ww2farmer

Being from NY here are some of my observations on vegitation in the bodies of water I fish that may help you once you have ID'ed what your looking at: Submergent veg: Milfoil = bass.......... if it's green and healthy. Once it turns brown and slimey, and looks like "rust" falls off it when you hit it with a lure, get away from it, as the bass have left it. Milfoil takes it's sweet azz time getting going in the spring, as it really likes nutriant rich, warm water, and a cool dry spring seems to keep it down. Deep water coontail = bass. This stuff stays green in even the nastiest water, and way late into the year. There is ALWAYS life around it. Like Milfoil, it takes a while to get going in the spring, but by late summer it's usually pretty thick, and stays thick and green longer than the milfoil. Curly leaf pond weed = bass......... IF milfoil and coon tail are not available, but if they are, they really seem to prefer the milfoil and coontail. On my lake this weed is the first one in the spring to "take off' and get lush...as it seems to like really really clear water, and cooler temps. But then it wilts and dies in early summer when water temps start rising and when the water starts getting a little color in it, and is replaced in the depths it grows in by milfoil and coontail. Eel grass.........avoid it. They NEVER and I mean NEVER seem to be IN the eel grass, but will cruise the edges of it. At some point in late summer/early fall eel grass uproots, and floats, and makes floating mats...........sometimes they get under it, but they still don't seem to care for it much. carpet weeds........like chara, coon tail moss (looks like deep water coon tail, but just grows close to the bottom in shallow to mid depths)....never seem to be many bass around this stuff or in the area it grows as it mostly grows on soft mucky bottoms Elodia.........looks like hydrilla, but it ain't, and I rarely find bass in or around it Emergant veg: Pads of all sizes............they all hold bass if there is enough water under them, and the bottom under them is to the bass's liking.t Cat tails......... they typically grow in muck, and other than the odd hard bottom areas that intersect with them , I rarely find them to be productive.

That's what it is. And............at least here, it's not very fishey, and grows in areas that I rarely fish.

This ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^................... Also, just my .02, but I have found that with a lot of "clip on" drop shot weights......the bigger the line you use, the worse it holds. I seemingly never have them fly off 8lb or less line, but anything else, and I think the larger diameter lines bigger than 8-10lb test, spring the little clips open a little and they don't hold as well. I do a lot of power shotting in cover with 15-17lb line, and have given up on using clip on dropshot sinkers for this, because of that issue. Instead I use a tungsten bullet sinker, pointy end up, with a split ring tied to the tag end to keep the weight on, and a sinker peg/bobber stop above the weight to keep it from sliding up the "drop' line.

The lake I fish is small, 800 acres or so. The tournaments I run just about everyone gets a limit on all but the worst days. Average # of boats is around a dozen, with most of the anglers being locals who know the lake really well. On tough days 14-15lbs wins, 10-13lbs cashes, a 4+ lb fish will take lunker On average days, 16-18lbs wins, 13-15lbs cashes, and an upper 4lber to low 5lber takes lunker On above average days, 18-20lbs wins, 16-17lbs cashes, and a low to mid 5lber takes lunker When the place is on fire it takes 20+ to win, often 18-20lbs to cash, and a high 5lber to over 6lbs to take lunker You can win with both largemouth and smallmouth, and often the biggest bags are a mix of the two. I have seen far more 20+ lb bags of all largemouth than all smallmouth, but all smallmouth 20lb bags have happened. More than one 20lb bag in a single tournament are rare. The only three I remember, have all come in the last 2 years. One was in early october last year in my two day classic tournament. The day one leader (and winner after two days) had a 23lb bag of smallmouth on day one, and I had a 22lb bag of largemouth on day one. The other was this past July, the winners had 21lbs of largemouth, and 2nd place had 20lbs of largemouth. The third was in late June this year, the winners had 23lbs of largemouth, and 2nd place had 22lbs of largemouth. Every other tournament outside these 3 that I have run, or been to that has been won with 20+ lbs, 2nd was 18-19lbs, and a lot of 16-17lb bags were not cashing. Lunkers closely follow the quality of fishing for the day too, as it seems on this lake, when they are biting they are biting, and when the ain't, they ain't. Usually during a hog fest, lunker is an upper 5+ to a 6+, and usually a largemouth. Every year at least one or 2 6lbers gets lunker. Since I started tournament fishing (about 12 years ago) the biggest lunker ever brought in, in any tournement, was a 6.68 largermouth...........caught by me. I have seen two 6lbers brought in that took lunker that bucked the trend of the lake being on fire when the big ones are biting, the last time was this past August. I won a tournment with 19+ lbs, and 2nd only had 12, but they had lunker with a 6lber, negating the 3 cookie cutter 5's I weighed for lunker LOL. Smallmouth will often take lunker too, I have seen low to mid 5lb smallmouth often win it. I have never won lunker with a smallmouth, but several other people have. Personally I have won lunker (always with largemouth) with fish ranging from a 3lber (on a super tough day) all the way up to that 6.68. It's very rare to have a tournament where one guy runs away with it, where everyone else struggles..........but it does happen. The most recent examples are:... This years two day classic. The day one leader had 22lbs, and most every one else, including me struggled badly. Another one in recent memory is the one I mentioned earlier, where I won with 19+lbs, and 2nd only had 12, and after him few guys had a limit. A third time I remember well was a couple years ago. I won with 15lbs, culled many times to get to 15, and thought "well, they must be biting, we'll be lucky to cash"...........it was exactly the opposite. 2nd place had 8lbs, and only four fish, and no one else in a 15 boat field caught much of anything.

I have top self tastes, but a bottom shelf budget, and I am kind of a moron, so I middle it pretty effectively with Royal Crown Royal.......... It takes some doing to regularly find Royal Crown Cola around here anymore, but after knocking back a few, the soda get conserved while I finish fueling up on Crown..........and then hilarity ensues.

Personally for me, the best time, is any time you can go.............don't matter the season. With a job, family, etc...I don't get to pick my spots often. So any time I can go after work, on days off from work, or when I have no family stuff going on I go. I adapt to the conditions I am given that day. I have some times/conditions I prefer NOT going fishing in, like thunderstorms, extremely cold/wet conditions, or holiday weekends where the boat traffic on the water and at the launch ramp make for less than a good time, but even then, I still often go (except for the thunderstorms) If you wanna learn something, go fishing when ever you can...............any one can catch them when they are biting, it's who can catch them when they ain't biting good that sorts the good fisherman out from the average Joe's.

So I should leave all my jig heads laying around the boat LOL......................... Oh......... you must mean lead in it's high velocity state

A fella would do alright anywhere smallmouth swim with just six classic and basic lures/presentations.............in no particular order: Suspending jerkbait silver buddy style blade bait tube drop shot with a nose hooked 3"-4" minnow type bait 4" single tail grub on a ball head compact football jig with small craw trailer

Me too...............and EVERY time I used this combo and got bit, it was on the drop shot, not the tube. I quickly discontinued this practice.

same here. Some people claim it's just a feel good measure that doesn't really work, but I'll can tell you from past exp. it does. I store all my farm equip./boat with moth balls and dryer sheers spread generously in and around them. Last winter, one of the guys at work put a machine away in the shed without using anything, and guess what............they went to get it out this spring and mice had done quite a number on it, while leaving EVERYTHING else in the same shed that had moth balls and dryer sheets in/around it alone.

Year in and year out, my go to baits for largemouth in the fall have been jigs. Either a white or bluegill swimming jig with a rage grub trailer on days they want to chase.....1/4 oz on the bank, 3/8's oz over the grass, and 1/2 oz along the deep weed edge...........I'll go with a chatter bait in dirty water. In the fall around here, sometimes the grass gets funky, and swim jigs come through better, where as cranks.........while a go to, often will just wad up, and not pop free out of this fragile grass.....every year is different, some years the grass remains hearty well into late fall, other years, like this year, it started getting mushy and difficult to fish treble hooked baits around as early as mid sept. As the water temps fall and the bass move from deep to mid depth, to shallow, and then back out again I follow them with different weights and styles of jigs/trailers In early fall, before they start moving up, and water temps are going down slow, I will start on the deep grass line of hard offshore cover with a 3/4 oz football jig with a 4" chigger craw trailer. Either in black/blue, or a green/brown depending on water color/light conditions. As they move back into the mid depth grass, it's hard to beat ol'reliable............the 1/2 oz. flipping jig in the same colors, with the same trailer..........that is IF the jig is heavy enough to get through the grass, sometimes I have to bump it up to a 3/4 or 1oz............and also the clearer the water the heavier I go............faster is better in clear water. When they have moved to the inside grass line, up under boat docks, and other bank cover like laydowns, etc....I go with a 7/16 finesse flipping jig with a 3" chigger craw trailer. As water temps start falling more rapidly, and they start reversing this movement, I again make adjustments to my jigs.............the shallow jigs get downsized to a 5/16oz, and I put a more subtle trailer on, like the small Havoc pit boss or the small yum craw bug, the 7/16 oz finesse flipping jig now gets the call in the thinned out grass, with the same subtle trailers, and the deeper grass lines, and offshore stuff get targeted with a 1/2 oz football jigs trimmed and thinned to be more compact..if I can get away with it. If the winds blowing or I am having trouble keeping bottom contact, I'll bump back up to 3/4's oz, but thin and trim that jig up as well. I also go with a smaller subtle trailer here too. I use other stuff.........sometimes quite often, as there are days when they just don't want to bite a jig very well. But year in year out, a jig in some form or another would be the only type or bait I would use in the fall if I had to pick just one. For smallmouth, I consider the fall bite to be on here when they are grouped up again, and back in realatively shallow water (for them), which is less than 20', and usually not much shallow than 8-10 feet. On calm clear days, I like to poke around in these depths with 4" stick baits on wacky jigs, or something nose hooked on a drop shot, and some top water or suspending jerkbaits early in the AM and late in the evening. When the wind picks up, and the clouds roll in, cranking with a 3xd or 5xd works well, or the old "drift and drag" over/through smallmouth holding areas with wobble style football heads with a chigger craw or pit boss, dragging a tube on the bottom, or drifting with a drop shot put fish in the boat for me. Swimming a grub on ball head is another old school technique that works really well for me on fall smallmouth. It's about as simple as it gets, thread a 4" grub on a 3/8's head, cast it out as far as you can on spinning gear, let it sink to the bottom, and just reel it back in nice and steady. As the water temps reach the point of no return in the late fall/early winter and the largemouth action all but grinds to a halt for me, I reach for a silver buddy style blade bait, and fish those in the same areas, at different depths until I find out where they are that day. I am a noob with these, but in the last 2 years, they have been a go to in both late fall before ice up, and early spring after ice out........they catch everything in the lake, and work when nothing else will.

I keep a pack or two of white or bubble gum ones around for fishing on a drop shot when the smallies are bedding, because I can catch 30+ smallmouth a day on one bait..........otherwise the rest of the year I use Yum dingers. I like white or pink, because..........see white or pink, keep fishing...........don't see white or pink, set the hook. With bedding smallmouth it don't matter what you use, they would bite a bare hook most of the time if they haven't seen an endless line of guys trying to catch them. When I do find that they are being pressured a little, they will clam up some on the brighter, larger baits and I switch to a 3" yum dinger on the dropshot and can catch them literally right behind other guys who have sat on them for a long time and NOT gotten them to bite, usually within 15-20 seconds.........and often mutltiple times a day. Ask bckark7b............. I don't like this kind of fishing much, and only do it once or twice a spawning season, usually when I have a guest in the boat and feel the need to put as many fish in the boat as possible for them to have a good day, and maybe once or twice when I am by myself just to sore mouth some of the stupid jerks who will pay me back the rest of the year by NOT cooperating when money is on the line LOL.

I have had a bit of fun on Erie with a few large drum while smallmouth fishing, and I have never been displeased to catch the several 20-35+ lb carp I have hooked into with bass tackle over the years on my home lake. Anytime I am not tournament fishing, anything I catch outside of the target species, is just a bonus and is never met with profanity...............unless it's a pike that has swiped a hot lure that I am running low on. About the only "rough fish" I don't like catching are bullheads. Flip into a grass mat or hole, get a good thump, set the hook, and the barrel rolling begins, and you just know in about 15 seconds your going to have to deal with one of those miserable little jerks who can clamp down on your thumb tighter than a pair of vise grips, and have pole barn spikes ready to impale you if you blink wrong. A few weeks ago while frogging I hooked a giant snapping turtle, and a bullfrog about 10 mins apart, I wisely played the turtle boat side and cut the line, donating my frog to him so as to keep as much braided line out of the lake as possible............and keep my fingers in the process. I landed the frog, which was huge and MAD, got the crap kicked out of me, and got bullfrog stank all over my hands and shirt, but got my frog back and kermit swam off in the end. I had enough of this, and went looking for smallmouth the rest of the evening LOL.

That describes my reloading to a "t" LOL Before I can give you any advice based on the stuff I have learned papajoe222, knowing what you want out of it, and where you want to go with makes a diiference, because loading blasting/plinking ammo, is way different than loading precision ammo.

This is kinda what happens when you don't take the timeout as RichF described in his thread below Except this is an entire month or so of being spun out. My tournament season started off fantastic. Multiple wins, with multiple partners, another high finish with a solid bag during a time in which I usually only do OK, and another money finish during a tuff bite grind fest in early Sept. Then somehow, grease got on the tracks. I have bombed............BOMBED..........as in lower middle of the pack type finishes, the last 3 out of 4 tournaments I have been in. And that brings me to this weekend...........the lowest of lows I held my annual two day classic for everyone who won/cashed in any of my various tournaments through out the year. My partner and I have never won this tournament, BUT, we have cashed in it 3 years in a row........with three straight 2nd place finishes. I had a bad feeling about this one. My home lake is not fishing to my strengths right now, and even out fun fishing, i am struggling big time to just get bit, let alone do anything in a tournament. I am not exactly a one trick pony either, I can slug it out on the bank in the slop with the best of them, or I can fish deep offshore, and everything in between and catch fish and feel comfortable and confident in doing so..........but man have I been sucking lately So that brings us to Sat. AM..................first thing I get.................a text message from my partner at 5:45 am saying he can't make it. Then I proceed to go out and chase my tail in deep water for the first four hours looking for smallmouth................and finding only a few short fish. Plan B..........look for largemouth. First one I catch, a 5.44lber, good start...................but it was one of only two fish I would catch the rest of the day. I wound up in 2nd to last place on day one with 7lbs and change, and the 5.44 wasn't even good enough for lunker, as someone else had a 5.82. So going into day 2, my partner calls and asks what he should do. I tell him just forget it and stay home, I blew it yesterday, and the only thing I have a shot at on day 2 is the daily lunker. I said screw the smallmouth, as not a ton of them were brought in yesterday, and most of the ones that were, were small. I decided to just go hog hunting for a big largemouth and see if I could get one that would at least challange for lunker............and I did.............4+ hours into the tournament. It was the first bite I got and was a nice upper 4, low 5lb class fish. Go to put it in my livewell, and the pump would not pump. It worked fine yesterday...........and all season for that matter. So I bucket some water into the livewell for the bass, while I start pulling fuses..............all fuses good, switch lights up...............Crap..........must be the pump cartridge, or a bad ground or something. I end up throwing the fish back, putting the boat on the trailer, and calling it a day. I left the scales, and prize money with another team who helps me out, and left humbled and embarassed by my performance this weekend. As of right now I am ready to winterize the boat and just take a "timeout" until next spring. I am spun out something awful, and I might light that boat on fire if I have another poor day of fishing this year. BTW: have power, and good ground at the pump, it IS the cartridge that is burned out................I'll fix it this winter.

Any time I get a lemon from SK,which is rare in relation to how many baits I buy............an email to them takes care of it. They usually ask you to send the baits back, and then they replace them............usually with 2 of the same bait for your troubles and some extra "goodies"....

Rage tail products................they move at super low speeds. The rage tail grub is my #1 swim jig trailer.

Do the pike where you live have teeth? If I could figure out a way to make a pair of braid cutters out of pike teeth, I'd be rich. Fluorocarbon, or an extra abrasion resistant mono/copoly is far and away more resistant to being bitten off than braid. I have had hammer handle pike cut 50lb braid like nothing.

I'd fish with any one on here who would buy me lunch. Not a task for the meek........

I haven't used a GYCB product in quite a few years now................my boat is loaded with SK stuff (as well as Berkley, Storm, Booyah and Yum stuff)

IMHO......after fishing this lake my entire life. There are a hand full of times you want to avoid bass fishing here: #1 The late summer .............AKA.........right now. #2 Any time the water is less than 40 degrees............like after the ice goes out, or in the late fall/early winter. #3 Sleep in and hit the water in the afternoon if there was a thunderstorm during the night........no matter what season #4 Also sleep in and hit the water in the afternoon if there was a frost in the morning..........no matter what season #5 The day after a big algae bloom strikes.........while the green water makes for great fishing, the first day or so after it hits, seem to always suck as things adjust. Especially if the water was pretty clear before hand. #6 When the barometer bottoms out ..........failing is fine, steady is fine, rising is OK, but when it hits rock bottom this place goes on lockdown This is a semi structure-less shallow bowl fishery and all these things make shallow water (15 feet or less) bass difficult to catch. This lake has an odd quirk, in that when things are unfavorable, most of them do not bury up in thick cover and hunker down. They get far away from the bank or the offshore grass and hard cover, and will suspend 10-15 feet down over 25-30+ feet of random featureless water. Food is of no concern to them, as there is bait in every square inch of the water here. You can still have good days when it's tuff here.............if your timing is right, and not ALL of the bass vanish, just a lot of them.

I did poor by my standards. I fished for 2-3 hours and caught 5 bass. A pair of 3lbers, a pair of 2.5lbers, and a 13" squeaker keeper. This place has always been slow in early Sept.....Everything that has been working all summer is a grind to just get a few bites, and the good fall stuff has not started yet. Fish are scattered all over the place, a few shallow, a few in the weeds............and LOTS AND LOTS of them suspended over deep water. Chasing suspended fish is not my game. Your best hope for a good day the next few weeks is to be there when a wad of those suspended fish come into the grass to feed for an hour or two. Some people curse the post spawn...........I have always thought, at least here, the summer to fall transition has been the worst. Wait till the first extended cool spell in which were due for anytime now, and things will be popping again.

Because.............magic..............that is all.

I had...............HAD............a Mojo in MHM. Great rod for lipless and squarebills, as well as deeper cranks up to like a 5xd sized bait.............THAT IS if your cranking rock, wood, or other hard cover. Around grass...........it sucked. It would just load up and wad the bait into the grass more often than not, leading to wasted time and frustration on my end.....and that was with braid, which I crank with exclusively (often with a fluoro leader).......with any thing other than braid that rod flat out didn't work for me at all. Since most of my cranking is done in/near/around grass, I sold it. I find a M (or MH with a soft tip) power fast action rod is just about right for cranking grass, I get a much cleaner "snap" or "rip" out of the grass, and am not dragging wads of it back on a wasted cast where the bait just dug in deeper because the rod didn't have the ability to pop it out. The one thing I miss about a Mod action cranking rod, is how the rod loaded up on the cast and I could launch baits half way across the lake if need be. With a fast action rod, I can still cast as far as I want to, it's just is not as effortless... YMMV. If I had the room in my boat for multiple rods for cranking, I would keep some Mod. action cranking specific rods in the rotation, but since space is limited in my boat, I go the more "All Purpose" rod route, and while a M or MH (depending on who made the rod) power fast action rod is not the "best" hard cover cranking rod, it works just fine, and as a bonus it's a better grass cranking rod, and I can also use it for other things too.

I use yum dingers exclusivly, and have for several years. Most of the guys I fish against use GYCB senkos...............I take people's money regularly. Draw your own conclusions.