ABA CAST CHAMP 2006

Heddon torpedo. Slow retrieve, quick series of twitches with pauses between to move it no more than 6" per twitch

I don't use Mr. Twister brand grubs, but I do use grubs, usually 3"-5" size. In open water without much cover I use a jig head with no weed guard. When the fish are around stuff like trees, then I'll go with a texas-rigged grub. My favorite colors for are bumblebee (black/yellow swirl), watermelon seed, tequila sunrise, and different variations of white. Jigging the grubs works very well for me, but sometimes, especially in the fall when the baitfish school up into big balls, swimming the grub over, in, around, below the baitfish with a darter-head type jig works very well since the smallmouth seem to be more active here during the fall than in the summer months.

Main lake weed mats near deep water and submerged humps/roadbeds/ledges with stumps and chunk rock on them.

The only thing a landowner can do is ask the trespasser to leave and if the trespasser does not, then call the law. There is only one state in the USA, Texas, that allows landowners to shoot trespassers after dark. Anywhere else, any time of day, in all states it is illegal unless the trespasser poses a situation in which the landowner must defend him/herself. So, trespassers, unless you're in Texas after dark, then you should be safe, but that's no guarantee since there are quite a few insane people out there in the world. No one wants to get shot, but if you do (and live to tell about it) then you could probably be recompensated through a lawsuit. Just ask permission. It's a whole lot easier to deal with a happy landowner, who might say yes or who might say no, than it is to deal with an angry landowner.

3-5" bluegill work the best for me. I hook them through the meat on the top right before the dorsal fin and rig them about 1-2feet unweighted below a 2" diameter round bobber. The bluegills can't pull it under, but they can swim around a bit, usually in circles jerking the bobber around. The only thing that can take a the bobber down is when the bass takes it and they usually just seem to swim off and pull the bobber under slowly when they do this. Count to about 2 or 3 then ram the hook home!

Oh yeah! It's a blast around here when the mayflies hatch because you can catch the bass and any other species for that matter very easily since they all get on the mayflies. The bass will hit anything that goes in the water near wherever the mayflies are falling off the trees since there are so many baitfish gobbling up the mayflies.

Throw an Arkie Salty Craw on one of their weedless jig heads and jig it back bouncing the bottom. Also throw a weightless Creme Rigged Scoundrel Worm. Those are killer for bass in ponds.

Go old school to find what kind of crawdads you've got in your lakes. Walk around the banks and flip over rocks that you can reach from shore and stick our hands in there and grab 'em. I don't think I've ever seen a rule in any tourney that says you can't do that during practice. So, if you can get a bait to match the color of those crawdads then you can load the boat up during a lot of tournaments.

Kentucky. We've got a bunch that fall into the brown/orange/dark olive category such as the rusty crawfish. There's another kind that I haven't been able to find any information on that I've found in KY Lake. It is almost a turquoise bluish/green with 2 skinny yellow racing stripes down its back. Only found a few, and I'm pretty sure at least one of them was female because she was hiding a mess of eggs under her tail, but it's a pretty killer color down here in the spring.

Dominion Dan is right about much of what has been posted as being complete hearsay as to recognizing the species of fish that we're talking about. No offense intended, but there is no "simple" identification such as "removing a scale." One can look at a fish and say that it is one species or another, but everyone should make use a dichotomous key from published material such as The Fishes of Tennessee by Etnier and Starnes in order to determine exactly what species of fish they're dealing with. So I argue that any posts furthermore about a questionable species be left to the replies which have made use of scientific observation rather than replies based on experience and belief. At least the arguments presented would be legitimate instead of being completely biased and the bickering might slow down a little bit .

According to the latest fishing reports here at KY Lake, the smallmouths are spawning right now on main lake pea gravel banks. The water was near 65 degrees when the reports of spawning smallmouths came in, but with the recent cold fronts and the water already back down to 60 degrees on the main lake, there could well be a 2nd good spawn of smallmouths.

Jeeze, those are some grande-sized bucketmouths. Sweet pics.

Wow fo'bizzle, if that's fo'shizzle, then that's a great idea! How did you drum up that idea? It really does sound like something that anyone could benefit from. I'll have to try that sometime this summer.

I don't know of any bass clubs in Louisville that accept non boaters, but if you know someone with a boat who'd be willing to take you as a fishing partner, then there are the TNT tournaments and FNBBO tournaments on Taylorsville Lake every week of the summer. Both series are team tournaments. The TNTs are on Tuesday nights from 6 to 10pm, 5 fish limit. The FNBBO tournaments are the Friday Night Big Bass Open team tournaments, 1 bass limit. Hope that helps some.

No matter where you are, it's hard for any smallmouth bass to resist a natural color tube.