jomatty

o rings work fine and before i started pouring i used them with good results. i usually dont bother anymore just because the baits dont cost me nearly as much anymore, but i had no problems with hook ups or action when i did use them.

i would absolutely love visiting the different lakes and spending that much time on the water but it could never work for me. i could not spend that much time away from my son. if most pro fishermen made more money i would consider it if he could travel with me and i could have tutor etc and do it right but thats just not the reality of pro fishing. most of those guys are lucky to make more than a 100k a year and even most of the well known guys dont make that much more from what ive heard. now KVD and IKE are exceptions and i assume they make the kind of money to take a family on the road if they so choose but most guys are gonna struggle to do this. dont know why im blathering on anyways as i doubt i would do it to my son anyways. thats the long answer. the short answer is not for me.

#3 but im having a lipless crank kinda spring so im biased

it caught my wife she thought it was the coolest thing she has ever seen. didnt catch anything on it but it actually looked good in the water. im reserving judgement as nothing else caught anything the day we tried it either but im still not overly optimistic. matt

t rigged and you probably will want to peg the weight. i would use something with a straight tail or a beaver type bait would be a good choice. this is also one of the few times that i will occasionally fish a senko with some weight, i prefer a screw in weight for this. the straight tailed worms will not wrap around the branches as much as the ribbon or swirl tail worms can. another option is any kind of creature bait.

what knots do you guys use for floro. i often use a palomar and have had no real problems although ive heard it can be a poor choice for floro as it can cut itself. i also use the uni and double uni some, specifically the double uni for drop shotting. i like this knot a lot it is just a real pain to tie. im sure everyone has their preference but lets hear em. is there anywhere that has tested the different breaking points of different knots with different lines? it would be cool to get a diffinitive answer to these sort of questions. matt

yeah i dont think that i necessarily need the extra hitch or whatever you call it but it does give me extra confidence and i have had knots slip when using braid before, although it was no doubt partly due to an imperfect knot.

jigs are great but like anything there is a time and place. one more thing i thought of was that if you are intent on fishing a jig in these conditions use a bulky trailer. something that floats like a 3x chunk would also help some. i still think that fat ika is gonna be the bet and that is what i would have tied on, although i might swim a jig with a grub a trailer.

a new trick that i discovered works ok is to heat the corkscrew with a lighter before attempting to thread the worm on. it dosent work that well but works better than not heating it. its a shame because i love the 3x on a shaky head and i love the spot remover for a shaky head. unfortunately it is just too hard to get the 3x to stay on that keeper so i use a bite me jig head when fishing a 3x worm on a shaky head

caught a few more fish swimming a jig with a speed craw as the trailer. fast becoming one of my favorite swimming jig trailers, although it will be hard for me to like something better than a simple single tailed grub for swimming. matt

tell us about your day, sounds like you caught em, which is impressive to me because i have a tough time in water that cold. what did you catch em on and any other details would be awesome?

go as light as you can if you are intent in using a jig. swimming a jig is another matter and that can work fine but fishing it in a traditional style in the scenario you describe is always frustrating for me. i much prefer a fat ika which will give the fish something jig like to look at but not stir up the bottom and burrow in as much. fat ika is one of my top baits for this bottom type.

ive posted about this before and never got a good accident. the only time i ever need to improve on a regular palomar is when using braid and what i do is... ok so youve made the overhand knot that you pass the loop through, pass it through, wrap it around, and pass it through again. i dont think this is technically a double palamor but i have never had this knot slip (or fail) when using braid). do not use this double hitch with floro or copolymer that contains floro or it can cut through. matt

owner makes good treble hooks and ive also had success with the mustad triple grips.

yeah thats the exact criteria i use to identify spring

sounds like a plan!!

john you did catch one. he was arond 200 pounds. not that long but looked healthy and and fat (j/k inside joke) i had a great time and enjoyed the company, although the fishing was slow. i will definitely be in touch about heading back out. we will definitely have to do this again. this was the first time fishing with a bass resource member and it was a lot of fun. great way to exchange ideas, learn a little something, and most importantly have fun fishing. John had it a little tough today as i was in the front of the boat, although he is such a class guy that it didnt seem like he minded. i also got to meet his dad who also seems like a great guy. im looking forward to doing it again, matt

found a little more info on these guys. at one site it says they can survive in aquatic environments with fish because they give off an odor when preyed upon and upset fish stomachs. makes me think that something with a different color pattern would be better in this reservoir as there are so many of these newts around. there are literally so many that my wife was getting frustrated fishing her fat ika and said "how am i supposed to catch anything with all these lizards all over my bait" and it was true almost every cast there were newts on her ika. we are guessing that they might be trying to mate or something. matt

i fish a reservoir that is filled with newts. there are a bunch of them all over the place. my natural first choice was to throw a lizard, and a green pumpkin with red flake matched the hatch almost perfectly. unfortunately i got no action on the lizard and went back to senko and fat ika in the same color pattern and had success. i read up on these newts online and it said that they give off a foul odor when attacked. my son had one in the fishtank and i never smelled anything foul but im thinking that maybe these newts are not a good food source for bass. even if they are a food source it seems other things may work better jsut because there are so many of these buggers around. kinda like throwing a lure that prefectly mimics a 1 inch shad into a school of 10,000 1 inch shads. just curious if anyone knows if bass do not eat some newts or what might be going on? for those that are curious the species is the red spotted newt. matt

you can rig em on a ewg hook with a bullet sinker but i think the best way is on a jig head. i like to rig em on a football head/or just about any other head and fish them with long slow hops. good smallie bait around here. i let water clarity be my guide as far as colors go. matt

it dosent mean that it performs actual tricks in the water. you have to put em on the corner and they will turn tricks and make money for you all joking aside, they are a very versatile bait. fish them weightless as others have suggested, on a jig head, t-rig, c-rig whatever. its a straight tailed worm and can be used anyway that you would use any other worm. matt

wacky senko, shaky head, and jig is about all i ever throw under a dock.

after watching a few of the tournaments recently it got me all jazzed up to try to make a swimbait. unfortunately i dont really know how to do it but would like to avoid pouring two halves and then gluing and painting etc. what i would like to do is make a mold and then just be able to pour them the color i want and then use minimal paining to get the look i want. i also was interested in making a bait that did not need any additional weight. i was thinking about salting it and thought that even a bait that was small by swimbait standards would be plenty heavy. the big question to me is if they will run true without a weight in the head. excuse my ignorance as i know almost nothing about swimbaits, so any help would be very much appreciated. i was thinking that a shad modeled bait, with or without the indentions on the side that are featured on some baits would be cool. i was thinking that i could use some sort of big hook rigged with a stinger might work. matt

no one else has any advice on how to use these?

as soon as i saw this post i knew it was gonna get folks fired up. dosent matter how many times it occurs this topic always gets people going. anyways for me the senkos just have more wiggle and shimmy. i too found them too expensive and combat that by pouring my own. of course they are not senkos but i find that the only bait that is soft enough, other than senkos, is a hand pour. thats not to say i havent caught many fish on the knockoffs. in fact ive never fished any knockoff that didnt catch fish. rw if you read this could you answer one question? when fishing the 6 inch senkos do you find you catch more big bass or just less small bass? i suppose that if you cant keep the small bass off the hook it will be hard for the big ones to get a chance at it but im wondering if it is that the 5 inch does not apeal as much to the big bass or that the 6 inch dosent appeal to the smaller bass? matt