Raul

Understanding fish behaviour and how it reacts to the changes.

The mean motherless goat strikes again !!! ;D

I 'm with RW, most of my big mommas are caught in the middle of the day on those hot spring days ( down here summer is not hot, it 's the rainy season ) when the temp reaches 95°+ ( just about when you feel your blood begins to boil ), if the place is almost impossible to navigate then you 're not the only one with the problem, since it 's impossible to navigate the place is most probably underfished and they seldomly see a lure in the thick stuff, on the other hand, the conditions when you caught that bigun were ...... ? since you have already identified the type of cover that produces the fish you have already struck gold: i catch most of my bass around the weedy bank and in the first bit of standing timber , on what are both types of cover standing on ? with what bait you caught that fish ? What I can recommend for big fish is with what I catch big fish on: jig n 'trailer combination, big 8 inch worms, walk the dog baits, jitterbugs, big creature baits. Jigs, worms and creatures should be fished slowly with an ocassional hard jerk just enough to change the pace of the retrieve.

We fishermen like to complicate ideas. Not really, I just love to buy stuff, all those pretty colors and beautiful shapes........ ;D, it 's like a well served buffet, hunger starts at the eyes . You know you are a bass fisherman when.... Your tacklebox weights more than your boat, Your tacklebox is your boat, When every year you recieve Christmas cards signed personally by Johnny Morris and Dick Cabela, And you have become the ultimate tackle junkie ( like GLoomisman said, ha ! look who 's talking : ) when....... Somebody asks about a lure and you know everything about it because you already have it. Sorry folks, I have to leave now..........oh wow ! man, those Evergreen lures look gooood...........

Neither do I MM, it 's just that I simply had to carry all the stuff, I felt kind of......... "naked" without them. The results of the selection were spectacular and if someone told me 25 years ago when the baitmonkeyitis began with what I was going to catch fish consistenly I would have never believed it. The Wart "family" ( SubWart, MidWart, WiggleWart, Deep Wart ) of Storm is one of my most lethal and toxic weapons in the arsenal followed closely by the Shad Rap "family" ( Shad Rap, Shallow Shad Rap, Shad Rap RS, Jointed Shad Rap, Glass Shad Rap ) between both they account for a frightening 55% of all bass caught on crankbaits, so my personal recommendation: forget about the rest, purchase Warts and Shad Raps . Other very good baits are banana shaped crankbaits like the ThunderCrank, Tail Dancer and BaitX, that banana shape creates an action like a cross between a minnow and a fat crank.

Megabass Baby Griffon Gobbledog, one of those 25 dollar lures the BaitMonkey likes so much.

Well it 's located in the west but it ain 't Kaliforny, farther to the south, Sinaloa to be exact Mac, Mexico 's equivalent to California. February 13th, 2005 ( big bass season in Mexico begins in late February and extends into late April ) when the big mommas move into the shallows to spawn, nowhere in Mexico fish grow as huge as in Bacurato ( Baccarac ), the lake record is 19.10 lbs but the gossip says there are fish in the low 20 pound class.

The interesting thing behind the story of that fish is the guy who caught it thought he just hung up on a mesquite, :, imagine his surprise when the mesquite began swimming . ;D

Haven 't seen the pic of that fish but an 18 pounder should look pretty much like this one:

If you carry around too much tackle ? ??? Since I began fishing every year my tacklebox grew in size ( and weight ), as years went by not only my tacklebox grew in size but also I no longer carried a tacklebox, I began carrying tackleboxes ( read more than ONE ), last time I went fishing I suddenly realized that the available space in the boat grew smaller every year, and when you 're fishing from a 12 ft jonboat there isn 't much available space for tackleboxes, binders, you, the cooler and your fishing partner along with his tackle, the anchor, the oar, the net, the rope, etc, etc, and forget about another person joining you because there 's not enough room for him : . Tough decission I had to make but it had to be done, so I did my homework and took a real good look at my fishing log ( which extends for 25 years of bass fishing ) to see if I could determine which lures were the most consistent fish catchers every year and prepare me just one tacklebox and one foldable binder for soft plastic baits, in other words, I was pretending to carry only what I really needed and nothing else. The concept behind the idea was that I always fish the same lakes all year long, on very rare ocassions I fish somewhere else, the times when I was single and went fishing to distant big bass Mecas on a regular basis besides fishing the local lakes are nothing but a memory now that I 'm married with two kids and my own business those days are gone for good, now when I have the money to do it I don 't have the time and when I have the time I don 't have the money. :-X After a couple of days of study I was amazed with the results, I ended up with a 3700 box with my most lethal and proven to exhaustion lures that by the way do catch fish in those far away Mecas ( just another proof that bas are bass everywhere ) a foldable binder with 30 compartments where I stored the jigs, soft plastics, jig and spinnerbait trailers and spinnerbaits ( when folded the binder is the same size the 3700 box is ), and a small 6 compartment box where I placed the hooks and the sinkers, all of it fitted nicely in a backpack. Not bad, not bad at all....... of course it took me hundreds of cranks, spinnerbaits and about 40 pounds of soft plastics to find which ones were the gooduns. ;D And NO, I don 't have my remaining tackle for sale.

Largemouth, smallmouth, Guadalupe, Suwanee, rock, spotted, red eye, all of them belong to the Micropterus genera, stripped and white can 't be considered as true bass because they belong to the Morone genera.

I know buddy, I do get deep hooked fish, not every day but it happens frequently when it 's windy and I 'm fishing against the wind, the wind alone is enough to create the slack and when you feel the fish it 's already late.

The kooooolest thing about BR is that not only it has forum but also it 's all the goodies the site has and that you can access directly to them, everything is great and Glenn deserves a big THANK YOU and an ovation for keeping it that way, there 's a lot of work involved in having a site like this one.

If you can 't reach the hook to unhook the fish cut the line and leave the hook there, trying to unhook the fish is going to cause a lot more damage. If you can reach the hook but can 't unhook it cut the hook, it 's better to leave a piece of it. The reason why the fish swallows the bait is because you 're giving the fish too much time to much on it, this can be caused: 1.- your line is slack ( when it 's windy is a good example ), 2.- your rod is not sensitive enough, 3.- you 're not watching your line, 4.- you haven 't developed the "feel" for the bait, 5.- just because your mind is in one place thosands of miles from your body. All of them can be corrected: 1.- keep the line tight ( if it 's windy use a heavier sinker ) 2.- use a stiffer rod and heavier line 3.- man this one doesn 't need much explanation 4.- the only way to develop the "feel" is by fishing ( not a bad solution, huh ? ;D ) 5.- hey I know that you 're out there relaxing but your mind should be in your body.

but if she just wants to ride around that's what we do. I have a perfect solution for that situation JB, you can troll and she 's still getting her boat ride. Meaner than a motherless goat Now that 's funny !!!! ;D ;D ;D

It 's difficult to say how quiet is quiet, anybody here has trolled for bass ? I do when moving across the lake from one place to the other with the outboard turned on and still catch fish, what could be noisier than having a boat passing above their heads ?

I 've been thinking carefully about this, if an 8 inch LMB hits a bait almost as big as he is why shouldn 't a big momma smalljaw hit a large bait ? and a big momma smalljaw has much bigger mouth than an 8 inch LMB.

Item 28-421-057-00 of your BPS catalog.

I have an inflatable boat, I used it a lot when I didn 't have the jonboat . What kind of inflatable you have in mind ? just to know if you can add the plywood or not, if you can add the motor mount or not, also you will need a weedguard for the motor ( it looks like a basket ) because the prop can tear down the boat.

Also try C-rigging it, the bait darts and flutters with a killer action. I know they smell horrible so adding a couple of drops of anise scented oil to the pack doesn 't hurt and masks that horrendous plastic smell they have.

Bass are bass the difference is the size of the offering, crawfish immitators work on both as long as there are crawfish for the bass to feed on.

Crrrrrrrrankbaiting the thick nasty stuff Raul Style: A) It all starts with the gear: 1.- No place for mickey mouse gear here: monster gears on your reels, monster drag washers ( oh boy you 're going to need them ! if not to avoid them momma basses from getting into the stuff then to haul them from it ) 2.- Resistant to abrassion line with low stretch ( no place for extra limp lines, forget about braided, that thing is for cowards ) this means fluorocarbon or the old reliable Trilene Big game, 12 pound test ( anything higher = read braided line ) 3.- Medium rod ( or you will loose fish, MH rods are not for crankbaits, they are too stiff ) 4.- Extra razor sharp hooks ( just looking at the hooks is going to get them hooked ) 5.- No snaps, direct tie only ( there 's a reason that wll be explained later for that ). B ) It continues with the attitude: 1.- You don 't scare me, NO FEAR is my middle name 2.- You eyeball me I eyeball you and give that brush pile, stump or standing timer a killer look >. 3.- I am as nasty as you are ( and give that brush another killer look ) 4.- Your preciousssss crankbaits catch nothing stored in your tacklebox, time to beat the h....out of them, let them feel the punishment, no pain no gain. 5.- If you ain 't fishing cranks where they are in inminent danger of snagging you 'r not fishing them in the right spot, knock on wood and rocks. If you 're afraid of loosing them.......man fish with soft plastic baits. C ) Then read Cmat 's post over and over again until you memorize it, there 's some very good advice there. D ) Get one of these cuz you 're gonna need it: Now you 're ready for crankbaiting and give them hell, take no prisoners. :-X The FORCE will be with you.......always. ;D ;D

Buddy, don 't try to understand women because you will never understand them, just love them. ;D

I 'm very much with Marty 's choices and also with the way his process of elimination works. Personally I think that Clunn is the most consistent of them all, look at the stats and here 's always in the list and that has been for a long time.

It 's the increase in light penetration what causes the lockjaw. Post front days are normally cloudless, the barometric pressure is high so clouds will not appear for several days, this allows the sunlight to penetrate deep. It doesn 't mean the fish aren 't active, it means that they are not in more accesible water ( shallow ) or that they are buried in cover. To fish succesfully in those days what you need to do is to fish deeper, slow and look for shaded areas, the fish will be there. Bass are not bothered by strong sunlight but strong sunlight allows their prey to spot them where cover is available they will hide in it, where cover is not available they will be deep, how deep it depends greatly on the turbidity of the water, the clearer the water the deeper they will be. Many times your baits are not fished at the proper depth just because they don 't reach it.