MIbassyaker

I think after so many decades of plastics that wiggle or flap on the retrive, there's a suspicion that if a bait doesn't do that it won't catch fish. The Ned Rig reminds me of nothing so much as the old Berkley studies with craw baits that showed bass would make the most strikes to plastic craw bodies when all the claws, legs, and other appendages were removed. IIRC, they didn't think anglers would buy something like that, so they didn't produce one for sale.

I wouldn't call it "needing a break" so much as temporarily losing the struggle for control of my life against all the other activities waiting in the wings to take over -- hiking, backpacking, biking, brewing, whitewater, landscaping and yardwork, concerts, movies...not to mention social life and family obligations and work... If I ever actually feel the need to take a break from a particular hobby, it means I probably really, REALLY need to take break now for my own health and sanity; otherwise I'd never get to that point.

If the art of catching bass was so simple that you could learn enough in three weeks to always catch fish, of good sizes, everywhere, most of us would probably be bored with it by now. One of the main things you'll need to work on is finding where the fish are in your waters, and understanding why they are there and what they're doing. How deep are they? What are they feeding on? What kinds of cover or structure features are they relating to? And, understand, sometimes the bass are just going to win no matter what you do.

Some baits really are poor quality, but nothing wrong with the ones you mentioned - Strike-king and Booyah tend to be excellent quality for the price, and I think everyone should have a rebel craw and an arbogast jitterbug somewhere in the tackle box.

I haven't tried the crazy legs, but I use the regular chigger craws all the time on a basic texas rig. The claws flap nicely with a little bit of movement. To be honest, though, most craw baits I've tried are pretty effective on a texas rig; I have a few favorites, but I haven't really noticed consistent differences in production. I don't intentionally wait to set the hook, but I'm usually fishing from a sitting position low on the water, on a kayak, and to get a good hookset I usually take a split second to reel down and turn my body to a better angle.

Wow! looks like a standard aglia blade. Pretty cool. interesting to see a swivel on the line tie, since Mepps have been advising for years (oddly, in my opinion) not to use swivels or snap-swivels with their in-lines.

I caught my first buzzbait fish ever this year on a 1/4 white/chartreuse cavitron. I've had buzzbaits of various kinds in my tacklebox for years, and would try them occasionally but never had any success. This year, I targeted buzzbaits as one of the lures/rigs I was going to work on, bought a couple cavitrons on the recommendations of people here, and I've had one tied on everywhere I go. I'm not throwing them constantly, but I've gotten to the point where, if I end up in a good position to buzz past some nice cover several times, especially if it's early or late, or a little cloudy, I'll go for it. and I've discovered I can get at least a blow-up pretty often by being more persistent than I used to be.

My wife went fishing with me exactly once, when we were dating, almost 20 years ago. She, her dad, her grandpa, and I, all in a little boat, puttin' the hurt on some bluegill and sunfish. She had fun, but has never expressed the slightest interest in doing it again, with any of us. Nowadays, when I fish with somebody else, it is with her dad and her uncle more than anyone, and with them it's always for walleye and crappie, never bass (although I always have a few texas rigs and topwaters to ready to throw to likely largemouth targets -- they just shake their heads when I catch one...they don't get it, and probably never will).

x2.

I have been using 1/8oz all summer at depths varying from 5 to 20 feet, and haven't yet felt a pressing need to change to anything lighter or heavier. I love this rig -- I grew up fishing a river for channel cats with live bait on a splitshot rig (with actual splitshot); caught all kinds of stuff with it, including my first ever bass, a smallie, on it. So the mojo version feels very intuitive to me. One problem we often had with the old splitshot rig was fish swallowing the hook. I used to think that was just the live bait, and probably was, to an extent. But my first couple times I tried the cylindrical-weight mojo rig with plastic baits, I noticed the fish were still getting very deep-hooked. I realized this might be because the weight was pegged, and maybe fish were taking the bait but not moving the weight, and I would only feel the strike when the weight moved. So I changed it to a "slip shot", with the weight freely-sliding ahead of a rubber bobber stop --I can now feel fish pull on the line even if they don't move the weight. And that has seemed to fix the problem for the most part. So here's my question: Is there a reason to peg the weight itself instead of letting it slide freely ahead of a stopper?

Sweet -- Coincidentally, yesterday morning I pulled out a jitterbug for the first time in a few years and used it for 20 minutes before sunrise as the sky was starting to lighten...Water smooth as glass --plop, ploopity-plop, plop...Splash! Just a dink, but nice to know they still do the job!

Alone. Most of the rest of my life requires me to be social. Fishing is the best way I have found to get away from people for awhile.

Whoa -- I had to Google "Choupique"! Bowfin! Natives up here call them "dogfish" (when I moved here, I had to Google that too!). I catch them on in-line spinners and crankbaits sometimes. Tough buggers with attitude.

Could be worse -- at least a strike and brief hookup is something. But, man, are they ever escape artists. River smallies have been skunked me this summer too, although I haven't been after them much. If I'm starting in the morning, I go top-middle-bottom in that order. I start with a tiny torpedo or try a buzzbait around wood or current breaks and edges of eddies if I can find them. Then I try crankbaits or flukes along the same kinds of edges. Then tubes or curly-tail grubs, or a 4" worm on a slider head, hopped along the bottom in the shade or into deeper holes.

Number of bass caught in my last 10 trips (3-4 hours each, over the last month): 5, 0, 1, 2, 3, 7, 4, 1, 2, 8 (not counting "bonus" pike and crappie) I'm happy if I catch one bass, and real happy if it's keeper-sized at all. Actually, technically, I'm happy regardless of what I catch, or whether I catch anything at all, as long as I got out of the house.

Really interesting thread, although I have no ambition -- an no interest, really -- in catching a record of any kind. I almost always fish solo, I have no livewell, and I will not ever keep a trophy bass, so I'm unlikely to ever have a fish certified for any reason, much less a world (or state, or whatever) record. But I am rooting for the rest of y'all.

This GenX-er narrowly avoided the urge to post something on this thread with nearly identical substance but less wit. And now I don't have to. Cheers.

That's a nice way to put it -- definitely the most important and consequential rig/lure I've learned.

Top/Shallow --> Mid --> Deep. And often (but not always) Faster --> Slower. The specific lure I use and how long i stick with it if I don't get bit depends on season, time of day, type of cover, water clarity, forage, prior experience with the body of water, confidence, whim....but I almost always start on top or very shallow, no matter where I am.

After 6 pages of this over 2 weeks, you really must share with us what you decided after all to order.

Glenn's videos on the Texas rig and the Mojo rig are a good place to start: http://www.bassresource.com/bass-fishing-videos/texas-rig-how-tips.html http://www.bassresource.com/bass-fishing-videos/splitshot-mojo-rigs.html

A couple mornings ago, I hit up a lake I had only been to once before. Last time I was there it was end of June. Back then, I caught fish around the edges of a big field of lily pads on a hollow-bodied frog and weightless fluke. The most recent morning i brought 4 rigs in the kayak with me: a cavitron buzzbait, a KVD 1.5 squarebill crankbait, a slip-shot/mojo-rigged 7" worm, and a texas rigged, pegged Havoc Pit boss. I started at 6am with the buzzbait. around the pads. Nothing. Then I went a little deeper with the crankbait. Nothing. I ran the pit boss over and down into the pads a little bit -- nothing. Then I went down around 10feet with the worm -- 2lber on the second cast. I stayed with that for the next couple hours at 10-15 feet deep, and caught several more before I had to get back home. Finding the right depth was key.

Meh. I used to watch a lot of fishing shows when I was a kid too, but on Youtube nowadays there is collectively more thorough instruction and much greater concentration of useful information per minute by DIY-ers than by any TV fishing show I've seen, then and now.

Bingo.

I tried a strike king KVD frog for the first time this year and had a lot of trouble with it. I think I hooked up only once. About half the time on the retrieve, I would find the rattle had gotten stuck back by the hooks preventing it from collapsing all the way. I tried bending the hooks up and out a bit and ended up breaking one of the hooks. Enough of that, I say.