HeavyDluxe

I'm a tight-line fisherman... Whatever pulls on the other side is fun. Picks and Pikes are fun, and some of their strikes (which, for me at least, come often when I'm just reeling in quickly to cast again) can be really exciting. Sucks to get a bait/lure tore up by them - or lost to them - but the ride is still a joy.

Rock bass are a non-native, invasive up in these parts and haven't 'coexisted for eons' with smallies in these waters. (It's worth noting that smallmouth are non-native, too... but we like 'em.) . Rock bass are, like most panfish, more fecund than other species like LMB and SMB and I think there's an additional issue here at their spawn/growth cycle competes with the smallmouth spawn in these colder waters... So, it's not that the adult rock bass are out-competing the adult smallmouth. It's more that the juvenile rock bass are putting a serious dent in the recruitment of juvenile SMB/LMB from their spawn. As another poster here said, you can google for articles from most of the New England F&W departments on bodies of water in their state where the rockies are taking over. (Sunapee and Winnipesaukee, among others, in NH, Bomoseen in VT, etc)

Again, I specifically said there are applications where braid or fluoro might be better... No one can argue with the strength to size issue, among others. For every job, there's probably a specific tool that makes that job a lot easier. But, there are also tools that are pretty good for ANY job... I think all the different rods, reels, lines, and lures we talk about on here fit in those kinda roles. Most are pretty good for everything, and better for some other jobs, and perhaps 'perfect' for some specific thing. Just saying that I think modern monofilament is a pretty good compromise for 'all around' fishing on spinning gear. I think braid or copoly are reasonable shots there, too. But it seems like mono's easy to hate on because it's the technology of yesteryear. It can still catch fish. That's all.

My father always said, "If you can't reel it in on 14lb [then duPont] Stren, I don't want it in the boat." And I reeled a lot of stuff in from the Delaware Bay on 14lb Stren - including some thing _I_ didn't even want in the boat. So I guess he was right. While recognizing that there are specific applications where braid or fluorocarbon might be better, I maintain that it's not a mistake to use appropriately-weighted mono for all-around setups. It just works... Personally, 6-8lb Trilene XL is now what I use (sorry to my DuPont father) on all my kids' spinning setups. Sure, they can't frog fish in slop that way... But they can catch infantile panfish one day with worms, bobbers, and a bit of split-shot while turning right around and fishing senkos or jigs (in light cover) the next. Plus, we fish a lot of gin clear water here in New England, so the lowER viz of mono compared to braid is good, too.

So, I've been quiet on here for a while - mainly because work has been kicking my butt and not letting me fish. But, vacation is coming and I'm planning to spend as much time slinging for bass as I can. Up 'til now, I've mainly focused on bottom-contact tactics (t-rigged and weightless ikas/senkos, jig-n-craw, 'Rage rig', etc). Anytime I threw moving baits, the only things I'd catch was weeds and rocks... Several of the rocks managed to get away, too, before I could weigh them - taking my lure with 'em. I mostly decided that I was quite comfortable/happy fishing with what I knew and, since it produced, didn't really need to try anything else. But, then came a week at a campground with the kids earlier this summer. My 5-year-old, as a reward for something or other, got to pick out a new fishing rod and lure. He decided that what he really thought was cool was a big, black/red Strike King spinnerbait. *shrug* Never expected him to catch anything on it (because no one really catches fish on them, I suspected), especially fishing from a shallow dock with little cover. Well. He proved me wrong. So, with another week at a lake house upon us, I'm thinking it's worth disciplining myself to really trying to fish some hard baits. That leads me to a couple question... The lake we're fishing at (Lake Bomoseen in Western VT) is gin clear, and we've got a weed bed near our house's dock that gets 4-12' deep. I don't want to break the bank, especially since I have dropped a lot of $$ in the past couple years on the stuff I normally fish. But, ... What are your top budget soft plastic swimbaits/hook combo, 'safety pin' style spinnerbaits, and medium-diving cranks? Any tips for maximizing fishing with those lures you'd offer to someone who's really never fished 'em? Thanks in advance. Looking forward to getting better at stuff.

Biting shallow here... but, then again, there's not much 'deep' to the places I fish.

Either will work... The Berkeley punches way above its weight class when you consider the price.

I live in Vermont now, and I love it... but I always long for home (Harrington) when I see posts like this. The fishing's the one thing I miss about home. Well, and then scrapple.

That's great... Having my little guy on the boat is the most fun I get fishing, too. Going to use the video of your kid fishing to try to get mine to make a few more casts.

If these are the only two choices (Dingers and Shim-E-Stiks), I'd vote for the Shim-E-Stiks... They're cheaper per worm (I think), are durable, and fish fine. The only downside is that they are even *lighter*, seemingly, than the Yum's - so they don't cast as far or sink at the same rate. That said, I sold out and bought a bulk pack of the BPS 'Tournament Grade' Stick-Os this year... They've been really solid for me. They're dirt cheap in the big packs, plenty durable (though not as durable as the Dingers) at that price, and are salted enough that they cast/sink more like true GYCB Senkos. YMMV.

You've asked this in three different places, so hope the answer here (only) suffices. If I am fishing very soft bottoms (sticky muck), I don't throw a jig. I'll use a weightless plastic or something that isn't going to get dredged through the slop. However, I _do_ still fish a jig on soft (aka 'not rock') bottoms all the time. All I fish is brush head jigs. I do have a couple football head jigs that I got when they were on megasale from Sieberts, but I don't find that they do significantly better on the bottom of any of the bodies of water I fish. Brush head = All-terrain vehicle

Yup... But, I think what I've read says that has to do more with the fitness of the environment at that 'place' than the fishes instinct to group together. If you opened a Chick-Fil-A in my town, lots of people - including my whole family - would congregate there. (Curse my idea of living in the frozen northeast for robbing me of delicious chicken!) But, we're there because of the food source, not because we're instinctively grouping up because we feel like it. The way I've seen it explained is that bass will congregate because of things like a pod of baitfish or good cover, but they'll happily cruise off on their own when the bait's gone rather than prefer to stay in pods. Whenever I hear more seasoned anglers talk about 'schooling bass', it seems to be a real reference to feeding behavior. "They're schooling over there!" If that's what they mean, cool. I don't care about the terminology. But, I am curious when I hear them say that whether what they're seeing is something ELSE (not just them grouped together and feeding) that I should be looking for...

So, I'm sorry is this has been discussed ad nauseum before and I just didn't have the right kung fu in my search to find it. I've been consuming more 'fish knowledge' this past year - including things like the FLW podcast, etc - and, more and more, I've heard people refer to bass 'schooling'. When I got into bass fishing, I - as someone who works at a college - went the route of consulting all kinds of biological resources on bass (In Fisherman books, peer-reviewed papers from journals, etc) and devoured them more than technique-focused stuff. Consistently, I see in them that bass are NOT considered to be a schooling species, and yet anglers sure seem to use the term. I've been confused. I think I've come to the conclusion that "schooling fish" in bass-angler parlance means something like this: A concentration of bass that are actively feeding (busting on top, etc) on a concentrated bait source. Is that a fair definition from a 'technical' standpoint? "School" me if I'm wrong.

I think this might be a false dichotomy... I'm betting that almost every professional angler (with the exception of a rare few) are in the game mainly for the fun of it. Competition can be fun... That's why we have softball leagues - and even people who play frisbee golf and weird stuff like that. Personally, I've never fished a tournament... I doubt I ever will, partly due to the cost and time. But, I do find the idea of trying my skills against others, having a measure of your success (at least if you fish enough tournaments to 'norm out' variance), and to be challenged to try new things that, in my current, lazy angler state, I'm content to let just be the subject of posts on here. So, I fish solely for fun. But I bet that's what's ultimately at the root of the experience for all but the most competitive, successful anglers.

For stuff that size, any ultralight spinning (not spincasting) combo from your local StuffMart and maybe some fresh, 4lb mono will be all you need. Slight upgrade would be a Berkeley Cherrywood rod and a better spinning reel (Pflueger Trion)... That would put you real close or a little over your pricepoint. I use a Berkeley Lightning spinning rod paired with a small Trion for all my trout/panfishing.