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hooch bass

Well as a follow up .. keeping the ‘23 bank fishing grind going has Finally produced, check out the fat 5-2 that smoked the Grenade Gill yesterday. I fished this spot earlier without a bite. Went back about an hour later after covering a few other spots and she hit pretty shallow right away. What a mystery. Had to drag through some pads. I was thinking I wouldn’t see a fish this size until maybe October or November. As for my yak I’ve covered a tremendous amount of water this season with some great fish but haven’t seen a fiver since May. #grind. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I actually tossed a Rafa glide earlier today (with an owner hyper wire split ring out front) using the double Pitzen knot… landed this one on a strike right next to the yak. Between losing baits and fish smashing me 5 feet from the boat, swimbaiting is going to give me heart disease…

In a nutshell, for anything stretchy, use a SDJ, for anything brittle or *MOST* braids a Uni knot will work out. These 2 knots preform better than nearly every knot for their application. Unless you get an inline scale and do all your testing for the line of your choice, these 2 are by far the safest knots to use, don't exceeded 7 loops/twists. I do prefer the way I tie mine, there is 1 step that I think really helps create a stronger SDJ. https://www.instagram.com/p/CfqvIQED3-t/

I tie direct to 95% of all my baits and never had a problem. Yes I have casted baits way off but my have been a human error, maybe not wet enough when tieing down, line wrapped around guide, so on.

Conquest 200XG or Conquest 200DC-HG would be my top choices. Go with the XG if you want the faster 7.5 ratio for things like glides, otherwise DC-HG is plenty fast. If you wanna go 300 size you can do the new Conquest 300 MD. Those are saweet, but maybe a little bigger than what you need.

Looks like the hype train was fueled primarily by stimulus checks.....Nice to see prices/availability coming back to normal.

Lol. Market is weird lately. I got on at 6pm pst on the dot and snagged a MH. They had always sold out in like a minute. Checked this morning and they are still up.

I keep it simple and haven’t ever had any issues chunking glides of any weight aside from once when I tried to stop a 9oz glide in the middle of my launch and the treble snagged my rod, spun a 360 and cut my line. Direct tie. P-Line CXX from 15# - 25# depending on the weight of the glide and I tie a Palomar keeping plenty of spit on it throughout the tie while making sure the lines stay parallel through it all. That’s what has always worked for me.

If you are using a .092 screw to direct tie to, i highly suggest putting a owner solid ring on it to lower the diameter, rather than going to a snap. I avoid all unnecessary weak points and I think the moment you tie any snap on, you are introducing a failure point, however small it is. The same goes with using split rings, however not all baits you can open the eyelet to swap in for a solid ring. However... there is another issue that is often overlooked. When bait makers tune their baits, some do so by grabbing the eyelet and bending it left or right to correct the straightness on retrieve. When doing this, they leave small and sharp abrasions on the screw itself. Not all baits have this issue.

Daiwa 18 Zillion HD would be a great match and it's a superb reel.

Contact @A_Deanbaiter, he had a few up for grab as well as if there is interest he might have some more printed. best to hit him up on IG At Scales N Tales.

Nice one! To be honest I haven’t even broken 3lbs this year it’s sad. Foul hooked one dink at the pond I was talking about, but otherwise the place is still dead. I am starting to see more fish at other locations now though…not sure if it’s the 100+ degree days that is starting to warm these fish up, but last time I was out I saw some decent fish cruising about including one really nice and healthy 7lber. Missed a few smaller fish on a glide, but at least they’re starting to bite again.

Nice work! Looks like the fish hit right at the shore/weed edge. They are such neat looking fish.

That's so awesome. Can't wait to get mine snagged on a mooring

Toad….nice one!

Nice one!

found a decent NJ bass in August willing to eat the Illude Zombie.

Hoog trout has been my go to lately. Nice wide glide. Hiro's are good too.

Hiroshima trout

Found a big shoulder NJ bass on the Wade today.

thread like this are like asking what kind of side burns get guys the most poontang

I feel like there are a number of things at play with this. 2020 saw a LOT of people get into fishing. The waters where I am have a ton more constant pressure than ever before and with that has come a greater presence in what I refer to as “the bucket brigade.” This group will keep everything they catch from 2” sunfish to 9lb bass (I’ve even seen a few take turtles home as well). I’ve literally watched these individuals DECIMATE populations in once honey hole spots and it’s incredibly frustrating and disheartening. Another thing at play is the fact that the electronics folks are using are now giving them more and more access to fish that 10 years ago 99% of people couldn’t find or if they did, it was a luck thing. Now, this isn’t me knocking the new fangled forward facing real-time sonar, but the fact is, as this technology improves and as it becomes more and more accessible to the average Joe fisherman, the fish will not only get more and more bait shy, but I would imagine that the populations may see a decrease because….as we all know, a certain percentage of fish caught in a tournament setting will die from the stress. It stands to reason that if more fish are caught, more will perish although I could be completely wrong there. The point is, it used to be that a certain population of fish, for whatever reason, would make themselves a lot more inaccessible to being caught for periods of time. These new electronics have once again made those fish accessible, so that “break” they used to have isn’t there in the way it once was any longer. Last thing that I believe is absolutely a factor is, as others have mentioned, the weather has been absolutely NUTS this year. I don’t think the fish know what to think!

@danthefisherman Im in the northeast and this has definitely happened in my bank spots. No doubt. This year being so much worse than last year and even the previous year. Im scratching my head and can only blame the weather I guess like crazy amounts of rain and cooldowns. Water is still extremely high compared to last few years. Also bluegill activity is way down at least along the shoreline where I fish. We also had an abnormally warm winter where ponds didn’t even properly ice over. I caught a couple in February which is a big deal here and thought that was a positive sign for the bank fishing season.. I noticed how off it was quickly when the season was picking up in March when bites were noticeably less than previous years. Last season I caught fish almost five pounds with ice still on the water my first day I could fish a few open spots on March 11. Fish were already very active. This season I’ve kept grinding there to see it turn around, and it never has now into August. I got one good fish in May and did miss two others and that’s it. Other than some smaller fish. Whatever it is, there is definitely something significantly effecting the fishery. Weather is obvious but I didn’t realize it would impact the bite so seriously for so long (all season). So am always wondering what else happened. Interesting to hear of the same issues in other locations even across the country. I’ve watched some fishing youtubers to see other location trends and picked up on similar issues they’re experiencing especially early in the season.

Crawlers, BC Wake, Koolkat Wackker, Tater Hog Hootchie Momma.

@Ceaser was the first member to fish the traveling slammer. It was cool to see him with it again