soflabasser

I have been to Jamaica, it is a beautiful country but you have to be careful where you go. Stay inside the tourist areas and avoid going to the bad parts of town. I highly recommend you visit Dunn's River Falls which is one of the best places to visit in Jamaica.

A good lure for hybrid stripers is the Bill Lewis Rat-L-Trap.

Crankbaits, jerkbaits, spinnerbaits, paddletail swimbaits, and ned rigs are good lures to use for river smallmouth bass fishing.

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I hope you guys are taking care of yourselves in the heatwave we are having. It does not matter how strong you are or you think you are, you can still be a victim of heat stroke. A 32 year old former NFL player recently died from heat stroke. He was 6'3'', 315 pounds, and was in the Super Bowl.

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I cut off any line that shows signs of abrasion and fill my spool with line when needed.

Would like to see someone catch a 8 pound or better bass from public waters with that hollow belly spider. Will not pay attention to any private water bass since many of those bass will hit anything. Let's see the real customer reviews in the next couple months.

Thank you @Choporoz. I believe most of us in this forum enjoy bass fishing and do our best to safely release bass. Studies have shown that catch and release fishing is very effective and there are many cases where a bass gets caught multiple times. There are certain organizations that would love nothing better than to make fishing illegal and I won't be surprised if they are reading this thread. I plan on fishing for the rest of my life and will continue eating meat which includes fish.

1. Make sure to stay hydrated and drink plenty of water. 2. Fish in the shade and avoid fishing in full sun if possible. 3. Protect your skin since the ultraviolet radiation from the sun is more dangerous than the heat. 4. Try to fish during the morning, late afternoon, or night and not so much during the middle of the day. 5. Leave early if you feel any signs of heat exhaustion. 6. Release bass quickly since they will die easier in warmer weather compared to cooler weather. 7. If you are going to keep a legal sized bass ice them immediately so they do not spoil. 8. Hollow belly frogs, spinnerbaits, and trick worms are good lures for Summer bass fishing.

Try fishing with a Shimano Stradic, they are great spinning reels.

Good to know! I will consider using stone rollers if they are available the next time I fish up north along with creek chubs. I hear gobies make great bait for big smallmouth bass as well but not all states allow you to use them.

They only care about making lots of Youtube money and do not care if they are giving a negative influence to children. They have potential to be positive role models for the fishing community but instead choose to stay true to the name they gave themselves. Googans will be googans and not much you can do to change that.

You can replace treble hooks with single hooks if you are concerned about getting hooked at night with treble hooks. Make sure to have a good light source to see better when removing the hook. If that is too much work for you then you can always stick to single hook lures with the barb bent down or barb removed.

This is the silliest thread I have read here in a long time. To answer the question yes it hurts a fish to be dropped but so does hooking it in the mouth which is how most people catch bass. Just be careful when handling bass and it will be rare for you to drop one. Quickly release the bass or keep it to eat if it is legal size.

Do stone rollers stay alive longer on the hook than creek chubs or they just prefer them much more in your area? In Florida wild golden shiners are better than tank raised shiners.

Bass will bite the same lures at night that they bite during the day.

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That fish is a beauty and you should be proud of catching it, especially if you caught it from public waters. I would say that bass is somewhere around the high 7's to low 8 pound range. As for keeping it alive I have released several bass bigger than that one and none have died even though I got length, girth, and weighted on scale pictures of those fish. There are times I only measure them if they are over 24 inches and even then I only measure the length of the bass and release them as soon as possible. Fishing in the Summer is risky since post delayed mortality increases with increased water temperature so I try to target big bass in the late afternoon/nightime and leave the daytime for other species that can handle the heat better.

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Nice bass. Next time measure the length and girth to get a close estimate of the weight of the bass. Use the following formula to get the weight estimate; Length X Length X Girth / 1200 = Estimated weight of bass in pounds You can use a piece of fishing line to measure the length and girth. Best choice is to use a accurate scale but using the above formula is better than guessing a weight.

I am surprised nobody here mentioned creek chubs for trophy smallmouth bass. I got an old smallmouth bass fishing book that has a whole chapter on trophy smallmouth bass fishing and it specifically says live creek chubs and other similar sized live bait is the one best ways to catch them. Big golden shiners is one of the best baits for trophy largemouth bass in Florida.

Black crappie

Thank you for your offer, I am thinking of visiting next year or the following year. I have done research and know of several locations to catch Coosa redeye bass in Southern Tennessee. Have also done research for other redeye bass varieties. It will take years to catch them all since I have to travel for these fish but it is worth it. Let me know when you plan on visiting South Florida and I will tell you a couple places you should be able to do well with freshwater exotic fish.