Airman4754

Great job guys. You learned a very important thing in this too. Stick to what you know and not what you should do.

When the water gets chunky I run a Bold Bluegill Robo and it gets bit quite a bit more. Clear water is M3 time.

Absolutely! They are deadly on a jig rig and swing jig. I hate how flimsy they are in the back though. One fish and it rips through where you make the turn to rig it weedless. If you keep cutting them down you can get five or six fish on them. Great bait and something that is a permanent fixture in my arsenal now.

Rig a drop shot with a 2/0 light wire straight shank with an 8" Robo so it is weedless. Leave your leader about 3ft long and throw a 1/8oz weight onto it. Throw it out as far as you can and walk the worm through the weeds. You'll never know when you actually get a bite, you'll never miss a fish. Throw it on at least a M/F rod.

I go to where I think there are good fish and do my best to catch as many as I can. If that ends up with a few toads that's great, if it's a bunch of dinks that works too.

Find the food.

I'm not really pro-barb, I guess I'm just lazy. I've been fishing barbed hooks my whole life and it hasn't been a problem or a hindrance in any way, so I will stick to what I know.

If I'm targeting just weeds and grass its the Neko. Deep rocky bottoms and gravely banks is shaky head territory. Everything else is a drop shot. I also use a drop shot as a search bait a lot too.

I almost exclusively shaky head in the winter and the Kicker Fish high tail worms are by far the most productive.

Even up to the 10" ones they are pretty thin. Anything 3/0 and up in the EWG world should work.

Here is my take. Try them all, pick the one you like the best and stick with it. This applies to rods as well. If you find one you like, don't get rid of it. I have buddies that buy new rods every year, go from mono to FC, you braid, and whatever else is hot on the market. Use this scenario: Who is going to detect a bite better, a guy that has made 5,000 casts with the same rod and line, or a guy that has made 1,000 casts on five different rods and line combos?

The only technique I have just flat out given up on is the Ned Rig.

I'm in high school, maybe a sophomore. My dad is trout trolling, I am bass fishing (this is how most of our trips went). I hook a good fish on a crank bait right next to the boat and just flip it right in. I almost land it right in my dads lap and the fish is going nuts and thrashing around. I didn't fight it at all so it's at full tilt. My dad is trying to lip it and get it out of the boat, I'm laughing at him. My dad wore glasses and during this event the bass pooped and some of it got flung up on the bottom rim of his glasses right by his nose. I see it right away but don't say anything. For the next few hours I get the constant "You don't smell that?" He changes jackets, he washes his hands in the lake first, then forearms, then takes his shoes off to inspect them. He stands up and says really loudly "Everything smells like ***** to me!" I just start laughing and tell his to check his glasses and he takes them off and sees the poop on them. At first he looks ticked then starts laughing too.

I don't remember my first bass. I don't remember my first good bass, but I have a picture of it. There were two instances that got me hooked and I mean really hooked and I still remember both of them to this day. I was 6 years old at a logging pond that was known for big fish. Sadly the logging industry is dead and all those great mill ponds from my youth are gone now, but I digress. Anyways, the sun just went down and it's the middle of summer. Action is all over on top of the water and I ask my dad if we have anything for top water. He ties me on a jitterbug. I throw it out and start reeling in and right behind it comes a big big bass and it misses. It takes another swipe at it and it looks like someone dragging a bucket through the water. It was over. I was devastated. Fast forward a year, summer, we are at a local lake and most of the reservoirs in that area have a cutoff point as you get into the river system where you are only allowed to use electric motors past it. My dad kicks on the TM so we go by the buoy marker in the middle of the lake for the TM only water. I had a Zebco 303 combo with a little white Mepps spinner bait. I throw it out by the buoy just messing around, crank a few times, and everything just stops, my line, my reel, everything. I tell my dad I'm stuck, he thinks I'm snagged on the buoy cable and is annoyed. Then it starts fighting. That dinky pole and reel can't do anything so my grandpa tells me the ditch the rod and hand line it. I think he is nuts but eventually do it and land the fish. It was my first 5+lb bass. I made my dad go buy me a bait caster the next day and I spent every day out in the back yard practicing until I could make every cast I could think of on the money and I haven't really ever stopped. I'm fairly young but my dad and grandpa have been gone for well over a decade but I have a 6 and 2 year old son that I can hopefully get into it. I learned how to fish in a 12' aluminum boat with a Zebco and a few hard baits only able to get advice from trout and salmon fisherman. My kids will have it a little easier lol.

Hit the local golf course this evening and landed a couple of these pound and a halfers. The tail walk by this one was awesome. Drop shot and Senko didn't the work. I just fished my new Revo MGX baitcaster on my weightless setup tonight and was VERY impressed!

A rod that transmits vibration really well why not being overloaded by the weight you are using with a main line that has little to no stretch is so helpful. From my experience bass that are big enough to be worth reeling in take a bait and don't mess around . If you have your bottom contact or reaction bait weighted then point your rod to your main line and reel. You will feel the extra weight. That weight could be a rock or a log, but a bait sliding over structure won't weight your line. You will get some bites over time too that you will know is a bite and you'll never forget it, but those only happen about a third of the time. Line watching is really easy, but also needs to be in your arsenal.

This is a great technique. It is painfully slow, but it can catch some really good fish.

My jerk bait rod is a Rage. The handle is both awesome and awful. I just prefer the happy medium of cork. EVA is solid too.

I do this fairly often in the summer when the wind kicks up and I don't feel like fighting it. I use a Havoc Money Maker and either a 1/8 or 1/4oz wacky jig head depending on the wind strength. I run a swivel with about a three foot leader and just a regular old red & white bobber above the swivel. We figure out what depth the smallies are cruising at with the electronics and keep the boat at that depth line. Then we throw it out in front of us and let the wind drift the boat and bobber naturally. It can really make the slow times a lot less slow.

I use a Bub Tosh iRod for glide baits and it's a REALLY good rod for it. I will throw the 6" speed shads on it with a heavy wire jig head and it sticks fish. If you want to throw heavy swim baits I would advise getting gear built for it. The tip will be a little more flexible do casting and the back bone will be stronger.

Awesome! Once you get a bite on a 10" or longer worm you kind of forget they make smaller ones.

I almost never vertical drop shot so my depth finder is kind of useless. If you're casting then it's a lot like a C-rig.

I'm no scientist, but I know the time of year bass fight the hardest is summer. We just had one of the hottest weeks in five years and I caught five really good fish and lost a monster in 8ft of water. The surface temp was 76 degrees. The perch and fry were in the weed beds, so that's where the bass are going to be too. In summer the bass will be wherever the food is, no exceptions. Don't fish during the spawn, don't fish when it's too hot, don't fish when it's too cold. If we followed the cork sniffers of the sport we'd only get to be on the water about 90 days a year.

I decided to go to a high mountain lake pretty close to me that I usually never touch in the summer because it's like ski boat central. It's really shallow and it's always a grind to fish. I'm showing a buddy how to bass fish a little and I am fishing the deep edge of a huge weed flat. I cast my drop shot out there and it just starts taking off. I set into it and it feels like I have a sturgeon on. I start closing the gap with the TM and it turns and makes a run towards the boat. I see it swim broadside about ten feet away and it looks like a mailbox in the water. Double digit fish are so rare here and this fish was on the doorstep and probably past it. I got it up along the boat and it dove straight down and burried me into the weeds. I couldn't horse it with a 10lb leader and he eventually shook me off. I won't be able to sleep for a week. I still had a 17lb bag on the day which is pretty good with a 5lb kicker, but it didn't really lessen the blow. It might be another decade or more before I hook into a fish like that again.

I might have watched a few lures and setups go flying into oblivion...