Preytorien

With a lot of broken trees in the water I'd start off with lures that are weedless or topwater prior to getting a feel for what the situation is underneath the water. No sense in casting your whole tackle box at them and losing lures on sunken trees. I'd start with probably a buzzbait, popper, or Zara Spook/Puppy. I have great luck with those in the summer and they're good for heavy cover situations because they don't hang up very easily since they run on the top of the water. Of course your casting ability with so many trees might prevent you from using lures that require a long cast so use your discretion there. Once you get the feel for the cover under the water, maybe try some weedless jigs, texas rigged worms, senko worms, etc. Really anything that can freefall through the tree branches will likely entice those bass. Try to keep it weedless though when you can to prevent hangups. If you've got the confidence in such heavy cover to throw a crank, I'd recommend a squarebill so it has more of a propensity to bounce off of anything it might encounter and prevent a loss of lure. With those lilly pads, there's really only one winner there.....and that's a frog. Throw it on the bank if possible and "jump" it into the water. Let it rest on the tops of the pads. Think about how a frog would behave and try to work your lure as similar as possible. Don't be afraid to work it slow. Then hang on. Those bass will take the whole lilly pad if they're aggressive enough. I've caught bass and it had a whole mouth full of salad. But beware, it's easy to jump the gun and set the hook too early on a frog. Give it a 2 second hesitation before you set the hook. That's by far my favorite kind of fishing, and I'm sure after catching a couple of bass that way you'll agree.

I agree with jherm87 there that a heavy bait is easiest when you're first learning. You'll gradually get the hang of it. Once you do you'll be glad, you'll be able to cast a pretty good distance, even with some of the lighter lures in your tackle box. My first 3 or so outings with my baitcaster was a mess. Backlashes everywhere. Then I learned that I need to adjust the spool drag based on each lure I tied on. One setting didn't work for all of them, so experiment with that. You should be able to let the lure freefall to the ground and have minimal or no backlash at the spool, this will go a long way in preventing backlashes at the cast (along with your brakes), so adjust that baby for each separate lure you tie on. I had issues as well (and still do occasionally) with favoring one side to another as to where my lure goes. I've figured out that it had to do with the timing of when I was letting my thumb off the spool. I cast usually from my left, so if I let off too late it went far right, if I let off too early it would trend to the left. So experiment with the different timings of your release. Your thumb, arm, and mind will quickly learn and remember the best timings for bullet accurate casts. I don't know if anyone on here could second this, but it seems easier to untangle a birdsnest when I've got 65lb braid on rather than a lighter/smaller diameter line.....just my observation though. I'm sure a thread somewhere on here has about 100+ posts about it. Good luck, it'll be worth it when you can launch your lure twice as far as your spinning outfit!

Yea I saw those rods a few months back when they were clearanced for something around $70. I convinced my cousin to get one, he was in the market for a new one. Now I wish I could find one of my own! They look like excellent rods. I particularly like the reel seats and securing rings. Machined and very solid. Having 2 rods in the past 2 years that the securing rings failed, these rods look more solid than anything I've seen in a while. My cousin has had nothing but great things to say about the Vendetta. He likes the sensitivity and again the solid craftsmanship. I think you'll be pleased with the purchase!

Yea I watch it religiously. I'm a fisherman, but before that I was, and am still, a cyclist. I ride about 40-50 miles a day. I've always dreamed of riding those same mountains they do. They're incredible athletes. They ride an average of 100+ miles a day for 21 days with only 2 rest days in between. Crazy! It's a sport with a dirty past, but they claim they're "cleaning it up", let's hope they're not just being hopeful and it really is cleaner. What kills me is that my current bike could buy one heck-uv-a bass boat......cost me more than my first 4 cars put together!

I've always had less than desirable shipping experiences from BPS. I ordered a rod/reel combo last time, it shipped from the same warehouse at the same time. They used FedEx for the rod, got it in 2 days, then they used FedEx SmartPost (crap) for the reel, it took 3 extra days. Makes no sense. Then bought a spool of line from them about a year ago, less than a 1lb package, and it took 5 days to get here.

These are all good tips. I also second the above advice to use Trilene XL. The "XL" means extra-limp, which means the line will have less of a tendancy to spiral when it's hanging free. I've used this for years on my ultra-light setups and when they say extra limp, they mean it. I have far less tangles than with other mono line.

I've always been a huge fan of Booyah's buzzbaits. I just got a couple of the one's like these with the additional clackers and shut up some of my skeptical friends right away. I use all of those sizes depending on the situation. For calm water such as a picturesque little pond I'll use a 1/4, I've found the 1/2 seems to make more noise than is needed. I use the larger ones then the water might be choppy or during rain. I use black almost exclusively. I think by nature of the lure's reason for enticing strikes that the color of a buzzbait isn't as important as making sure that it's actually making a lot of racket. I'm sure others on here may disagree with my observation, but I've had a pretty equal number of hits on black, chart., white, bleeding shad, etc. that it would offer the arguement that color is secondary to action. The bass see a disturbance on the surface with a lure that's moving along at a pretty good clip and more or less make a reactionary strike with comparatively less investigation time than say a jig or senko. But back to my original thought, I use black and have great luck. Consider try as well the buzzbaits with three blades. I've used these when I need a much slower and sort of "bubbly" retrieve more than a buzz retrieve. Seems to work when the bass are acting lethargic.

Lent a $8 Rapala DT6 Baby Bass to our pastor's 14 year old son who assured me "he knew how to properly tie a knot to a crank"......I'll let you figure out the rest of the story.

When all else seems to fail, I turn to a tried-and-true Kelly's Pier Boy Special in Purple Wild Grape. http://www.kellysbassworms.com/products.asp I clamp on a split shot about 18-24 inches from the worm and hop it along the bottom, or even sometimes just slowly drag it through the water. More often than not when all the other fish catchers I own fail to land fish, this one will work.

I know exactly what you're talking about. Even with a spinning setup I get tangles, but I find that it's mostly when I've got an overly arched cast. I will agree with the above mentions that a sidearm cast, low to the water seems to remove any issues I might have. I love buzzbaits, and on nice quiet ponds this time of year they're a go-to lure for me, so don't lose the drive. You'll thank me next time that hawg blasts that thing on some warm summer evening.....

Looks like a great place. You're on the right track though. I agree with the previous comments, using topwaters will probably be the key. This time of year on similar bodies of water I've had a lot of luck with a buzzbait, especially the three-bladed model so you can plane it quickly and run it slower than a 2-blade model. Just don't take Bailey, she's likely to outfish you

Yea come to think of it since we never saw a fish in the boat there's nothing to say it was definitely bass, I've just never seen carp jumping out of the water to hit something on top. Maybe an aggressive surface disturbance, but this was more of a surface detonation. Time was not on my side concerning this front, so I only had time to fish after it, but I agree I sure wish I could've hit it before the rains. We tried being as stealthy as we could, trolling motor was our only propulsion, so hopefully we got that right. As far as retrieves and lure size/colors, believe me when I say, we tried about everything in our bags/boxes. Senkos, craws bounced on the bottom, lightweight Spinnerbaits, plastics run slow, etc. On this lake we can usually light it up with chartreuse RoadRunners, but not even that worked. So I'm hoping to rule out the lure selection I'll be hitting this spot again soon you can bet on that. If I have better luck you'll know it. Thanks for the help guys, gives me food for thought and a good list of expert's advice to follow on the next outing, I'm hoping for better luck!

Had a chance for some fishing last evening. Found a great spot, or so we thought. It had all the makings of perfect bass habitat. 3'-6' depth, weedlines, structure, mats, lillypads, the works. A storm front had just passed about 45-60 minutes prior. It was a "finger" off the main lake body and it was pretty sheltered by forest etc. You could see it wasn't very well visited by non-fishermen. It looked like something you'd see on the beloved TV bass fishing shows. We could see them feeding on the surface as the sunset drew closer, and it got our blood pressure up when the big ones would explode on something a ways off. Didn't seem to matter though what we threw at them, topwater, stickbaits, chuggers, plastics, shallow cranks, med' cranks, spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, even live bait (minnows and beemoths), they wouldn't take any of it. Tried multiple colors, varying retrieves, alternated depths, etc. Everything I know to do. But.....nothing. Not even a slight tap. Really frusturating, we had pretty much ideal conditions and got skunked. I've had my share of days where they proved me wrong, but this seemed like such ideal conditions it makes me think we, ourselves, had something to do with our luck running dry. Any ideas?