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Got him crawling a 8" hudd in holdover trout color. Also first fish on my new dobyns 90 ultra mag hvy.

Now that Mike Bucca has released his new baits I can post a picture of my pb from October 3rd, on a then prototype Bull Gill wake. First time out with the bait, and first cast of the day over one of my favorite spots produced this NH 6-11, incrementally improving on my earlier this summer 6-10 on a 6” Bull Rat.

Deps OG 250 Collection (Damson colorway by Bassjak) My Deps OG 250 SS collection Left Side: BB Natty Trout, Flash Carp, Flash Carp Right Side: Damson Trout (By Bassjak), Deadly Keta, Deadly Keta Not pictured: (Flash Biwa Masu)

The new lotto shad is out what do you guys think.

Great write up. Melones can be daunting if you've never been there. Like you said it's huge and deeeep!! I've been fishing up there since Xmas break and have been killing them on finesse. 20-30 fish per trip dragging drop shots and ned rigs. Nothing huge but tons of those 1-3lb spots. The water temps are supriseingly warm, 52-55 degrees. So, when those storms roll in we've had some decent response on the glides up shallow. I've had a couple fish nose or grab the 250 but haven't hooked any. Last week I had a slob 8-9lb largie hot on my Hudd but also didn't commit. I'm ready for spring, when those fish get shallow and the glidebait bite goes off! There are some GIANT spots in there...I saw a few over 7lbs last spring.. Here's a few fish from last year.

Working on a logo, working on getting a batch made shortly.

Bored and ambitious so I thought I would post weights of a bunch of different baits. I am weighing these on my own scale so these weights are exact. I'll specify what hooks are on the bait that I am weighing, whether it be stock or replacement hooks. I am not going to get picky about split rings. Obviously a lot of different baits I do not own, but maybe people can add to this and we can keep the thread near the top. Here goes... Hard Baits - S-waver 200 - 3.40oz with Owner 1/0 ST-36 Savage Gear Glide Swimmer 205 - 2.9oz with Owner #1 ST-41 Hiroshima 8.5" hard tail trout - 4.5oz with Gammie 1/0 Deps 250 SS(New Model) - 6.15oz with Owner 2/0 ST-41 Woodenswimbaits 3 piece Mag Rat(Prototype) - 5.1oz with Owner 2/0 ST-41 and feather tail hook Woodenswimbaits Wake 125 Rat - Varies from 2.0oz - 2.5oz with #1 Owner #1 ST-41 Woodenswimbaits 175 Mag Rat - 3.75oz with Owner 2/0 ST-41 and worm tail Woodenswimbaits 175 Regular(Prototype) - 3.05oz with Owner 2/0 ST-41 Woodenswimbaits 125 Crank Rat - 2.3oz with no hooks or rings MS Slammer 14" Super Slammer 2014 - 6.65oz with Owner 3/0 ST-36 MS Slammer 12" 2005 - 4.15oz with Owner 2/0 ST-41 MS Slammer 12" 2012 - 5.05oz with Owner 2/0 ST-41 MS Slammer 9" 2005 - 2.8oz with Owner 2/0 ST-41 MS Slammer 9" 2015 - 3.15oz with Owner 1/0 ST-41 3:16 Hyper Herring Wake - 2.2oz with Owner 1/0 front and #1 back ST-41 3:16 Hyper Herring Crank - 2.35oz with Owner 1/0 front and #1 back ST-41 3:16 Hyper Herring Sinker - 2.75oz with Owner #1 ST-41 Triple trout 10" - 4.5oz with Owner 2/0 ST-41 Spro BBZ 8" floater - 4.6oz with 1/0 unknown hooks Spro BBZ 8" SS - 4.8oz with stock hooks Spro BBZ 8" FS - 5.3oz with stock hooks Deps Bullshooter 190 with nose weight removed - 5.95oz with stock feather hooks Deps Bullshooter 160 with nose weight removed - 3.65oz with Owner #1 ST-41 Morgan Custom Lures Glide Gill 7" - 4.7oz with Owner 1/0 front and #1 back ST-41 Got 'em Coach Real Gill 7" SS - 3.55oz with unknown 1/0 front and #1 back Black Dog Baits Wooden Shellcracker SS - 3.5oz with Owner #1 ST-41 Black Dog Baits Shellcracker G2 - 1.35oz with stock hooks Soft Baits - Mattlures U2 Gill - .95oz Realprey Alewive top hook SS - 2.2oz Realprey Alewive top hook medium sink - 2.3oz Realprey G2 Pond Shiner SS - 2.35oz with #4 short shank vmc Huddleston 6" weedless rof 5 - 1.6oz Huddleston 8" rof 5 - 4.1oz(same as weedless) Huddleston 8" rof 12 - 4.5oz(same as weedless) Rago Soft Tool 9" - 5.0oz with Owner 2/0 ST-41 Use this for reference. Lots of people wanting to know when when buying rods and line. Be aware, 6oz seems to be the magic number for jumping up to a big rod. The Okuma XH and Dobyns 807 are great for baits up to about 5.5 - 6oz. Once you get over 6oz it will start feeling like a bit much for those rods. Feel free to post up baits I don't have. Plenty more high end, Matt's, and 3:16 baits that are widely used.

I don't have much experience under my belt when it comes to fishing for spotted bass, but I have caught a few before on conventional finesse tackle. This past week I was on vacation in the Angels Camp area and had the chance to fish New Melones Reservoir from a new inflatable kayak gifted to my family over the Christmas holidays. I normally frequent shallow water, grassy lakes and streams fishing from shore, so I'm a bit out of my confort zone in deep and rocky waters on a kayak. Fishing all day Monday with no results was a bit of a letdown. We had a big rain come in Sunday evening through the night so I was hoping the trout and bass were pushing shallow with the runoff. I fished a homemade 6" trout glide most of the time anywhere from 0 - 40 feet deep and picked up a small kastmaster every now and then to try locating the trout. Saw a few trout surface in a grassy cove and a local angler pulled in a nice carp, but other than that we saw no sign of the bass. My brother and I almost didn't try again on Tuesday, but the lake was so close to where we were staying we figured we'd give it another go. I wasn't expecting any action at all and was actually focused on catching those surfacing trout that I saw earlier. A few hours passed without a sniff, so I started to mess around a bit tying on a bright chartreuse wacky rigged senko (shame on me) since it could probably be seen a mile away in the crystal clear water. I had no clue where to fish since I had don't have a graph and had already fished most of the nearby shoreline and open water, so I made my way to the only isolated hard structure that I could see: one of the huge bridge pier columns from the highway way overhead. I spent a good amount of time getting a feel for the bottom contour of the shoreline at the base of the bridge first with the senko and really liked what I felt. I was snagging up in some wood and there was a nice deep pocket where the bank jutted out with the bridge. Earlier on I had found a 6" paddle tail swimbait rigged on a flashy swimmer style swimbait hook, so I tied that on to probe deep cover. I paddled out to the first bridge column which was in 150 - 175 feet of water according to a topographic map I found and planned to fish it at the very bottom. Let me just say that it takes a good while for a weightless senko to sink 150+ feet haha. At this point I was just messing around though, so it came to my surprise that I set into a healthy 1lb 10oz spotted bass on my second drop with the senko. This fish was my new personal best spotted bass after only fishing for them three times haha. It only registered in my brain that I actually had a fish on about halfway through the long fight to bring the fish to the surface. I let the fish go after a quick picture and immediately picked up the swimbait I had found earlier, casting it past the column and right along the edge of it. The swimbait hit bottom a lot faster than the senko, and I fished it slowly on bottom right up against the bridge column. Not a sniff. I paddled to the opposite side of the column and did the same thing, crawling the swimbait right along where the bridge column met the bottom of the lake. The bait just about cleared the bridge when a good fish stopped it dead. I slammed my rod back on my new personal best spotted bass at 3lb 7oz and finally got her into the net after a very long and stressful battle. I was a bit worried because her air bladder was pretty messed up coming from so deep and she was coughing up crawdads all over me, but she swam right down strong after the release and never came up again so I was pumped! Probably not a very big bass by most standards, but considering that it was my third time fishing spotted bass and a three pound largemouth is a good fish at our homelake (I haven't caught one here of this size since January 2018) I was pretty happy. To see her able to swim away and get bigger was even better! We didn't catch anything else for the remainder of the day, but that's ok and we'll be back! Thanks for reading!

Just a quick update on my purchase. I never received a bait, tracking or a response from black dog baits via emails provided by paypal. Paypal reached out to black dog baits as well with no luck. the charges ended up being disputed and I received my money back last week nearly 2 months later. buyers beware...

best fish (that I could find the pics of) little late but the it’s the thought that counts. not all swimbait fish but the majority are, enjoy!

Northeast HOGS! Congrats!

In the process of making my own. 1/2 yard of duck cloth and firnature plastic only cost me about 9 bucks. Just gotta steal the ol ladies sewing machine

Got the livewell, baitwell, and bilge pumps replaced and humming along. Also replaced the winch strap, added a ram mount on the front deck, installed a new transom-mounted transducer plate and replaced the rope in the rub rail. Upgraded the battery terminal brackets and now just need to replace the bearings. Hopefully next weekend, she’s off to get her new engine.

Here’s mine that i picked up a little over a year ago, 1978 Lowe hustler pro 1748, this was hideous when i got it and the trailer needed some love. I fished it a little the summer i got it but then i couldn’t take the look, plus i didn’t really have a decent size motor for it so i took the rest of the season off and fixed it up, boat was in great shape had a couple of cracked areas that i brazed and sealed, painted the boat with a roll and tip technique that turned out great, added 2 budget finders, put in some new cheap carpet, added a console, picked up a old 35hp and cleaned that up and got it running good, and a 24volt 80lb minn Kota. Then i turned towards the trailer while the boat cured, trailer needed some welding done for a couple areas that where cracked and rusting out, had like 5 coats of paint so i completely striped it down to bare metal, sprayed 2 costs of primer and then 3 coats of satin black rustoleum, new led lights, new winch, new bunk boards, new leaf springs, and a new set of wheels and tires. It was a lot of work but now it’s all looking good. I’m trying my hardest right now to clear my plate of bullshit work (finishing basement) so i can start my deck build after checking out tiny boat nation I’m going to sign up for the patreon account to get the owner to help me layout my entire build. Hoping to start in about a week. Can’t wait for this little rig to be fully custom to what i want. All in all once i gave a deck with storage i think this boat will be perfect for me, i mostly fish alone these days so it was really hard for me to justify getting a nice big fiberglass, plus i don’t really have the room to store a bigger boat and hoeslty water around where I’m at is pretty limited so it would be hard to swallow a big payment on a pro boat. This boat cost me $1200, motor i got for $300, all in all I’ve probably put about $1000 into it so far and I’m hoping my deck build won’t be much over another 1k so for under 4K it’s a perfect boat for me right now.

His wake prior to this was a shad profiled bait, this is a gill profile.

Just got an Asian arrowana for an aquarium cool cool fish

I second that weight range (3.5 oz sweet spot) on the 806. Thrown a hinkle shad on it for a few weeks before I got an 867 and that’s a much better rod for the 5.2oz bait.

Took a little test swim session before work this morning. If you like to slow roll glides, this probably isn’t your bait, not saying doing that won’t catch fish but it’s just not the baits strong suit. Definitely more of a rod twitch glide then reel pumps. Not a wide 250 style glide, more of a Tiny Klash tight twitchy glide. With stock hooks it’s a xxxxss, maybe a inch per second on 20lb mono. Bait DOES NOT blow out at any speed, and I mean any speed, reeling as fast as I can with a revo rocket lol. Very tricky to work right off the bat, took me probably 50 casts to get the hang of, very easy to mis glide ( if your trying to glide left right left right etc. it’s common to accidently left right right right left) on the other hand. If you have floating docks and you want to glide it up under the dock or up under overhead limbs etc. ......this is THE BAIT to have. By far the easiest/best glide I’ve ever used to “walk” up under cover. Almost effortless. That in my opinion is where this bait shines

Agreed on the fury 806 being good up to 5 oz ( though I prefer lighter, in the 3-4 oz range). It's parabolic, tacticalbassin has a great youtube video showing the actions of the dobyns swimbait rods. I've tossed the 250 (6.5 oz) and baitsanity (5 oz) on it, and much prefer an 867 (either dobyns or spiralite) for those heavier glides. Just speaking from my experiences, haven't thrown other sb rod companies.

I'm really a fan of billed crankdown baits. I like the feedback that the bait gives back through the rod. For baits I throw a lot, I can tell if its swimming true or of it has weeds on it. As others have said, you can crank them along the bottom and hit structure more than with a glide. Baits that float are huge for me. If I break off or send one flying, being able to retrieve that bait is a big plus. Most of the waters i fish are less than clear so if I cast off a sinking bait it's almost an immediate loss on most cases. With baits like the 250 I found that I got a lot more feedback out of the SS versus the SK because I could feel each glide and could pump the rod for more deliberate movements. The SK swims so smoothly that i wasnt getting very much rod feedback with it, and could never tell when I had it hung up. Seems like a bait that could be fished in the same erratic, stop n go retrieves that you see with newer Japanese baits. Another thing to remember is that both are good sized baits, so regardless of the action it's usually going to take a big fish to eat it. If your timing/location isnt right you'll strike out regardless of which one you throw, gotta be a biggun that wants it. IMO

Although this was just a blank, I’m thinking of using this bluegill as the color pattern for the lure I submit. The bluegill isn’t cleared yet and I’m sure it’ll look a bit better once it’s cleared so I may post another picture later. I have a few more blanks to paint in a bone pattern and Shad pattern that I will post later. Other color schemes I’m considering are this white crackle with a blue hue and trout pattern even though it is on a gizzard profile since I know many of y’all have trout eaters.

Damn!!

All the cool paints were gone when I got there, bucca said it only took 20 minutes, paint doesn’t really matter much to me tho

@chefchris Thanks for the suggestion...

Recently found this Toxic C-walker in trout at a nearby bait shop. I was stoked. My first “bigger” topwater walker. I’ve been playing with the 6” Punker. This is a fair bit heftier.

They just aren’t getting bit well. I know very few people catching fish on the sk. That being said, the ones who are swear by them. IMO, cranking baits are excellent baits because of their versatility. Most of them you can wake and/or crank. Especially the ones which will wake at slow speeds and crank deep. Not many baits can be fished on top and 8-10’ down. So i can make a cast with a floating crank up into the brush in 1 fow and slow twitch it out. The very next cast can be parallel to a channel drop and I can effectively crank down to where the fish might be hanging on that drop in 5-10’. Definitely no hype in the world of cranks. The sk on the other hand doesn’t seem to cut it so well.

I keep my jon boat simple, it fits in the back of my truck and is still light enough for me alone. Once you start adding stuff you can't handle it alone or will need a trailer. Thats why I have the ZX ..

This is my 12 foot job boat. I want to rebuild the deck and all of the electronics but I love it.

More electrical work today. Installed new starter battery and the tilt and starter are working. Should make it easier to transport and get the motor off in prep for the new one. Also pulled the bilge, livewell, and baitwell pumps since all 3 need replacing.

To make matters worse I had to go to the hospital yesterday and I now have a concussion and a busted open head from hill bombing on a skateboard :/

Here's a before and after, I switched the front seat out for a pedastool seat