IndianaFinesse

Z-man has by far the highest CPU of any brand, but they don't always have the best shapes. Beekley Havoc and zoom comprise most of my other plastics, plus gcyb senkos.

I like to let the big girls go, but I did keep a nice limit of crappie last week that tasted pretty good.

My team is sucking epically.

Fishing's been great here lately, and today was no exception. Caught 32 bass in a little under four hours, and 11 of them were keepers with the best five weighing 13-14 pounds. No monsters, bot lots of one to three pound fish. They are on the beds big time now in parts of the lake, water temps about 69-70 degrees with 4-5 feet of clarity depending on location. Most of the fish were caught on and around spawning areas, and about a quarter were sight fished. Half of a zinkerz accounted for most of the fish, but some hit a swim bait, senko, and a popper once the rain started. On a side note, I also accidentally caught a monster 15 inch crappie while throwing a 6 inch savage linethru trout yesterday. It had a huge mouth, but it was stretched to the limit with the big swim bait. It failed to catch any big bass though.

I've caught bass up to 8.2 pounds, and have yet to have a fish pull drag more than 15-20 feet in one run. Not even my 38 pound carp did that, the fish I've hooked seem to do shorter, repetitive runs rather than one long one. Pike are one exception to that rule, they do tend to go on longer runs on lite tackle.

A a couple of small gravel pits 20 miles out of a town with a population of a whopping 500 people. It can only be accessed by driving through sand that can and will sink if you park on it (I've got a funny story about how we figured that out) and then climbing over old barbed wire to get to the lakes. They are public, but I have only ever seen one person fishing there before. Great fishing, 4-5 pound bass are the norm with much bigger fish available, 10 inch gills, giant pike, and 1.5-2 pound slab crappie abound.

That's another possibility, I once had a cracked guide that literally shaved tiny strips of line off each time it went through the guide. Another rod came with a cracked insert that cut the 50 pound braid on almost every hookset, took losing three frogs to finally figure that one out. Check them by running a fine cloth or a cotton swab through each guide, if any cloth or cotton catches that guide needs to be replaced. Check to make sure your line isn't to frayed and that it hasn't dry rotted also, with the flouro.

When you going back to the future again?

We (somewhat obviously IMO) can't guess the weight of a bass that not only have we not seen, but you haven't had a good look at either. We can't even guess the weight of a bass from picture all that accurately, so no one can guess the weight of a bass from a simple mention of line and rod specs, and an inaccurate, probably overestimated, guess of how far it pulled drag.

My guess with the braid is that the line tangled around a guide midcast and the weight and speed of the jerkbait caused the line to break. Braid has practically no stretch, so it also has no shock absorption. Happened to me once, with a 25$ megabass jerkbait that I was not lucky enough to find. Never used braid for any jerkbait over 1/4 ounce since then, switched over to mono. Don't know what happened with the flouro, probably a bad knot though.

While it is true that topwater is constantly productive in the morning and evening, it also can be just as good when the sun is higher. You have to let the bass tell you when to put the topwater down, but you have to give them an opportunity to hit in the first place. I do not look at surface activity as an indication for whether they are hitting topwater, often the fish you see on top are bluegills sucking bugs off the surface so that is not a reliable indication. The post spawn period is my favorite time to throw topwater, for about three weeks to a month after the spawn the topwater fishing is incredible. One of my favorite annual bites. Summer and early fall are good at times also. You can start out with one or two baits in each topwater category and do well, but stick with the tried and true baits for now. The Pop-r for the popper category, the junior super spook for walking baits, a cavitron buzzbait, a junior and normal sized pad crasher frogs, and if you want something else a whopper plopper is a good addition to. That's all you really need, and don't bother with getting more than one color for now, but I'm sure that you will want to branch out at some point.

Today was one of those days where everything that could break did and usually took something else out with it. Starter broke yesterday (after i had sprained my trolling motor foot on thursday) and left us without a prefishing day, but we found one in michigan that matched it and payed overnight shipping and was delivered this morning. Except when we opened the motor up to replace it, we saw that when the starter essentially exploded it took the top off of the fuel pump. Six hours later and we had managed to hodge podge it back together using a tap kit after having to buy and modify the parts, but the motor wouldn't run after it had used the gas in the bowl. Pulled it back out of the water and realized that it had vapor locked and the oil hoses had air in them so we had to go back into town to get another part to replace one that was modified a little to much. A local place happened into have a fuel pump in stock, but it turns out that the fuel pump side was working, but the oil pump portion of it wasn't. So we got the broken part replaced and the vapor lock handled almost two hours later, but the oil hose then got a leak in it and started spraying oil. Fixed that an hour later, and once again put it back in the lake to test it out before dark. It started up on the first try and we drove around the lake for about 45 minutes just to make sure, and it was running better than it had in a while. Except as we were pulling back into the marina to put it on the trailer the motor quit and would not start. Don't know why, but we were out of time at that point. So we obviously can't fish brookville tomorrow, which kind of screws us as far as AOY points go and we are going to have to do pretty well to make the state championship. At least it didn't break tomorrow morning in the tournament 10 miles away from the ramp after having driven 2.5 hours and waking up at 2 a.m.

Long story short, our starter went out at the ramp while attempting to launch the boat to prefish brookville. Bottom of the starter completely blew off. Couldn't find any matching starters in Indiana, so we are having one shipped overnight from Michigan. So we obviously could not prefish, but we did get the water temperature in roughly the center of the lake which is 60.5 degrees. Still planning on fishing the tournament this Sunday, but without prefishing we will be fishing an entirely new type of lake (for me) and for smallies which I have little experience with. How do you guys go about fishing a tournament on a lake that you have never fished before? Cover water quickly like in prefishing or slower? Any specific areas to hit would also be a bonus via pm, there is going to be 84 boats again in the tournament so our first spot or two will likely be the only chance we get at fish.

Heard you the first time, no need to repeat yourself seven times...

After the complementary testing of all said tackle of course... Next Thursday.

What was the water temperature in that tournament?

A more moderate action rod is preferred for cranks to keep from ripping the treble hooks out of there mouth, which can also be accomplished by a loose drag and stretchy mono or flouro. So yes, it will work fine especially if you keep the drag loose and use stretchy line.

Wacky rigged senkos, no idea why they would work for bass that are feeding on bluegill, but they do and that's all I care about.

Thanks for the replies. Sounds like the smallies like it as much as the green fish do.

This weekend I'm fishing a tournaments in a predominantly smallmouth lake (brookville), and was wondering if the vision 110 is to big for them. Would smaller jerkbaits such as the pointer 78 be more appropriate, or is the 110's size fine? I have not had the opportunity to fish for smallies much, so the only thing I know about them is from research.

I'm a huge fan of the pad crasher junior, it was the second (might have been third) highest producing lure for me last year.

I mostly use the junior pad crashers and the popping version. The junior is usually skipped underneath docks (they seem to skip better than the poppers) and when the water is slick calm and clear, and the poppers are fished when fishing open water especially when there's a breeze or muddy water. I don't fish heavy muck often, but when I do I prefer the standard sized pad crasher with a couple bbs inside it for added weight. I keep the color selection simple, either dart frog or cricket frog. Cricket frog gets the most use.

Bass are starting to bed here, most of them aren't locked on yet but are staying very close by to swept out beds and come back within thirty seconds when spooked. Water temperature is 67 degrees with two feet of visibility. Got out yesterday for an hour and caught 9 bass sight fishing with half of a zinkerz. Crappie are also moving up onto the docks, the males anyways. Last Saturday I caught a dozen crappie all over ten inches during the morning for a couple hours fishing docks with minnows, despite the water being stirred up by a tournament. Females were still staging out on the first break into deeper water, but I left them alone since I was looking for a meal and would prefer to eat the males than the egg laden females.

Good to see were all in agreement...

I think Daiwa makes them.