everythingthatswims

St. Croix Mojobass Swimbait rod 1-4oz, handles a 4oz bait pretty well. Excellent rod, I would recommend a cardiff 300. Use 20lb mono, not heavy braid, if you backlash while slinging a 4oz bait with braid, your bait will go sailing away but with mono you have some give that may save your bait. Also, when ripping a hookset using a broom stick like the mojobass, braid just doesn't seem like a good choice IMO. Get a couple s-waver 168s

I also has a dream that I was just fishing in my back yard and trout would jump out of the ground to eat my bait.

Anyone who has tried throwing a deep diving crankbait from a kayak knows why anchoring is a necessity!

Hopping a blade bait, fishing a 1/4oz redeye shad slllllooowwwwww, jerkbait with 10-15 second or longer pauses, and float-n-fly are how I have caught winter pond bass in VA. A fly rod is actually really effective on winter bass, you just have to be really patient. Use a black wooly bugger in dirty water, white in clear, and drag that sucker along the bottom as slow as you can without losing you mind! I have caught some nice bass doing this December-February. Bluegill and crappie will hit nymphs and small streamers this time of year as well, just fish slow.

Jack Of All Trades. I love catching fish on big swimbaits, but I'm not a member of the cult that won't think outside of the box

I like to go out during the spawn and fish a couple ponds wearing out the smaller "buck bass" guarding the nests, I release them very quickly and they always go right back to guarding their bed. If I see a big female, I may make a couple casts but I'm not going to sit there for an hour bouncing a bait off her head until she bites. The main thing I use the spawn for is to scout out new water, because it gives you an opportunity to see the big fish.

Definitely looked like C&R worked for that fish, check out his jaw! Wonder what it has been eating...Bluebasser, the odds of a trout dying in a livewell are much higher than a bass, and I assume he didn't want to take a chance with that fish.

Fuel for the fire before a moderator deletes this thread...... I would eat this bait

I like being able to catch fish on stuff that I shot haha. (Flies and some jigs from hair and feathers). Costs a lot less for one shotgun shell, bullet, etc than it does to get a "rabbit mask", bucktail, etc from a fly shop.

The only time a certain color has outperformed others for me is a black and blue in muddy water, and crayfish definitely don't turn black and blue in muddy water. That's pretty much my take on jig colors. If I know what the crayfish look like where I'm fishing I will try to match that, but I don't think it will cost me many (if any) bites if I don't match it.

Most of the time we refer to them as footballs, but that fish has surpassed those dimensions. Incredible fish!

Had a dream that I caught a really big brown trout and put it in a cooler on ice. When I checked on the fish it had turned into a big sucker, but someone told me it's their natural defense against humans and it was just trying to get me to throw it back. I have ZERO idea how that dream came about, usually dreams are bits and pieces of things I have thought about or done recently put together in unusual ways, but this dream was just plain weird.

Someone saw me fishing with a swimbait (in stocked trout waters) and said "Son, what does the game warden have to say to you when he sees you using that thing since it imitates a trout?" and "It does have TWO treble hooks on it, and some of those game wardens can be quite persnickety"...How am I supposed to respond to that, the only thing you can't do in stocked trout water here is use 2 hooks with "bait" on each of them, or fish two rods at once.

My PB largemouth isn't that exciting because she live in my neighbors pond and I have caught her 3 times. But here is the pb smallmouth story.... I was kayak fishing a small river with my friend, and for my first time I was on a pretty decent swimbait bite, throwing an s-waver 168. I had landed a few 1-3lb largemouth on it so far, and then we came to a very deep, rocky pool. I threw a cast waaaay across it, and within seconds I had hooked into a nice bass. It jumps and I see it's a big smallie, but then I notice an absolute tank following it, trying to rip the swimbait out of his mouth! I landed the first fish, it ended up measuring 19" and weighed close to 3lbs if I remember correctly, this was my PB smallie...But the fish that had been with it was much bigger, so we paddled through the pool, and sat down to have lunch so the fish would calm back down. After eating lunch, I grabbed the swimbait rod and crept up on the pool, looking for the fish. I couldn't spot her so I sneaked in close and stood on a rock, waiting. Pretty soon she comes cruising down the pool, so I toss my bait way out in front of her and intercept her path. She starts to follow it and I give it two hard rips, she slams it and the battle was on! I charged out into the pool in chest deep water to get her out of the rocks, my friend also comes charging out with the net. After an intense battle nearly peeing my pants the entire time, my friend scoops her into the net and we went ballistic. Taped out at 23", significantly bigger than any smallmouth I had ever seen before in my life. Only weighed 4.2lbs but those river smallies are lean, mean, fighting machines. Released her and she is still out there waiting to make someone else's day!

First of all, I need to thank Sam for inviting me to fish and even giving up his seat in a boat for me, that is just crazy nice! There was a small "fun" tournament on the Hot Side of Lake Anna this Sunday, there were supposed to be around 15 boats fishing, but I guess everyone is afraid of the cold so there were only 6 boats that showed---no matter, I wouldn't have cared if I was the only one out there, I just came to catch fish! I got to hop in a bass boat and fish with someone, which was really cool since I have never bass fished from anything other than my kayak. There were definitely a few new and interesting experiences for me being in a bass boat... I started to eat some chips while we were running, and when I opened my mouth, my cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk----didn't see that one coming but should have. Even though it was an informal, fun tournament, I felt the pressure, that's the reason I don't have any photos, I didn't want my bait to spend any extra time out of the water! Just watching my partner fish taught me a lot, I had never done much with a spinnerbait or carolina rig before this, and I learned a lot about both of those while fishing. We had to wait until around 8 to launch, because with water in the 60s and air temps in the teens, there was crazy fog on the lake. It was so cold that until around 10am, after every 5-10 casts we had to dunk our rods and blow on the level wind since so much ice was building up. The fish were apparently not as active as usual, but we still caught plenty (at least 40 between the two of us, most only 1lb or so, but it's January so it doesn't matter!). Most of the fish were caught slow rolling spinnerbaits around riprap, docks, and windblown points. The other few fish came from deep water, I caught the biggest two (2.5#s each) of the day fishing a football jig uphill bringing it from 30FOW up into 10. We ended up with just over 10lbs for 2nd place, 1st was just under 13lbs with a 5lb kicker. Everyone else had under 8lbs. HUGE thanks to Sam and Dave for letting me come out and fish, my experiences on the water largely influenced my decision when I was asked to join a nearby high school bass fishing team and partner fish with someone this year, I'm really looking forward to it.

Bass who feed on minnows will be more likely to be a shallow ambush predator rather than a pelagic predator, since the schools formed by minnows (especially creek chubs) are much smaller than shad or herring schools, and minnows relate to cover for protection whereas shad do not. Same goes for bass who feed on members of the sunfish family. I would just follow the shoreline and work cover since that is the easiest thing to do (feeder creeks are always a good spot too). Very rarely will you find NO bass on cover, even if it is a shad lake when most of the fish are in open water chasing bait. I'

Can't deer hunt 24/7/365

This was the thumbnail for a video called "Finesse Bass Fishing in California"...

I catch them on deep diving crankbaits and blade baits a lot. Once I thought I had a huge cat on a 6xd, but it was a striper. Normally it's the other way around!

Cutthroat! You're making me jealous...Catch any?

Everything is frozen over, but not enough to walk on the ice, so I decided to use a canoe to spread my weight out (around 3" thick but I wasn't taking any chances). Tied a rope to a fencepost on one side of the pond, and tied it to a tree on the other side, I used this to slide myself back and forth across the pond. Ended up catching one trout and a few bluegills---not bad for southern ice fishing

I have a friend who was SURE he saw the MD state record LMB in a pond he fished. But we all know how that goes . Main issue is that he wanted to catch it on a fly rod.

I always feel like the absence of a trolling motor keeps the bass more at ease. There's no way they don't discover a relationship between a trolling motor and being caught/fished for

Detailed baby bass patterns

Largie: 24" No Weight Spro BBZ Jr. Trout Pattern Farm Pond in VA Smallie: 23" 4.2lbs S-Waver 168 Lite Trout Pattern Ummmm...a river in VA, it's public. Only been throwing them since May 2014...my "conventional" tackle is slowly disappearing and my "there are no fish in here that will eat that" tackle is growing. The bass are in big trouble this year