txchaser

Irod's A-rig rod is pretty good, and it'd work just fine for punching too. I use it from time to time on 6" soft swimbaits (more like the whale or daingerous than a boom boom). 1.25oz chatterbaits, big spoons, etc. Fill the other spot with a H rod you like for frogs if you fish them much.

Sitting dockside has a decent amount of conversation about prey and bass behavior - mostly biologists.

Kistler and Daiwa have both exceeded my expectations.

More time I spend on the electronics the more fish I end up catching, to a point. Sidescan in particular - you find stuff that very few other people know is there. Those fish get beat on less. Now that I have FFS they are kinda the same - fishing and on the electronics. Although in less than 8FOW I'm mostly using it for "yep there's stuff here in this area" vs targeting specific fish. It is very efficient.

This last two winters (and a bassU class) taught me that there are fish that will absolutely smash fast stuff when it's cold. Not all of them.. but what used to be an outside grass edge with a rattletrap really is a thing. bladed jig fished a little bit faster than a blade bait, kind of like a swinghead can work too. Warming trend probably helps here, as does a sunny day. In fairness it doesn't really ever freeze over here though.

I hope they did a little something nice for you.

One of your best "this is the juice" videos, especially for when the fish are all over the place in volatile weather. Worth watching/reading twice - transition edges by the stacked up lines, and your spot on the spot comment ...

I'd say middle of the fairway is a 1/8 oz head with a 3-4 inch skinny bait. 10-12 ft deep right now. Kinda early to tell though. How's casting distance with that setup?

PSA, but maybe I'm last to the party. Dicks has some interesting 6th sense baits not listed on the 6th sense website or on TW. I have no connection to 6th sense or dicks, but I do like 6th sense baits for where/how I fish. Some of these are interesting. edit: looks like they are at academy too Fiction Shad https://www.dickssportinggoods.com/p/6th-sense-fiction-shad-softbait-246thufctn43lvgzzlur/246thufctn43lvgzzlur?color=Ghost Pro Shiner Strobe Minnow https://www.dickssportinggoods.com/p/6th-sense-strobe-minnow-softbait-246thustrbmnw32ghlur/246thustrbmnw32ghlur?color=Ghost Pro Shiner Strobe shaker https://www.dickssportinggoods.com/p/6th-sense-strobe-shaker-minnow-swimbait-246thustrbshkr33glur/246thustrbshkr33glur?color=Log Perch Panorama swimbait https://www.dickssportinggoods.com/p/6th-sense-panorama-soft-bait-236thupnrm35ghstmlur/236thupnrm35ghstmlur?color=4K Shad Rigged Panorama https://www.dickssportinggoods.com/p/6th-sense-rigged-panorama-swimbait-246thupnrgdswmbt3lur/246thupnrgdswmbt3lur?color=4K Shad

You will see structure and cover that is not obvious from above the water, and that will get you more prime spots, less pressured fish, and maybe bigger ones too.

Bait choice makes a big difference here. I mostly prefer the divine in 3.8 - it's not a very big bait compared to most and has a tighter wiggle. Lighter too. Jackall is my active fish choice - bit softer and more wiggle. IMO Keitech Fat Impacts are big huge wag, they just dont feel quite right to me. I'm sure there's a time and a place for them. I definitely agree with the comment above about no blades sometimes @softwateronly - If I had to do last weekend over again I should have seen it. They were gobbling a damiki/hover but wouldn't eat the a-rig, and I think the blades were the issue. Reel the rig slower than you think you should - they have a lot of lift.

Zako is my default. Rage bug horizontal for one specific color choice. Looks a little more craw like anyway. Going to try the blade minnow in it's stead because I like to fish deeper on this specific falcon craw in the spring, low and slow presentation. And I just bought a pack of the new geecrack bladed jig trailer that AJ co-designed. A friend had a pack and I liked them - tail looks good, and the head is much stiffer plastic so should last longer than a zako, especially burying it in the weeds. Hoping for the best of both worlds.

I'm leaning in pretty hard to the FFS, it's tons of fun. But that also means mid-stroll/hover stroll is a pretty key part of those days. The plain'ol 7' spinning rod I have is working fine, but if I'm going to be locked on this as a presentation I should (can? want to?) get a specialized rod. I'm seeing a bunch of stuff about solid tips being better because (whatever reason, maybe the shake?). Are they? I'm thinking about a little longer than 7', trying to stand off from the fish some and can't see how I could do a 80' presentation the way this is set up. But accuracy matters a lot here. Anyway, assume I'm fine spending a bit of money, but I'm not trying to buy a conquest either. Just want to buy once/cry once. But does it really matter on this presentation? Is there a bfs deal to be done, or just hush and get another spinning rod? Rod monkey is gonna win, so please help me push him in the right direction.

First 13+ in Texas for the year is usually caught in the first few days of Jan. IMO big fish prespawn starts mid-feb at the latest. But the weather is comically volatile week to week. 4746 Strike King Elite 01/03/2025 Brandon Burks Stephenville TX 11.37 24.00 J. B. Thomas Brandon Burks's fish 4727 Legacy #670 01/02/2025 Brady Stanford Millersview TX 13.13 27.00 O. H. Ivie Brady Stanford's fish 4726 Strike King Elite 01/02/2025 Steve Eldred Yantis TX 10.08 24.75 Lake Fork Steve Eldred's fish 4722 Bass Pro Shops Lunker 01/01/2025 Max Nwanebu Fairview TX 9.63 24.50 Lake Fork

IMO this is a great moving bait rod. Does fine with senkos, etc. If I could have just one action on a baitcaster (and a single rod) it'd be this unless I was getting up in Nitranium or Loomis MBR territory.

It is the TM - I need to be able to make finer movements. Some of it is skill issue, but I think the comment above about making sure the friction spots are lubricated and fiddling with the screw will help.

Edge boxes are really nice but I will only buy on amazon when the price drops from time to time. Especially good for plastics that come in blister packs like the keitechs. And the 3600 flex is perfect for chatterbaits and swimjigs with a trailer. For terminal, by far the best so far is the bass mafia 3600 'ice coffin' or something like that. The spaces for dividers are very close together - don't need much space for 30 beads, 15 1/8 oz tungsten, etc. But for crankbaits the plano CDS thin are the best I've found by far. I drop some of the flambeau blue dividers cut up a little since they have anti-ruse. I had extras from the one flambeau box I have. I don't like the regular waterproof planos because the way the edges are curved removes a lot of usable space.

Just weighing in on this winter thread with a few observations. 1) Yeah there's some luck involved. Can you learn from your luck? And in my case can I learn that day, not on the the drive home wishing I shoulda coulda woulda! 2) 100% the bigger fish are more likely to be deeper, or at most a couple of tail swishes from whatever deep water is around there. Not 100%, there's always that shallow monster, but way way more likely to be in 8-12' than in 3-4'. 3) I think there are something like eight different kinds of LMB - based on behavior not genetics. These will be in 'southern lbs' so YMMV. I think onshore=littoral and offshore=pelagic as I'm describing it. onshore/offshore small 1-3 (kinda the same in terms of what they do. water puppies, chase nearly anything although sometimes get super keyed on a specific presentation) onshore/offshore adult 4-7 (offshore adults still group and wolf pack some. Lazier though, more likely to be under a shad ball or chasing big gizzards) onshore/offshore big 8-12 (example behavior - onshore bigs are mean and don't share cover much, offshore bigs can still pack up some but IMO less likely at the top of the range. In both cases more likely to be isolated) offshore/offshore giant 13+ (IDK, haven't caught enough to really see patterns beyond being near deep water 100% of the time and better bigs and giants with steady retrieves, slower, silent or near silent baits.) What do you have to add or refute to the categories above? And in texas I notice most of the offshore fish are built different - they are far more likely to have a gut and shoulders eg over 100% relative weight. They live a different life than the shore fish - more food and more activity to get that food too.

If a white spinnerbait works for you then maybe an a-rig would. But whenever the idea fairy tells me to try what you are suggesting (and I do) it hasn't worked out for me with shad colored baits. Mayyybe with GP trailers and no blades. Or gold blades. Give it a shot, if it works I can say I was in the thread when @IntroC invented it and it ultimately was banned from tournament fishing for being too good.

In soft plastics, SK's Falcon Craw color. When they are eating craws they can get keyed in really hard on some red in the bait. I really like the two tone GP/red on these. In moving baits, red/black keitechs. Shallow. Same reason as above. In hard baits, black. For gill eaters. Each of these have had enough outstanding results in the right situation that I'm past the 'it is just confidence' conclusion.

After you've had them in the market for a bit, consider calling american legacy. While you'd have to ship they will likely buy them all. I think they are going to be below 1/2 of retail though.

The crankbait pause mentioned is an A+ nugget. Caught a nice fish this weekend by accident - was fishing a flatside, and paused halfway through the retrieve to fiddle with electronics. Five seconds later the fish smoked the lure. Turned out to be a great clue to slow down even more on the retrieve, incorporate pauses etc. And to try a jerkbait, which worked well with longer pauses.

Its more tank-y than a tat300, if that tells you anything. I use one for frogging and one for heavy punching. It feels like it is made for the heavy winching of big fish out of nasty grass.

I don't know if it was here or on youtube, but I recall someone making a comment about breaking a lake into thirds, and then creek arms into thirds, etc as a way to try to get dialed in faster. Seems to fit with my experience of on smaller waters I'm better off posting up on the best spot and getting them dialed in from there, and on bigger waters if I'm not getting bit I should move, assuming I have a pretty good read on where they are in the column. I'm not saying they can't be picky in big water, but it does seem like they are less picky on what, but far more likely to not even be there at all. An example of how I fished a bigger (for me) lake this weekend - we've had a south wind for a bit, pushing warm water and air towards the north end of the lake. There's warm water coming in off the creeks but it's nasty and muddy, and this lake is kindof silted in. So I wanted to be close to deeper water as we are rolling in to prespawn. That put me on the top 1/3 of the lake. Picked a point and fished all three sides of the point (directly in the wind, parallel, protected) - I expected the directly in the wind side, but nope, bite was far better on the parallel than the others. And inside that the bites were where the banks were a little steeper/less distance to deep water. I was looking for shallow fish moving up because of the warm water. What I didn't expect is that where there were fish shallow, there were often some fish out a little deeper too - hanging out waiting to move up and eat I guess. I also ran the 1/3's in one of the creek arms since it was right by the point, and relatively short. Bunch of buck bass but no bigger girls moving up to feed, which was the opposite of what was in the good area mentioned above.

Nice! I had a blast there. Guy running the pro shop (forget his name) was solid too. Sorted me out of a gear jam.