smalliebigs

Just imagine, if we could get the donfather's fish/bite locating ability and those guys bait selection together we'd probably be looking at what, 70+lb limits?

Wow, dudes got a hump with fish on it in his living room!

I've fished it. Durable, swims well and has gotten bit pretty well when I've thrown it but I haven't gotten any big fish on it. It is a little on the small side (even smaller than the mattlures baby gill), so I usually throw the various Matt lures gills.

Taking some time to catch some giants before taking more orders? You deserve it.

Stupid looking but works? Sounds like me. I'll have to get one.

Forget the traveling bait programs. We really need a traveling don-father program (and some other guys too). Not fair only the NC guys got a shot with him.

I've experienced similar situations, but tend to focus on location more than what bait. With so many key feeding stations with bait over them, and so much bait to draw some fish away from the stations, it can be hard to compete and isolate them. I look for the the extremes, either the most isolated ambush points with bait close by (think oasis in a dessert) or the most densely grouped/varied ambush points (think: hit as many stations with as little effort as possible) with the most reliable baits for that lake/season and see what happens from there.

I actually have a topwater bait that I put a weight on a spring in just like that about 8 or so years ago. Give it a little pop and watch the water vibrate around it, just like that illustration. Showed idea to a mass produced bait company, but they didn't see the vision. Anyways, its caught fish for me pretty well considering it wasn't my confidence bait to begin with. I never tried it in a bait that I already had confidence in, just too lazy I guess. I'd love to see it in a billed swimbait that could be ground into bottom and paused giving off a few seconds of vibration.

I was just reminded of another: people using "colorway". Are "paint" or "color" or "pattern" too plebeian or something. No biggie, just doesn't sound right to me. It is like swimbait hipster speak or something.

Users of bent rod sonar. They should get a bent rod $$#%@!%#.

I do something kind of like that, but I use those twisty wire things that hold all my kids toys in their packaging. Drill hole, put wire through with knot in end. Free end of wire can be bent, folded, twisted or whatever to hold bait, same function as swivel. Only challenge is if you run out of the size of wire needed for smaller baits.

I like big bass and I can not lie...

Most of my best patterns for big smallies have been situations where they were locked onto a specific prey. Sometimes it was small sheephead (had them spit up a 6 to 7.5 inchers at the boat), other times big perch, other times young of year perch, occasionally gills, etc. During these times they were very selective about certain characteristics (mostly color, sometimes size), much more than largemouth. The patterns were, however, repeatable in type of structure/cover and time of year.

My most used baits reside in a large BW surf pack. It has 9 2.5" diameter tubes I hang the baits with trebles up to my baby possum and 10" TT, but I sometimes also double up smaller baits. Since they are hanging they dry nicely. When shore fishing I can fish with it kind of like a satchell, with the pack out of the way on my back hip and swing it to the front when changing baits. In the boat it fits nicely our of the way under my driver's seat. I put a small digital scale in the front pouch and pliers with a bungee thingy on the side, so I don't ever forget/lose those.

I felt like I fished better for largemouth this year, making better decisions and some key new learnings to get on some kind of pattern more quickly. I think I've gotten better at not camping on the "old favorite" spots for too long and moving to look for new water which resulted in a broader range of "hot spots". However the end results don't really show it. I'm still documenting each swimbait catch, and I caught 33% less fish than last year, and the average size was about the same. For some reason I had a lot more fish come off the hook this year, which accounts for some of that, but I think less time on the water was the real problem. But, it was a banner year for stripers which I only target for 2-4 hrs a trip over a one month period or when a school happens to come up around me during the rest of the year. I don't track data on them, but probably four 30+ fish "days" and around 200 stripers total.

I was thinking to myself "why does that look like a cardboard picture of a bait", then realized it is looking through the window in the package, duh.

Society is well past "necessity". Lazyness is the babies momma of invention.

Yeah, some of these pros who complain that it is a "cheat" and doesn't mimic "one baitfish" are the same guys who are part owners in a company that makes electronic gadgets that supposedly mimic the sound of schooling baitfish. And they don't seem to mind tournaments where other baits/techniques are dominant. The only legitimate argument I can see against them is the extra hooks that will stick the fish you are fighting. That said, I personally don't really enjoy fishing them so I have barely thrown them. Then again, maybe if I threw them more and caught some donkeys on them I'd change my tune.

Seen two boats dumped on the ramp, never seen a car (or van) go in the water though.

And in the final plot twist, Colby was that kid, duh duh duuuuuh....

Since the key forage in my lake moves a lot, sometimes the small fish help to tell me what the bait is doing. Then I can use that to narrow my focus to best spots with the best feeding conditions.

I had a dead and bloated ground hog float into me while wade fishing a central PA river once. In another central PA river when I was 13 I once found what looked like a little six legged starfish while turning over rocks trying to see what color the crawfish were. Of course, starfish are saltwater creatures and would not exist in a freshwater river in the mountains, so I must be totally insane.

Thanks for the info Randall! As chilly as it gets most nights I didn't think dawn would be so good until it started to warm up. I guess the cold would affect the bait more than the big ones, giving an advantage to the predators. Now that kids soccer is done I'll have to give it a try. FYI -- Most of the striper guys over here seem to be afraid of the dark and only want to fish down lines or troll. I was last one off the ramp, and I'm usually the only one out there for the pre-dawn spring herring blitz.

Let's face it, very few people come on here, share and post "Hey, guess what new technique/key to the hot bite/undiscovered bait/etc" I discovered today. The attitude of most is the opposite, as evidenced in this thread. Others should "earn it" the same way "I" did. That's OK and there's nothing wrong with that, we all do it to differing degrees. Very few, probably none, of us learned it ALL on our own. But 90-99% of the info that gets shared in this place is only shared because it is pulled out by a question. Take away the questions, and you are mostly left with a bragging board and "check out this new bait" drool. No need to sweat the newbs, they will either give up and go away, or eventually their questions get more advanced and more can learn.

So, sometime between now and January the big girls move back under deeper docks near backs of short cuts/creeks/creek mouths. Before this move they are on or near typical deep water/transition areas of main lake structure near the creeks/cuts. This year will be interesting because they are dropping the water 8 ft. (about 6 ft down already). The draw down has pulled a lot of the dink bank runners off the bank and moved them out schooling on 1" shad near the structure haunts of the bigger fish, which has actually been annoying when fishing big baits out there. So, last time out in the boat I went looking to see if those big fish had moved in yet. Did have 2 good fish follow, but that bite isn't quite "there" yet. While checking out the dock bite, I saw some fish school out between the main lake points at the mouth of the cut. At first I didn't chase them, thinking they were dinks or stripers. I came back to the spot an hour later, around dusk and I saw a 5+ fish leave the water completely. So I went out. They stayed up, sparsely spread over half a football field from 8 to 30 ft deep for another 20 minutes. Fish I marked were typically holding around 10 ft. I hooked up one good one (fish pulled off) and missed a couple (maybe some dinks mixed in?). Then, just as the light reached the point I felt I had to put my nav lights on, they stopped completely. The shad all pulled up creating "rain spots" on the surface in many pods spread over the area. Once on the surface, I never really saw the bait react like it was being attacked. I fished all around this bait for almost an hour with no luck before I had to leave, and didn't mark any bass either. I thought maybe they went shallower, but no luck there. Maybe I should have tried dragging bottom around 10 ft, but it didn't compute for me at the time with the bait on the surface. Anybody have experience getting fish to eat after the light goes off and those shad pods are chillaxing on the surface?