IndianaFinesse

Is the smaller shine glide any good, or should I get the 7 1/4 inch version? And how do you retrieve it?

Thanks for all of the replies! Would you choose the shine glide or the s-waver, and which color?

And then double it.

So a couple weeks ago I bought a 6" slow sinking savage gear line thru trout. So far I love he bait, I haven't thrown it that much and I have already got two really nice fish. I decided to get another swimbaits (and take advantage of the memorial day sale) to widen my options, and the three baits I am thinking of buying are, the river2sea S-waver, the shine glide, or a sinking version of the line thru trout. Which swimbait do you guys think is best?

Most of them were just little 12-14 inch bass, and only two were over fifteen inches. Even though most of them are small, it's still fun to catch a lot of bass with the occasional better sized fish mixed in. I usually use coppertruse when the water gets muddy, but the only way to find out for sure is to try them both out and let the fish decide.

You can use it on the bottom, that is why there is a drag and deadstick retrieve in the six Midwest finesse retrieves where the bait never leaves the bottom. And sometimes the fish do want it slowly moving on the bottom, but at least for myself once they get out of winter and early spring the swim glide and shake retrieve catches far more bass and allows you to cover more water than the drag and deadstick. Usually between the months of March and October or November I use the swim glide and shake retrieve, and in the winter the drag and deadstick or even a straight deadstick is often the ticket. Of course there are exceptions to this, if the bass are active after a couple of abnormally warm days in winter the swim glide and shake retrieve is best, and if the bass shut down in the summer I will occasionally use the drag and deadstick. And T-9 answered your other questions very well, take his advice.

Fished last night for an hour and a half. Caught 22 bass, half on he Ned rig and the other half on a Texas rigged grass pig. They were still in the same areas as yesterday, but I fished in the weeds with the grass pig instead of avoiding them.

Is kvd just going to fade into the background of tournament fishing? NO. Are his sponsors going to drop him as long as he is alive? NO.

That is a good looking diverse order right there.. Let us now how you do with the savage gear bluegill, I have been considering getting it and it looks awesome. And I would love to try a gantrel, but I would be terrified to ever use it with its crazy price tag.

It's usually 15% off, and on cyber Monday they have a 20% off sale.

I can't upload pics, but technically a Ned rig just means a soft plastic four inches and under on a tiny (usually 1/16 ounce) mushroom shaped jig head. This could explain some of the variations you saw in he photos. All it is a small piece of plastic ( usually from z-man for the durability and buoyancy) threaded open hooked on a mushroom head. What most people mean when they say the Ned rig, sometimes including myself, is either half of a zinkerz or a trd on a 1/16 ounce mushroom head with either a #4 or a #2 hook. The finesse shroomz that was designed for the bait comes with a #4 hook, but since I started pouring my own because the shroomz are a dollar a piece I upsized the hook to a #2 and love it. The Ned rig catches way more fish than a wacky rigged senko, and instead of paying 7 bucks for a pack of senkos that will only last a fish or two, a pack of trds only costs 4$ and they usually last at least fifty to a hundred bass before tearing. As far as actual numbers, last year when using a trd I averaged about a bass every 8 minutes, and so far this year I am averaging a bass in just under eight minutes when using the Ned rig.

Like bluebasser86, I mostly use cheapo ten pound floro with good success so you should easily be able to get away with eight pound. I wouldn't even consider going under eight pound test, six pound would break to easily around the stuff I fish in, skipping docks, dragging over sharp rip rap, etc. I used to use eight pound, but got tired of braking off so easily around rip rap, so I changed to ten pound. I haven't found that there is any noticeable difference in the number of bites since switching to ten pound at all. I should probably break down and get line designed for leaders or tatsu to get better abrasion resistance, but I am a bit of a cheapskate and just use a spool of spiderwire floro I picked up for three bucks from FFO a while ago.

I thought it might be a good idea to start a thread were we can post the latest deals and sales we see to help each other save some money, sponsored by the Bait Monkey!

You all had better hope your wives don't see this thread.

I have been busy fishing for the last three days, on Saturday I spent most of the day crappie fishing and trolling for white bass. Ended up with only two crappie between 7 am. and 12 am. and after that trolled for white bass until 2:30. I caught a ton of white bass, so many I lost count. Later on in the afternoon I switched to largemouth and caught thirty one, but only three over fifteen inches and all on the Ned. On Sunday I concentrated on catching bigger bass, only throwing jigs and swimbaits in deeper water. I saw no increase in size whatsoever, only a severe decrease in numbers. I only caught thirteen bass and zero over fifteen inches in three hours. All of the fish are a jig skipped underneath docks. Today I started with jigs again, but after four hours and only six bass in the 12-14 inch range and none over fifteen, I switched to the Ned rig. Over the next two and a half hours I caught about 35-40 bass, with five over fifteen inches. There goes my theory of catching bigger bass with jigs. Most of the bass were caught under docks, but once the sun started setting they moved to the shoreline in one to eight feet if water. The bigger bass came five to twenty feet of the shoreline while the more numerous smaller bass were closer in. All of the bass ate the half of a zinkerz fished with a swim glide and shake retrieve. So I have came to the conclusion that I don't necessarily need to upside my baits to get a better size, I just need to cast a little farther off the shoreline and under deeper docks.

How do you replace the tips without cutting off part of the tip of the rod? I was wondering because I have a st. Croix triumph that has lost the guide insert on the tip and is a little bent up because of it.

My second biggest bass came on a 2 3/4 inch trd while skipping docks two months ago. It weighed in at a whopping 8.2 pounds with at least a pound of eggs stuffed in its fat stomach. And my pb of 10.3 ate a strike king bitsy tube sight fished on its bed. I have found that nearly any bass, no matter the size, will eat small baits fished in front of there faces. Big bass won't move very far for them, but they do eat tiny baits.

Congrats on the new pb! I love the photo of the bass on the scale, I think I will start doing that so people will believe me and not just think it's a fish story. I went out late night for two and a half hours and fished for white bass for something different. I caught 39 good ones with lots of smaller six to nine inch fish that I didn't count also. The white bass were up on top feeding on shad in open water, so i trolled spinners around and stopped and casted whenever a school blew up on the surface within casting range. I went back to bass fishing this afternoon for about three hours and caught a total of 36 bass, but mostly the thirteen to fourteen inch clones and only four over fifteen inches. It seems another wave of bass has moved up on the beds, which gave me the opportunity to sight fish. If I have the chance to sight fish I always take it, it's just plain fun watching the basses reactions to the baits movements and adjusting accordingly to each different bass. The Ned rig was he ticket as usual, and although the majority of the time was spent sight fishing, when looking for beds I fan casted and skipped docks using the swim glide and shake retrieve.

Uh, when you said panfish, I thought you meant bluegill. I have no idea where the perch are as my lake doesn't have any. Depending on your water temperature they might not be up shallow quite yet, here it is ~65 degrees. Any cooler than that and they will likely be out a little deeper on cover in seven to three feet of water as they are just starting to move up in that last week or so here.

I have never actually fished in summit lake, but the panfish are up shallow on or staging next to there beds right now. They are not spawning yet, but they are staging and the males are fighting over the beds. Good areas to look for are a sandy/small gravel bottom protected from the wind, and any cover like docks or weeds are sure to have loads of fish on them. For the big females fish right off of the drop off next to the beds, just about anything will work as far as baits go. Crickets, gulp 1" minnows, wax worms, night crawlers, small jigs, etc. are all good choices. I haven't done any actual bluegill fishing lately, but I have been catching quite a few monster 9-10 inchers while bass fishing in the areas I described over the past few weeks.

That's a sweet looking boat! Unfortunately I can't help you with the electronics though.

Awesome smallmouth! They both look like they swallowed a softball!

I respect that and am somewhat the same way. For instance, I never purchase anything from basspro simply because they are driving up the prices on everything and are trying to eliminate the competition by attempting to buy cabelas.

What sort of depths are you looking for, and are the right breaklines the ones by the opening to the coves or farther into them?

So I have been having a lot of problems catching anything over the fifteen inch limit for tournament's lately. For example, yesterday we caught 76 bass, but only three were over fifteen inches and all came on the ned. With the cold front we downsized baits to the Ned rig to start out, but after catching 13-14 inch fish by the dozen with only a few good bass to show for it we decided to change our approach. We tried using jigs, wacky rigs, t-rigs, Topwaters, swimbaits, square bills, just about everything in the box with no increase in size whatsoever. Then we tried moving out to deeper docks and points hoping to catch the post spawn females, (everything except the males and dinks are done spawning) but again only caught less fish with no increase in size. I fish in a small flatland reservoir with minimal wood cover surrounded by doghouse and docks. Water clarity is usually about two feet, and water temperature is ~65 degrees. Do you guys have any ideas on how to get on a better quality of fish?