fishingfrenzy

Some of the places mentioned are decent places, if you have a boat. The newark watersheds are nice places, fish there often. The only place that really comes to mind for shorefishing is the roundvalley pond located next to the ramp for the main lake. Its prob like 5 acres in size and is shorefishing only

I know where you are.. looks like a solid 4 - 4.5lber.

I've done pretty good with blade baits.. they will catch just about every specie out there. I prefer a bait called "the binsky," a friend makes them and they will out produce a silver buddy any day of the week. Way more flash and vibration. Awesome bait.

That fish definately looks skinny and if you had caught her a couple weeks back, she probably would have been 1-2 pounds heavier.

After looking at a bunch of baits, I think it's a rebel jointed minnow. The joint was more in the middle, and had a much more exagerated swimming motion than the rapala jointed. It almost looked like a snake going through the water. It floated and wouldn't go more than 1 foot down, but mainly 6" or so. I'm gonna buy one and see if it's the same exact thing and if so.. I guess the baitmonkey is gonna be happy.

There was an old lure that I absolutely loved. It caught my biggest bass 8 1/2 pounds and also accounted for numerous other 5+ pounders. Unfortunately, I lost it to a tree 3 years ago and have never found one similar since. It was a jointed jerkbait, similar to a rapala jointed. I guess it was about 10 years old and made out of plastic. The paint was all worn off, but it was silver with a blue back. The difference between this one and a rapala jointed was that it had a looser joint and swam in a S pattern. My best guess would be that it was a rebel.. but I'm not too sure. If I could find this lure, I'd by 10 of them. It also was a shallow lure, running no deeper than 1 foot.

Here in NJ, 5 pounds is considered a trophy by a lot of people. Our state record is just shy of 11 pounds. This year, we've got two 7 pounders, two 6 pounders, and maybe five 5 pounders. Thats just with people I've fished with. My biggest for this year was maybe 5.8 pounds, thats the biggest i can remember. Next year, hopefully we'll break the 8 pound mark and possibly go for a double digit :

Do I have to worry about patents on other people's baits. Because I wanted to make one like a beaver, but didn't know if I had to worry about patent issues. Another question.. how would I be able to make a mold for a completely new bait that I came up with? I know someone who has a machining shop, and possibly a cnc machine.. could a make an aluminum mold for a new design with that?

I'm really looking into starting my own soft plastic's company, I have some new ideas that might work out pretty nice. I'd want to start making some worms as a hobby, and try selling them futher along. Roughly, how much will it cost for supplies, excluding molds. Do I have to worry about patents on molds if I sell some stuff I make. Also, I believe senko77 started his own company a while back and I wanted to find out how thats been going.

Looks like a 3 pounder to me.. great job with the jig!

Just think of what you'd be missing!

Ahh... the bait monkey can't seem to keep his fingers out of my wallet. Just when I thought a new reel was enough.. I HAD to get a new rod.. then the LC Sammy was calling my name... so I bought that. Within the first 15 mins of using it, it got baptized by a 4 pound bass. So of course, after I caught a 4 pound bass first time out using it.. I HAD to get another. Then came the Arbogast jitterbug g700 ( quite cheaper than a LC, but still $6). Then the monkey got involved in my life again, and just made me buy another $70 worth of lures. Now thanks to the baitmonkey, I'm broke > Does anybody feel my pain ;D

I said harvest 10-15% of the mature bass, but I also said not to harvest the biggest ones. Having 50 mature bass in a 2 acre pond is way over populated. You can either feed the fish more or cut down on the mouths to feed. I would not let nature take its course, because sometimes thats not always the best thing.

I know a little bit about pond management. I'll try giving you as much info as I can.. With the backround of your pond being 2 acres, according to what I've read you probably have 30-50+ mature bass (3 pounds or more) living in the pond. You say that the bass are overly aggresive, by eating sunnies whenever you hook one. I would think that there might be a lack of food within the pond, so when a bass sees a sunny strugling (from you hooking it), each bass is trying to eat it before another one does. You might have a good population of large bass, but if you want to grow trophy bass 7 pounds and larger, I would suggest harvesting roughly 15-20% or so of the mature bass. You might want to keep the larger ones and harvest about 5-10 bass 3-4 pounds. Bass need food to continue to grow and with a lack of it, the bass will still grow but they will become skinny and not gain as much weight. I would rather have the bass nice and fat, than a bunch of skinny ones. You might also consider stocking the pond every 2 years or so with sunnies and other minnows. It is good that you have some big sunnies (1 pound and larger), that way they will continue to reproduce without bass eating them. I would also advise you to contact a fisheries biologist and seek their advise.

This was actually the second rod I've broken in the the last year... and have never broken a rod before that. The last rod, was a St. Croix triumph, that was actually my dad's that I borrowed. I hooked a little fish and was just bringing it in, when about a foot from the tip snapped in half. The rod was sent back and we got a new one soon after. I'm just kinda angry that now I have to go through the hassle of replacing the rod. But I'm trying to see if I could pay the difference a get a slightly heavier rod and possibly slightly longer. Who knows, it might turn out for the best and be worth it after all.

Today was a great day, a little wind, with temps in the upper 60's. I haven't gone out fishing in a while, so I was very excited. I went to a small private lake, 15 acres, that has a good population of fish, but the big ones are very wary and are hard to find. I was paddling around the outside edge of the lake in a canoe, looking for some fish that moved shallow to feed. After catching a couple small ones, I finally found a decent size fish 3-4 pounds. I made a perfect cast to it, I was using a 5/0 hook with a 10" berkley power worm. The fish turned and took the worm.. I reeled up the slack and just pulled back on my rod. I didn't swing it hard or yank.. just enough to hook the fish. As soon as my rod loaded, by pulling back.. my rod went POP! and snapped halfway down the blank. Because when the road snapped, there was some slack in the line from the upper half going into the water, the fish threw the hook. To make matters worse.. this was my prize possesion... the rod that I've taken every where and babied it.. making sure there wasn't a scratch or nick on it. I just don't understand why it broke.. its pulled in fish after fish and now on this one, it had to go. Anyways, it's a Loomis GL3.. so it should be in good hands with their warranty.

Instead of just guessing... You can find out exactly what your fish weighed. If you still have that spring scale, take some weights and keep adding them, till they reach the same amount as your bass that you caught. Then take those weights off and then put them on your digital or another scale that is accurate. That should give you the exact weight, and you wont have to keep assuming. For example.. I was fishing sat and I caught a nice fish. My scale was having some serious problems and wouldn't read correctly. I weighed a couple fish and digital scale read .23kg.. then I put on my big one and it read .44kg. I know that if you convert kg's into pounds, that would be about a pound or so.. but my scale was being really screwed up. After I was done fishing, I came home and started adding weight until it read the "exact" weight of my bass I had caught earlier. I then put that weight on a calibrated doctors scale and it came out a tad over 5 pounds. Problem solved.

Sorry to burst your bubble... but I must say that looks like a sunfish. So I guess that raul still holds the record.

Maybe next time you go fishing, you might want to dull your fishing hooks cause you dont want to them to hurt and get stuck in the fish's throat. ;D

At this one place I fish, I havent caught many big ones but definitely know they're in there. I was trying to "match to hatch" for some bigger ones and thought that this would probably help in figuring out the fish's diet. I've been catching some smaller bass that have fat stomachs and I didn't know if this would hurt the fish in any way, but I put my finger down into its stomach to feel around and when I felt something, I gently squeeezed the bass's belly and up came the food. I wasn't sure if this actually harms the fish in anyway, other than just emptying its stomach. The fish seemed to have swam away just fine, but I wanted to post here and see if anyone knows more about doing so.

Its not that I don't fish both of them, cause I do. Its just that the shallower one is a slightly further bike ride, with which I have to go up a huge hill. The deeper one is like 3 miles and the shallower one is 5.5 miles... which can be tricky trying to carry a bunch of rods and have a big tacklebox strapped to my back. I've been alternating between both of them, so its not like I fish one over the other. I just wanted to see which one you guys would prefer.

Ok so here's the question, I have 2 ponds that I have permission to fish. One pond is 15 acres, it is really deep (30 feet). The pond is basically round and has a lot of cover all the way around it. It is loaded with bass between 13 and 17 inches, but has the capability of producing a bass between 20 and 26 inches in length. The bigger fish are very hard to catch, with one 23 incher being caught in 10+ trips of fishing there. So on average you will catch 10 small bass with the rare possibilty of catching one big one. Pond #2, is 10 acres and is long and somewhat narrow. The max depth is about 6 to 8 feet and has a lot of weeds all throughout the pond. The average bass caught is slightly bigger than the other pond with typical bass ranging from 16 to 21 inches in length. It has the possibility of producing a bigger bass, but my biggest so far has been right around 4 pounds. Given these 2 ponds... which one would you rather fish? I have permission to use a jon boat at both places, with bare minimal equipement. There are no fish finders or other luxeries, so finding structure in the deeper pond is much harder.

jw.. how long was that 6.6 pounder?

I at first thought it was a small bass (2 pounds), cause it wasnt really fighting all that hard. I hooked her probably 50 yards out, so she was out quite a ways. Then she just launched herself way out of the water and I started thinking atleast 5, maybe 6 pounds cause she was really fat. But she really didnt have the length, maybe 19 inches or so. I got another pic that shows the girth... I'll try and upload that pic as well.