Raul

Shade is COVER.

Haven 't seen a fishless day in over 17 years, I always manage to catch a few, like SFC_AL put it, tenacity pays off and I can be more stubborn than a mule.

Sand bottoms cause lots of bubbles, air easily gets trapped in the sand.

Well.......I split shot rig senkos and they work really way presented that way. the worst that could happen is that you don 't catch a thing. Hooksets are for free.

Before dumping anything in your lake be shure it 's legal, some places have boating regulations that do not allow placing objects.

I 'm 42, I grew up fishing for trout in the lakes, rivers and pay-to-fish lakes that surround Mexico City since I was 9 years old, in 1980 we moved to León in Guanajuato, right in the middle of the country, here it 's not a matter of how far or how close you are to the equator, here it 's a matter of height above sea level, where I live the only decent fish to catch is bass, drive 20 miles north and climb 900 ft in altitude and water is cold enough for trout, but bass is THE sportfish even up there. I started fishing for bass in the numerous lakes around the city with my trout gear, which consisted mainly of Rapala minnows and Mepps in-line spinners.... that was until the BaitMokey got me.

Most bass where I live have never seen a trout and will never see one in their lives, in places where trout are not present swimbaits work just because they swim. A couuple of weeks ago I went to Lake Zimapán, bass there do not feed on trout and will never feed on trout, they feed on Tilapia, baby bass, native cichilds, minnows and crayfish, tied my trout colored swimbait and at the third cast I got a hit from a big momma, see the point ? Bass will prey on anything that moves which includes their own kind, if it 's smaller than the width of their mouth then it 's fair game and doesn 't need to be trout pattern, any pattern will do the trick IF PRESENTED PROPERLY.

If it bothers you don 't fish with him. A good friend of mine and fishing partner also practices catch and eat and I have nothing against it as long as he keeps the legal size and the legal ammount. When we go fishing together he keeps what the law allows him to do, I release most of what I catch ( I keep those fish that no matter what I do I know are not going to make it ) which is the vast majority of the fish. On one ocassion he filled his quota and asked me if he could use my quota to take more fish with him since I release the fish, I just said to him NO. He has never asked me again. C&R is a choice. It 's funny to see C&R bass zealots talking about the benefits and such about releasing all the fish yet still they are the same people that take a truckload of panfish, don 't panfish deserve the same treatment ?.

Yeh, in your avatar it doesn 't look THAT big.

I took the picture from his avatar.

That name sounds familiar. Welcome to the forum.

If you 're not holding it like this----> and didn 't catch it on rod and reel it don 't count.

RICK CLUNN !

Fish normally bite the bait on the fall while flipping so it doesn 't matter with what are you flipping on the hooksetting aspect, do not use ribbontail worms for flipping, the ribbon tail hangs up; paddle tail, gator tail or C tail short beefy worms are better suited for flipping than other types of worms.

Don 't think about Gary 's pocket, think about all those poor Wagyu cattle he has to feed in his ranch that he purchased with your money, what it 's going to happen to those cows if you no longer purchase baits from him ?

Yup, we us southern boyz sure have to learn where we step at a very early age: rattlesnakes, fire ants and scorpions are what we have to deal with. Not to mention those red wasps that carry more fire power than an Apache helicopter, those black bumble bees ( who needs B52 when you got those ? ), all our thorny vegetation like huizache, mesquite, catnail and cacti, that grass that cuts like a knife and to finish, cow patties. Man you gotta love the South !

Aside from the legal aspects, goldfish don 't grow big enough to stop bass from eating them even when full grown, eventually bass will grow and eat them all leaving your bass without a food source. In order to ensure a continuous supply of food for those bass you need to add something that will provide the bass with food when the goldfish are gone ( they will be gone in a couple of years ), most pond managers suggest bluegills as forage base for bass in ponds. The only problem with the bluegill/ bass combination is the management of the pond, you can 't practice catch and release in a pond stocked with bluegills/bass, you will need to practice selective harvesting or you will end up with a pond stuffed with stunted bass.

DO NOT USE A BUCKET to keep the fish, imagine yourself being grabbed by the neck and slowly being choked and suffocated to death, not pretty huh ?, well if you place the fish in a bucket that 's exactly what you are doing to those bass, suffocating them to death. If you want to keep the fish before releasing them get a fishing BASKET made out of wire mesh, you can put the fish in, tie the basket with a rope to a tree or something like that and keep the fish in the pond, that way they won 't suffocate.

I 'm really not bummed for loosing the fish, my swimbait.......that 's another story.

Last Sunday I lost one, easily over 9 and under 11, my fishing partner instead of scooping her out he smashed her like if she was a dang tennis ball with the net >.......don 't know what 's worse, loosing the fish or loosing the fish with your brand new swimbait hanging on her mouth.

The structure of the quarry is limited to a few stumps and trees Stumps and trees are not structure, structure is the bottom contour of the quarry, in this case the structure is man made due to the human activities of mining the quarry. Fishing a quarry is not that different from fishing a lake that looks like this: The catch is the abrupt change in depth between one step and the other, normally quarries are mined in steps pretty much like a stair, you have a step that extends for several feet then a vertical drop and another step, fish like bass use the near drop area as an ambush point so what you do is to position yourself parallel to the drop and cast your offerings like deep diving cranks parallel to the drop or your drop baits like worms, jigs and tubes not parallel but perpendicular to the drop, why cranks parallel and drop baits perpendicular ? the answer is: the fish will be hanging on the wall, a crankbait casted perpendicular to the wall is useless because unless it dives almost vertical ( and the closest one to do that are Rapala 's DTs ) is going to be immediately out of depth and out of range for the fish. You cast your drop baits perpendicular to the wall because the fish are hanging to it as the bait drops the fish will follow the bait beacuse it 's in range, preferably fish with suspending crankbaits like Shad Rap RS, Glass Shad Rap, Pointers and Staysees. The idea is to drop the bait and let it slide through the wall. Tubes fall vertically on a slightly slack line and so do jigs, worms on a split shot rig will also fall vertically on a slightly slack line. Opposed to regular worming where you move your rod tip to make the bait hop when fishing a vertical wall what you do is to lift a little the rod tip, that is enough to lift the weight and allow it to drop several inches deeper. Senkos rigged on a split shot rig are lethal when fished that way.

Hydrilla my man is not your enemy, quite the opposite, it 's your friend, all you need is to take a good look with calm at the weedbed, use your powers of observation and you will start noticing things. If the weedbed is a huge expanse of weeds all of the same size with no pockets get out of there, there ain 't nobody there, a quck glance is not good enough you need to take a real good look at the weedbed. Weeds don 't grow just because, emergents like hydrilla only grow under very special conditions, water quality and clarity, depth and bottom composition are key elements in the way weeds grow. Weeds grow only as deep as there 's enough light to support them, weeds grow only if the water quality is good, weeds grow only if the substrate ( bottom composition ) is adequate otherwise they either don 't gro or grow stunted. Casting a bait on a weedbed without thorough study of the weedbed is just a waste of time, you 'll be casting to nothing and nothing will hit it. Stand up on your boat and look at the weedbed, look for: 1.- "pockets": you can differentiate pockets from the rest of the weedbed because they look different, you can see "holes" that can be only a couple of feet wide up to several feet wide, those pockets are caused by either greater depth in that area or different bottom composition, something is stunting the growth of the weeds in that area, COVER ON STRUCTURE. If you see holes cast past the hole and retrieve towards the hole then drop your bait as soon as you reach the edge of the hole. 2.- points: just like you look for points in the lake weeds also create points, those points are formed because the water around is deeper or has different bottom composition, COVER ON STRUCTURE again. 3.- eddies: if there 's current eddies will form around the weeds, it doesn 't necessarily mean current as in a river, wind also causes that effect, wind and current are elements of cover, COVER ON STRUCTURE. Topwaters, súper shallow runners, lightly weighted or weightless soft plastics, spinnerbaits all of them are good baits for fishing the salad.

My family fishing story is short, it starts with me, none of my ancesters were fishermen and my dad less than anybody else, he was not the "outdoorsy" kind of guy.

Here 's another term you need to learn: BaitMonkey

Ain 't that the way them guyz at Kaliforny ketch them world record breakin ' basses ?