papajoe222

A #9 Rapala original floater. That one lure got me through some very lean college years and is likely responsible for what's left of my sanity. I retired it 45 years ago.

Being an all around good fisherman AND a specialist at one technique is a whole different ballgame than just being a specialist at one. If one is all you know, you'll be missing a lot of opportunities available to someone that knows a few fairly well.

If he isn't practicing catch and release, your problem is the fish aren't in the pond anymore. If he has, The fish are either refusing to come up for the light weight presentations, or they've moved off those weeds to an area where they feel more secure, or followed the baitfish. Try a heavy swim jig or punch rig with a tube, or beaver as a trailer. It'll get to the bottom through the weeds and will come through them without bogging down too much. Let it fall to the bottom and rip it up and let it fall again. If they've moved, you need to go find them. As fall approaches, the deeper weeds won't hold the fish like they do during the summer. The baitfish will have moved to shallower weeds and the bass will follow.

The Sword hit the nail on the head. You have to find them and then figure out what will catch them. There are a number of good articles on just that on this site. Check them out. The other thing I suggest, especially if you plan to continue targeting deep fish, is to get yourself a depth finder. With the influx of the down and side imaging units of late, you can pick up a good used unit without emptying your wallet.

these http://www.basspro.com/shop/en/lindy-no-snagg-slip-sinkers

No matter what you call it, I believe we all have at least one. Mine is keeping a spinnerbait at a certain depth during the retrieve. Swim jig, or lipless crank.....no problem, just count them down and with a little experimentation you figure the right retrieve speed. Not so for me. So, who' your daddy?

You can tell a lot about the area you're fishing even when you don't catch anything. You can tell when the bottom changes from soft to hard, gravel, rocks, shell beds, etc. Because you're always in contact with the bottom, when you do loose contact, it's because of a quick depth change. On a flat, especially, you can locate ditches that the bass use like inroads from the deeper water when feeding.

I love to fish deep structure for the big girls. I've been doing just that for the last decade or so, but my body can no longer take deep cranking for any length of time. I'm not covering a lot of water during an outing dragging a big tube or a football jig/trailer along looking for that sweet spot, but I have confidence that the fish are in the areas I target, so it's just a matter of figuring out what they want. The other presentation I use and the one that seems to be more productive, is a C-rig with a 6in.-7in. action tail worm on a 12in.-18-in. leader. It's more of a finesse presentation, IMO and that's why I believe it's more productive. There's just something about that skinny little worm floating along just off the bottom that the big girls really like and I learned long ago that giving the ladies what they like is the key to success. So how many of you consider a C-rig as a year round presentation and if you don't, is a drop shot or other rig your season long pet presentation for deep structure?

Bigbill may be off target a little whe he says that we don't target big bass, they target us. I believe that if you want to catch a 5lb.+ bass, you need to aggressively target them. That means when you go out, whether on a big lake or a one acre pond, every day catching mentality needs to be forgotten. Refine your thinking and presentations to that task and you'll have a much better chance than just lucking into one. Add a Muskie sized Jitterbug or a saltwater ChugBug to the big worm and buzzer already suggested and target the stuff you and 99% of the other anglers don't and you may be surprised with a hawg (or 2).

One thing that many anglers forget is that during the peak of summer, the forage base of almost all bodies of water is at its peak. You are competing with the buffet that the fish have to choose from. They will more easily ignore a sloppy presentation or an offering that looks out of place, unlike during their spring or fall movements. The other behavior that is often overlooked is that during those peak summer months, a good majority of the fish will have set feeding periods (not by a human's clock, but by theirs) and they know where to feed and what to feed on at those times. That's the downside. The upside is they also tend to group together more during the summer, whether feeding or not. Did you ever have a summer outing when you caught 20-30 bass in a relatively short period? Yes, to many of the fish that use the shallows as their home this doesn't apply, but I'm talking the majority. Now take just those few facts and apply them to a small body of water like a pond and you can see why it can be very frustrating when fishing them during the summer. The odds are stacked against you, but then again, there's always that one memorable outing that awaits you too.

The reasoning behind a closed season was mainly to protect the fishery from over harvesting, especially during the spawn. This, in theory, allows reproduction to advance to the stage of fry hatching. As you can attest from your own success in the early spring, bass are much easier to locate in the spring during their pre-spawn to post spawn cycle. The reasoning is, this also makes them easier to catch. Just a few decades ago, catch and release was unheard of and removing fish during that period when the fishery is at its most vulnerable was the driving force in closed seasons. The same goes for other species that have closed seasons such as muskie. Sadly you have only a couple of options: Move to, or fish a locality that has a longer open season that starts earlier. Petition your local law makers to update the laws to reflect the angler's morals. Good luck with the latter.

That looks like some alien movie spin-off, but I like it for a dead stick bait.

What he said. Not all the water will be moving fast and an often overlooked area of slack, or slower moving water is the deeper water below the rapids. Actually, any place the water's movement slows enough to be distinguishable is usually due to an increase in depth. A good way I've found to target that deeper, slower moving water is with a jig that will tumble along the bottom by the faster moving water, but is heavy enough to fall to the bottom on the downside of the drop where the current isn't as strong.

I've run into male bass (LM) going through the motions of fanning out beds after an extended warming trend in the fall, but never females. Then again, the water up here is hard for a few months at a time.

Check out the muskie section of your LSG. I regularly catch bass on muskie glide baits and big Original Rapalas. Soft plastics open up a whole different subject, but the big hollow swimbaits are a killer on both the muskie and big bass.

I wish a low pressure system would move through the area when I'm on vacation. Too bad you and your dad stayed off the water. Post frontal conditions are the most difficult because the fish tend to hold tight to cover, or go deep. Either way, their strike zone is small and unless you can first place your offering within that strike window, you don't have much chance. Even with reaction baits, if it isn't passing close to the fish, it won't get a second look. Most guys will switch to finesse tactics, but I concentrate on the same areas that hold fish on a regular basis and pick apart the cover with a jig. If I'm targeting deeper structure, I'll slowly drag a football jig or crawl a deep crank along key spots. It sounds like you did alright, both in locating fish and finding a presentation that worked. That front may have stalled and done you a favor......you didn't have to get wet.

I'd do odd jobs during the school year for cash. During the summer, I'd do my best to eliminate the overpopulation of squirrels in the woods by our summer cottage. Back then, a half dozen squirrel tails shipped off to Mepps would get you a bunch of free spinners. I'd end up loosing a dozen or so every season, so I needed a good, cheap supply.

With a soft/muck bottom, a jig with the line tie above its center will get bogged down less than one with the tie at the nose. So will a lighter jig, or one with a slow fall rate. You had good success with a swim jig, so if there's any weeds you occasionally run across, I'd stick with that. Otherwise, either of the above are good choices.

It would depend a lot on the main forage of the lake. The reason the fish go up the creek arms on the big inpoundments is because that's where the baitfish go. That's what they'll do in most any lake unless there is an abundance of varied forage. I know it's a very generic type of answer, but there are a lot of other factors that influence where they may be.

Nice legs Seriously, that's a story you'll be telling even after you top that 6.5 Congrats

Welcome to the forums. I fished similar pits here in Illinois for years. Crystal clear water that drops off quickly into 30+ft. There were a few areas where the drop was a slower taper and a couple of islands. Indiana was right on about finding a ramp if one exists. Two things I found out early were; After the spawn, the fish (not just bass) tend to suspend and once you find that depth, catching can be very good. The other thing is to parallel the shoreline with your presentations as much as possible. One thing to keep in mind and that is SHADE. Those steep drop offs are like bluff walls and offer plenty of shade but for a couple of hours mid-day. The fish will hold shallower in the shaded areas and tend to hold close to that edge it provides. Smaller baits (I bagged a lot of fish on crappie sized cranks and split shot 6in. worms) and light line, fluorocarbon if you prefer, will get you more bites. You didn't mention if you'll be fishing from shore, or a boat. Pits are great bodies of water to fish from shore if there isn't a lot of brush and such to deal with.

There are so many ways to rig plastics and different retrieves, one could write a 400 page book and still leave out a few. Learn to rig them weedless, or what many call Texas rigging, and you can present them with or without a weight. When it comes to weights, you've a ton of options, pick one that fits the conditions (water depth, wind, etc.) and go out and fish it slow. No, I mean s l o w.

Yes I do, but once the water temp. hit 60, I tend to put them away until fall. Unlike your success using a steady retrieve, a pumping/jigging retrieve seems to work best in the waters I frequent. I would imagine using one under tough conditions, rather than a lipless crank, could be productive. Or just to show the fish something they don't see very often. Thanks for turning on a light for me. Hope I can pay ya back sometime soon.

Exactly. I crank it down until it hits bottom (I'll usually run it a few feet to kick up some bottom) then pause for a bit (I also experiment with how long I pause) wind it down until it bumps bottom again and repeat. With a deep diving crank, you get the bait down to the bottom quick and it stays there, even if the depth increases a few feet you're still able to keep it down. The time it takes to complete a cast can be upwards of a minute, so this isn't a tactic to use if you're trying to cover water, but it's a real killer when you know you've located fish, or have a lot of confidence in a spot. One more thing. Although craw patterns work well doing this, I've also loaded the boat using shad colors at times, but honestly,IMO, the action is what the fish are submitting to.

Most crankbait anglers know that those baits work best when they deflect off cover or the bottom. For years I have used cranks that run 12ft-14ft in 8ft-10ft of water for that very reason. As a byproduct of doing so, I've been forced to slow down my retrieve speed. 'Grinding' a crank across the bottom is harder on this old body than deep cranking which I've all but put on the shelf, but by slowing down and using a bait with closer to neutral buoyancy I can bump the bottom, pause it, and repeat. There isn't the sharp, strike triggering deflection doing this, but many of my bigger fish have succumbed to this tactic.