MIbassyaker

Isn't "all-time best" contrary to the whole idea of something being a gimmick? I've always been partial to the "Dance's Eel." I still have a 25+ year old original version taking up space in a tackle box. It always looks like it ought to catch fish, I've just never been able to get a fish to agree...

I think i've posted an answer to some version of this question about 4-5 times since last summer, and it might have been different each time! Current answer: 1. 3/8oz cavitron buzzbait, black blade, black skirt 2. KVD 1.5 squarebill, bluegill color 3. 5" green pumpkin GYCB Senko, for wacky and weightless t-rigs 4. 7" Black Berkley Power Worm, bullet weight and hooks for t-rigs 5. 6.5" Zoom trick worm, green pumpkin, for shakyhead, and mojo rigs. Just missing the cut this time: Ned rig, Pop-R, Rapala original floating minnow, flipping jig with rage craw trailer.

x2 on the Black/Black Cavitron...my new favorite after using it a lot this summer. But my long-standing traditional favorite is a chrome heddon torpedo (actually prefer the 1/4oz tiny torpedo)

#2 Mepps Aglia, Red and White blade, undressed.

I assume the Pro Qualifier usually goes on sale during the classic, is that right? What kind of markdown is typical?

That's pretty sweet -- a friend with a new outdoor store. For $25, no reason to not just get it and try it out for awhile. If it doesn't work out, keep it for frogs/jigs/punching/heavier stuff, and spend some time shopping around for something more appropriate.

I have been catching bass and other fish with crankbaits -shallow, deep, light, heavy, whatever --with spinning gear since I was a kid, with no obvious problems. In fact, I have never fished with a baitcaster, although I did buy my first three this winter. I've been messing around with them in ponds pre-freeze, and practice casting & pitching into the snow in the back yard post-freeze. One of the rods is a cranking rod, which I'm going to try to convert most of my cranking duties to. Maybe once I get back on the water this spring, I will "see the light" and decide everything other than "finesse" should always be thrown on a baitcaster. Maybe. Maybe not. We'll see. But suffice to say, If I've been doing it wrong all my life, the gods have not yet seen fit to let me know.

Chatterbait for me, but I haven't given them much of a chance (too many baits competing for my attention!) Before this summer, my nemesis was a Buzzbait -- always owned a few, but never so much as a blow-up, so I just ignored them most of the time. All it took was revisiting them with a little extra patience this last summer, and BAM! All of a sudden, I couldn't keep bass (and pike) off them, all the way until I hung things up for the season before the freeze. One even produced a new PB. I might not go anywhere anymore without a buzzbait tied on now. Here's hoping I can do the same with a Chatterbait/bladed jig in 2016.

The articles here are great, but I like browsing the forums more than anything else, and seeing questions, answers and tips from a wide variety of perspectives....there is a powerful "wisdom of the crowds" effect at the forums here that I don't see other places: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd

I'm too young for 70's BPS catalogs, but I remember getting them as a kid in the 80s. I used to flip through them over and over, dreaming of one day owning every worm in every color... a dream that, to this day, goes unfulfilled, but not for lack of trying...

People around here seem to have consistently good things to say about the value per price of the various Academy H2O products. No Academy stores where i live, so I had never heard of any of the H2O things before I started hanging around these boards.

Huh. I like the look of that. I have rigged plastic craws backwards, but not with the weight down like that.

4 inch black curly tail grub on simple round jighead. Pick a random weight head between 1/8oz and 3/8oz, and I'll make do. Can be thrown on spinning or casting, will catch almost anything, almost anywhere. Runner-up #1: in-line spinner, silver blade, undressed treble. Runner-up #2: original floating rapala F09, silver/black-back

I often wonder if other humans see and interpret colors as I do. In the end, it doesn't matter though: we can still agree that a thing is "orange" whether or not we see it exactly same way. What matters is the ability to distinguish it from other colors. And bass are demonstrably capable of distinguishing the same basic colors from each other that we can. A bass may not see orange as you do, but the idea is, whatever it sees when it looks at something orange still bears some similarity to what it sees when it looks at, say, a bluegill's throat.

I don't actually think color matters very much, most of the time. I think on occasion bass will dial into particular color patterns related to particular forage in particular conditions, but from my own experience and from the published evidence I've seen, it's very situational, and other aspects of presentation (depth, speed, size, movement, general visibility) tend to dominate most of the time. Again, it's not that color doesn't matter, just that it doesn't matter as much as most other things, most (not all) of the time. But quite a few bass forage species have distinctive orange highlights -- bluegills and pumpkinseed sunfish have orange throats, yellow perch have orange on their pectoral and pelvic fins, craws in many places have orange coloring, especially undersides and claws...If bass are going to key in on color patterns indicative of quality forage at least some of the time, I would expect an orange belly would be a good candidate pattern for that, in many places.

The 1-2 punch!

Question! I've decided I want to upgrade a medium spinning combo with an Avid X. I bring only a few rods (5 max) at a time with me on a kayak so I usually need them to serve a few different purposes. Here is what I'll use it for: 60%: wacky rigs, weightless and light t-rigs (flukes, ribbontails) 15% tubes, grubs, paddle-tails 15% Small topwaters 10% Jerkbaits I'm looking to choose a length and action that will give me the best balance of functionality among these uses (I can split duties with the current rod, but it's not very sensitive). Leaning toward the 6'8" MXF -- does that sound about right? Will I wish I had gone with a longer rod (the 7'0") or a fast action instead of XF, for some reason? Or, since St. Croix has a reputation for being more powerful than their ratings, should I consider an ML power instead of M?

Whatever colors you'd use for jigs and/or craws in your waters, I suppose. For me that's anything with a base of black, pumpkin, green pumpkin, or watermelon.

I put them on any jighead that fits, 1/8 to 1/4. Try the 5" on VMC swinging rugby head. The 4" I just put on whatever lead roundhead I can find. As much as I fish a finesse C-rig similar to what WRB mentions above, (mostly lizards, worms, smaller brush hogs), I haven't tried a hula grub on it yet...I'm sure it would be great.

Jeez, you florida guys! Rub it in some more, why doncha!

My biggest of the year is a current PB: 5lb 2oz largemouth on a 3/8oz Megastrike Cavitron Buzzbait, black blade/black skirt.

That screams "pike magnet" to me.

Easiest. Question. Ever. http://www.siebertoutdoors.com/

I dig a 3.8 fat on a hornet underspin. Whatever color looks good to you is the right one to use.

My uncle's backyard, just across town from our house growing up was just loaded with crawlers! My brothers and I would go over there and hunt them with my cousin, exactly as you said -- trying to slosh around carefully after a rain with a flashlight, competing who could get the biggest one or the most. We were never careful enough or knowledgeable enough to keep them alive and fresh very long, though.