IndianaFinesse

I throw buzzbaits on mono, but braid will work fine as long as you make sure to wait till the bait is completely submerged and inside the bass's mouth. I use mono cause I have a hard time not setting the hook as soon as the bass blows up, and it gives me a little cushion for early hooksets. Either mono or braid will work fine though, it is mostly personal preference. Leave the skirt on if you want or take it off, either way will work. Taking the skirt off sometimes works better when pressure is high, but I usually fish with it on. If you decide to take take the skirt off, I would highly recommend putting a toad on it as a trailer. Makes it possible to skip the buzzbait a little, to. White

Put it on the 7'3" mh rod. But if it had been a black buzzbait instead of sexy shad color, you would have had to step it up to the extra heavy rod jk

Chatterbait shallow, spinnerbait deep (and shallow to).

Yeah, that what I said about Okeechobee right before I bombed that event.

That sale ended on Friday, but I posted it on here last week for anyone who needed some.

The starter went out on our motor while backing off the ramp for prefishing, and when the bottom blew off, it took out the top of the fuel pump, which then clogged up our carburetors with pieces of plastic from it. So we didn't end up getting to fish that tournament, because of our numerous motor problems, but i would like to go back there just to fun fish sometime.

Ended up in 18th place out of 84 boats on Monroe yesterday, with only two fish for 4.68 pounds. Frustrating part was that we were hooking fish that would have put us in the top four or possibly top three, between us setting the hook to soon on the topwater and the fish rapping us around all of the brush, we only landed two keepers to the six or seven we saw and lost. You could see them coming up through the clear water to hit usually, and a couple cleared the water before landing on the bait, so I couldn't get my nerves calmed down enough to wait till the fish really had the topwater. Most fish, including our larger keeper, hit a lunkerhunt pocket frog with upsized hooks and skirt legs until I hung our only pocket frog fifteen feet up a tree half way through the day, then most of our hits were on a pop x. Our other keeper was caught flipping a jig, but that was the only hit we got doing that. Also lost a keeper each on a bubblegum trick worm, shaky head, and half of a zinkerz. Mostly fishing the backs of spawning coves in and around floating logs and debris. Who's going to the state championship hasn't been finalized yet, so we don't know if we're in that or not yet. One thing i am glad of is we have the highest number of points of anybody who missed a tournament, so at least we're consistant. Doesn't matter for state qualification though obviously. Thanks everyone who gave advice and tips for the tournaments, they were a big help.

I already own a vision 110, I was just asking last month if they were on the big side for smallies (i hadn't had a chance to fish for smallmouth much before the tournament, there aren't any smallmouth lakes neareby) I also have an x-rap, which is great for fishing shallower and warmer water, but the vision goes a few feet deeper and has a different action that works better at times IMHO.

Every bait (including hard baits, no difference there) has its place. There is no one best hard bait, search bait, or any bait. Just choose which bait based on the conditions, and let the fish tell you if you're right. And no, I don't fish fast moving "search" (all baits are "search baits" to a degree) below 40 degree water. A jerkbait fished with long pauses is as fast as I go at those temps. Don't know where you live, but unless you live in northern Canada, the water temps are well above 40 about everywhere in the states.

It probably doesn't matter, the salt all gets soaked out in less than an hour of fishing anyways. But the ocd side of me soaks and stretches the salt out beforehand just cause. The buoyancy is somewhat a moot point in my opinion, its more about the softness and durability. Unless you are spending a lot of time dead sticking it, which I don't. I almost always use a swimming and shaking retrieve just above the bottom. So my thoughts are, soak the salt out if you want or just leave it, it probably doesn't matter anyways.

Where?

Got three in the cut, but nobody in the top 20. Kicking myself for picking Dave Lefebre instead of Jacob Wheeler, I had Wheeler on my team right up until Tuesday night and swapped him out on a false hunch.

You could try sharpening them up real quick with a hook hone or file, I keep a hook hone with me in the boat for when a hook point gets dulled. If you decide to upgrade them, I would recommed either the kvd 2× short treble hooks or the gamakatsu magic eye trebles.

Brand new hooks don't usually need replacing or sharpening these days (unless the hooks are defects), I would suspect there is another problem.

I can't tell you exactly where the fish are going to be, even with the best and most accurate topo maps. It just isn't possible to predict where exactly the bass are going to be. My pre tournament research has three stages, first I spend time looking for reports online to get a few general areas, then I study maps and highlight which areas look like they have the right structural requirements for the season, and then I go out prefishing (if possible) and cover as much area as possible and try to establish a pattern. So while I couldn't garruntee the basses location from a topo map, I can get a good idea of which areas have a higher likely hood to be productive.

I use every map I can get my hands on, but navionics (especially on lakes with high definition sonar charts option) in conjunction with google earth is my favorite. Old maps showing farm houses, fence lines, roads, etc before the reservoir was flooded are awesome to if you can find them.

Both the hula stickz and the finesse shadz are 4" long, according to the zman website. And not to be nitpicky, but he usually cuts the hula stickz down to three inches long for the record.

@Bunnielab I have yet to find or hear of a 1/16 ounce mushroom jig with a small enough hook for halves of zinkerzs or trds, other than gopher or zman, but something I would recommend considering is pouring your own. If you use the lil' nasty hooks (#4 and #2 lil nastys are my favorite hook I have tried, even better than owner IMO) they only cost 5¢ each to make plus lead costs. I get my lead for free, its not all that hard to find someplace willing to give you lead wheel nuts or something. If you pour your own, you can obviously choose whichever size and style of hook you want in addition to saving money. My favorite mold is the Midwest finesse mold with the wire keepers, although unfortunately only two of the cavities are light enough to be usable and the 3/32 ounce size is rarely used. Mine paid for itself within a few months.

Nice catch. And I just caught 32 bass in two hours with the ol standby half of a zinkerz.

I have a tournament this Sunday on lake Monroe in Indiana, but haven't been able to find much info online about it. So I was wondering if anyone has any reports out of there, or if you even know the water temperature/spawn phase? What areas of the lake are good right now? Any hot techniques going? Feel free to pm me. Any information at all would be greatly appreciated.

Not a mechanic by any means, but I just got through fixing every conceivable thing on my motor, one of which was similar to what you described. If I had to guess, there's something partially clogging the fuel pump and/or carburetors. Had some metal shavings (all motors have tiny bits of metal worn away over time) and tiny pieces of plastic clogging the fuel pump and the carburetors. The fuel pump problem was solved when we replaced it after our starter blowing up and taking g the top off of the fuel pump, and we had to rebuild and clean the carburetors to get the junk out.

Did that, a couple of times... A safer way to bend it back is to place a flat piece of wood on each side of the skeg, and clamp the skeg between the pieces of wood with a heavy duty clamp or two, and tighten it enough to put a lot of pressure on it. Leave it on overnight, and if it hasn't straightened out add more pressure. You can't add to much pressure (within reason). The wood and clamps spreads force evenly over the entire skeg, which has less chance of breaking it than pounding on it with a mallet. Worked for me a couple of times, and I have yet to break a skeg.

Not sure if I already mentioned this or not... But the tournament at geist was cancelled due to logs and junk that was washed in with the flooding. Which worked out OK for us, cause we hadn't got the motor working yet anyways. So they are awarding double points for this next tournament on Monroe next Sunday, to make up for the cancelled tournament. So does anyone have any reports out of monroe, and do you know what the water temperature is? Any areas (even just upper or lower end) that are good right now? What phase do you think they will be in, and are there any hot techniques there? Feel free to pm me. Not sure weather it will be post spawn or spawn, or a little bit of both. Thanks for helping with all of my previous questions, this will be the last tournament for the year unless we make the state championship.

Do a search on google and add the word bassresource to the end of whatever you want to search. 3 letter words don't work well with the search engine for some reason.

A medium can do a little bit of everything.