youngangler274

thanks guys for the info! hopefully I will get out there in the next few days and get after em. Ill keep yall updated!

Been really tough here lately in Southern Wisconsin. Ice finally got off most of the lakes a few weeks ago. Temperatures have still been pretty low with it dropping below freezing most nights and averaging around 45ish degrees during the day. Wind has been blowin real hard as of late but the past few days it has finally let up enough for me to get out. In the two days I have been out I have failed to connect with a single fish or even get a bite. Today I was out for 6 hours total from 7 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. without so much a sign of a bass anywhere. Originally thought maybe they'd still be on their winter patterns. So I tried deep water, rock piles and brush piles with nearby staging areas and spawning flats using small jigs, drop shot, ned rig with no success. next I tried some staging area like water, shallow ledges, drop offs, Islands near flats using a wide variety of baits also with no takers. Finally just to give myself peace of mind, I tried some skinny water (3ft average) channels, docks mixed with laydowns, rock, again with no takers. Somebody give me some hints or tips here! I have no Idea what to do at this point then hope the fish get into a better temperament soon.

Never had that happen to me personally, but if that does concern you then I would suggest switching to a plastic bead instead. otherwise you could peg the weight down on the bead so it cannot come back down hard on the glass bead but this would essentially be the same as pegging the weight to the head of the plastic anyways. Just my 2 cents, experimenting is never a bad thing and your mileage may vary. - tight lines

Be careful using tungsten weights with glass beads! the tungsten is hard enough that if the tungsten weight has any room to slide up and down the line, when it comes back down on the beads it will break them!

least it wasnt still walking when you hit it, I can tell you from experience that is quite messy

Thanks for the reply, email is on the way.

So first a little back story on me so you all can judge how capable I am for trying to pull this of. I am 16 years old and have been bass fishing for going on 2 years. I am the sole proud owner of a 1997 ranger r72 sport that I work and pay for myself, and fish 3 - 4 times a week when possible. I have numerous rods of varying companies and so I feel that I know enough about good rods to be able to judge what is right and good for one that I custom build. Now on to the reason for this post. My mother has been starting to fish with me more and more and she is getting much more into it. She doesn't know much about different techniques and such, I usually just hand her a setup and explain what to do and she fishes it. Normally this ends up being something along the lines of a wacky rigged worm or texas rigged plastics. But she has started to comment on how different rods I hand her feel. She has said things like "this one is too long and hard to cast". or "this rod doesn't bend enough and I cant cast it as far". So for her birthday (which is coming up: August 25) I want to either build or buy her a custom rod. I have narrowed down the specs for it. It needs to be a 6'6" M-XF rod with split grips. I would like to make it mostly greyish silver with some orange mixed in as she is a survivor of kidney cancer and orange is the color for kidney cancer. So what do you all think? Do you think I can knock out a decent build before august 25th or do you think I need to buy a pre built rod? Any help or advice is helpful thanks!!!!

I literally just take whatever small fabric bag I can find. Such as a small cooler, or a small utility bag, anything that can hold a decent amount of plastics bags. I keep all the plastics in their original bag and I just dump the plastics in the cooler type delio. One of the medium gandermountain soft tackle boxes work well, they are on sale often and come with 3 plano style boxes.

thanks for the advice!! I will most certainly try this out on my next attempt. Thanks again!!

Hello, I am young anger from Madison Wisconsin. I do not currently have a boat, and I am wanting to start fishing tournaments. I am 16 years old and I live on the east side of Madison although I will most likely be moving to the deforest area. I am looking to start fishing tournaments and competing in this great sport. Since I am a non boater I would obviously be fishing as a co-angler. I have been fishing for most of my life but I have been targeting bass specifically for most of this year. If you have any information or if one of you is a part of club near me, please let me know. Thanks for your time - Jacob

I fish out of a kayak, So I don't think I am making that much noise. From what I have seen the lake is pretty much untouched by fishing boats of any kind. I have seen one or two fishing boats out of all the times I have been out. As far as what they are feeding on, I am honestly not sure. By soaking do you mean letting them sink to the bottom, or what? - thanks for the reply

the boat launch over on sandy beach is a decent one, haven't seen any of the others yet. There isn't much for structure on rock lake, nor is there much for weeds. I have actually been going shallow towards the shore, and sight fishing with wacky rigged stick baits and other such things. the water is crystal clear once you get away from the swimming areas and you can see fish as deep as probably 8 feet down. I caught probably 8 or 9 nice sized large mouth using this tactic. It might now work for someone in a boat, but because of the kayak I can glide almost right on top of the fish and they never spook, it makes it near impossible for me to miss a hook set because I can watch the fish eat the worm haha. Right off of rock lake is a place called marsh lake, and in there there is an abundance of Lillie pads and such, and I have been told it is great for frogging and top water presentations. There are a lot of fish in rock lake, it is just kind of difficult to find them because there isn't much for the conventional "find the weeds or trees" approach to locating the bass.

I just recently got a fishing kayak, so that has helped a lot. I have been getting good results on lake Monona, and Rock lake in Jefferson. That's nice, its always fun when young kids get something on their line and get excited.

this is awesome! I am actually currently looking into pushing to get one started in my high school this winter so that we can be good and ready once the ice thaws (yeah, I live in Wisconsin, and the ice will be on the lakes before we know it). I don't think it would take a lot of convincing of the school, I just don't know how many people will be interested. I have a couple of friends that fish with me all the time, but apart from that I'm not sure who will want to participate.

yeah this is what I was afraid of, if they are carp, they are probably hurting the bass population.