Cgolf

This is and has been the only fishing site I have been on for years. I hung out on the original riversmallies for a decent amount of time till it shut down. The reboot, I never got into and not sure if it is still around. Still look at walleye central, but since they had an issue I haven't logged back into that site. I don't disagree that it is the best fishing forum I have belonged too.

I wish I could go back to that. I do have shows I watch on TV, sports, oak island, skinwalker ranch, and a couple of sit coms, but as I get older I find I watch a lot less shows on TV. Unfortunately you tube has filled that void, but I generally watch informational stuff on there about my hobbies while doing other things, so not sure if that counts. I haven't watched national or even local news in over 20 years to try and preserve what sanity I have left;) It is sad though that the screens have so invaded my life that I hardly read anymore and I used to read 2-3 books a week. Trying to get back to that. I have a lot of great old fishing books I bought last year that I need to read.

Reading a lot of these posts, I am wondering if all of the negativity over on the cruise line threads that I follow is impacting all of my social media. It is not great over there and yet I still follow it lol. Just lots of changes and people venting about it. I want to clarify the mods and the rules thing. The rules work fine and I fully understand why it is done, but the exception is I wish the could make the PM section **** free, but having worked with programmers over the years I know something like that can be super difficult to impossible. I have never had any warnings or points against me so I have been good about following the rules. There was a thing a few years back, I don't remember what it was that I asked Glenn to delete my account. I am glad he didn't because I don't even remember what it was. I know from my daughter that being a mod is a thankless job. I also have no issues with how the site is moderated. If I could take back anything in my original post, that would be it. I wanted to make it generic and in doing so caused more issues. This is why writing stuff is so difficult, because words can be interpreted many ways we didn't intend. I see it at work all the time with certain people that take stuff out of context that others write and it goes sideways lol. I haven't noticed a lot of Ned rig/ midwest finesse threads lately, perhaps they are saving them for this winter;)

It is an issue with one mod in particular that some of their posts really come across odd to me. I don't want to give more info than that because the majority of that mods posts are really on point. I just wish the filter for certain sites was disabled in the PM section, because I have had people reach out to me about a site for example and I needed to work around the **** thing even in the messaging section.

I will admit to lurking multiple times a day:) Also if I lived that close to the slider company I would be broke;)

Right now I have been out of fishing since my shoulder surgery in July and expected to get the winter type blues and get back to posting on here, well it didn't happen. I don't know if its me, but I struggle to find threads that interest me enough to post. I will say that I have gotten into the everyday carry thing (no gun just gear) this year and that has been fun trying to finally figure out a way to carry all my daily crap way more efficiently. I have even done a few you tube videos on it. I will admit I have had a love hate relationship with this site and the rules and maybe a mod along the way. I get the rules and the reason for them, it just gets difficult when people are researching sites to see if they are ok to order from or certain products. I am also an analytical introvert, so my posts are usually detailed and I probably come across as a know it all lol which I know rubs some people the wrong way, but I can't write any other way, I have tried. So I have no clue why this is happening, maybe it is the lack of fishing blues that is dragging me down and not seeing the new SK Rage Hawk drop anywhere for black friday sales, cause wow does that bait look fit for a slider head while fishing reed beds.

Just did another order from 6th sense on their clearance page and saved on average 55% on 18 new lures. Bought on this sale in the past and have caught lots of fish on the lures, so don't think that they are seconds, or if they are the blemishes worked in my favor.

Well I ordered my Lure Parts Online late Tuesday night and I got it Thursday afternoon. Was glad that I was able to pickup some 1/8 ounce frames and some Indiana blades. Gonna try the painted blades next year, no idea what to expect there

For clear water it comes down to how much light is getting into the water. Overcast or choppy water red or darker colors generally rule. Sunny or partly sunny and calmer water smoke based colors seem to work a lot better. This has held pretty true over the years for me. One interesting thing to do is look at a gill out of the water on a sunny day vs an overcast day. Seems more silver in the sun and more green in the shade. That is my theory, which likely has a billion holes in it.

Right now it would be 6th sense. The Provoke got me hooked, along with their crazy sales on their site. It seems like every hard bait I get from them catches fish. Haven't tried their plastics, but they have styles similar to what I already use. A couple of years ago it would have been Strike King because of the RES, spinnerbaits, and Rage plastics, but it has shifted. For spinnerbaits though it is CMD Baitworks, the ones I make myself from frames I purchased. The name is only for when I gift them at Christmas:)

Thanks I think for this. I got a bunch of the cheap painted colorado and willow blades, indiana blades (double indiana spins aren't to common and produce well), my favorite blades minus the #5 that sold out. I did pick up some 1/8 and 1/4 bullet spin frames with the looped eye too even though not on sale. The 1/8 did well this year when the fish shut off on the way big 1/4 spins;)

Nope, they don’t work for me and aren’t very efficient. I like to fish fairly fast, and if I have to wait that long for a fish to bite I will move and look for more active fish.

The ones I made run a lot like a chatter bait, the back and forth is very pronounced. I did put a pretty big colorado blade on it, so that probably plays a role too.

What I noticed last year fishing deeper water is that the traps run a bit higher up than the RES and even the old rattle rap. My father in law was putting a hurting on me until I realized I wasn’t getting down to the fish. So depending on the situation that could be good or bad.

I have had very good luck with the little 1/4 oz RES including catching 45 fish on it one day on my fishing trip that included a couple of pike. The small bait is a nice change up when the fish are being picky and ignoring larger lipless lures.

I am guessing you will not care about this post, but for a lot of folks this gear gets them out fishing, because it is in their price range. They can’t afford superior gear like many on this board, but it gets a lot of folks started. That said I picked up an OT SB for under 4 on sale and the jerkbait was under 6. I tried both with stock hooks and the SB ran well, a bit shallow and caught and held fish. The jerkbait if memory serves was a slow floater and had nice action. I was gutted though when I lost it too a pike after like 10:casts. I had been boatside releasing them all week and the pike thrashed and I lost the pliers grip on the hook and he cut the line. I actually had high hopes for that lure. Will be picking up more of the jerkbaits for next year. Honestly I find a lot of the hooks just fine on cranks a lot of people change them out. I may lose a fish or two once in a great while, but since I am just fun fishing, it’s not a huge deal. I also find I lose fish on cranks that come with premium trebles too, I just see it as the downside to crank bait fishing.

It happens once in a while, even on baits I have made. If the swivel is gone, somehow the way the bass grab the bait it pulls it off the wire loop holding it on. The thing I have always found with War Eagles after switching from Strike King spins is that the lighter wire got me a lot more bites. There is a downside though, that they almost always have to be bent back to the proper shape. Now with any spin I either use a net or pick them up at the water line to limit the tuning that needs to be done. Boat flipping a bass is hard on spinnerbaits.

Yeah my biggest bass of the trip absolutely choked a 3.75" rage swimmer on a VMC Moon Eye jig, which was surprising since I was reeling it back. I will continue to work with swim jigs to build up some more confidence in them. I was also fishing them in reed beds which does mess with their angle of attack, but they really have only had that issue with ploppers, they generally find spinnerbaits just fine.

The Zman dark sleeper style bait has my attention. I would feel better spending that much on one plastic bait knowing it will hold up for many fish. The new Rage bait on a slider head would be really interesting to me. The Rapala Ned bait could be interesting if the new more durable plastic they are talking about will play well with all the rest of my plastics. I will likely try the Rapala Jerkbait since I have had good luck with the shadow rap series.

On a recent trip I fished a 5/16 Santone rayburn swim jig a little bit. I had a 4" Largo shad on it and it generated a lot of hits in a short time with only one fish landed. It is possible it was panfish grabbing the tail that were all the hits I felt, but I would like to think that some were bass. Was the issue that the trailer was too large and I should have went with 3" or 3.5" trailer? Over the years on this lake I have found that I have to trim my spinnerbait skirts even with the end of the hook to increase my hookup percentage. Could the northwoods bass just be a short strike group of fish?

This is an interesting lake. The biggest thing that will tank the number of fish I catch is the wind. This lake can an will get 90% unfishable. Luckily this trip I only had one day that I got two trips in. Some days I just have to adjust the baits I use due to the wind. The actual fishing this year was slow but consistent in a way. This was a year that the stars aligned weather wise. Pre trip I was expecting half the number of fish I caught to be a successful trip, little did I know.

I work in the sciences on the instrument design/test side so I have the engineering mindset and am very analytical. I also found I was wasting a ton of money on baits I don't use. So this has really helped me figure out my purchases and save money and storage space. I do find I don't fish to a certain number, it just helps me to analyze each trip, usually 4-5 each day we are up there. Right now I am in the process of boxing up lesser used plastics and putting them in the basement. After some period of time I will likely give them away. Will be doing the same with crankbaits too. I have been burned by giving baits away though when I finally figured out how to use them years later and then realized I gave them away. I am also strategizing my packing list for next year already lol. I get one to two week long fishing trips a year, so planning is part of the fun for me and cracks up my wife so a win win.

So on a recent week long trip I landed the most largemouths ever on that trip (taken yearly, yes I keep records of how many fish caught and how many fish caught on each lure along with trip logs with weather conditions. I honestly thought the previous record would never be touched. I have used this data to limit bad spends on tackle and to also learn what works over time. So leading into the trip I bought some baits like a flat sided squarebill and the newer flicker shad shallow 7 a week before the trip. The weather was not great all week with some storms and at least one cold front. I generally had to grind out the fish, only getting 2 strings of 5 fish on 5 casts and 4 fish on 5 casts. The interesting part was in one case I picked up on my father in law getting bit one night on a RES and my lipless happened to be a quake thud also started catching them. That night though, I have known orange craw is a good June color but my gut said go with the 1/4 ounce instead of the 1/2 ounce he was throwing. Sure enough the next day, I landed 45 bass on that bait and he got maybe 3 on the larger size. Once the bite slowed that afternoon I picked up a plastic again and caught 3 fish and I knew the lipless bite was over and went back to plastics. The last change that stuck out to me was on the last day it was quite windy so boat positioning was a challenge, especially with 2 people and I made 2 decisions that helped me get my PB fish count. I downsized my spinnerbait to an 1/8 ounce bait and picked up some bass on a spinnerbait bite that had disappeared, and then I made the decision to pick up the flicker shad after the plastics weren't even working and I pretty quickly picked up 11 bass, and it was really easy too, they were pretty much jumping on the bait. After I got a bass on my last cast and was letting my father in law finish fishing we saw the funniest take ever. He was using a smaller flicker shad that had gotten out of tune from pulling it off a reed. It basically barrel rolled back to the boat. We watched a short bass come up and take this lure that I honestly thought would repel fish. It was a nice way to end the trip with him getting a fish and it not being the brightest fish in the lake giving us a good laugh:) So has my experience helped me and I have grown as a bass angler, or did I get lucky? Heck is it a combo of the two. The above is the decisions that stick out in my head, but I made others each day as well.

I did that and got the craw tube which worked really well on my latest trip. Had to also buy a few other things to get to the 75 free shipping lol.

I am so glad I switched to slider heads years ago. Carry the light wire and heavy wires in a few different sizes and life is good. I have always wanted to go back and try the standard texas rig to see if it is better, but haven't found a need to.