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New PB 7.9lbs on a toxic wake and crank. Tough day battling swirling winds. I’m fishing out of a crawdad so it gets blown around like a styrofoam cup. Tucked out of the wind in a small cove with some lay downs. Cranked down the last lay down and right at the end it gets smashed. Didn’t realize it was that big till it was at the boat. A nice clean healthy fish. It’s been a while since I caught a real nice one so I’m pretty stoked

Yes someone posted a Pizz with hook rash and crushed the server

When we’re the drops? Just trying to get a clue. I refreshed a lot on the hour for a week straight when I saw the site was in maintenance mode. Then I remembered what the definition of insanity is and I stopped lol. Looks like I stopped right before the 3 bait drop.

Don't you hate that feeling of helplessness when you can't get bit on your big trout glide because the fish are keyed in on tiny shad? I sure do haha. The Rapala Shad Rap has been my top conventional bait when small threadfin or baitfish are on the menu (I've caught some big fish on that little bait), so I've been wanting to make an upscaled and more realistic shad imitator for a good while. I'm planning to have this bait sit at 4.25" long and will experiment with a variety of actions, joint combinations, materials, applications, etc. I'll be molding the master as one piece so that I can have more opportunities to experiment with it. I've been working on this bait for a bit, and thus far it has been very challenging just to carve the master. As much as I love working with bass wood, it does have the tendency to crack and flake when I try to carve scales or fine detail. My eyes keep crossing trying to focus on what I'm doing for long periods of time. Tuning the bait will probably be an even bigger hurdle seeing as I have less material to work with. Hardware selection and placement will be a critical factor with such a small bait. I left the front half of the master fairly wide to try and maximize how much resin I'll have to work with while still maintaining a good body profile. Also, I'd like this bait to move water and stand out from the millions of real shad swimming around. So here she is so far! My brother @porkmeatballs told me I shouldn't post this until I was ready to mold but it's my way of keeping myself accountable and motivated to push forward . She still needs a bit of cleaning up done, but this is more or less the finished look. Wish me the best. I have the tendency to drop the ball on new projects or end up with a dud more often than I'd care to admit haha. Either way, it's still been a fun little piece to pour my efforts into. Enjoy and thanks for following along!

This past Sunday , around 1:45 hit a smaller shallower pond as our ice has been out for a few week , working the 3 pc pizz wake trout 5ft off shore against some reeds a fish smashed it and threw the bait a few ft away, quickly threw a smaller beast wake around the area to no avail i knew she was probably in the same area , and told myself I was going to come back later and try again with a smaller profile than the wake trout 9:30 pm , pitch black and raining pretty good , went back to the spot with the 3 pc beast wake and made a few casts , (my son was with me and was raining pretty bad and wind blowing into shore and told him last cast ) as I worked it back twitching it and making as much noise as I could to make up for the crappy weather , all of a sudden I thought I was snagged and started to pull it in like you would a stick (one hand on handle and other above my reel just pulling in) . She starts to fight back and next minute was a blur until she reached the reeds and pulled her over lol I was amazed at just a hair over 23 inches she was only 7lbs pb for me LOL

Well I mean it wasn't a lie there was no drop lol also idk why my phone commented multiple times sorry for that

it was data transfer, site got too big for the current host and then had move to a new host transferring all data, intact,and securely to a new host company.

First time out testing the new shad prototype and got whacked by this little chunker. I love it when that happens! Also that rare feeling of accomplishment when the first guinea pig out of the mold performs a lot better than expected My first pour turned out pretty great as a two piece mini glide/twitch bait. It's a very responsive bait that swims a tight "s" on a steady retrieve and will perform short glides on a controlled pump or dart to and fro with erratic twitches of the rod. As anticipated, the hardware is a lot for such a small bait. Hook placement was tricky and I was only able to add limited ballast, but the result was to my liking and proved to be surprisingly stable even on faster retrieves. The bait sinks fairly quickly which helps me keep the bait down when I want to fish it deeper. I'll have to get some video of it in the water it's a pretty neat little lure. Overall I am very happy with the first try which is rare for me. Is it cheating to use a swimbait this small? Is this even considered a swimbait? All I know is this little bait is going to do some major damage in my future fishing endeavors and save me from many a skunk. I'm excited to put it in front of more fish and see what improvements I can make.

I think that all the hard working individuals that keep this forum up and running deserve a huge shoutout and thank you for the awesome work that they did in getting the community back up and the forum restored in its glory. We appreciate everyone of the mods and and techno wizards that make this forum a center point for the community.

Got a couple decent ones on a 6in hudd while the forum was down. First one was 3.4 followed by a 4.5.

First fish on the red ear ufo last night was a dink lol. Missed 2 other bites and lost one at the shore.

Took me a lot longer than I hoped to get one of these. I am about 1/8. Once I dialed in the rod Reel line and how I needed to set the hook I finally got one. Not a giant but nice fish at 4.3