RSM789

Exactly. When I went out this past Thursday, a T-rigged 4" Roboworm out fished a wacky rigged 4" Senko by a ratio of 8:1. That was an oddity, normally the ratio is closer to even, but the conditions that day dictated that the fish were striking an extremely slim lure as it dove towards the bottom (as opposed to fluttering down). It is a struggle for me often to not try to force the fish to hit what I think they should hit, but I catch a lot more if I just let them tell you what they want & how they want it. That said, there are more days than not when a 4" Senko rigged wacky style will load the boat, once the sun comes up & positions the fish in the shadows.

Ironically, those who fish fairly clean lakes would kill to have some visible slop to target...

Last year, 70% of the bass I caught were on T-rigged plastics & wacky rigged Senkos. I actually prefer to catch bass on moving baits, especially topwater, but the structure, cover & pressure on my home lake dictate that soft plastics will be most effective. If you bank fish, it makes even more sense to fish soft plastics. You are limited to what water you can reach, and usually a soft plastic gives you the best chance to catch any fish that may be in that limited area. That said, I fished a pond in Arizona last year that gave up 1 fish to a multitude of soft plastics, but over a dozen to a crankbait & topwater (including 4 that went over 4 lbs). Visibility in the water was less than 6", making those lures that made more noise more effective.

If it was a seagull, it would have gone after the sandwich you were eating instead of a fish in the lake. Then it would have circled back around & pooped on you. They seem to do it on purpose.

My home lake runs pretty much East to West with a majority of the coves on the north or south side of the lake. On Thursday, in some of the north coves, fry have already hatched & are hanging around docks (I assume the male, if he is still there, is under the same dock). In other coves, including those at the East or West end of the lake, I saw some males on beds, pretty shallow. On the coves on the south side, most of the fish are still on the outer points. Pretty textbook, except for our dock. It is on the south side of the main lake & a male built a nest about 3 weeks ago off a side that doesn't get much shade. Yesterday, there was a ball of a thousand plus fry moving in & out of the shadows. Apparently the bass that built that nest refuses to be part of a pattern.

For me, I tend to use poppers earlier in the spring and walking baits later and through the summer & fall. I tend to fish Zara spooks kind of fast, so it may be me more than the bait selection. Further, this is on a lake that isn't notoriously great for a top water bite. I typically use them first thing and the types of strikes (or lack of strikes) tell me a lot about the mood of the fish for the rest of the day.

My personal best went an even 8 lbs and measured an even 24". Apparently she liked to work with round numbers. She was set up about 15 yards away from a school of smaller (1 lb or so bass). I caught 6 of them in 7 casts and then after no strikes for about 3 minutes, cast to the side to see if they moved. I don't know if she was sitting there waiting for easy leftovers or was targeting those smaller bass themselves.

I played hooky yesterday to take advantage of the full moon & perfect spring conditions here in Southern California. Within the first 15 minutes, I had 3 short strikes on a 6" Roboworm, either nipping of the tail or pulling it off the hook. I switched to a smaller 4" worm, which solved the problem. As I went along, I had found that many female fish were positioning themselves on the outside edges of the docks & were hitting the 4" Roboworm on the drop. I came to one dock at the entrance to a cove and got a strike right at the corner of the dock. I swung, missed and found when I retrieved that the 4" worm had been taken off the hook. I re-rigged, cast to the same spot, another strike, another miss, another empty hook upon retrieval. I'm sure now that either a couple of male bass or large bluegill had set up shop there, but I wanted to be sure. I make a third cast with a 4" worm to that spot, get a third strike but this time connect on the hook set. To my surprise, it wasn't a male bass, rather a chubby 2 lb. female (I think). As she neared the boat, she jumped & shook her head. I thought I saw her throw the Roboworm off my hook & sure enough, I noticed it sinking slowly next to the boat. Then I noticed a second Roboworm also sinking next to the boat. I looked back to the surfacing fish & my 3rd Roboworm was still attached to the hook. The bass had thrown up the two worms I had lost on the previous 2 casts! I quickly scooped up the two sinking worms and landed the fish. I know the worms were mine, they had the crawdad scent I put on them still there, you could smell it. I don't know if she was the one short striking or if she was just hanging out nearby & swiping worms stolen of the hook by smaller bass & bluegill. Either way, she sure found those Roboworms delicious and was nice enough to return all 3 to me after she was done tasting them.

My sister got called by one of these scammers and when she asked for his name & position as identification, he responded (in a thick Middle Eastern accent) "That is none of your business, you wh**e". Wrong response to the wrong woman, he didn't get a word in edge-wise for the next 20 minutes. Just know that the IRS will NEVER, repeat NEVER contact you via phone. All IRS correspondence will always be via mail. **EDIT** - Let me make a clarification for Mr. "Nitpicky without an explanation" down below. The IRS will never initiate correspondence with you via the phone. Once you are in the middle of working on a particular situation, phone calls may be made. However, they will never be the primary way of contact.

Hey, it was kinda close. I even got wet from the rain & had to put on a jacket, that is real suffering. People around here were scared to venture outdoors, what with the temperatures plummeting into the high 40's. Very life threatening...

Hey, even one of the beach's here in Southern California was covered in white stuff yesterday, although it was hail & not snow. Google "Huntington Beach snow" for pictures However, it all melted in about an hour or so, it will reach the mid 60's today and this weekend the full moon will most likely have pulled the big females up on the nests. Well, at least I felt your pain for about 60 minutes...

A rude person would say you are the only male she ever said that to...

My twin sons will be 27 in a few months, so most of my memories of baby clothes has faded. I do remember that with twins, any trip to the mall takes 3 times as long, since every woman in the world stops you for a look. On the positive side, it seemed that any correspondence with companies selling formula or diapers resulted in a bunch of unasked for freebes. Also, take the advice about skipping the matching outfits. You can choose a certain color for each, which helps aunts, uncles & grandparents tell them apart... at least until the kids get mischievous enough to switch it up on you.

The last bass I kept was about 12 months ago & she has grown about 6" and looks like she has doubled her weight since then. No, I don't have a radioactive freezer or Jesus as a neighbor, she is living large in my koi pond. A diet of night crawlers, feeder goldfish and any critters my kids find has kept her fat & happy. She is aptly named Blutarsky and is now as big as our biggest koi. We think she may have even eaten a turtle, but can't confirm it...

Depending on the amount of cover in your lake, you may want to consider Berkley Nanofil. It is a no memory, low stretch super line that just comes off of spinning reels smoother than any other line I have used. If you are fishing around a lot of wood or other abrasive cover, it may not be the right choice, but in areas with less potential for line damage, I swear by it. I use 10 lb. & 12 lb. with matching test fluorocarbon leaders, have landed bass up to 8 lbs. and catfish (who grabbed my Roboworms or senko's) up to 15 lbs on it.

Skipping unweighted, wacky rigged Senko's (4" & 5") under docks is a go-to technique on my lake following cold fronts and during the middle of the day in the summer & fall. I want to be able to keep the rod as vertically straight to the water as possible all through the cast in order to keep the lure as low as possible. Many of the docks on my lake have clearance of 12" or less from the water or I am shooting a small gap between multiple boats & the more angle the rod has to the water, the more difficult it is to be accurate. I have also found that be keeping the rod as vertical as possible, backhanded casts & inside-out casts (like hitting a baseball to the opposite field) are easier to accomplish with accuracy. Therefore, I choose a 5', 5" medium heavy spinning rod because I fish from a pond prowler which puts me low to the water. If you fish from a boat with a higher hull a 6' 0" or 6" may work depending on your height. I prefer a spinning reel with the fastest ratio possible because a good percentage of the fish will grab the lure & swim towards you, making line pickup speed crucial. I used to have issues with monofilament & fluorocarbon eventually twisting up coming off the reel until about a year ago when I tried some Berkley Nanofil. That line flows off a spinning reel like butter. I know many people have concerns with its abrasion resistance, but I have pulled fish as big as 7-6 out from being wrapped around boat props with 12 lb Nanofil & a 12 lb. fluorocarbon leader. It may not be the correct line to work around areas with real nasty snags, but most docks in my lake are pretty clear because the boat owners don't want to foul their props. As far as horsing fish out from under the docks, I have found that many of the fish tend to swim out on their own anyway, at least until they know they are hooked. If I skip a particularly nasty spot and am worried about getting a fish out, I will often give the fish an extra five or six seconds before I set the hook. By that time, they have usually cleared most of the obstacles on their own & are pretty much in open water. Occasionally this does result in a gut hooked fish, but the method shown on this forum how you turn the hook around by going through the gill works like magic to remove those deep hooks.

"Hey Whitey, where's your hat" - Al Czervik

South of you (Orange County), it has been wide open for the past 4 weeks. We had multiple days of warm temps at the end of January & in mid February that kicked the water temperature into the 60's and it has been like that all month. I am looking forward to the full moon this Thursday, I am betting that with the weather pattern (3 days of warmer weather after a few rainy days) and the lunar cycle will push the biggest females into shallow searching mode. That said, I would guess that with the distance you are north of me, your March or early April will be like our February. I'm sure that WRB will have more specific info for you.

The lake I fish has water clarity in the 3-4 ft range and not a lot of snags, so I only have one casting rod with braid spooled on it (fluorocarbon on the rest). I have always used a fluorocarbon or monofilament leader depending on the lure I was using because I believed it made a difference. As I read this thread, I began to doubt that the leader makes a difference for moving baits, so I tried an experiment yesterday. I tied a KVD Series 3 crankbait directly to the braid. This is a lure that I typically always have tied on, even though I use it sparingly compared to the other slower moving baits that catch a majority of the bass for me. On an average day this time of the year, there are only a few locations where I fish a crankbait. I may make anywhere from 30 to 50 casts with it throughout the day, usually catching 1 or 2 fish, at the most 3 or 4. So yesterday, I used it in the same manner as above and caught 4 bass & 1 irritated catfish. By no means does this prove anything, for those fish were part of a 50 fish day, meaning the fish were willing to bite. However, it does make me realize I can catch them on moving baits with braid with no leader. Tougher days or slower moving baits may be a different deal, but I am now comfortable on my lake with no leader under at least these conditions.

It may be one of those situations where he likes the music and the main part of the chorus & is oblivious to the words of the rest of the song. I think most have us have had a song that we hummed in our head & later were astonished by the lyrics & their meaning. Either that or he hates Catholicism...

That is the thing that drives me nuts about cold weather fishing. Not only is is it slow, but the bites aren't even spaced out a bit to break up the monotony. All your catching is usually in a 10 minute window, the other 7 hrs & 50 minutes is nothing but trying to keep warm.

This story is about equipment, albeit not fishing equipment, but it still happened on a lake. My parents had a lake house when I was growing up and one day my older brother found a floating golf ball. He grabs my dad's 9 iron & hits the ball off our dock (which was covered with astroturf) into the cove about 80 yards away. We had an old surfboard there, so I paddled out & retrieved the floating golf ball. He hit it another dozen times or so, with me retrieving it until I told him I wanted to try. I climb out of the water, take grip of the club, swing...only to watch the club fly out of my wet hands out into the middle of the cove. I knew I was in big trouble, my dad really valued his golf clubs. Alas, my older brother did what older brothers are supposed to do, save the day. He paddled out to where the club entered the water & dove down (it was about 20 feet deep). Thirty seconds later he emerges holding the club. He said the air in the grip made the club literally stand on end on the bottom, making it easy to find. Dad was never the wiser.

I am going to wait for the 2.0 version. It sends a small robot up your line checking for nicks, chooses where to cut the line and then chastises you for fishing with monofilament...

6" Roboworm, Orange Crusher in winter & spring, Aaron's magic in Summer & Fall.

6 weeks after catching my PB, I caught one just 8 ounces lighter. What I liked was it was caught on a different lure, different technique, different location and different time of day than my PB. Nothing breeds confidence like knowing you are more than a one trick pony.