everythingthatswims

Another bass snatcher on the FBI's most wanted list

I have fished with various MaxScent baits ever since their release last year, I actually got a head start on the rest of the fishing community due to Berkley giving us some baits at a college event before they were available to the public. I have fished with The General (a stickworm style bait), The Flatnose Minnow (drop shot bait with a forked tail), the D-worm, and the Hit Worm. All of these baits have produced fish for me, and are definitely a bait worth fishing. I am a big fan of The General. To me, the most important quality of a stickbait is the rate of fall that it has. Many low end stickbaits fall through the water column extremely slowly when fished weightless, which is rarely a good thing. The General has a faster rate of fall than most stickbaits, which is a big deal to me. I am not a fan of sitting there all day waiting for my bait to hit the bottom, not to mention that fish definitely have a preference for a faster falling wacky worm 80% of the time, if not more often than that. The General also is a fairly durable bait, which tends to be a hot topic when people discuss stickbait/wacky worm fishing. I personally am more concerned with getting bit, but you can definitely catch 4 or 5 fish per bait with these. I'm not sure how much of a factor the scent provides in being successful with this bait, but it definitely can't hurt. The Flatnose Minnow is another good one that I have been fishing with for a while. My friends in the college series are also big fans of the bait. It is a smallmouth killer! For whatever reason, smallmouth really like scented baits, particularly when you are fishing a slow presentation (being a drop shot in this case), and the MaxScent definitely plays a role in getting bit, I have seen it work well on very pressured smallmouth. One of my friends caught a smallmouth over 5 pounds last summer on a flatnose! Two newer baits to me are the D-Worm and the Hit Worm. The D-Worm is a 5.5", slim profile worm. I fished it on a shakey head, drop shot, and weightless on a worm hook. All of those rigging methods worked, but I liked it most on a drop shot. I fished it in brush piles on a #1 worm hook, rigging it weedless. The bait only holds up to 2 or 3 fish per bait since it's so thin, but I'm totally okay with that if it gets bit! The slim profile of the bait combined with the slightly longer length than most drop shot worms meant that it still had very free movement even though it wasn't nose hooked. I caught a pile of fish on it too! The Hit Worm is a 4.5" bait with a bulkier profile than the D-Worm. It fits on a shakey head well, and would be good for a larger profile drop shot too. I fished it on a Carolina Rig, it did pretty well for me. I could see it being a really effective bait on a C-rig around some brown fish, I just don't have any nearby to try it on! I would imagine the bulky profile would do a good job resembling a goby for anyone who spends time on the great lakes. The only negative I can come up with has to do with color. There are a number of great colors available, but they are all very solid colors. I have a feeling you can't make a translucent bait with the material used to make MaxScent baits, because if you could, Berkley probably would have done it. My favorite color is definitely Baby Bass, if I had to pick one color from the MaxScent Lineup, it would definitely be that one.

Did you land that one from up top on the concrete wall???

Earlier this week, I headed out with my buddy to chase after some schooling fish he discovered. (Some of you may recognize him from my high school fishing days!). We didn't find any activity til about 10am, and it took a while to figure out what was going on. The area we found was maybe a square half mile of water with fish eating bait everywhere, but it was very spread out. After observing for an hour or so, we learned that there were maybe 3 areas where fish would surface in the same locations repeatedly. This meant you could put a bait in the middle of the feeding frenzy, and also know that your bait is in front of them while they aren't "up", which is good for trying different baits, as schooling fish are often finicky. I spent a good chunk of the morning throwing a gunfish and spook at the breaking fish. I was able to boat one about 2.75lbs, but only had a couple other fish swat at my bait. I tried a flutter spoon around the depth of the thermocline (around 15') in areas with the breaking fish, but that didn't produce either. We also tried a jerkbait, and several types of swimbaits to no avail. Finally, as the action slowed, I tried the ol' super fluke. I have caught schooling fish on them in the past, but jerkbaits and walking baits have always produced way more fish for me. For whatever reason, these fish were big fans of a fluke. While a topwater couldn't even draw a bite during a frenzy, the fluke would actually "call" the fish up after they quit chasing, which I had never seen before with a fluke. I didn't think it made enough disturbance for them to notice from whatever depth they suspend at in between frenzies. I ended up catching 3 or 4 fish in the 2-3lb range before the surface activity came to a screeching half around 12:30. From then until about 3:00, the action was very slow. We couldn't get anything else going, so we just hung out and waited for it to start up again. I was frustrated that I didn't try a fluke earlier, because we were around some big fish, and the fluke was shockingly effective, even when the fish were not showing themselves much. At roughly 3:30, things picked up again. We had the flukes ready to go this time, and things got off to a hot start. By now, we had honed in on "the spot on the spot", where lots of shad and herring death was occurring. We could get the school of fish fired up just by throwing a fluke over top of them, it was incredible. Once one fish was hooked, others would surface and start eating baitfish, which is probably one of the coolest things to witness in bass fishing. Alongside many 2-3lb fish, I landed one close to 4, and my buddy got one close to 5. I did a little on-the-spot rigging, because I always have trouble hooking fish with a fluke on an EWG hook. I took a 2/0 VMC Neko hook, and trimmed down the weedguard. The short pieces of mono would act as a keeper (despite facing the wrong direction) when you pulled them down into the nose of the fluke, rigging it like you would on a jighead. This was a very effective rigging method, we only missed 2 or 3 fish between the two of us. The fish seemed to wise-up to the fluke within an hour or so, and we started to change things up. I was able to get one decent fish on a flutter spoon, but besides that we were having a tough time. I had a 1/2oz hairjig/underspin in my box that I had never used, and figured now would be a good time to try. I had several strong bites the first few times I brought it through the school, and bowed up on a big fish, but it came off. Since I didn't have any more hairjigs, my buddy rigged up a 4.8" keitech on a half oz underspin. He fished it just like I did the hairjig, with 3-4 fast turns of the handle and then freespooling it for a couple feet, for a fast drop. The fish were all over that swimbait! He was hooking a fish every 2-3 casts, it didn't even matter where he threw it. I tried a 3/8 underspin with a swimbait because I didn't have any more 1/2oz, but I assume the rate of fall just wasn't fast enough to make them react. He finally hung up and broke off the magic underspin, and couldn't get them to go on anything else after that. I rigged my hairjig up again, hoping I could get one of the bigger fish to stay pinned if I did hook one. I finally was able to lay into a big fish on the hairjig, which was our biggest of the day @5.9lbs! It was super neat to catch a big fish on a relatively unconventional method, particularly here in Virginia. It was almost 6:00 at this point and the fish began to slow down again, I was able to get a couple more hits on the hair jig but nothing got the hook. I'm not sure if they swipe at it, or just eat and reject the bait really fast. All in all it was an awesome day of fishing. I already have a good bit of experience with schooling fish, but I think my schooling fish knowledge may have doubled from that experience, I learned a lot! Oh yeah, we broke the 20lb mark too

I am curious to see what the line consistency is like after some wear and tear, good to hear this feedback

I recently tried out one of Berkley's variations of fireline, the Ultra 8 Superline. I have mixed feelings about it, and I'm curious to see what others think about it as well. I tried both 10lb on a spinning reel, and 30lb on a baitcaster. My experience with braided lines is mainly with 10lb (spinning) and 50lb (baitcaster). They are of similar diameter, so that is what I am comparing the lines to. Bad news first, I was not a fan of the 30lb. I used it for a hollow body frog and a large walking bait, which is what I do with 90% of the heavy braid I fish. The first dislike I had was for the stiffness of the line. The line has memory, and would lie on the water in small coils on a slack line. This means when you are working a bait, each movement of the rod tip is suppressed by the coils, which sort of act as a shock absorber. The coils of line straighten as the line tightens, so if you give the rod a sharp twitch (like when walking a frog), the movement of the bait is "smoothed out". This also makes pausing the bait difficult, because the coils re-form when you stop the rod movements, causing the bait to glide forward slightly. Having the bait come to a dead stop during a pause on the retrieve is often critical for triggering strikes. My other dislike with the 30lb braid was the diameter. I don't have the tools to measure it, but the package says it is .38mm. This is slightly larger than many 50lb braids on the market which come in at .36mm (what I have used for the same applications prior to this). My best assumption is that the roundness and coating used on the line makes it seem even larger than that, because it seems much bigger than standard 50lb braid. I don't know why you would want a lower pound test line with a higher diameter, especially on a baitcaster, when you can nearly empty a spool of large diameter braid with a heavy bait on a long cast. The combination of the large diameter and springy/stiff nature of the line made it difficult to make long casts with a baitcaster, due to what felt like friction on the guides (this also could have been from coils passing through the guides). I could still make reasonably far casts, but not as far as what I can do with most 50lb braid. Extra long casts are common for my uses of heavy braid, either reaching schooling fish with a walking bait, or reaching a spot far back in vegetation with a frog, where it may be too thick or too shallow to maneuver a boat closer. The 10lb Fireline Ultra 8 was much better for me. I fished it on a 2500 sized spinning reel with a 7' medium action rod. I used it for fishing a weightless worm around lily pads. This would test the strength of the line well, because often times the strength of the line doesn't get tested well due to the nature of spinning tackle fishing. I attached a 14lb mono leader to the braid, because I use a leader 100% of the time with braid on spinning gear, and wanted to test the knot strength of the braid. The roundness and coating on this braid that was detrimental to its use on a baitcaster, seemed to help in use on a spinning reel. I was impressed with the casting range I had even with a 6" worm and no weight. It also cut through the lily pads well, not that you typically do that with spinning gear, but it did work! The line was still a little stiff, I assume the coating is responsible for that, but since the line is much smaller in diameter, it wasn't nearly as noticeable. My opinion on Berkley Fireline Ultra 8 would be that it is good for use on spinning reels with the smaller diameter braids (14lb, 10lb, 8lb, 6lb, and 4lb). I would bet that the coating sheds water well, which would make it an ideal line for fishing when temperatures are below freezing, keeping water off of the guides and reel, as well as not freezing solid by absorbing water (which other braided lines have done in my experience). If you've used this line, let's hear what you thought of it too!

Was going to say the same, you'd be hard pressed to find a lake without any in it

I don't think that fish had a clue what that bait looked like, but I KNOW it knew what it felt like The coveted pats perch, thought you sold most of those big boy toys?

Bump!

Ultralights will never be able to set the hook as well as a medium action spinning rod, plain and simple. No matter what you do, you're going to lose some fish due to not being able to drive the hook home hard enough with an ultralight. Even with a small open hook on a ned rig or drop shot, the amount of force applied with that rod won't get the job done consistently. That being said, typically when you fish an ultralight for bass, it is for the enjoyment of it, not because of the suitability of the rod for the job. The best way to combat the limber rod would be sharp hooks, and fishing a zero stretch line like braid, accompanied by a leader of FC or mono.

They spaced it out to give the National Champions time to be the champs, because in years past, all of the attention shifts to the bracket winner and everyone forgets about who won the event. Excellent decision on their part, whoever takes it home worked their butt off to accomplish it, and deserves recognition!

ESPNU will be airing the show, I'm not sure on the exact dates. It will be a VERY interesting event to watch, the leaders caught fish on flutter spoons and jigging spoons with their boat pulled INTO the boat slip they were fishing!!

Camera boats only followed the top 3 or 4 boats on the final day, so we didn't get any coverage. I do believe there will be a little footage of us at weigh-in on the final day. The bracket us going to be August 14th, 15th, and 16th. We get one practice day on the 13th.

What a week! You often hear tournament fishermen say "meant to be" or talk about when it is "your time". That all definitely applied to me during this year's championship. Tenkiller was fishing extremely tough, it has some incredible fish in it, but they are hard to catch this time of year. There is a TON of bait for them to eat, so they mainly just roam around, eating shad and suspending. This made for some very frustrating time on the water, but when you did connect with the right fish, things got very intense, very quickly! Practice started on a bad note, I made it halfway to Oklahoma without a key to the boat. Luckily, my dad already had the aluminum boat at his house, 30 minutes from Lake Tenkiller. By complete chance, the rock quarry company he works for in Virginia moved him out there to work for 3 months this summer. My dad was at our home in Virginia when I left, and wasn't flying back to Oklahoma until the evening of our first day of practice. He was able to bring the key for the Stratos, but we had to fish in the 17' tracker until then. To put it simply, we had to use the aluminum boat on day one of practice, but would have the big boat for days 2 and 3. We decided to run wayyyyy up in the river since we had the ability to take a boat where it maybe shouldn't be, because aluminum is a lot more forgiving than fiberglass. All we found up there was one laydown with a small group (5/6) bass living on it. We pretty much wrote that off as not being worth our time, being so far out of the way and because we were sure some of the other anglers would catch those fish during practice. Day two of practice was tough again, we spent our morning running and gunning points with a walking bait, but only found short fish. We spent the rest of our day graphing offshore structure. We fished both brushpiles and rockpiles, but all we found were short fish, aside from one keeper in 20FOW on a brush pile. Keepers at this event were 16", which made things even tougher. Day three of practice was also spent offshore fruitlessly searching for good fish with electronics. During the last two hours of practice, I decided to take the big boat up the river and idle in the channel between trees, so I would have a GPS track to follow during the tournament. We looked at the same tree we found on day one, and still saw a handful of nice fish, and because of how fruitless our practice was, we decided that we would definitely visit it on the first day of the event. Day one started off running a lot of water with a buzzbait, because that was how we caught one of two keepers in practice. Even though we covered hundreds of yards of bank, the one keeper I caught came 6' away from where I caught the other one in practice! After that, we ran up the river to "The Tree". I fished it from a distance with a wacky rig and shakey head, very thoroughly. Not a single bite so I decided to troll by and see if I saw any. I saw a 3+lb bass with one eye cruise alongside the tree, and drop out of sight. At this point we decided to back off and kill time for about 15 minutes. We then came back, positioning the boat a little differently this time. When the fish wolfpack on wood in the rivers I kayak fish, your only shot is a topwater from a long ways away, and you only get one shot, one good cast. I picked up my trusty super spook junior that has almost no paint left on it, and fired a long cast over the roots of the tree. I had walked the bait over the tree and was now 10-15' away from it, losing hope, when a shadow rose up from the depths. She followed it for 5 or 6 feet and then sucked it right under! And whaddaya know, it was ol' one eye! That was our last keeper bite of the day. We spent the last 4 hours of the day sitting on a deep spot, watching 3-4lb smallies gorge on shad, not able to get any to bite. On day two, we did not have high hopes. We started off running buzzbait water, and caught a couple shorts. I did finally bring in a keeper and we were stoked to not blank. After that, we ran up river to the tree. I caught another small keeper on a spook, making the same cast as the day before. We did see a very nice fish follow the hooked one to the boat, but we could not get it to eat. We then ran back down the lake to a deep spot, where we planned to sit for the remainder of the day again. I chose to throw a Berkley Dredger 25.5, the fish didn't eat a jig or worm the day before, so I figured my best shot would be getting them to react. About 10 minutes in, I bounced the bait off a brush pile and loaded up on a good one! It ended up being a 3.5lb largemouth, number 3 in the box for the day. That fish also had followers, both of them in the 3-4lb range, encouraging to see! I didn't get any more fish to eat the crankbait, but while I was working on that, I spotted a fish on the surface about 80 yards away. I could tell it was a big smallie and knew it wouldn't be up for long. But then I noticed it was chasing a pretty large fish, so I threw the trolling motor on high and picked up a walking bait. I saw fish do this to a trout at South Holston Lake last year and they stayed up for a very long time and I was able to catch one, so I was very excited about this fish once I saw what was going on. Once I was finally in range, I put my bait as close as I could to the big smallmouth. The fish swam away from the bluegill it was beating up, and got underneath my bait. It followed the bait for nearly 20 yards until it was getting close to the boat, and I began to worry. My partner and I both crouched, and it got so close that I didn't have any more line, so I just stopped the bait, and expected the fish to sink back into the depths. But then, WOOSH!!! Two seconds of fumbling and the fish was in the net, one of the coolest catches of my life! We headed to weigh in with 4 bass that ended up weighing 11lbs, 5oz. This moved us into the top 12 cut, and we headed into the final day in 9th place. During weigh-in, once we realized we made the cut, we quickly got a waypoint from our other team at the event. (We are allowed to share information with other competitors before the scales close, I checked with officials before doing so just to make sure). He had found some schooling fish, and had seen many big ones, including the 4-8 he weighed in that day. The spot was where a floating dock sat over a creek channel in 65FOW, and the bass would pin shad against the docks and boats. We started there on the final day, because we needed to make a big move in order to make the top 4 for the classic bracket. We pretty much went in blind to those fish, so when we got there, I spent some time observing and deciding how to approach it. My choice was to skip a swimbait in between the boats and docks, hoping to trigger some larger bites. A 6" magdraft was the weapon of choice. My third skip of the morning produced an 18" smallmouth, and I thought it was about to get wild. I did get two more good bites after that, but they didn't stay pegged. I caught a few short fish as well. I had pinpointed where the majority of the fish were sitting, and I was able to skip a 3" EZ Shiner in there and caught a 16.5" spot, which went in the box with his brown cousin. After that, we couldn't get them going again, and abandoned ship around 11:30am. We ran all the way back up the lake from the dam, to our deep spot. It was within an hour of the time I caught the deep crank fish the day before, so I lined up and started banging the bait through the brushpile just like I did previously. I connected with another solid largemouth, and it ended up being about 3lbs. We then chose to go fish the magic tree again while giving the deep spot time to rest. The sun was high now, so I knew the spook would probably not do the job up there, and I opted for the magdraft. I fired out "The Cast" and let the current sweep the bait right past the sweet spot on the tree, where the current has washed out the bottom underneath the root wad. And just like something from my dreams, a giant comes up from the depths and crushes the swimbait! I honestly thought it wasn't a bass because it was so big. After a brief battle, we netted the fish, and I guarantee everyone within a 2 mile radius heard me when that happened. We knew we had a good chance at making the bracket with that one, but knew one more keeper would put the nail in the coffin. And just like we needed, my partner stuck a 2.5/2.75lb largemouth on his first cast with a big worm once we got back to our deep spot. Our 15lb, 4oz limit jumped us from 9th to 3rd place, securing our spot inside the top 4. The next step is the Classic Bracket, where 8 of us will head to @Bluebasser86's neck of the woods, where one of our lives will be changed forever!

It is tough out there, the top 10 is solid but after that it drops off FAST! Sitting in 29th out of 136 with 2 bass for 6-4 if that gives any perspective

Everyone down there was using cut bait, and that is pretty standard for drum fishing in the outer banks. I just used whatever baitfish I could catch and did my best to keep it fresh.

Not on a swimbait, just a croaker head haha

Outer Banks, Jennette's Pier

43" I won't be back til August but I only have a day or two left of this salty stuff

These guys must have misplaced their calendars because they aren't supposed to show up like they did until October! I had quite the time playing this guy on my swimbait stick with a Cardiff 400. I had never caught a big one before, I was very impressed by the power this fish had

I broke my PB sheepshead by several pounds today, and was very lucky to do so. My brothers and I have been doing very well on Jennette's Pier (OBX, NC) for the past two days. We are fishing fiddler crabs on spinning rods with light (15lb) leader, you use a light (1/4-3/8oz) weight and let the wind and current push the bait up under the pier to the sheepshead, it's a blast! I hooked this fish late in the afternoon on the end of the pier, and somehow managed to keep it off of the pilings with 10lb braid, 15lb leader, and a medium action spinning rod. Mind you that fish has the capability to snap a flippin stick like a toothpick! Landing fish with a pier net is nerve-wracking and takes so long, but that part came together too. A once in a lifetime catch I suspect. 8lbs is citation

Those guys are living the dream! I know Alex through college fishing, he was part of the group I went to the classic with this year.

An extremely fun fish to target! We fished two days on the Chesapeake Bay. Saw 70+ fish, landed 13, 3 legal. I almost got a small one to eat a 6" bull shad on the first day! Size limit right now is 40" so it takes a pretty big fish to get some for the table. The fish pictured was 47" 32lbs. Cobia are such a strange fish. Very strong and fast, but clumsy and dumb. They will turn completely upside down and even corkscrew while trying to eat a bucktail.

I know it's Lay Lake but I still wouldn't be calling a 3lb spot "only"!!

Don't worry, I wouldn't be surprised if you got the state record for one of the "desirables"