IndianaFinesse

A spinning reel!

I have been catching fish on a 1/4 ounce x-rap fished over weeds that go within two feet of the surface, but yesterday the bill broke on it. So I might just replace it with another x-rap, but if there's another small, very shallow running jerkbait that you guys like better I'll try that. What's your favorite?

The temps here regularly dip down into the low twenty's for high in December/January!

All of mine broke off eventually, which is unfortuanate because they worked well until they broke (I always just glued them on afterwards, but it's a lot easier to not have to mess with super glue). This and the fact that they cost a dollar a piece are the two main reasons I pour all of my ned rig jigs myself. I would highly recommend pouring you own, you can choose the size and style of hook that you want. My pouring equipment literally paid for itself in around five months.

When there's to much ice to break through, but not enough to ice fish on.

I was also hoping for and expecting one with smaller weight sizes than 1/16 ounce, something like two cavities for 1/32 oz, 1/20 oz. and two or three cavities for the 1/16 ounce mold. Not sure why you would ever use a 1/4 ounce ned rig jig head, or for that matter anything over 3/32 ounce seems overkill to me. At least it has few more choices and the option for a wire keeper. Thanks for the heads up on it being for sale though, I might just get it anyways.

I haven't ever really done well with the floating jerkbaits, but I suppose they might work on shallower more active bass in warmer water. I've always just switched to a shallower running suspending jerkbait with an erratic action in those conditions, lately I've been doing well with a small x-rap fished fast over shallow water.

NO!!!!!! What happened to the broncos?!! I don't know if kubiak being gone made the difference, but if they should not have lost to the chargers even without Kubiak.

I do one of two things, one is to time how long that particular rig (two inch of a zinker-z, (2.5 inch section, tube-z, etc. all have different fall rates) takes to sink a foot and count it down. But I only do this if I am fishing over a lot of alegae on the bottom that sticks to your lure if it touches it. Otherwise I do let it hit bottom first and will actually let it deadstick for several seconds to give bass that heard it hit bottom time to come over and check it out. Every few turns of the reel I let it glide back to the bottom on a tight line to re-estabolish bottom contact and to make sure it stays close to the bottom while it changes depths. As far as not being any different than a jig worm, i'm gonna have to disagree with you there. A jig worm generally uses larger worms than 2.5 inches, which is the most common bait put on a mushroom jig. Also elaz-tech is softer, more durable, and highly buoyant than regular plastic worms. I could not afford to fish half of a senko or something similar on a mushroom jig, even though it would not catch as much fish as half of zinker-z because of it's softness. We will just have to see if it is forgotten in a few years, I dougt it will be forgotten but it probably will be talked about less as the novelty and hype surrounding it weares off. I do not think any major tournaments have been won on the ned rig, but it is not made to catch the five big fish needed to win a tournament. It was created with the purpose of catching as many bass as possible no matter the size, which is the goal of Midwest finesse fisherman. Oh, sorry about that. My understanding of your post was which technique should a brand new fisherman start on, I apologize for my mistake.

Those are all good points, but the ned rig is actually designed for and usually works best within six inches of the bottom, according to ned kahde's guide to the six Midwest finesse retrieves and the majority of Midwest finesse devotees. Not saying that it can't work in the middle of the water column, but it is typically more effective fished within six inches of the bottom.

Thanks for the help, once tw gets them back in stock I will definitely be getting the 117 gunfish.

Like tom said the first thing a beginner needs to do is to know where the bass are under different conditions and seasons. If the fish aren't there, it won't matter what you're throwing. Then, start with one or two versatile techniques for the current season and learn those well. For spring I would recommend a suspending jerkbait and a jig. Pick whatever jerkbait you can afford, but suspending rogues, pointers, and vision 110's are all great jerkbaits. Do yourself a favor and get the jigs from seibert outdoors, they are the best jigs I have ever used and are very affordable. Match one of his jigs a zoom super chunk, salty chunk, or pit boss. For summer and post spawn i'd go with a Booyah popping pad crasher frog, a cavitron buzzbait, and a texas rigged ribbon tail plastic worm. For fall a suspending jerkbait (the same ones as in spring) and KVD 1.5 and 2.5 squarebill crankbaits are good starting points. Later in the fall I will also pick up a silver buddy blade bait Winter a jerkbait, blade bait, and ned rig are the only baits I use. A half of a zinkerz on a 1/16 ounce mushroom jig (aka ned rig) is an awesome year round bait for sheer numbers, but not always the best for size although it did catch my biggest Indiana bass. These are all good starting points, but make sure to experiment yourself and become well aquanted with basses seasonal movements. The bassresource articles section is a great place to find information regarding this, and also if you have any more questions just ask.

Yep, they are so aggressively stupid that they will literally eat anything. I've caught them on bare hooks, twelve inch worms, big bulky jigs, frogs, crankbaits, etc. I can not think of a single lure that I haven't caught a green sunfish on. They seem to really love the ned rig, I always catch at least a few on it.

Yep, no one believes you when you tell them the weight anyways. If you have a scale and a camera, something I've started doing is taking a photo of the bass while on the scale, so that you can see the weight reading.

I use a 7' medium fast st. Croix triumph, because it's the closest thing I've got to a jerkbait rod. It works fine, but I would prefer something shorter in length and with a much shorter handle, plus a little faster tip would be nice to.

I'll bet that was both challenging and fun. I hadn't heard that they stocked any more wipers since 2007, but i'm glad that they did. Excited to hopefully catch a few in the next few years, I have yet to land one. I did hook one last fall while white bass fishing but the hook on my in-line spinner bent out right next to the boat. Fought like crazy while I had it though, just like a fifteen pound white bass.

Went fishing this afternoon for a few hours. The entire lake is definitely turning right now, dead broken weeds floating are all over the place. Water Temperature is a steady 69 degrees and hasn't changed much over the last week, and the water clarity is up to over three feet. Went out today expecting a jerkbait bite with the moderate winds and clear water, but didn't get so much as a bump on a jerkbait. Switched to a pop-r and caught a couple decent bass, but I wasn't catching as many as I would like so I switched to the ned rig. Caught a fair amount on it, not sure how many but I would guess around 15-20, including another nice smallmouth. The smallmouth was the best fish of the day measuring 19 inches long and 3.4 pounds, and when I got it in the boat I found out that she had apparently broke someone off, because about ten feet of line was hanging out of it's mouth and led down to a hook in it's stomach. I didn't want to rip the stomach out, so I cut the line as close to the hook as I could and released her. Does anyone know what to do to remove a hook from a fishes stomach? Normally I would just keep a fish that has a hook in it's stomach, but there are so few smallmouth in this lake I wanted to give it a chance to survive.

I've done that quite a few times. Usually i'm dreaming about frog fishing and see a massive head come out of the slop and slam my frog and I swing on it like my life depends on it, only to slam my hands on the wall behind my bed and wake up disappointed.

That's a monster wiper! I'm glad to hear that at least a few survived the winter, I really hope they stock some more this year or we're going to be out of wipers. Did you get it on crappie gear?

A while ago I found a good brush pile, but apparently a guy (I assume he is the person that sunk it) did not want us fishing there. So he drove laps around us, even after I "accidently" snagged a treble hook and a half an ounce of lead in his anchor rope. I finally thought to take out my phone and take a picture of him and notified security of him harassing us and breaking the fifty foot minimum distance between watercraft rule. I don't usually actually snag an offending boater, but I do bounce lead sinkers off of them ruitenely when they get to close, especially back when I fished out of a canoe and idiots driving wake setters thought it was fun to try and dump it by going within ten feet of my canoe. I didn't bring a cell phone in the canoe because of the high chance of dumping so I couldn't take a pic of them, but I could bounce led off of there shiny waxed boats and if I got really mad I snagged them.

In my waters 12-13 pounds is all you will usually need to win! Sometimes even less!

Thanks for the heads up on the 117 size, no idea why that one size is so much cheaper than the other sizes. Makes it a no brainer on which one to get. The only color tw has left is chrome, is that a half-way decent color for topwater? I haven't ever owned a chrome colored topwater before.

http://www.bassresource.com/bass-fishing-forums/topic/17628 Here's a link to an excellent write up by @A-jay on how he night fishes.

Got out crappie fishing yesterday for 13 hours, just before dawn to dusk. Caught 54 keeper crappies, with lots more smaller fish. Most of them were caught on minnows, some under floats and others while spider rigging. Couldn't find a concentration of fish, they seemed to have scattered over a huge range of depths and areas from as deep as 20 feet and as shallow as five feet. Ninety percent of the fish bit in the first two hours and the last half of the day when the wind was calm enough to keep our baits in the narrow strike zone, they wouldn't eat a bait that was bobbing up and down with the waves or the boats movement because of the cold front. Not a great day, but better than I expected for the windy cold front conditons. Went back to another lake today and fished for crapie for a little over an hour and a half. Only caught five, i haven't figured out the crappie here yet. They were schooled up over 20-22 feet of water suspended between 7 and 14 feet mostly, not tightly relating to cover but n the vicinity of scattered stumps.

Thanks! I will try to remember to post a report tomorrow night or sunday.