jomatty

the reason there are not as many knock offs as there are for senkos is that they are much more labor intensive and expensive to pour. senkos you just pour and done. aside from getting the right formula it is about as easy as a bait can be to pour. fat ikas you have to pour and then attach the skirt which takes a lot of time, relatively speaking. you also have to buy the skirts. this adds tremendously to the price of these baits and make them not feasible for most small operations.

in spring i almost always throw a 3x lizard. the 3x material is a pain but the action is incredible and the slow float is awesome. as the summer progresses i start using more subtle baits like centipedes and trick worms.

im another cavitron fan. im also with rolo on often prefering a soft plastic frog to a buzzbait these days. i like the ribbits the best.

if i possibly can i like to fish a tube with a jighead. there are exceptions but the only time i really like to t rig a tube is when pitching heavy cover. the death spiral of a tube with a jig head is just too inticing imo. the way i usually fish them is to make a long sweep of the rod tip and then let the tube fall on a slack line. long slow sweep and then try to make the bait fall straight down, not gradually arcing down.

i dont have a box specifically but i do make sure i have a few things that i consider panic lures. 4" senkos grubs on a jighead small willowleaf spinnerbaits basically if they wont eat a senko or a grub im in trouble.

i was in a similar situation yesterday but the wind wasnt nearly as bad as what you describe, although it was a factor. i caught most of my fish on a fat ika and some on a paca craw t-rigged with a 3/8th tungsten weight. seeing the fish was impossible but i could see the beds easily enough. i would fish the bait slowly on and around the beds and watch the line very closely. it can be tricky becasue they will pick it up and blow it out off the bed so quick.

im sure every jig fisherman has experienced a bite when he was done fishing the cast and reeling the bait int he last few feet. sometimes im not sure if this is a fish that is following the bait and then commits or if it is a fish that jsut sees this jig flying by and whammo. anyways this is what first made me think that swimming a jig was bound to work at least some of the time. a week or so ago i had a 3.5 lber nearly make me pee myself when it absolutely annhilated a jig right as i was bringing it out of the water. viscious strike. i was lucky enough to catch him, mostly because he ate it so deeply and my knee jerk hook set got the job done. matt

i usually dont go too crazy with matching the hatch but do think that colors can be important. for me it all has to do with visibility and contrast. if the water is murky i want a dark bait that the fish can see, and if it is clear im always gonna start with green pumpkin and need a pretty good reason to switch. i think you are right that with reaction strike bites it is less important. if you are crawling a jig along the bottom then color is important but if you are blowing it by his head around a dock then probally less so imho.

the first wave of bass are on the beds and i got a chance to get after them out at lake orange yesterday. Good day with a lot of bass caught, the largest few being in the 3 lb range. also caught a big pickeral that had my hopes up for awhile. reminded me of the post by KU about how the fight may not be as important as he thought it was. if it was all about the fight i would have tried to catch another big pickeral. i thought id finally got into a 7-8 lb bass but...lots of fun nonetheless. this guy was so big i thought it might be a northern pike, but after closer inspection of a hazy picture i dont think so. anyhow it was a good day with almost all bass being caught on a fat ika, and a few on a trap or a senko. i kept trying to get something going on a trap or a spinnerbait but the fish wanted slow so i spent my time blind casting to beds (the wind and clouds made seeing the fish pretty much impossible).

as far as being a mook goes if you have a sneaking suspicion that you might be...you are. its one of those things where if you have to ask, then deep down you already know the answer. for the record, i would have had to try it too!

there may be a major diff but if fish in my lakes will eat a rainbow trout swimbait then i doubt it is a major diff to the bass

sounds like an awesome day. ive taken my son out a few times this year and watching him catch a fish always make my day. i told him that if we catch the world record bass it might be worth a million dollars and every time he catches on over a pound or so he asks "dad is that the million dollar fish" priceless. he would be so dissapointed if he knew that the next world record is not swimming around in the pond on golf course

sounds like a blast. id love to go fishing with my dad, to bad he dosent fish and is a dick lol. im heading out to lake orange in about an hour or so for a few hours in a rental before ive got to get back to take over with my son. i would have invited you but i know you have school so we will have to do it again sometime soon. im probably gonna get wet but some cloud cover should be good today. got some new swimbaits and im going after a big one (even though it dosent seem like great swimbait conditions)

yeah id join if i could get the rain gear without the annoying year long "business trips" and all that training. lucky i got my army issue on ebay for next to nothing. thats how us wimps roll, keep up the good work, matt

break out the crocodile swimbaits and 18 inch lizards!!! you dont get many bites but the ones you do are bigguns!!!!

i have a 4 year old that often accompanies me when i go fishing. its been my experience that there is no way to stop the noise and trying to will make us both not enjoy ourselves. the best i can manage is to get him not to throw rocks in the water and play drums on the bottom of the boat (you can see that our outings are really strict). as far as talking and even yelling i for the most part just bite my lip and have fun anyways. does it hurt the fishing? imho it does 100% hurt the fishing. do we still catch fish? absolutely, plenty of them, and we have a better time if im not trying to get a kid to not act like one (i realize you never mentioned any intention of trying to change your childrens behavior just mentioning my experiences) i think my son would have a better time i didnt even bring a rod, and sometimes at the pond near our house i wont, but generally im too selfish for that it will be easier when he can tie a knot, hes only 4 now, matt

my son is only four but give him a couple more years and we will schedule the "sons of bas resource fishing tournament". should be a blast when all the pros get together. my sons latest thing is to refuse to use live bait unless they are "guppies" he catches in his little scoop net. pretty uppity for a 4 year old

it may in fact be quite a bit worse than eating them if it introduces a disease. the last thing you would want to do is to introduce a disease that wipes out a pond that you had stocked. that said i know a number of people who have done this with great success. are you sure there is an adequate food base for bass in this lake? if there are no fish in a pond you cant just simply put bass in there and expect them to flourish. they will not be able to get enough from frogs and snakes and lizards and such and need a ample food source like bluegill or shiners. gl matt

just wanted to mention that i placed a small order with brad and have nothing but good things to say about it. the merchandise was exactly what i ordered, which i knew it would be knowing his reputation but what really impressed me was the speed of delivery. i ordered early on friday and it got here this afternoon. now that is service. its nice that some people realize that folks want their order in a timely manner and i appreciate Brad getting mine out quickly. for those who shop online i just thought id mention what a good job he is doing, matt

there is no way you can tell whether the fish is a male or female unless you see them both on the bed and one is much larger or if the fish is very large. sure when you catch an 8 pounder its a female but when you catch a 2-3 lber there is no way to know whether it is a male or female. i love fishing for bedding bass, i immediately release them and often they shoot right back to their beds. matt

when i first started fishing i tried the snap with a leader idea and would tie the leaders onto the baits beforei went out. i found it was much more trouble than it is worth. keeping all of those leaders straight is a big pain. i would suggest just learning an easy knot like the palamor or uni and the more you tie them the faster you will get. also if you are going to use a snap with cranks consider using a snap rather than a snap swivel. matt

i have two set ups, one that always come along and one that is for when i think there is a chance of rain. the first are frogg toggs that live in my backpack and are there for emergencies. they are not one of the higher end sets and i dont like them very much. the hood is terrible and like lbh says they are kinda like wearing a garbage bag. they do however do a great job of keeping you dry. the higher end models may fit better. my gear for when i know there is a chance for rain is actually my hiking rain gear. it is a golite parka that is made of paclite gore tex and either north face gore tex pants or military issue gore tex pants that i picked up on ebay far a steal. the military issue pants are great although not nearly as packable as the jacket. im a big gore tex fan but if you really want to stay dry and have something breathable check out hte e-vent stuff, it is supposedly even better than gore at keeping you dry, although it is also even more expensive. matt

lol yeah at wallmart the other day they had 3x lizards and finnesse worms for .99 a bag. i bought around 35 bags and my wife looked like she was gonna throw up when she saw how many of the same things i had bought. it reminds me of a deal my friends father supposedly got. he was a renowned bargain hunter and one day he got back from the flea market with a lot of 20 pairs of sports cleats shoes. well unfortunately they were not pairs they were all left foot shoes. he knew this and supposedly said it was just too good a bargain to pass up!! never know when you might find a big lot of right footed shoes. the tackle store near my house has a consignment lot of zoom plastics for half off and some rapala lipless cranks and bandit baits and i had to buy a bunch of those too. how many 3/4 oz red rapalas does one guy need. answer: you cant have too many if the price is right lol

and while we are all flattering lightninrod id like to add that once again your pictures are great. you post the consistently best bass photos that ive seen at any of the forums ive been too. i would never go fishing with dan because then i couldnt say "no thats not what i look like im much skinnier in real life" because everyone knows he takes such good pictures. keep up the good work, matt

man i bet that was a mess lugging that bad boy in the canoe! awesome, makes me want to start looking for all the things ive lost, especially with my son. he used to have a tendency to throw things overboard. thats how i lost my nice sunglassess and ive been using cheap ones ever since. unfortunately that was in Smith Mountain Lake in 50 ft of water. i should go back though because it would be worth it to find my son, as i through his but out right after the glasses...