everythingthatswims

I like the good ol' gamakatsu bronze round bends. I don't lose many fish on them at all.

I am definitely not a fan of any of those baits Berkley came out with. A 3xd can be excellent when the conditions are right for it!

I use a 1/4 for bank fishing and a 1/2 when I'm on a boat. Usually I am fishing traps on some sort of flat, and from the bank this means there is probably a whole lot of skinny water directly in front of me that a 1/2oz would dig into the bottom of. In a boat you can sit on the deeper end of the flat and not have to worry about that.

I assume this is a spotted bass. I catch a few of them on the river here in Morgantown. The confusing part is that these fish look nothing like spots I have caught in other bodies of water. They are all pretty tiny, have very red eyes, and typically not a very well defined lateral line. Just looking for others to weigh in on this, maybe this is just a strain of fish that doesn't get big I'm not sure, there is plenty of food in the river they aren't stunted. This guy was about 12" and is by far the biggest out of maybe 30 or so I have caught during my time here. Very apparent tooth patch Connected dorsal

In the shadows of downtown Morgantown

Last fall I killed one when the hook on the jighead I was using hit something important, I guess something similar could have happened

Caught a little guy on the 9" suicide glide this morning before class. Yes I need new hooks.

I caught a fish this weekend that acted really weird. I set the hook and had her in the boat in 5 cranks with the Alabama rig. She couldn't have been deeper than 10' when she bit. Instantly she rolled over in the well and I know it wasn't from exhaustion because there was no fight. I put fin clips on her and she was happy as a lark but never did "normalize", when I tried to let her go after weigh in she wouldn't swim down. The fish was still very lively but remained on the surface. She could have made it but I'm not sure. Any explanation for why the fish did that? My best guess is that she was up in maybe 10' coming up from deeper water to eat bait and I brought her up those extra few feet that did the damage.

This Saturday, the Virginia Tech bass fishing team hosted a collegiate tournament on South Holston Lake on the Virginia/Tennesee border. On Thursday, my tournament partner Casey and I traveled from WVU to Charlottesville, VA, to get my dad's truck and our boat, then we headed to Abingdon, VA, to stay with my grandparents while we fished the lake Friday and Saturday. Friday was our practice day, and having never been on the lake before, I didn't know what to expect. Looking at a lake map, I saw that there were a lot of creek arms and coves at the lower end of the lake, so we headed there to pursue some smallmouth. At our first stop of the day, the first cove as we entered a creek arm, I caught a keeper (15") smallmouth on a vision 110. I caught two more keepers in short order fishing neighboring coves after that, so we decided to head to the other side of the creek. Here there were solid rock bluffs whereas the other side had a mixture of chunk rock, bluffs, and gravel/clay banks, with fish holding on the transitions. We fished three coves of solid rock without a bite, so we headed further into the creek to look for coves with rock transitions. We found them but no fish, so we decided to stick closer to the main lake. The pattern held up everywhere we went, any cove on or near the main lake with rock transitions had smallmouth anywhere from 1 to 3.5lbs ready to pounce on a jerkbait. We would catch one or two, mark a waypoint, and leave. The whole day we did not get a bite on anything that wasn't a moving bait. Fished drop shots, shakey head, ned rig, and a jig, nada. We started working our way back up the lake fishing similar areas and continued catching fish, so we decided to head to the "mid lake" area and see what was going on there. Starting with the jerkbait, we put a 3lb smallmouth in the boat in short order just inside a creek arm. After that we decided to quit throwing jerkbaits since we had the fish figured out and started trying to find another bait they would eat. I picked up an Alabama rig, which I had been throwing a good bit without a bite in the cleaner water down lake, and boated a 3lb smallie within minutes. Two more smallmouth and a largemouth after that on the rig, and we decided to get off the lake and prep for the tournament. While the tournament we fished only had 26 boats, there were at least 4 tournaments on the lake that day, one 15 boat club tournament out of the same marina as us, a larger club tournament from a different marina, and a big tournament that had 105 boats fishing it (could have been more but that was the number I heard). Couple that with guys out fun fishing, and it made for a VERY crowded lake that day. We were boat number 6, and headed to our spots down lake right off the bat. Our 17' aluminum tracker tops out at about 40mph, so I got pretty good at easing over the boat wakes as everyone else zipped by in all directions. The first stretch of bank we hit produced 3 fish, 2 keepers, a 16" smallie and a 14" largemouth, both on the jerkbait. I missed several fish but I don't think there was anything I could have done about it, I had put brand new katsuage hooks on my 110 the night before! We headed further down the lake and fished a couple spots without a bite. Finally I caught one about 2&3/4 when we were working down a bank and it came up behind us over deep water chasing an alewife. We ran to many of our spots from practice and found no fish but plenty of boats. It was around noon when we ran back up to the spot we caught our first two on. We caught two more short smallmouth, and decided to work our way up the lake, bouncing around fishing coves with the banks we were looking for. Things were looking up in this area of the lake, we were only seeing a boat or two in each pocket rather than 3 or 4 (or 5 or 6). Finally some time after 1pm my partner hooked a 2.5lb smallmouth on a jerkbait that went in the well for our 4th keeper of the day, this was a big turning point as the "wheels were coming off" after such a rough first half of the day and a nice fish made us feel a lot better. Shortly after that I boated a 14" largemouth, we had our limit and felt a lot better, but we needed to get rid of most of them. We fished similar areas for a while and caught a couple short fish, and decided to make a move to the creek near the ramp where I caught the fish on the Alabama rig in practice. The creek had a couple boats in it, two on the spot we were going to hit, so we fished a couple pockets on the other side. In about 10 minutes I boated three fish on the jerkbait, one of them was a 15" smallmouth that we swapped with one of our little largemouth. It was about 2:15 now, (with a 3:00 check in!) and the two boats were no longer on the stretch of bank we wanted to fish, so we headed over there. 15 minutes in and I hook a nice fish on the A-rig, a 16" chunky smallmouth that got rid of the other little largemouth. 10 casts later and I swing into a solid fish, it ended up being a 3-3.5lb largemouth, I culled quickly and jumped back up on the front of the boat. Very next cast produced a good smallmouth, and after that cull we fished for another 10 minutes before we had to head back to the ramp. Pretty much everyone in our tournament struggled that day, only 6 limits were weighed. We ended up in 2nd place with 14.3lbs, we hadn't really paid attention to how much we culled at the end of the day and thought we only had 11 or 12lbs, it seemed like they grew a little when we opened the well to put them in the weigh bag, it was a nice surprise. First place had 14.8lbs, and big fish was an absolute brown football freak weighing in at over 6.5lbs, but it was that boat's only fish for the day. Not a bad showing for our first college tournament, hopefully there will be more to come! Everything below this picture is from practice, when we caught some BRUTES! Forgot to add that my younger brother Wyatt came down to practice with us and film on tournament day for some youtube stuff, here is his PB smallie @3.54lbs

I don't have a whole lot of experience with walleye, but the experience that I do have makes it seem like it's considerably more difficult to target them with artificials. A 4" grub tipped with a minnow will outfish a 4" grub without a minnow 10-1. Bass aren't like that.

It really freaks me out when they eat it like that. I see them come up and I just know the bait is destined to pop out with one headshake!

Have fun y'all

Give it 5 years and people will swear it's the best crankbait around and they'll be going for $20 on ebay

I have not been impressed with rage tail swimmers. On a chatterbait they don't even kick.

Yeah I worded that one a little funny. Setting the hook on that jig (probably a 7/0 or 8/0 as big around as a pencil) takes a lot of force that's what I was referencing about hooking the fish.

To me, 50 degrees is the magic number where the fish really start to get going and most baits will catch them if you find a situation to fit that bait. However, length of the day/angle of the sun as spring progresses has far more to do with it than you would think, THEY KNOW! A fish in late March in 45 degree water is going to be acting a lot different than a fish in 45 degree water in December.

That's a gaff shot in his back (not sure if you're implying that the fish was snagged), took 2 gaffs and barely got him in the boat at that! Fish was swimming around a navy tower and we would see him every now and then but it wouldn't bite. My dad started dropping live baits down for amberjack and handed me the bucktail rod and said "If you see that fish, cast this to it". Fish was so close to the boat that I made a one handed underhand toss and when the bucktail dropped on his nose he flared his gills just like a bass does when it eats a bait!

Been there done that

Meanmouth, naturally occurring tiger trout, or one of the albino largemouth (and/or) smallmouth that are yellow in color would be high on my list right now. A fish that is extremely rare IMO is way more interesting than something that exists very regularly in a different area of the world. Here are some dream fish (that I have already checked off the list) pics Can't leave this one out! Checked this one off a long time ago. Not sure how I managed to sight cast and sink a 2oz bucktail into this fish at that age but I did. It was 51lbs

Just use a 4" keitech on a jighead haha

Tomorrow will be the only day I take my laptop to class. This is my March Madness.

I use war eagles. They are gonna break, but the light wire lets the blades put off more vibration. It makes a big difference IMO. I try to not swing any fish over 2lbs in the boat, on the bank, etc to put less stress on the arms. Definitely don't hold the fish up by the line while he's thrashing, that will put an end to a spinnerbait very quickly!

Drag the jig, pause, and shake your line, this will move the jig in place but not move it forward. Pause it as long as you would a jerkbait in those temperatures. It is best to do this in areas where you are confident that you have your bait in front of a fish!

Got out in the kayaks today and caught several. Slow going though, the fish are wondering where the warm weather went!

I might get to stick around and work on a masters but they'll definitely send me to terrorize fish somewhere else if I decide to take it further than that!