ww2farmer

Same here, and my jerkbait rods also pull double duty for weightless soft plastics.

Sound advise that WRB and I agree on............which is rare. To answer your specific question's............I myself subscribe to the K.I.S.S. method for drop shotting. I won't describe my "bubba" or "power" shotting gear, as that's often much different then what I use for "traditional" finesse type drop shotting. Weight: I carry 3 sizes, that cover all the bases from the bank out to the abyss, and everything in between. I like 1/4 for 5' of less, 3/8's for 5-15', and 1/2 oz. for anything deeper than 15' Hooks: The VMC spin-shots are my favorite, I use the #2 for nose hooking, and the #2/0 EWG for weedless rigging Baits: I use a couple regularly, my #1 choice is to nose hook a basic 4"-6" straight tailed finesse worm , #2 would be a small 3" creature or craw bait #3 would be a 3"- 4" minnow style bait , and # 4 would be a 3" or 4" stick bait rigged wacky style ..........As for colors..............K.I.S.S. again.............I stick with green pumpkin, with or without assorted different colors of metal flake (purple is my favorite). Rods/Reel/Line: a 6'9" - 7' ML spinning rod with a fast or X-fast taper is what I like, along with a 2000 size spinning reel spooled up with 10lb braid, and a 10' length of 6 or 8lb fluoro leader. I consider my system..........."drop shotting for dummies" and since I have had excellent success with it over the last 10-12 years, and am a pretty big dummy, I don't change much.

Another fan of the previous mentioned Storm Twitch Stick, very very good "bang for the buck". I also like the SK KVD's.

Well, since you asked nicely......I could care less, and I think the whole "the pros use secret stuff made by unicorns and fairy's" argument to be ridiculous and often put forth by ignorant buffoons.

I am a K.I.S.S. man when it comes to swim jig and chatterbait trailers. 99% of the time I am using a single tail 4" curly tail grub, the other 1% of the time a boot tailed swimming stick bait . For the grub, I use the 4" Berkley power grub..............cheap enough, durable enough, power stank, swims at slow speeds, and, best of all, the Walmart 5 mins. from my house stocks them for $3.49/bag, so when the swim jig bite is on, and I am in need of more, it's an easy re-stock mission. The swimming stick bait I use is the Yum swimming dinger,

Whoops.

If we're talking about wishes, I wish there was a place where we could discuss the things that really matter in bass fishing, instead of the deluge of amateurish level and or redundant discussions that get beat worse than a rented mule around here.

Fish weigh exactly the same on my $19 berkley hand held as they do on the $300 dollar table top "equalizer" brand scale I bought for the tournaments I run......good enough for me.

Chart./white skirt, double #4 willow leaf blades in gold. 3/8 oz.

Every body of water is different. The two lakes I fish the most are prime examples. On one, the colder the water gets, the shallower the largemouth go. On the other, they get away from the grass and start relating to offshore hard cover.

3/8's is the best "all around" size, and if you only have one, that's the size I would pick. I use three sizes....1/4oz for super shallow work,from the bank out to 3'-5' FOW, 3/8's oz. for mid-depth (4'-8' FOW), and 1/2 oz for deeper weed line stuff in 8'-12' FOW. I K.I.S.S. for colors....bluegill for clear water, black/blue for dirty water, and white for when white is what they want. I also K.I.S.S. for trailers. I have tried many, but I always come back to one, and this one type is by far the most productive in every condition I use it in............the old, plain jane, nothing exciting to see here......... 4" single tail grub. Green pumpkin (sometimes with the tail dyed charteruse) on the bluegill, black on the black and blue, and white on the white. Rig the grub with the tail "curled" down if you want a little "lift" on the jig, or with the tail curled "up" if you want to keep it running low. I don't do anything fancy on the retrieve. Cast it out, let it hit the bottom, and start cranking at a moderate pace. Sometimes I will kill it and let it sink next to juicy spot if I have already ran it through there without a bite to see if that triggers a fish that may be lurking, but not chasing.

I catch ALL of my fish between 6am and 9pm, except for the days I am not fishing. When I am fishing, I am sleeping, or driving to/from the lake the other 8 hours.

The Jr. size devil spear is very close in size to the darter. The larger devil spear is bigger, but some times, that's not a bad thing.

Silver has been on fire. I held my annual "year end classic" tournament his weekend, Day 1 on Silver, day 2 on Conesus for all the casher's and winner's of my 2015 opens. On Sat. at Silver, we had two 20lb bags hit the scales, as well as another 19, and 18 lb bag. My partner Rick and I had 21.93lbs on Silver................good for 2nd place that day, as the leader brought in 23+ lbs!! Day 2 on Conesus was a little stingy, but we maintained our 2nd place position and brought home some $$ with a 15.68lb bag giving us 37.56 for the two day total, and also had lunker for the day with a 5.09 largemouth. WNYbassman and his partner (who fished day one solo and slammed the 23lb bag by himself while Noel worked) stayed ahead of us on Conesus with an 18lb bag and took the win with 41.85lbs for the two day total. I'll still fish till the snow flies, and the water is hard, but that's the end of my tournament season for 2015. Had a good year, and scratched another goal off my "to do list" which was catch a 20lb bag on Silver in a tournament. Still chasing a 20lb bag on Conesus during a tournament (I actually thought it would happen on Conesus way before Silver) and the first win on Conesus............we have finished 2nd in 5 consecutive tournaments there, we'll get it...........eventually LOL. My tournament results for 2015: Old Orchard Beach opening day tournament on Silver : Cashed in 4th place with a 3 fish limit for 10lbs My "Sunday Open" team tournaments on Silver that I put on: June: We finished 3rd, one spot out of the money with 16+ lbs July: We finshed 3rd again, this time in the money, again with 16+ lbs, plus we had tournament lunker with a 5lber August: We finished 5th place, again one spot out of the $$ with 15 lbs Sept: We finished 4th...again...one spot out of the $$ with 17+lbs My Conesus lake tournaments: July "Aluminum boat only": We finished 2nd with 15+ lbs August "SLBA friends and supporters Invite only" tournament....2nd again with 16+lbs Our 3 hour Thursday night, 3 fish limit tournaments on Silver: #1....3rd and cashed with 7+ lbs #2....2nd and cashed with 10+lbs #3....5th and one spot out of the $$ with 7+lbs #4.....Won with 12+lbs #5.....our only stinker of the year....bombed with only 2 fish for 5lbs #6....fishing with my 6 year old daughter, we finished one spot out of the $$ with 8+lbs And finally our classic... cashed with 2nd place with day one on Silver 21.93lb + Day 2 on Conesus with 15.63lbs for a total of 37.56, plus day 2 lunker of 5.09lbs I was glad the tournament season was over at 3:15 yesterday...but LOL, now I can't wait for next year.

If you like the darter, try the Havoc devil spear, they are cheaper, more durable, and catch more fish for me than the darter.

I am not much of a creature bait user on the c-rig, I tend to stick with worms and lizards adhering to the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" motto. As for wobble heads I like the Havoc pit boss and devil spear,as well as a chigger craw.

When the surface temp drops into the 40s

Another vote for the Strike King KVD's, I also like the Storm Arashi's. The Storm's are a few bucks more than the KVD's, but are ready to go right out of the package, as they come with short shank, heavy wire VMC trebles. Some people are fine with the stock hooks on the Strike King's, but I change them before they even get used.

This.....and I love the Minima reel seat.

Yum, Berkley (powerbait, havoc, and gulp) Netbait, Strike King, Big Bite.

I use braid as mainline on all my reels. I tie a fluorocarbon leader for every technique except frogging, topwaters, and punching. Sometimes, reaction baits like squarebills, or swim jigs get tied directly to the braid, but I rarely don't use a leader with those presentations anymore for no other reason than instead of getting bit off almost 100% of the time when a pike bites those baits, with the leader, I have a tiny bit of a chance of getting my bait back.

For me, deep cranking, jerkbaits, and walking a frog/spook.........I can do all of that stuff for a couple hours at a time fine, it's when I have yanked on that jerkbait for 12+ hours a day because they were biting it and nothing else, or frogging every day, all day for a week that I start to get worn out.

Twice that I can remember. Once on a spook, two 1lbers, and then once on a jerkbait, one was a 2.5lber, the other was a 1.5lber, I thought I had something for a minute LOL. I had two smallmouth grab a jerkbait at the same time once, got them all the way to the boat, and they both got off. And in a really bad kick in the groin, I was once bumped out of a tournament win to 2nd place, by a guy who had three 12" fish all day, who caught a 4lber, and 5lber on the same crankbait at the same time, on his last cast. It was a tough day, I had 13lbs and was culling ounces at a time all day..., he beat me by .25lbs.....and like I said, he had three small keepers in the boat with 5 minutes left to go.

Depends on who you ask. If you ask me.....not enough. An "average" week for me would be 2-3 nights a week after work for 2-4 hours depending on what time we finished up. And then one day every weekend (usually Sunday) quite often from sun up till sundown. Sometimes I get several week days to fish all day if we're slow at work, or weather is not conducive to farming. At the end of the season, my boat has typically been in the water 125+ times from early/mid April to mid/late November.

Same here....almost, while I don't avoid them, they only get a casual pass through, I don't spend too much time on them. I have caught good fish from pads, but I don't like them at all...at least on Silver or Conesus. On Waneta/Lamoka though, they are often the ticket since there is little milfoil or coontail in those lakes. So when I go there, I put my anti-pad stance in check,and fish them way more thoroughly than elsewhere.