IndianaFinesse

It helps that until recently i've been throwing it on a medium powered spinning rod and 8 pound mono, not much for pressure on the hooks. No aggressive spots or smallies to thrash them either. Sounds like i'll be picking up some nano's, probably in both #5 and #6. I like to mess with the hooks on jerkbaits to change the action and how deep they run depending on water temperature, plus I might try them on some topwater and cranks.

Got some Thanksgiving bass today, 16 of them plus a few nice crappie. Lower numbers, but better size with most of them measuring over 15" and the best five going 14.9 pounds. All jerkbaits, mostly the vision 110, but also a couple on the staysee 90. Fishing steep dropping banks and steeper offshore spots. A surprising bonus was getting my staysee back today, I had hung it about 8 feet underwater on a branch that comes off of a tree sitting in 19' a few days back, but the wind was a steady 15-20 miles an hour and my trolling motor battery was dead. I tried to get over to it with the outboard, but the line got into the prop so I had to shut off the motor, and while unwrapping the line from the prop my line broke. Obviously I couldn't find it in that wind, so I gave my only staysee up for lost. Came back today just fishing, not even looking for the staysee, but happened to see it shining up from the branch. So I grabbed my pole style lure retriever, put some light chains on it, and tangled the hooks up with them and pulled my own $17 jerkbait up. Not a bad Thanksgiving all around, caught some good bass, found my jerkbait, and ate some good food at the end to top it all off.

After catching upwards of 300 bass, one of the hooks on my megabass vision 110 finally gave up the ghost today. Looking to replace them now, but I'm not sure weather to get the #4 katsuages or the #5/#6 gamakatsu nano finesse treble. The hooks on the vision 110 are #6 (I believe) katsuage, but the only size that tw carries is #4, not sure if that is accurate or not. So do you guys prefer the #4 katsuage, #5 nano finesse, or #6 nano finesse trebles? Heard really good things about the nanos for jerkbaits but never seen or tried them before.

It doesn't start till tomorrow at noon.

For me at least, durability and effectiveness seem to be negatively correlated to each other in frogs. The more durable a frog is, the harder it tends to be, which leads to worse hookups. My favorite frog is the Booyah pad crasher (especially in the junior size), I even like them better than the higher priced livetargets and spros (which have better durability, but at the price of hoosets and $$)

Yeah, if you're going with the lil' nasty hooks (a surprisingly good hook that is very affordable, not quite as good as owner but pretty close and only 5¢ each) definitely get the #2 instead of the #4. Lil' nasty's run a bit smaller than the owners.

I like the owner 5318 in #4 and #2. I use the #2 for 3-4 inch finesse wormzs and the #4 hook for the 2.5 inch zinkerz. They look tiny, but you'd be surprised at how small a hook you can get away with on light tackle. I find I have just as a good a hookups with the #4 hook as the #1, but the #4 or #2 gets way more bites and snags less to.

What do you do in the cold water then? Doesn't seem like those four lures would work so good then IMHO. Something like 90% of my bass are caught on shaky heads, the ned rig, buzzbaits, jerkbaits, frogs, and shallow cranks-so I really don't branch out as much as I could on a regular basis either. Several techniques are all I use for short, seasonal windows but aren't used much the rest of the year (weightless trick worms in the postspawn, rattle traps for a week or two in the fall and spring, blade baits and hair jigs in winter, etc.). Those are typically my "money" bites so to speak.

Do I carry more stuff than I need? Yes. Does that keep me from bringing it anyways for the "what ifs" that almost never happen? No.

Unless the bass are suspending off of the structure overtop of that 20'-30' no more than 12-14 feet down (they will come up a few feet for a jerkbait sometimes), I would go with a shaky head or a blade bait. A staysee might work for the fish (assuming they're suspending at least a little) on the edge of the 15' flat. I catch a lot of fish that are suspending overtop of 20 feet of water ~10-40 feet off of a steep/almost vertical dropping bank, on a vision 110 that only dives 5-6 feet. The key is the bass are still relating to the structure, and are simply suspending at the depth that they normally would be while actually on the structure. Btw, I suck at drop shotting so I can't advise you on them, that's a technique I need to learn.

Fish jerkbaits (my favorites are the vision 110 and 110+1, lc staysee 90, and pointer 78) around steep dropping banks, the steeper the better. A deep channel swinging in close to the bank before turning back out again is a sweet spot. Keep a small shaky head, blade bait, and 1/8 ounce hair jig ready to. Fishing in cold water takes a little more skill, but the fishing can be great if you dial them in. I fish a reservoir nearby you and have been killing it on jerkbaits the past couple weeks.

The absolute windiest time I've ever been out was last summer, I was going down a bank throwing a buzzbait when a wall of rain moved across the lakes at an amazing speed. It went from glass calm to hurricane force winds in a matter of seconds. Hit us hard, luckily we were nearby an empty boathouse that doesn't have a lift inside it, so we were able to take shelter in it. Barely got there though, our little 15 horse motor could hardly make headway into the wind. We later found out that a hurricane had actually touched down about half a mile from where we were, and winds were reported up to 75 miles an hour. This was on a small (360 acre) lake, so the waves didn't have as much distance to build as they do on larger lakes. The time that I was closest to sinking the boat and the largest waves I have ever been out on occurred on a lake called Monroe (largest lake in Indiana, and of coarse we were fishing at the far side of the lake from the ramp). I was prefishing for a tournament there in early July and had been having a terrible day. We had fished from 6 am from 7:30 pm and only had one keeper, and we hadn't even been shaking fish off. Started seeing a storm build along side of the lake around 5:30, but for the next two hours it just seemed to run parallel to us. Since we had absolutely zero patterns going for the tournament, we kept on fishing. Then around 7:30 we got a call from someone who basically told us to get the heck off of the lake right now, the storm had just knocked out power to a huge part or the surrounding area with reported wind speeds of 40 mile an hour sustained with gusts up to 70. And it was looking like it was going to stop running parallel to us, and instead go right into us. So we fired up the motor and got out of the cove we were fishing, and in literally 5 minutes the lake had gone from ~10 mile an hour winds to 40-70. Our 21' fish and ski (it has a way deeper v and handles waves much larger than a bass boat would, luckily) was getting waves swamped over the bow all the way to the wind sheild on almost every wave, filling the boat with water. By this point the rain was coming down so hard that we lost track of the shoreline, and the wave action was so jolting and the waves that we couldn't figure out were were on the small GPS screen we have mounted on the dashboard. We were driving essentially blindly, on an unfamiliar lake, with no view of the shoreline, and we couldn't even read our GPS. We ultimately ended up finding our way into a protected cove where we hid from the wind for about 20 minutes, but the rain was still pouring down and the boat was filled with so much water that it was sitting dangerously low, even though the bilge pump was on. After that we decided to try and get back to the ramp again, this time by hugging the shoreline as lone as possible. By the time we got back to the main lake, the storm had calmed down and virtually disappeared, the rain had lessened and the wind down to a breeze. The whole way back to the ramp we saw boats ran up on shorelines, bassboats and pontoons alike. Several had obviously ruined the hulls by choosing to run up the shorelines, apparently the owners thought that they had to do that to keep from sinking the boat with them in it. One especially nice Ranger bassboat with twin power poles had run up on the riprap shoreline, ruined its hull, and the back end was under water. Never before had I actually felt like we were more likely to sink or flip the boat than not, the experience has definitely gave me a new appreciation to the power and danger of wind, especially on big lakes. Coldest ever was a day with a high of 28 and a low in the single digits, with freezing rain that would freeze on your jacket, in addition to 10-20 mile an hour winds. No rain gear can keep you dry in that. By far the coldest I've ever been, but we caught a boat load of fish vertically jigging blade baits.

But what about the "skilled fisherwomen" floor?

I thought about trying those, but I doubt they'd work in an environment that has such a high humidity that it causes hooks to rust, even hooks that have never touched the water. They're good hooks to, gamakatsu, katsuage, and owner. Any ideas for protecting against humidity?

Don't know if you've tried them, but the lc lv500 lipless has been killer around here for green fish fished just like a blade bait/jig. Especially in cold water, but also in the summer. Another good option, and cheaper if you buy them during the 5.99 lucky craft sales a "big" site does a few times a year.

@smalljaw67my bad, I thought he used the 5318 but you are right it's the 5313. I personally have a slight preference for the lighter 5318 hook though.

Sounds like I should be heading down south... I won't be seeing a bed fish around here for another 5 months of cold Winter is just starting up here.

I have the 6'10" ml/f villain 2.0, and while it does run about 1/2 power stiff, the tip is still plenty soft enough for drop shots IMO. I'm not much of a drop shitter though, so take it with a grain of salt. I mostly use it for 1/8 ounce shaky head with 4 inch finesse worms, but if I ever get into dropshotting that'll be the rod I use. Super light and sensitive to, although the micro guides are a bit brittle.

Thought that might have been you we passed on that point, but wasn't sure cause of the different boat. You looked like you pretty much knew exactly where the best fishing is right now, you hit each of my current three best spots right in a row while we were trying to retrieve a jerkbait i broke off the night before Your Bucktails still left a good number of fish for our shaky heads and jerkbaits though

That on hl?

I'm a #4 and sometimes a #2 hook guy, but I can attest to the fact that the owner 5318 hooks that @Siebert Outdoors uses are very sharp, light wire, and plenty strong enough-but they will still bend out enough to sometimes free a snagged lure.

At least the water movement will help keep it from freezing up for a little while longer, I doubt I have more than 3 or maybe 4 weeks till the ice gets to thick to break through with my boat or canoe.

Roughly 46-50 depending on where in the lake you are. I'm a bit south of you though, about even west of Indianapolis

Jerkbait bite is still hot, hopefully it lasts a few more weeks and this rain doesn't muddy up the water. Got a little over 6' of clarity in the upper end, and even more in the lower lake areas. I've been out for at least an hour or three every day lately, and it's been a pretty steady 7-12 bass an hour. Mostly getting them on vision 110s, but a shaky head has been mopping up a god number of fish after an area has been hit with a jerkbait. Even got on some big crappies last night, caught 19 fish in under an hour with 14 of them being crappie in the 12-14 inch range. Only a couple less than 13, and none smaller than 12. Got them on the vision 110 too, all stacked up around an underwater tree that has a branch that sticks up out of 18 feet up to 7' beneath the surface (you can actually see that branch right now), off of a steep dropping bank in the upper part of the lake. They were suspending around the top branch, somewhat loosely schooled, but very aggressive. I know it's chilly out there, but if you guys have the opportunity to get out, do so. In my opinion, the fishing right now is second only to the spring bite. And as the fish are for the most part grouped together now, the multi species action can include some nice bonus fish.

No kidding, that thing is wicked sensitive. Awesome shaky head rod to.