st41 hook. I saw the fish follow and strike and it looked 10 plus. So we adjust again and we see bait in open water over channels and I mark some big fish on the depth finder near a good big bass spot. The sun comes out and we have pretty much narrowed down a spot where the fish are coming from. Ben gets a strike from a follower right at the boat and we catch it. I make a cast down the ledge and get a follower. The fish turns off the bait and starts to swim off and I make the bait dart and glide away from the fish and get a reaction from the fish but the fish sucks and spits the bait while slack is in the line. I say something to Ben wanting him to turn and see the fish and at the same time I just kill the bait and deadstick it as the fish swims toward the bottom. I let the bait sit for maybe 10-15 seconds and just give it a twitch. The fish comes from directly below the bait at full speed and clears the water and crashes back down on its side. Since the fish got so high and it happened so fast I am thinking eight pounds at the most so I am calm and the fish is deep so I just crank slowly bringing it in. It comes up under the boat so I never see it. Ben nets the fish right next to the bottom of the boat and I get back on the trolling motor fast excited about the topwater strike we just saw but also worried about getting stuck in the grass we are going toward. Ben says this fish is bigger than the 14lb fish from Horton so I turn and look and say it's not. I still think I have an eight pounder. I have a rubber net and Ben has to lean the net down for me to see the fish. Then I get off the motor and let us get stuck in the grass while I look at the fish. Now we have no livewell or real camera other than our phones so we talk about what to do. I remember the rope at the front of the boat and tie the fish off with it and start calling around to find someone close to bring me a good scale. Dawg1419 is close and can bring the scale so he meets us with almost his whole family. Thanks to you all for bringing the scale. We weigh the fish and get it back swimming in the lake.

Fella named George Perry owns the record. 22-4 ;D Ah yes, that was also the world record till recently too right. Who really knows if that ever happened. Didnt he supposedly eat the bass and never take a pic ? I recall reading something in an old bass fishing bible I got. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume this 15 pounder was released after being registered for a citation or did you throw it right back in after you caught it ? EDIT: Found this http://www.mrlurebox.com/GeorgePerryBass.htm Guess thats supposed to be 7 pounds bigger then the one in this thread ? Doesnt look that much bigger then the 15 pounds 14 ounces does it ? Interesting, any chance this fish you caught was heavier then you think? Was it a digital scale ? I want more details. That fish just looks bigger then almost 16 pounds to me. My fish when caught probably weighed 16-17. It spit a big gizzard after it was caught that had to go between a half pound to a pound. I have caught three fish between 14 and 16 pounds. All looked different in photos. I posted one last year that was a 14lber but alot of people said it was only eight or nine pounds. I have a better example to compare to Perry's fish which was a 31 1/2 inch fish, compared to perrys 32 inch fish, that is not near as fat as the fish in that photo.

Thanks for all the comments...... even those who want me dead now. ;D

I am not the only one who gets big ones. These are two of my buddies, Jim and Ted Lee, and they get some big ones and they have a 13lb fish from Varner as well as this giant almost 40lb sack they caught on a spinner bait and a High Power Herring. Adam Stanton (aka Doghouse) who used to fish tournaments with me has stopped fishing Varner and posting much here. He caught a bunch of 10lb bass back when we fished together. Theres some more guys who are good at getting some big tournament sacks on a regular basis as well. Varner is a very tough lake for most though and it takes time to learn to fish it.

Yea I know what you mean but the Triton Mike Bucca Bull Shad Swimbait has been out for a while I believe and I've never heard much about it. It's similar to the high power herring but it's more expensive though. I've never used it but I'm sure it's different somehow. I'd much rather get them from Randall though to help out a BR member who's an average guy like most of us on here. Plus it's an awesome bait. I think he will be able to make his bait a pretty big hit if he has the time and wants to. Also it would be neat to see someone start off selling there bait on here and locally then one day start to see it on ever tackle website. Good luck Randall I think you'll do great if that's what you want to do! Well, I really don't want to see my bait in every tackle shop. I have two here in the local Atlanta area that carry it because they asked for it when I started and I have had long term relationships with them as a customer. My goal when I started was to build the best bait I could for a good price without all the hype, fake promotions and lies that I have seen to sell swimbaits. As long as the bait keeps catching ten pound plus fish and 40lb five fish limits I am happy. As long as the people with the baits never have an issue with them and they are happy then I am happy. If it gets larger then I will stop guiding and do it full time. Thanks for posting and congrats since I like seeing the sucess others are having on the bait. That's what makes building baits fun for me.

I am real busy with a newborn baby and 100 more things I need to do so I don't have time to post a full report with all the photos and video I have. Here is a photo of the fish since a few members here had heard about it and asked me to post a photo here. I will try to get some more photos and a video or two posted tomorrow. I caught the fish yesterday on a High Power Herring swimbait and it weighed almost 16 pounds after spitting up a big gizzard shad. Here is a link to a video of the fish. In the video I say the fish is 14lbs but we weighed the fish on a 50lb Berkley scale and it settled on 15lbs 14oz. I will get that video up also.

Coverage on Varner is nowhere close to 75%. Closer to 10% maybe around five % matted on top. The 75% is a huge lie made up by the lake managers and spread to the media. I am guessing they are doing it to get support for grass eradication. They seem to be spreading lots of other lies to the media and other places right now to get support for stocking grass carp. There is a movement started by a study on eagle deaths at the University of Georgia to eradicate all Hydrilla all over the South in the name of saving Bald Eagles. Varner is just the second lake where they want the grass removed. Once they get a precedent where they can say they removed the grass and the eagles are not dieing anymore in this study it will not be long till lakes like Guntersville, Clarks Hill and the lakes in Texas will no longer have grass. In the case of a lake like Guntersville where almost everyone depends on the fishermen spending money it will be the end to great year round fishing and the local economy will suffer a huge loss.

The Gambler heads with the spring (giggy with the spring keeper and the one that is football shaped with the big hook) are the only ones I will use that have a keeper. All the others I have tried or seen are not designed well enough to give a good hookup ratio because of the angle of the keepers and not enough gap.

I am considering the same or selling the gps to the highest bidder and buying a new one. ;D Over the past five years I have a ton of way points but the ones I actually use alot I have spent so much time in the spot that I only use the way point to get on the spot faster with a clean slate I could just go back and mark the sweet spots. I am sort of a hoarder of waypoints but hate the clutter that comes with it.

Congrats!

Site is backup now. You can really fish alot of swimbaits without swimbait gear. Swimbait gear is usually better but some if the largest fish caught in my boat this year were caught with medium heavy flipping sticks.

It hard to say there is one primetime in the Southeast. It depends on the lake and even forage. I fish them year round but will move from lake to lake because all types of lakes don't hit a primetime at the same time. This way I can hit a buch of different "primetimes". But I still don't put the swimbaits away at the other times either.

It doesn't always produce that way. Some times the fish hit other baits better but when it's on it on and you get a lot of good fish. Those days the fish were feeding on four and five inch shad in the middle if the day and the shad were up in the water near the surface. When the shad moved back deeper we were pitching tubes into grass walls and that's all we could get bit on.