KingMidas

Thanks for the replies everyone. I think I now have the confidence to take bassun's advice and take a day and set it aside for just hair jig fishing. To answer nice_bass, I have the following hair jigs now: 1. Black w/ weed guard and a flat bottom kinda darter head 2. "Perch" color with fish head jig head, these are about 3 inches long 3. Green w/ orange coloration, flattened round head ( kinda looks like a fat almond) with a weed guard and some plastic skirt material 4. Brown w/ yellow eyed roundhead jig. All of these are fairly light, I think the heaviest being the brown roundheads at 1/4 oz. sorry for the strange explanation of the jig head shapes. I basically went down a few aisles at my fishing supplies store and picked up what limited hair jigs they had. I think that I have enough to experiment with under the right conditions but I was wondering if anyone has any particular hair jig that they would recommend. If there's a good reason, I can always buy 1-2 more variations to allow me to be successful in more situations. Thanks again guys for the thoughtful responses.

So after watching a lot of videos online of people's fishing hair/bucktail jigs mainly for smallies I decided to purchase a few in various sizes, head shapes, and colors. I have yet to tie one on. Once I hit the water I usually have another lure/bait in mind and can't convince myself to tie on one of these hair jigs. I think having a few questions answered will help my confidence. 1. What is the optimum line, rod strength, and reel type to use for hair jigs? 2. I get out on my families boat whenever my Dad goes out but most of my fishing is done from the bank or a small canoe. That means I usually fish small water (max ~ 200 acres). I've seen videos of guys swimming hair jigs through fairly open water but never anything like the conditions I'm usually in. Besides deep, calm parts of local rivers/large streams I can't think of another place to fish these. Am I wrong? Would they be effective in a relatively small, weedy pond? I have one I love to fish because its stocked with smallies, which is a rare thing in my area. 3. Should I use a trailer? Most videos I saw showed them being used without trailers but my brother's highschool fishing coach uses grub trailers on his hair jigs. Any advantages/situations for using a trailer? 4. Just in general, how do you fish these hair jigs? Any advice is welcome, I really want to be successful with these a few times and start building my confidence with these jigs. Thanks in advance everyone.

My family and I just got back from a SWEET fishing trip near Hayward Wisconsin. We spent the majority of the time fishing for walleye, and that was a lot of fun, but my personal goal was to catch a smallie on that trip. After consulting various guide books, this forum, and the old men who hang out at bait shops, we went to Grindstone Lake to fish for smallmouth. I used a drop shot slug-go in a red shad color and caught 4 of em that day. I am now and forever hooked on smallmouth fishing. My best of the day, and thus my personal best smallmouth, was 4 pounds 6 ounces. I was ecstatic to say the least. Now I just need to convince my Dad to put the boat in on Lake Michigan so I can keep catching those bronze buggers.

I have had luck locating fish with large craws or beaver style baits Texas rigged with a 1/8 oz. bullet weight. I try to cast it near the edges of weeds or anywhere that the surface of the water changes. Getting the bait to slap the surface when it comes in seems to help. When i do this, if I don't get a hit on the fall to the bottom I will retrieve it fairly quickly and often end up with more of a reaction strike as a result. Also a hop n stop retrieve works well. With the hop n stop, I notice bass dont seem to pick the craw up off the bottom as often as when fishing a trick or ribbon tail worm. In my experience, they seem to stare at it while its stationary and then slam it when you give it a 1-2 foot pull. I like Berkeley havoc fatty craws, yum wooly bugs, and rage tail craws the best for this. They seem to have an attractive profile on the fall which I think is important for this.

So today when I was out at a local pond I got a hit on my t-rigged havoc craw fatty that I wasn't expecting. My 2/0 hook ended up coming out of the fishes eye. I HATE it when that happens. It always makes me feel bad for blinding a fish and I subsequently called it a day and headed home. Does anyone have any tips on how to stop that from happening? ATM I can't think of anything to avoid that but hopefully someone out there has a tip to at least make it less likely to send a hook through a fish's eye.

Like I said, that information was second hand to me. I would imagine that you can find plenty of black lures...they will just be painted with eyes, gills, etc. to enhance its realism. I would be real interested to know if your black crank performs well... Bruce actually said that the huge variety of color schemes is just a way companies get us to buy more than we need so they can make more money.

I was out with a guide last year in Michigan and he told me that the first model of every bait/lure is black. At all times of the day, he explained, a black lure presents a solid sillouette to the fish. Companies test their new designs in black before approving them to be made in other color schemes. I would say that it was actually a good idea to just paint it black. The shape and action of the lure are the main things that fool a fish into believing what they are looking at is a prey item. The perfect color will seal the deal, but black will not scare fish away by any means. FYI: my imformation on this topic came from walleye and Muskie guide Bruce Becker in watersmeet michigan and he really knows his stuff.

So my Dad took into consideration everything I told him that I had learned on this forum. Thanks to everyone for the advice. He ended up with a combo I didn't expect him to go for but it's REALLY nice. He put a Daiwa Exceler on a St. Croix mojo bass 7 foot mh rod with fast action. Looks great and I can't wait to sneak some fishing on it to see how it performs. Once again, thanks to everyone for the responses.

Thanks to everyone for the input! I think I'm going to push him to buy a pflueger reel. As far as the rod, brand doesn't seem as important as length and power/action. Probably going to recommend medium power n fast action but I myself am ignorant of the differences between a 6'6" and a 7 foot rod besides having the longer lever for pulling fish out of thick cover. Is there anything besides that aspect that would should be considered when choosing rod length?

I was just using 300 bucks as a guess of the absolute max amount he would spend. I was thinking of something along the lines of a pflueger president 6900 on a st. croix premier

So my 53 year old father wants to spend more time with me and my brother, and we like to fish. My brother is in high school tournaments and Im a atypical college student who would rather go to bed early n get up to go fishing than waste my morning hungover from the night before. Every time my Dad comes out with us though, he jokes around about having to use our "guest" tackle. He mentioned to me tonight that he would like to buy himself a nice rod and reel...spinning only, at the moment he doesn't think he can handle a baitcaster (but we are going to work on that). I would like to give him some suggestions but I want to make sure they are the right ones to give so I figured I'd ask. He likes to fish top water pop r's, crankbaits, rattle traps, the occasional TR trick worm, and his all time favorite: live bait lol. I would like to suggest to him a combo that is not geared towards any one thing too particularly and something that he will be able to throw just about anything with and have a decent shot of making it work. Basically, a beginners rod that doesnt seem like one. His max price for the whole thing is probably $300 or so. He said he wants something nice, but nothing that's expensive just for the sake of being expensive.

I had the strangest day fishing today that I've probably ever had. In the approx. 6 hours that I was out "beating the bank" I caught 3 nice LMBs. Nothing out of the ordinary there. The weird stuff happened when I started pulling other people's lost tackle out of the water. I snagged someones x-rap type bait, a somehow fully intact carolina rig with a usable soft plastic on it, a mangled wire leader with a bullet weight stuck on it by some wrapped up mono, and a pre-snelled hook with leader attached to some slip shot and a very much alive catfish. It was great to know that stuff was out of the water and the cat was free, and it was a cool experience as well. I know I've heard of people catching rods n reels with fish still fighting on the other end, but to pull all this crap up in one day was really something. Im sure someone out there has brought up something even weirder....and I'd love to hear about it! haha

I like the St. Croix premier for that application. Heck, any model from St. Croix will be nice for what I think you want. I don't own one, but a buddy of mine raves about the Element 21 Carrot Stix Wild Black rod that he has and from my limited use of it, I would agree that its a pretty sweet rod.

Suffocate would be a better word. Their oxygen extracting organs (gills) are not drowned in anything whereas our lungs would become drowned in water if you were to breath it in.

Aurora/Naperville area

What?!?? I was going to make my first trip to Clinton this next weekend. I know it's a bigger lake and hopefully 25 bass were about the only ones to die but from the sounds of things, that seems unlikely. Someone please let me know if it has cooled down / is still worth the trip from the Chicago burbs. Feel free to message me but I will return to this thread...thanks

So my family just got our first bass boat. Sweet lightly used Ranger 188vx! I could not be more excited. We live in the Chicago area and are making a trip to Wisconsin in about a month. Today we decided that's too long to wait to fire this baby up. As of now we are still deciding where to put her in for the first time. Obviously much of the day will be spent just enjoying the fact that we are on a Ranger lol, but I would like to catch some fish as well to really see the potential of the boat. Does anyone have any suggestions on a lake? It will just be a day trip so please keep in mind my location in Chicago. Probably a 3-4 hour drive each way would be the max we can do next week. Thanks

X2.... My brother never had any luck on them so he gave me a pack of hyper worms saying that I could keep me if I wanted to waste some space. I went out about a week later and at the end of the day just t rigged one and brought it in on a moderate retrieve and got the nicest fish of the day. They are fragile though and usually won't last me more than one fish and occasionally an over zealous bluegill will rip the back section off causing it to drop in the standings of my favorite baits.

Another for south Chicago suburbs here.

x2..... the St. Croix Premier is nice if you want a full cork handle.