ww2farmer

What works for me on my lake is just that..........what works for me. Trying to copy what other people do is a fools errand. Learn what works on your body of water. That being said...........I consider these techniques "Bass fishing 101" and they can and will work on any body of water a bass lives in. And if you do nothing else but these simple basic things, you will catch bass where ever you go. #1 Wacky rigging a stick bait #2 Pitching a jig or texas rigged creature bait to cover like boat docks, lay downs, and in grass beds. #3 Drop shotting a nose hooked worm on spinning gear If you do nothing but these 3 things you will catch bass year round. Yeah, some days doing some specialized stuff will get more bites. I subscribe to the K.I.S.S. method of bass fishing, and the above 3 things are my "bread and butter".............add frogging, swimming a jig, shallow cranking with a squarebill, and fishing a suspending jerkbait in cool water.............and that pretty much covers most everything I do.

Braid mainline, fluorocarbon leader connected with the alberto knot, vmc spin shot hooks.............problem solved.

I am keeping count this year.........for no other reason than to just know, and because I never have kept track before. As of right now, I have been fishing 51 times in 2016, I average about 3-4 hours of fishing per trip, and have caught over 600 bass. I have no idea how many Pike, rockbass, crappies, bluegills and other misc. fish I have caught while bass fishing..........100's if not more. I do know I have caught ZERO walleyes, carp or trout LOL. Most of my bass have been caught about 6 different baits/presentations: A jig.either flipped, swam, or dragged A 5" wacky rigged Yum dinger A Frog A suspending jerkbait A a texas rigged craw/creature bait And a 4" or 6" worm on a drop shot There have been a few misc. days when I have caught them on Chatterbaits, blade baits, lipless crank baits, shaky heads, a t-rigged worm, and carolina rigs One of my staples..........a squarebill has SUCKED for me this year. Hopefully the late summer/fall bite on those will be better. I have not done a whole lot of "finesse fishing" this year with down sized versions of my normal stuff like 4" dingers, small creature baits,etc...but those days are coming

Trip #51...........fished from about 6:30 this morning till 1 pm, with a 45 min break for lunch with wnybassman. Air out of the balloon today It kinda sucked Caught 9 bass all day.. only 1 good one, a 4-5, a couple of low 3lb range fish, a couple of 2.5lbers, and a couple of small keepers.

Trip #50.............work is slow, so after the long holiday weekend.............I got the rest of (or most of) the week off to use up 2015/2016 vacation time before I get my 2016/2017 days next month. Slept in as I was out late at family thing last night, and hit the water about 8:30am It was pretty good again. I caught 18 bass between 8:30 am and noon...........and then the switch flipped the other way and I caught 3 between noon and 2 LOL. Best five from one side of the lake: 4-11, 4-9, 4-6, 4-4, + 3-14 Best five from the other side of the lake LOL: 4-9, 4-7, 4-3, 4-0, + 3-1 OK........................so my 50th trip review of the season to date: Hours on the water: 188 give or take a couple............averaging about 3 hours and 45 mins per trip # of bass caught: 626.............about 3 or so an hour.

Bass fisherman can light $400 on fire faster than an arsonist at a bank............... With a $400 budget, you can get everything you need to fish a pond effectively provided you spend it wisely. I disagree with the people who say spend half of it on a rod and or reel. You can get good quality spinning gear that won't break the bank, be good enough to catch fish with for years to come, and never need to be upgraded unless you want/desire more high end equipment. I also would expand into casting gear............you WILL need it. If I was starting from scratch, and had $400 to spend.........here is how I would do it: A pair of Berkley Lightning Rod Shocks @ $40 each from Walmart............one 7' M spinning, one 7' MH casting for a total of approx. $80 A Pflueger Trion TR30 size spinning reel for $40, and an Abu Garcia Black Max casting reel for $50..were up to $170 and you have two decent quality all purpose bass fishing rigs. $230 left to go............A spool of 50lb Power Pro braid for the casting rig for $15, and a spool of 10lb Power Pro braid for the spinning set up. Add a couple spools of cheap, but good quality Fluorocarbon for leader material , say 10lb for the spinning, and 15lb for the casting...also at about $15 per spool and were up to $230 The rest of the $170 that's left on baits and terminal tackle: 5 bags of Yum 5" yum dingers in the basic colors like Green Pumpkin and Black/Blue...$15 3 bags of 4" finesse worms in basic colors $15 3 bags of 7" Berkley Power worms in basic colors $15 5 bags of Berkley Havoc 4" Pit Boss's also in the same basic colors.....$15 A pack of VMC EWG hooks for the finesse worms...........$4 2 packs of VMC 3/0 EWG hooks for the dingers/worms..........$8 2 packs of VMC 4/0 "super line hooks" for the pit bosses............$8 4 packs of tungsten sinkers one 1/8th, one 1/4, one 3/8, and one 1/2 oz..................$20 A pack of 1/16th oz wacky jigs..........$4 A pack of 1/8th oz shaky heads........$4 Four 1/2 oz flipping jigs (2 brown, 2 black) $15..(use the pit bosses as trailers) Three SK KVD 1.5 squarebill crankbaits.......one chart/black, one chart.sex shad. one bluegill,$18 Two Booyah Pad Crasher Frogs...one black, one white...........$13 Two 3/8's oz. chatterbaits..........one white, one black................$13 That's a good start to pond and bank fishing 101 and you'll have a few bucks of the $400 left over to play with. 2 packs of

Same stuff I pitch/flip grass and docks with. Colors............Black/blue or green pumpkin depending on water clarity/sky light conditions. K.I.S.S. with color, it's usually dark (even in clear water) in the spots that hold the best bass, and it's often a reaction bite caused by you dropping something into there hidey hole, no need to re-invent the wheel with color choices. About as fancy as I get with color is, I will dip the tails/tips of green pumpkin baits in chart. dye if the water is stained. Baits.............T-rigged craws, worms, creature baits, some times a wacky rigged stick bait on a weighted wacky jig, bubba shot rig, or a skirted flipping jig with a craw/creature bait trailer.........depends on what they are willing to bite. I always like to "go big" first, with jigs and full sized creature baits, if that's not getting bit I scale down to smaller profile jigs, jr. size creature baits, the wacky jig stick bait, bubba shot or a worm.............also depends on if I am fishing "behind" some one. If other anglers have been pounding this stuff with jigs, I might go with a worm just to give the bass something different to look at. weights............1/8 - 1oz. depending on the depth, thickness of the cover, and the fishes mood.......sometimes they want a fast fall, sometimes they want it slow. 1/2 oz is a good "all around size" for jigs and t-rigged craws/creature baits, 1/4 for worms as they fall quicker on lighter weight than the other baits due to the slim profile and less "drag" they cause in the water.

It happens..........to all of us. Just don't be "that guy" Who is "that guy" ? The guy whom at every tournament weigh in (or just shooting the breeze at the boat launch after a day of fun fishing for that matter) who always has the "big one who got away" story. I am not naming names........but there is a regular at my tournaments that loses more hogs in an afternoon of fishing than I have caught all year..,,,,,,,,,,,,IDK, maybe his hooks are "Rusty".............LMAO.

Trip #49...............my hot streak continues. Fished from 5:30am till 10:30am or so, when the crazies started coming out. It was on fire. My buddy and I boated over 20 fish between us. My best five went: 5-6, 4-11, 4-4, 3-12, + 3-10 with several more 3+ lbers He put a 4+ and a bunch of 3+'s in the boat as well Fun day with a buddy..............a buddy who doesn't often fish against me in tournaments so I did not hold anything back today LOL.

Check your PM

FWIW............Rock bass and Bluegills will blow up on a frog like a 7lb bass..........

Trip #48..............day one of our 4 day weekend. I went to Conesus for the first time this year I got there about 8:30 am, and struggled for 2.5 hours to just get bit, with only three small keepers in that time. Then the switch flipped. I caught over 40 bass and 15 pike between 11 am- 4 pm Best five: 5-2, 4-11, 4-11, 4-9, + 4-4

Trip #47 ..........spent about 6 hours out there tonight as I was done with work fairly early. It was a grind, on on fire at the same time LOL I caught 8.............Now how can 8 fish in 6 hours be on fire? well the best 5 were a 4-11, 4-9, 4-7, 4-4, and a 4-3

Trip #45 Tuesday night..........fished for about 4 hours, kinda grindish. But a few good ones were caught. I only caught 7 bass all night, but the best five were a 4-11, 4-2, 4-0, 3-14, and a 3-9. The other two were 2lbers Trip #46 This morning. Had about 3 hours to kill before work, and it wasn't a banner morning. Caught 4 all morning. a 4-9, and 3-11 were the biggest, the other two were 2lbers again.

I am firmly in the Chigger craw camp, in fact I will take a Paca Craw over the rage craw too. I like some Rage tail baits, but the other craws produce more and better fish for me.........

Trip #44............I held my first open tournament of the year on Silver, and my partner Rick and I junk fished our way to an 18.68lb bag, which was good enough for $$$$ in 2nd place. Winners had 19.61lbs. We caught a ton of fish today and culled all day long, it was one of the funner tournaments I have had in a long time.

You need to take that video down...........RIGHT NOW...................LOL

I like to fish shallow or mid depth............not much of a deep water guy unless I am targeting smallmouth. Any time I go to a new body of water, I have 3 rods on the deck to start with. My first plan of attack is to start shallow and see what happens, I usually have a 5" stick bait on a wacky jig, a jig or t-rigged creature bait (depending on water clarity), and a frog. I'll target boat docks, laydowns, matted grass, shallow grass lines, etc..... If that does not seem to be the deal for the day, I will move off the shallow cover and fish any mid depth grass/cover (6-15 feet of water) that I find with the same wacky jig, jig/t-rig, power shot, and/or replace the frog with a reaction bait that I can rip through or tick the top of the grass with... like a swim jig, squarebill, or chatterbait. If they don't seem to be in the grass, I work out side the deep edge of it, trying to find areas with good hard bottom outside the grass, and/or isolated hard cover, like a rock pile, man made sunken junk, etc..., again with a wacky jig, jig/t-rig, c-rig, shakey head, drop shot, or deep crank. No mater what the lake has to offer......I always try to hit points. If there is no grass in a lake.............I don't go there LOL.

I use the Ardent smart cull tags. Each fish is weighed on my hand held scale, I dial in the weight on the tag, and have a balance beam for any that are close. Sometimes the beam is handy...............sometimes the cull is obvious.

Falling behind again.... Trip#41: Last Monday. Fished all day since I had the say off. Pretty decent day. Caught 20+ bass,all largemouth, with the best five going 5-2, 4-14, 4-1,3-12, + 3-9 Trip #42: Tuesday night for about 4 hours. Kinda slow, caught 5. But three of them were good with a 5-1,4-4,4-0. The other two were a 3lb smallmouth and a 14" largemouth. Trip #43: Last night.Held my first Thursday evening 3 hour/3 fish limit after work tournament of the year. N Bass resource member wnybassman and I teamed up and proceeded to grind our way to a middle of the pack ,semi poor 8.20 lb performance for our best three.

Weeds and boat docks are my specialty. Good places to start are, and what I look for when fishing weeds are: #1 Any kind of change in the weed bed....like for instance, if you have a long straight weed line, and then it turns in or out, makes a point, tapers off, etc... Good bet there will be fish there #2 Holes..................a hole in the grass means something on the bottom is different...........rocks,wood, whatever............I like the smaller holes, they seem to not get hit by everyone and there brother like large obvious ones do #3 Mixtures of weeds......any time (at least on my lakes) where two different types of grass meet, there will be fish, as often it's a change in bottom composition. #4 Milfoil...............Milfoil................Milfoil................and did I say Milfoil. It trumps all other weeds. If there is Milfoil in this lake bass will be near it, or in it............most of the time they will prefer it to ANY other weed. #5 Bait............you can fish acres of fishless water, because there is no food in the grass for the bass. Look for bluegills, and other panfish,and you will have found bass. #6 close to deeper water....grass that is close to deeper water is often the best grass to get a hog out of. Esp if there is something in the area close by outside the grass, like a rock pile, wood, sunken man made crap, etc...

I go tail up..........................unless, I am trying to keep the bait up high in the water. Tail down give it a little "lift"

If I knew that answer, I'd win every one!! LOL

I don't have one................BUT.....if they are NOT biting when it's really blowing, I go home.

When I started fishing, it was with spinning tackle with the crank on the left side, and holding the rod in my right hand. When I started using casting gear, I didn't pay any attention to what side the handle was on, and bought a RH reel. It felt weird and awkward to me, I took it back and exchanged it for a LH casting reel...........this was in about 1987-88 or so..........LH casting reels were available back then, but not like they are today, and finding one on a 12 year old kids paper route/lawn mowing money was a challenge. But I have been using LH casting reels ever since..............can't change now.