MIbassyaker

Power Worm finds a pair of 18"s hanging out on the weedline, around 12 feet: 3.38lb and 2.93lb respectively, best of 7 this morning

I would be willing to bet the difficulty has very little to do with lure choice and lure noise, and much more to do with not finding and hitting productive spots. If you're stuck on the bank, you usually have to move around frequently to be successful, stay low and stealthy, and choose your casts carefully. You're much more likely to be spooking fish by casting a looming shadow than by using a noisy lure. Bass can tell the difference between different sounds; a vibrating chatterbait sounds like food to them; it doesn't really sound like danger. I would think more about what kind of spots do you choose to cast to? What is there to hold fish? How long do you try one spot before moving on to another? How deep are you fishing, and how fast? How close to the bottom? I would worry about those things first before splitting hairs over the exact lure type or color or noise. Is there vegetation, sunken trees and laydowns, or hard cover like docks, rocks or riprap? In murky water, bass will often stay very close to cover elements like these. If there is a lot of cover right on the shoreline, bass could be right there, much closer and shallower than you may think. You can cover the bases pretty well with 2 or 3 baits -- something you can fish vertically, at multiple depths or on the bottom (jig, texas rig, ned rig), and something you can fish horizontally, through an area or past multiple spots (crankbait, spinnerbait). In murky water, I like bright colors, like chartreuses and oranges, but it tends to matter less what the lure looks like than in clear water.

See, this is why I never take selfies

I was expecting a typical midsummer morning of topwater & plastics. That turned out to be a little bit right, but mostly wrong. 3 hours in, I had gotten exactly three bites: a couple of buzzbait dinks and a 2lb frog fish: I had seen basically no surface activity. But nobody wanted a worm or jig on the bottom either, at any depth. Nor a senko, a flipping craw, a chatterbait...what to do? A warm, sunny, dead calm July morning doesn't exactly scream "spinnerbait" to me, but why not? Maybe the sun flashing on the blade could get me a reaction bite or two... Well, that did it - the SB produced 8 more bass over the next hour before I had to leave, all keeper size (14") or bigger including this 2.30lb and 3.00lb: (That's a 3/8oz Pepper Baits Bleeding Bluegill gold double willow...today's hero) When in doubt, try something out!

Wowza! The power worm strikes again -- congrats!

Finally, after a month of obligations and other distractions, I was able to get back out this morning, and was greeted within three casts by this 4.59lb, who could not resist a Duo Pencil 100: Unfortunately, most of its friends had no trouble resisting anything I threw for the next 4 1/2 hours, aside from four others in the 12"-13" range. At one point a juvenile loon showed up and hung around my area for awhile. Eventually a parent (I assume) swooped in, warbling, and promptly escorted it away:

For the past 10 years or so I've kept track of a little more than 40 bodies of water in my area that I spend time on, and fish in sort of a rotation. I've been recording catch rates and sizes of bass per hour of effort on each one. Any place where I don't catch bass of some quantity or quality, I have tended to stop visiting. But of all the places I've been more than once, the one lake where I have the lowest catch rate per hour, and where have been skunked the most often, is also the one with the highest average size -- it's also my second most-visited.

This 4.18lb slurped a pumpkinseed Pop Max a little after dawn this morning. Best of 8 before I had to go at 10am.

All soft plastics outing? Not at all unheard of. Starting Lineup: GYCB Senko, weightless, t-rigged GYCB Hula Grub + 1/4oz Title shot jig Keitech Swing Impact fat + 1/4oz Owner flashy swimmer Rage Space Monkey, t-rigged, 1/4oz bullet Zoom Trick Worm, 1/8oz Owner finesse ball head. Coming off the bench: Rage Cut-R worm Zoom Super Fluke Zoom Lizard 7" Berkely power worm 4" Berkley power worm Ned Rig (Z-man TRD)

It's been awhile since I've caught one of these guys! A good one, too -- look at that belly: ...and followed it up with what I'm sure is my PB White Crappie, at 14", 1.43lb (perspective in pic is a bit distorted, and doesn't do justice, but that was the measurement). On the other hand, the bass this morning were somewhat less interesting than the bycatch, with the biggest of 9 at 15": Other than 3 of the bass, everybody ate the same bluegill-pattern Siebert Fogy bladed jig.

Junebug/Chartreuse!

Little TW Memorial Day order:

Little Memorial Day TW order came in:

Spent a few hours at Big Pine Island Lake, notable for being where the MI State Record largemouth of 11.94lb was caught........in 1934. Like everyone else who has fished Big Pine in the 89 years since, I did not catch a state record. Still, as lakes for the area go, it fishes OK. I caught nine, including this 3-pounder as the sun had just begun peeking through trees: And a couple of not-yet-3s: A weightless Zoom super fluke did most of the work.

Interesting subject. I'm going to be totally unhelpful and say I don't fish smaller rivers until July-August, when I know how to find productive spots. I seriously do not know how to find river bass earlier than that.

I always find it difficult to pinpoint what people mean by "clear" water. Most of the places I fish have visibility to about 10ft, sometimes more, sometimes less. The murkiest water i fish has about 1 foot of visibility: Muddy river, or algae-stained natural lake in late summer. The clearest is probably 20' or so, but hard to tell without systematically measuring it, which I haven't done. As far as I can tell, the biggest effect of clarity for anglers is that when bass can see farther, the visual things that might spook them -- looming objects, shadows, fast movements -- will do so from farther away; thus, anglers should pay special attention to things like sun and boat/craft position. Avoid casting a shadow where you want to target. Theoretically, visibility first determines whether a bass notices, and is willing to investigate your bait. A big looming shadow may shut down investigation. Any bass you can see, can also see you, and you are more conspicuous than they are, especially when you move -- bass have excellent visual perception of movement; it's probably one of their main hunting skills. Other factors like bait size, profile, and color (probably in that order) come into play after a bass has committed to investigation, and help determine whether they strike. Water clarity just makes these factors a little more important than they are in murkier water. Most natural prey species for bass are around 4 inches long and have a long, thin shape -- think baitfish or crayfish. So downsizing to, say, a 4" worm rather than a 7"+ worm may occasionally help in clear water. Also, the faster something moves, the less its shape matters, and the more typical the shape, the less it's movement matters. Simply deadsticking a worm, for instance, is famously productive.

Another vote for Zoom. The price is right and they get bit.

Oh good grief! I did it again!

I'm having trouble understanding what makes this concern an ethical one as opposed to just a concern about social norms. If I want to know about ethics, I ask, what is the harm vs. benefit. Who is harmed, and how, by the act? I don't recognize any meaningful sense in which spots on public water can be "stolen" -- that is, harm via loss from theft of property does not apply. If I spend time and effort to locate a spot, this does not mean the spot is my "property". Nobody should spend time, effort, and other resources to find a spot on public water with the expectation that they will have it to themselves. The expectation is by definition, wrong and unreasonable, and there is no ethical problem to violate it. Even a local guide who makes a living putting people on fish, surely does so with an understanding that common knowledge is a natural hazard of public water -- a cost of doing business, as it were. If the guide is well-known, that implies they are successful, and thus the magnitude of harm for fishing their spots is likely minimal anyway.

yeah, that's probably what was going on this morning where I was too. There's a 20 foot drop a little behind me in that pic -- I worked it at about 6-12' with a lizard for a little while but gave up quickly because...well, what can I say? bites are addictive, and I was getting bites shallower.

...and 30 min from the center of the 2nd largest city in the State. If @Mbirdsley is the king of 2 pounders for Central MI, I'm the king for Western MI!

A representative catch from this morning -- a dozen cookie-cutter 15"-17"ers about like this one. My favorite little lake in my area -- publicly accessible only from a creek, which can be carry-down launched 1/2mile upstream from a minor gravel road out in the middle of nowhere, . Only rarely do I ever see anybody else on the water here.

He's back! I had to check your profile to see how long it's been since you were active -- 6 years!

I have too, and they've been good, and reliable. I seem to remember they were even a BR sponsor briefly a few years ago.