ww2farmer

Just my .02, I don't know anything about the teckle frogs... I won't buy one due to cost. But I have been whipping around the toad runner a lot this year and am catching fish on it. I find if I am missing fish on it, it's no different than missing fish on any other top water....in that it's usually operator error, or they just don't want to commit to it... which happens. When they do want it, they have been choking it, and hook up and landing % is high. The one compliant I have with the toad runner is the tendency for the legs to get askew to the hook bend, but it doesn't seem to be anything more than an annoyance to me, they still bite it when that happens.

The ned and Neko rig have been getting a lot of work for me lately, but day in day out, wacky rigs and drop shotting still are my go to.

If we're talking true summer time condition's....which to me is peak water temps, weed growth, and stain in the water from algae blooms my top choices are: #1 big jig or t-rigged plastic in the deep grass or under boat docks #2 deep cranking the outside edge of the grass with a 5xd or 6xd depending on how deep the edge is. #3 finessing the out side edge of the grass with drop shots and wacky rigs. #4 frogging thick shallow matted grass #5 ripping reaction baits out of the grass, something like square bills, swim jigs, or chatterbaits.

Silver was absolutely on freaking fire tonight. I bet I won't say that a lot this year LOL. I fished 3 hours, from 6pm-9pm, boated 30+ bass. Easily one of the best short after work trips in a long time. Best five 5-3, 4-9, 4-6, 4-4, and 4-3. A 4-0 and several upper 3's didn't make the cut. I flipped docks for an hour and a half and caught the snot out of them, then moved out to the grass as the sun was going down and kept up the pace. At one point on the grass, I had a flurry of 7 fish between 3.5 and 4lbs on 7 consecutive casts, with hordes of bass following the hooked to the boat trying to steal the bait from it. I don't know what's going on here LOL. I have fished this lake for 30 years, had the day of my life back in May, followed by one of the worst 3-4 week spells I can ever remember, to the place being more "on" than "off" lately. Meanwhile, Conesus, which is usually great for me more times than not, is stumping me. I wish my Thursday tournament was on Silver this week instead of Conesus. I am not on Silver (for a tournament) again until the 26th. Which by then might be too late to take advantage of this spell of good fishing.

I hope they have an open on Cayuga again soon, I have been saying to myself for a long time that the next time there's a B.A.S.S. open on Cayuga I am going to sign up as a co-angler just for the exp. of having done so. It's only about an hour and a half from my house, and fishes similar...although on a grander scale to the rest of the finger lakes I fish. I would have interest in being an Elite Series Marshall if they ever come back to Cayuga as well, but that's not happening in 2019.

I use three brands of soft plastics. Strike King, Berkley (Havoc .Powerbait, and Gulp), and Yum. The coffee scented SK, and Powerbait or Gulp Berkley stuff I add no additional scent, any non-scented plastics, like Havoc and Yum stuff get megastrike.

Well that's 2 grinds on Conesus so far this year. I have a tournament this Thursday over there so I wanted to check it out and see if it was any different than the day nosdog2 and I were there a few weeks ago...which was also a slow day. I started with topwater....nothing. Put that away after an hour. Then I started rotating through my finesse arsenal...drop shot, flick shake, neko rig, etc...one 3lber to show for that after 2 hours. Switched sides of the lake, continued to grindaway with the spinning rods...one more 3lber an hour later. Now were 4 hours into the day, I have two 3lber's fishing small stuff around the deep weed edge. Time to go flipping into the thickest stuff I can find with some water under it. It was no easy task to find such cover, weed growth on Conesus (as well as Silver) is way way behind this year. I spent the next 6 hours flipping a 3/4 oz t-rig craw, and caught 7 more fish. One good one at 5-3, the rest pretty sub average for this lake at 2.5lbs or so. Ran into several other good fisherman out there today, and the story was the same "I have 2", or "it sucks today", or "I have 5 but thats it"..yada yada yada. So evidently, it sucked for all, or at least me and everyone I talked to. Someone probably caught them good, but it wasn't me. My plan for Thursday? I have no plan. Other than to forget about most of today, and just go fishing.

I have never fished a boater/non-boater format tournament, only team and solo events, so take that into consideration with what I am about to say.... If he asked you to leave the opposite bank alone until he got to fish it, you should have left it alone. But I think your boater might have been an idiot if he didn't observe that bank with, as you said, more shade and cover on it, and fish that first. Instead he goes flat hatting through there fishing the sunny/less cover side.....yeah I think he might have been an idiot, but you still should have respected his wishes.

A week straight of 90+ degree days, today was the second day after the cold front, off the charts high barometric pressure, lows in the low 50's last night, zero wind or cloud cover.....................and Silver was on fire....go figure. I fished from 7am to 4pm, and had my best numbers day in a while, and even caught a few big ones. A 5-1, 4-14, 4-4, 3-12, and 3-10 were the best 5 out of the 30+ bass I caught today. They bit really well from 7-9 this morning, then had a long lull until about noon with only a few small fish caught, then from noon-3 they bit well again. I left at 4 after going 30 or so minutes without a bite. It was kind of a junk fishing fest today. Neko rigs, wacky rigs, and drop shot on the deep weed line, jigs + weightless plastics under docks, creature baits and t-rigged worms in the grass....all caught fish.

Say's the guy whose having trouble with the knot slipping.....maybe your not "firmiliar" with it as you think.

I wish I knew the answer. I shade tree managed a half dozen ponds on the farm I worked on for 20 years. The ponds that already had bass in them when I got there were an uphill struggle from day one. I removed bass, I added bluegills, golden shiners, cover, and crayfish, and it seemed like I could never grow big fish in those ponds. Even with "management" I could only get the average size fish up to healthy looking 12"-14" fish (slightly better than the hordes of 10" skinny fish before I started) and once in a blue moon would get a 3-4lb fish out of those ponds. Now, on the ponds that were built, and I could start from scratch with, using the same bluegill/crayfish/shiner recipe, I could grow bigger fish. The key was getting the forage base established first. I would stock the bluegills in the first fall after the pond was built, let them have one unmolested spawn cycle, then would add 12"-14" bass in low numbers after the first bluegill spawn. Within two years those 12" fish grew in leaps and bounds, and really really fast for northern bass. I am talking from 12" one lb fish at stocking, to 4 lbs in two years. I also had a good mix of small forage sized bluegills for the bass to eat, a lot of medium sized ones for table fare for myself, and some real bruiser trophy sized bluegills. Last I checked these ponds, mother nature was taking care of it on her own. There was a still a nice mix of the above mentioned sized gills, plus the bass ranged from 1-6 lbs, and looked well fed and healthy. I have not been to these ponds in at least 5 years, so I have no idea how the long term balance has worked out.

I don't use a weightless wacky rigs very much, so I have no advice on a hook for that presentation. But I do use weighted wacky rigs all the time, and for that I use the Revenge Flippin' Wacker's on bait casting gear in the 2/0 hook size in both the 1/16th and 1/8th oz weights depending on depth/wind/thickness of cover. For lighter line spinning gear applications, I use the VMC wacky jigs, also in 1/16th and 1/8th oz.

The Alberto knot can NOT slip if tied properly. On a properly tied one, the harder you pull, the tighter it gets, like a Chinese finger trap. You have to pay upmost attention to the way you run your tag end of braid back through the loop, it has to go through on the same side as it came in, one wrong move, and it will slip. I can almost 100% guarantee that your running the tag end of the braid out the loop on the wrong side if your knot is slipping. I am not saying this to be condescending, or holier than thou.......as it's an easy enough thing to do, especially after you have become comfortable/proficient tying this knot, and all of a sudden might be taking that one small final detail for granted. I have been tying this knot for 10 years using original Power Pro braid, and Seaguar FC. On flipping sticks, cranking rods, light line spinning outfits, and everything in-between. More 5 and 6lb er's than I can count, a lot of which have absolutely had the wood laid to the them on hook sets with big rods..ZERO slips, breaks, or failures of any kind of the Alberto knot.....and by zero....I really mean ZERO. I have also bent/straightened hooks trying to pull snags free before that knot has ever slipped or failed.

Not only will it work, but it is a fantastic frog rod for the money. It's the one rod in the Aird X lineup that seems to be true to it's power rating. Where as the M spinning rods I have are more like ML power, and the MH casting are more like M power. That's not a bad thing, just a "now you know" type thing.

Anything Fenwick makes is a better bang for the buck than Loomis rods below the IMX level.

When ever I go to a lake that is new to me, I look for stuff that I am comfortable fishing, and expand/explore from there. My personal comfort zones are shallow water cover, like matted grass, boat docks, laydowns,etc... I am also right at home fishing deeper submerged grass, deep and shallow grass lines, as well as deeper rock piles/sunken boats/misc junk in the water. The first thing I do on a new body of water is fish shallow, there are always fish shallow. Once I see the quality of the fish up there, I either keep doing it if they are above average, or go look for better fish in deeper grass, or explore any points/humps/edges that I find.

For the last 10 or so years I fished the Strike King Red Eye shad almost exclusively, except when I wanted a knocking style bait, then I used the old X-caliber one knockers. That's nothing more than a disclaimer...to this.....This spring I fished the Warpig a lot to see if it was a viable bait. It was. Even though I had a poor lipless and jerkbait "season" early, it wasn't the fault of the baits I was using (warpig and skinny cutter 110), when I wasn't getting bit on the Berkley baits, I wasn't getting bit on the others either. I didn't find the Warpig to have an un-durable paint job, I didn't care for the stock hooks.....which is weird because I liked them on the Cutter. So I took them all off the Warpigs I bought, and used them as spares for the Cutters. I switched the warpigs out to Mustad KVD 1x strong, 2x short triple grips, and the bait still performed as well as it did with the stock hooks (which I found to be too small, and too light for ripping a lipless, but they worked good on the jerkbait). I did have the paint come off one Skinny Cutter 110 in the color "Chameleon Vapor"....but that was after multiple big pike and smallmouth caught on it...so it gets a pass. I used the Warpigs in 2 colors..."Vintage Craw" and "Gilly" and the paint on both stood up just fine to pike, largemouth, smallmouth, and a few big walleyes. But I am mostly ripping them out of grass, or yo-yoing them off the bottom, not grinding them into rocks.

For a rod that performs well above it's price point, look at the Daiwa Aird-X ....$55 I am using the 7' M for ned rigs, mostly 1/15th and 1/10th oz heads. I pair it with a 2000 size reel, 10lb braid, and 6 or 8 lb FC leaders. This rod fished more like a ML power rod than a M. And I am finding it about perfect for the technique.

That's the "trickle down" effect. The tech used in high end rods has been around a while now, and has paid for it self several times over. As a result, those of us with limited means to spend on gear get the benefits of some of the higher end technology on lower price point rods as mfgs. incorporate it into low to mid price ranged stuff. Which has always been the most popular selling tackle. Only a low % of people, can afford or are willing to buy an arsenals worth of $200+ rods, most everyone can afford a boat full of sub $100 rods, and the MFG. who offers the most bang for the buck in that price range is going to sell A LOT of rods. Berkley has always been very good at selling a high performing rod at modest prices.

Custom built 6'8" M/XF spinning rod on a Batson Rainshadow Revelation blank. Daiwa Revros 2500 spooled with 10lb original Power Pro braid, and I use either 8 or 10lb Seguar Red Label FC leaders. This rod/reel does more than just shaky head fish for me, it also serves as my Neko rig, flick shake, and weightless plastic skipping rod.

It depends on the body of water. My home lake is pretty fickle, and known locally as a "feast or famine" fishery. It's not known as a lake for catching great numbers of bass, but the bass you do catch are above average in quality ....most of the time. A lot of the area's best fisherman struggle badly here, and it humbles me a few times a year. I "expect" to catch at least two bass per hour spent fishing. That seems to be about the average here. Like today, I spent 5 hours on the water, and caught 8 bass with nothing weighing more than 3lbs, I would consider that a below average day here, not the worst day....not by a mile, but far from the best. .

That about sums it up for me too.

Since I fish the same lake 3-4 times a week, I throw what I had tied on for the last trip, unless I feel it's not right for the current conditions. I usually have a pretty good idea on whats going on out there....If I don't, the scissors are an arms length away.

Fished from 6:30 am to 11am this morning before the boat traffic really REALLY ramped up. It was already at normal non-holiday weekend afternoon levels of stupidity by 9:30 this morning. The bite was so-so, caught 8. All largemouth, all junk fishing. 2 on a frog, 1 on a ned rig, 4 on a drop shot, and 1 on a wacky rig. No hogs today. Biggest was just a 3lber, the rest were all low to mid 2lb range clones. While the ned rig wasn't the answer today for bass, it did catch a bunch of crappies for me. I wasn't targeting them, but it put 2 dozen nice one in the boat while flinging the ned rig around in smallmouth water.

I have a couple sitting here still with the tags on them that I haven't fished yet. I agree they seem "better" than previous generations of regular Lightning Rods. I'll eventually work them into the rotation.