ww2farmer

I am firmly in the braid to FC leader camp, and none of these stories of "leader knots create a weak point" or "fluorocarbon is weak and fragile" hold water with me. I have YEARS of exp. using it, untold number of hours on the water actually catching big fish, and cashing in or winning tournaments with my sets ups to tell me other wise. If you have problems with the braid to leader knot, or with the leader breaking your either: #1 tying bad leader knots or #2 using garbage fluoro as leader material or both....period. That being said, I do not use fluoro as main line on ANY of my reels....100% braid, 100% of the time. 10lb on spinning reels, and 20,30, and 50 on casting reels depending on application. The only time I use straight braid is frogging, top water, or punching very thick very shallow grass.....in deeper grass I use a heavy leader.

My basic Neko rig consists of: 4"+ 5" stick baits, 1/16th oz, or 1/8th oz nail sinkers, wacky o-rings, and #1 VMC Neko hooks. Sometimes I will catch 10+ bass without losing a bait/o-ring/sinker.....sometimes I will lose them every fish. It is what it is, and I don't lose too much sleep over it.

Since the big win on Conesus in the dash for cash, my last three outing have been slow, to terrible. Monday night on Silver I fished for three hours after work, caught one 11" bass, a 3.5lber, and one pike...pretty terrible outing. Thursday I had the 5th tournament in my solo angler series on Silver. It was bad for me from the get go. I caught 3 keepers all day, nothing big. There are 9 events in this series, and we take the top 6 for the AOY race, so I just took a mulligan on this one and will use it as a drop. I was leading the AOY race after the first 4 events, but dropped to 4th after this one....but I am still in it, only a few lbs behind the current leader, and I can still afford 2 more "bad" outings, but I better not flub the rest too badly. Yesterday I fished the CV Bass trail team open on Honeoye...land of the dinks, with a new to me partner out of his boat who is a good young angler, and has fished and won a bunch of tournaments in the area. Neither of us has much exp. on Honeoye, I haven't been there in 10 years, and he fishes Cayuga, Keuka, and Oneida more than the smaller western finger lakes. We ground our way to a 5th place finish out of 33 boats by basically junk fishing...but since they only paid 3 spots, 5th was as good as 33rd in the money department, but at least we meshed well, didn't fall on our faces, and had a good time. This afternoon I went to back to silver, and given the struggles of the last two outings there...I locked a spinning rod in my hand and had a better day. Not good, just better than the last two outings there. I fished from 2pm-8pm, and caught 7 bass, all over 3lbs, with a 4-2 as lunker for the day.

I think I fished Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and friday night on Silver. Monday and Tuesday SUCKED.....I tried to force the bite I had going last Friday, and it wasn't happening. With me struggling to put a couple of keepers in the boat each nite. Thursday was good, I played around with the new Berkley max scent general baits and caught a bunch of good ones in a few hours. See my post in the baits section for report/review of the night. Friday was on fire. I got there around 1pm after an early day at work. I had another one of "those days" that only happens a few times a year. Without going into too much detail....the highlights/best five largemouth were a 6-2, 5-7, 4-11, 4-3, and a 4-1....yeah it was good. Then there was yesterday. If last Sunday I started to throw dirt on my Conesus struggles with my 3rd place finish and 6-4 lunker in a tournament, yesterday (with BIG BIG help from my partner) we buried them....for now LOL. I fished the annual big Dash for Cash on that lake with the kid whom had to cancel on me last weekend. We started right, as I caught a 4+ lber early and we each contributed to a solid limit in the boat of mixed bag lm/sm in the first hour or so. Then the wind really started whipping. We went to one of my best areas for big fish on the lake, and had a magical 20 mins. He put a 6.5, 5.5, and 3.5 in the boat in short order, and I culled out one of our smaller fish with solid mid to upper 3lb fish fishing behind him. That put us well over 20lbs when combined with the 4lber I got early. We ran in and weighed his 6.5 at the bottom of the hour, waited 2 mins and weighed in the 5lber at the top of the very next hour. The 6lber took that hours big fish prize, but the 5 was JUST clipped by some one with a little bit bigger one. Oh well....we could have waited and won almost every other hour after that, but we wanted to get them weighed, on the board, released, and get back to that area before the bite died, or someone else moved in on it. That's all part of the dash for cash game. Anyways we won the entire event in the overall weight department with 22.84lbs...got some $$ for the win and his hourly winning fish, a couple of cool plaques, and bragging rights for a year over a lot of the top guns on that lake. What a day.

This post is not meant as a hi-jack of this thread, but as an additional review of the Max Scent General. I bought 2 packs of them the other day to try. I am a big fan of Berkley soft plastics, and was looking forward to trying the General, as to my knowledge, Berkley has never has never had a "true" stick bait in their line up before. Things like the Gulp Sinking Minnow, Havoc Flat Dawg, etc..have always left a lot to be desired for me. First impressions straight out of the pack were: #1, listed as a 5" bait, they are a little smaller than a 5" Senko, or my usual go-to stick, the Yum Dinger, but a little bigger than 4" versions of those baits. #2, the scent is not over powering like OG Power bait #3, the make up of the plastic material is different from most other baits on the market. I can best describe it as very similar to Gulp!, but denser, and it doesn't dry out. I took them out last night and fished with them exclusively to give them a fair shake. I neko rigged the Junebug colored ones I bought with a 1/16th oz nail weight for fishing deep grass lines in slightly stained water, and wacky rigged the green pumpkin party colored ones on a 1/16th oz wacky jigs for fishing clearer water around/under docks, and shallow grass lines. I caught fish on both presentations, with the high lights a 4-4 on the shallow wacky rig, and a 4-1, and limit of 2.5-3.5lbers on the neko rig in deeper water. After fishing them for 4-5 hours, here are my thoughts/observations. #1...., BOTH colors turned from their darker original color to a a light purple/pink for the june bug, and a weirdo greyish/whiteish/greenish color for the green pumpkin based color. That was a big turn off. #2...Durability was decent, not better or worse than a Yum Dinger, but much better than a senko. #3....Wacky rigged they have the wiggle of a weightless Senko, and about the same as a Yum Dinger on a jig head (weightless dingers don't wiggle nearly as much) #4... They cast and skip like bullets, and sink very fast. Faster than a weightless senko, way way faster than a weightless dinger, and noticeably faster on a jig head as a weighted dinger on the same size jig had.....I DON'T like that, as I like to be able to start from a known base line of the super slow falling dinger, and add weight as needed to get the fall rate, and or wiggle I want Overall....they are a quality option, but I don't think I will replace my dingers with them. The main reasons are the sink rate is too fast out of the package for my liking, the color fading issue bugs me, and price...they are not cheap at $6.99 for 8. I will eagerly wait for the OG Power bait version of the General to hit the shelves (9/15 according to Tackle Warehouse) and give those a try next.

I finally got off the struggle bus on Conesus today....but it took a little luck, and a lot of grinding to do so. I was all set to fish as a non-boater in the Fix-it 4-U team trail tournament there today with a kid who buys jigs from me and is just breaking into bass fishing, but has a nice boat that would be more comfortable to fish out of in a bigger team open. He decided to not go at the last minute. So....I hitch up the ol' tin can this morning at 4:30am and head over there alone to fish it. My day, much like most of my outings on Conesus this year got off to a painfully slow start. It was 8:30am before I had a bite, and it was only a small 1.75lb keeper. Catching that fish did nothing to bolster my confidence, so I switched things up. Shortly after the switch, the days magical/lucky moment happened....I caught a 6lb 4oz. largemouth. Easily my biggest fish this year in a tournament, or even in practice on Conesus. ( I have caught several bigger n practice on Silver this year). So I keep running with what caught that fish...for a while. I ended up getting a limit by about 10am, but it was a 13lb bag, and with a 6-4....you do the math on what the other four were....let's just say, not hogs. I eventually bailed on that after a long period with out bites. I ended up culling up a couple times the last hour with a couple decent fish, one largemouth and one smallmouth, and ended up cashing in 3rd place in a team event by myself with a 16lb 11oz. bag, and also took tournament lunker with the 6-4.

No, but I caught twice as many pike as I did bass yesterday. I don't think I have caught a tiger muskie yet this year over there. As for tonight's fishing on Silver...it was good. Not on fire but good. I fished from 4pm-8pm. I caught an even dozen, with the best 5 a 4-13, a 4-1, a 3-11, and a pair of 3-9's. I'll take 19 + lbs for 4 hours of work any night. The most exciting part of the night was when I went for a swim.....unintentionally. I skipped a frog up under a dock, and some other bozo left a wad of braid broken off on this dock, and of course my line, and frog got all tangled up in it. So there I am, on hands and knees, with the scissors cutting my frog out of this mess, when I get blind sided by a huge wake. It wasn't the initial wake that got me it was the rebound wake off the retaining wall on shore. I felt it start pushing the boat away from the dock.....the next thing I know, I am forming a human bridge between my front deck and the edge of this dock. My out stretched arms and hands on the dock, and my feet hooked on the gunnel of the boat with the rest of my body over open water.....it must have been a sight to see. I was faced with two options.....keep holding on for dear life and risk some kind of bizzaro injury, or just let go and take a swim. I chose to go into the drink. So I went in as gracefully as a 300lb fool could. I actually landed feet first on the bottom in about chest deep milfoil and eel grass choked water, calmly walked over to the boat, grabbed the TM shaft and walked the boat through the grass filled water to the nearest dock with a ladder, and climbed back on. One of my idiot friends saw the whole thing, and I thought I was going to have to call the ambulance for him he was laughing so bad. Lucky my phone, keys, and wallet were in the boat, and not my pockets. I continued to fish for 2 hours or so after this comedic fiasco, and caught my best fish of the night afterwards.

I continue to drive the struggle bus on Conesus. Fished this past Sunday there from 6:30am-1pm, caught 8. Nothing to get excited about. Biggest was about 3lbs, and the best five went 13lbs or so. Pulled out disgusted, and went home to Silver. I fished there from 4pm-dark.......also only caught 8, so it wasn't on fire either, but size was much much better, with a 5-3, and 4-1 as the highlights of the evening. Then yesterday I HAD to go to Conesus for my weekday solo angler tournament. Unlike Sunday, I caught a lot of fish. But size is still escaping me there this year. I came in with 14.11lb....good enough for 5th, and good enough to maintain, and grow my AOY lead in the race to 9+ lbs over 2nd. The lake was not kicking out big fish, the winner had 18, 2nd had 16, and 3rd had 15. NO 5lber came in, and only 2 or 3 over 4lb were caught.....by a field of really good fisherman on that lake. 2 of the other 3 guys at the top of my AOY standing turned in terrible days as well, with one guy just clipping me for 4th with 14.33lbs, and the other guy, my team event partner Rick, who's won 4-5 tournaments on Conesus this year, posting up an 11lb bag...yeah....Conesus is "off" this year. I did make one strategic error yesterday. I have struggled so badly this year there fishing the usually good areas north of the launch ramp (which sits about smack dab in the middle of the lake), that I decided to fish some areas I like south of the ramp. I had my weight by 8:30 am from my south areas, but like a bone head, I pulled up shop, went north looking for big bites, and caught dinks and non-helping fish the rest of the day. I should have ground it out in the south all day. I have a team tournament there this Sunday...I am not excited.

I'm just glad the bull frogs around here don't get much bigger than they do. They are very aggressive. There are days when I can't keep them away from my frogs, and unhooking a big one is not for the meek or timid. Their back legs are very very strong. I will admit though, watching one "stalk" a frog through a mat is comical. You see a wake coming, thinking it might be a bass, then all of a sudden a few feet behind the frog you'll see a set of beady eyes pop up through the grass like little periscopes.....time to put those high speed reels to work and get kermit the heck out of town. Now that I think about it....when an area of the lake has a lot of bull frogs in it, I rarely catch a bass....I don't know why. I think the bass are still there, but the bullfrogs are such an pain in the butt to fish around, I think I usually pull up shop and go else where, because as I said before, dealing with hooked, big bull frogs is undesirable to the max.

I fished the 3 fish limit, 3 hour, evening tournament on Conesus this past Tuesday night....and it was just terrible. I fished with a good friend of mine who has been doing great over there. He won my single angle tournament a couple weeks ago with 21lbs, won his club tournament that same weekend, and won the Tuesday evening league championship/classic last weekend. Plus, him and I have cashed/won many tournaments together over the years. Tuesday night..................we each caught a 2.5lber and that was it. 8lbs cashed...so not an on fire night for that place. That lake is just kicking my butt this year. I am usually very competitive, and have finished in the money many many times on it, and even have a win. All in opens, and often against some of the real hot shots on that lake. This year I am just struggling to get bit. My good old back yard...Silver...however, is playing nice this year. Thursday night was back to being on fire. I caught a lot of fish. With one over 5, and a couple over 4. Go figure...it seems like these lakes have switched bodies this year.

Almost all of my Neko rigging is done with 5" Yum Dingers, or Yum's 6" finesse worm. 1/16th oz. Damiki nail sinkers for general purpose use, I bump up to 1/8th oz for deeper water ( >12' or more) or windy conditions. #1 VMC Neko hooks, and o-rings for both.

They will do what livetarget baits do best, catch fisherman.

Silver wasn't on fire yesterday, at least compared to what it's been, but it wasn't terrible either. I fished from 6am-4pm, and caught 20 bass. The average size went down from the last few weeks where 3-3.5lbers were jumping in the boat, to around 2.25lbs. Big fish were not real active for me yesterday, biggest was only a 4lber, and I only caught the one said 4lber, and only a handfull over 3lbs. Junk fishing was the name of the game again. I caught them doing a little of everything, with nothing seemingly too productive for more than a fish or two. Timing was once again critical, I caught most of my fish in two little spurts. One from 9:30-11am, and the other from 2:30-4pm. Out side of those two spells, I probably only caught half a dozen fish, and they were mostly 2lbers. I had one little frustrating episode where for 45 mins just before the afternoon bite turned on where I lost 6 decent fish in a row.....all on stuff that usually gets eaten well. I don't know what was going on, because all of a sudden it stopped and I started getting them in the boat. Thankfully it happened during a fun fishing outing and not on tournament day, or else I might have come unglued and got spun out.

I had limited time to fish Silver this AM, I was on my way to work at 7am when the boss called and said to scratch it, the job we had planned was called off. So I turned around and hit the lake for about 4 hours. I had to be off at noon as I had family activities planned for the afternoon. I forgot bclark7b was going to be out there, so like any good host, I looked for stuff to put him on. It wasn't easy. The super hot bites I had been on the last few weeks seemed to be off this morning. I did manage to put a 5-7, a 4-9, a 3-11, and a pair of 2.5lbers in the boat while in search mode for something that was working and I could recommend for Ben to try. But I had to go before I got the puzzle glued together for the day. Hopefully they turned on for him in the afternoon, or he found something that was working for him.

I don't know...there's not one I am fishing in, or running. A private club might have a small one out there, but usually they are not much to worry about.

No...it's been 3 different guys each time. This lake is "on" because it seems like everyone is catching 13-15lbs with ease. 25 boats on Saturday and 17 +18lbs was not cashing. 14 boats today, and 16- 17lbs did not cash. And this is only an 800 acre "pond" It's been "easy" tournament fishing for me lately, I can catch a 15-16lb limit in an hour in the AM, and then go hog hunting all day. And for the last few tournaments it's been working out. I am sacrificing numbers after the first hour or so, but it's been worth it. It's kinda been hard to put whatever is working on 2-3lb fish down, and pick something up that might only get half a dozen more bites the next 6+ hours, but that's what I have been doing.

Another day, another tournament on Silver, and my 3rd straight 2nd place finish there this year with my second straight 20lb bag.....20.86lb to be exact. A guy could get used to this....at the very least I am enjoying it.

The Fuego CT is an excellent reel.....I am not a fan of the Fuego Rods. The Aird-X is a better "budget" rod IMHO. But there are also caveats to the Aird- X's as well. They fish lighter than there rating, and have a more parabolic action to them which some people might not care for.

It will vary by lake, but around here, yes, generally smallmouth are much harder fighters and will jump enough to make your heart stop, especially when it's a big one. That being said, in reference to my "it vary's by lake" comment, on the two lake's I fish most often...Silver and Conesus, which are full of BIG northern strain largemouth, until you get a look at the fish, it's often not clear which one of the two you have, as the largemouth on those lake are hard fighters. Silver lake smallmouth tend to fight more like largemouth, bull-dogging, and running into the weeds rather than taking to the air, but they are still prone to going airborne more than largemouth. One of my favorite things in the summer is catching smallmouth flipping weeds and grass with not a lot of line out. They are MAD, and a 4 or 5lber will often come 4 foot out of the water an arms length away, and even though it's on stout tackle and heavy line, there is nothing like it. It's the closest thing in bass fishing to grabbing a wild cat by the tail...you just hold on, and hope it doesn't hurt you, or destroy your equipment LOL.

Silver continues to be "on" Fished 3 nights after work this week...Monday, Weds., and Friday. Caught the snot out of them all three days. Entered and fished a CV Bass League open tournament yesterday on Silver with my buddy Tim. I was quite confident in having a high finish given the way I have been catching them. We both caught tons of quality fish, had a great time and ended up in the money , finishing 2nd out of 25 teams with 21.8 lbs. Winners had 22lbs, and 3rd was 19lb.

For me personally, I keep it cheap and simple. Aluminum boat, budget rods/reels, sub- $10 hard baits, basic electronics, a few tried and true soft plastics. I catch a lot of fish, and I am competitive in local tournaments. Good enough for me.

Of the two lakes I fish most often, Silver and Conesus the answer is.............it depends. On Silver, when the carp are up shallow spawning, bass tend to be shallow, but not in the immediate area. On both lakes, when carp are jumping over deep water, it means nothing. On Conesus, when carp are sunning themselves in shallow water around docks, and inside grass lines, you better get up there and fish for bass, I have always, ALWAYS caught good sized bass in the area's I see carp shallow on Conesus. Oddly, on Silver, sunning/cruising carp seem to mean nothing.

Regardless of what happens the rest of the 2018 season, there's going to be two days I remember from this year for a long long time. I have fished this lake for 30 years, and days like these two don't happen often. A really really good day here is 20-30 fish, that's why these two days will be remembered for a while. The first was May 12th, see my report a few pages back on that day, but the highlights were: A new PB 6lb 8oz smallmouth, 11 bass over 5lb boated, including the PB smallmouth and a 6+ lb largemouth, and over 100 bass caught during the day. That brings us to yesterday. Another 100+ bass day, with 23 fish over 4lbs put in the boat. No five lbers though. I did set a new bass caught on consecutive casts record for my self, when I caught 17 3-4lb fish in a row..off one piece of cover. Unlike that day in May where I caught them on multiple things, and caught big smallmouth and largemouth, I only caught one smallmouth yesterday, and I had one rod, and one bait in my hand all day, and pretty much caught fish non-stop from 6am-5pm. The only lull I had was from 11am -2pm when the sun popped out. But before and after that, it was cloudy, and they were chomping as long as there was cloud cover.

I use Dingers 99% of the time, and have for years. You can make dingers heavier by adding nail weights, fishing them on wacky jigs, using bullet weights, etc.... But you can't make a Senko lighter. But Senkos excel at making your wallet lighter. I have won and cashed in a lot of tournaments fishing BEHIND guys throwing Senkos with Dingers. It's true, an un-weighted dinger sinks almost motionless, and some days, especially in cold clear water that WILL get more bites than a senko. But here's the magic of a dinger....you can tune them. You want the same wiggle as a weightless senko? No problem, fish it on a 1/16th oz. wacky jig, or texas rigged on a belly weighted 1/16th oz VMC drop dead hook, and you'll get your wiggle. Dingers are also a superior choice for fishing in heavy cover. You'll ruin half a pack of senkos flipping/pitching/etc. with them in heavy cover, not only will dingers hold up to the rigors of being yanked in and out of cover for hours on end, you'll actually catch fish with them before they are ruined. I'll put my dinger results up against anyone's Senko results. Don't mistake my confidence in the dinger for arrogance, the dinger is a more versatile tool if you understand how to use it.

Had my previously mentioned tournament on Conesus today. I finished 5th with 17.24lbs. 21, 20, + 19 cashed, 17.30 was 4th, and then me. I gave it away.....at least third, I doubt I was getting to 20 lbs, but I had two noticeable upgrades get off due to operator error. One was a big smallmouth I high sticked the hook set on when the bite caught me off guard, I had it to the boat, but she just opened her mouth and out came my 3/4 oz jig. The other was a big largemouth that bit me under a dock, and I was day dreaming............NOT looking at the bikini clad hotties on the next dock down....nope, not looking at them at all, and I never noticed this fish pick my bait up and swim OUT from under the dock into the grass with my line wrapped around two posts. By some act of god, I got the fish back under the dock, back around the poles, only to have my leader break when it made one last surge at the net. Those metal posts did a number on my 17lb FC leader...thats what I get for gawking at................I mean day dreaming. Anyways, other than those two bone head moves, it was still a grind to get to 17.24. I had a limit in the first hour on a swim jig worth about 13lbs, then proceeded to struggle for the next 6 hours not catching anything that would help. Then in the last hour made several culls to get to where I was. The two boo-boos happened at the end of the day too about 20 minutes apart, and in the last 1/2 hour. The only saving grace today was that my bag was at least good enough to take a slim lead in our AOY race two events into the season.