mcaetano2905

True! I only fish from the bank and saved one of my S-Wavers from a tree by using a lure retriever made by me. I learned how to make it here: https://youtu.be/9j1s50yFq0M

During about 16 years fishing I NEVER had a bass break my line. I used mono from 6 to 15lb (currently I use mostly 12lb Big Game for 6" swimbaits and 7" Slammer). I respool about 2 times a year. I fish some 40 to 60 days a year. I don't catch very large bass like many of you because I fish for northern strain and my PB is only just over 5lb. I retie often, specially when fishing on rocks. I check my line often. Many people in my country (Portugal) fish for carp well over 10lbs with 6lb line or less. I see many people bass fishing with normal sized minnow baits and spinners with 6lb line or less! Many people here think I'm crazy when I tell them I use 12 or 15lb line. They think it's too heavy. I caught my PB on a 3/8oz spinnerbait using 6lb mono. Also caught my 3rd biggest bass on the same spinnerbait using 8lb mono...

Nice fish! Congratulations!

Hi everyone! Today I caught my first bass on a glide bait. It was 4.96lb and it's the largest bass I caught in 14 years! Not a trophy for most of you who fish for florida strain bass, but here in Portugal bass are northern strain and it's difficult to find big bass because 99% of the anglers keep all the bass they catch. My PB is 5.07lb. So, today is a very special day for me! I caught the bass on a S-Waver 168 in a bluegill color. I fsh only from the bank. I fished a 7" Slammer and a Spro King Daddy frog with no bites or followers. Then, I started fishing the S-Waver and I was fishing in the rocky dam of this very small lake... I made a cast to a place far from the bank and retrieved the lure along an "iron rod" with some small concrete pillars, that go under water. There were some weeds in this area too. I was fishing at a medium speed, with some twitches. When the lure was about 8ft from the bank I saw a big fish following it (by the way, I've had BY FAR more big followers on the S-Waver, just fishing it 4 or 5 days than I've had on any other lure). I don't know if it came from deeper water or from under a weed mat just 8ft from the bank. The fish looked at the lure. Then I twitched it. The fish only hit on the stop. It didn't seem to show much interest in the lure and moved and hit slowly. It didn't hit the hooks! I was frustrated. But I didn't gave up! The fish stayed in the shadow of the weed mat. I made another cast and made the lure swim in the same place as before. The same thing happened! It hit on the stop but no hookup! Then I made a 3rd cast. This time I retrieved the lure so it swimmed right into the shadow where the fish was. The fish looked at the lure. I twitched. Nothing. Then, on the stop she hits again slowly and this time I hooked it! The bass looked as if it was tired or not very active. Maybe a late spawner?! She gave almost no fight. Well, I'll admit it: until I took the fish out of the water I thought it was just a 2 lber! LOL Now I want my new PB!!! Hope you enjoy my detailed report and the picture.

Bass see red/orange and green very good and they almost don't see blue and don't see purple (they also don't see infrared and ultraviolet). Blue and purple are almost as if they are grey. Carp see the colors bass see, but they also see blue, purple and UV.

Thanks everyone! You helped me a lot! I'll buy the Mattlures Ultimate Gill.

I have 2 U2 gills (4") but when crawled the tail doesn't kick and I don't have much confidence fishing them like that. Can I fish them in cold water, crawling them, with success?

I have some Mattlures U2 Bluegills but want to buy a bigger bluegill now. I want a bait that can do many things, from crawling and deadsticking on the bottom (fishing in cold water) to fishing in the middle of the water column, to fishing faster near the surface. Which lure do you think is the best for this, the Ultimate Bluegill or Savage Gear 5" Bluegill? I'll fish it from the bank only and I can't afford to buy expensive lures often. To me, the pros of the Ultimate Bluegill are: - It's very realistic looking - It has a pumpkinseed color (in the lakes I fish there are pumpkinseed, not bluegill) The cons of the Ultimate Bluegill: - The tail is not realistic - I think the tail doesn't kick at very slow speeds - The price - It's not very durable The pros of the Savage Gear Bluegill: - It has a realistic tail - Swimming action is great (but don't know if it will swim at slow speeds) - The price is great - I think it has a nylon mesh inside like the 3D Trout, so it may be a durable bait (?) The cons of the Savage Gear Bluegill: - It doesn't have a pumpkinseed color - Not quite as realistic looking as the Mattlures Ultimate Bluegill Looking at the pros and cons, to me, it looks like the Savage Gear might be better, but want to hear your opinion. Remember I prefer a bait that's good for deadsticking and sloooooly crawl on the bottom too.

Yes, those are two great guides! You can reach Matt Allen here: http://www.bassinguide.com/

I have this book in e-book format. Didn't find it in paper. I love the book and I learned a lot from it. I recommend it to anyone wanting to catch trophy bass, specially if you want to do it with big swimbaits, but my favorite book about trophy bass fishing is Bill Murphy's "In Pursuit of Giant Bass"! Bill Murphy doesn't talk about swimbaits, because at that time they were just starting to get popular among trophy hunters, but he talks about using some big Rapalas. And about all of his techniques can be adapted to swimbaits. GREAT book. If you fish mostly shallow reservoirs/natural lakes with lots of weeds, or if you live in Florida, Doug Hannon's "Big Bass Magic" is a great book for you. Again, Hannon don't talk about swimbaits (well, at some point in the book he says a Sassy Shad might be a good lure when hunting a World Record) , but you'll learn A LOT about big bass, where to find them and how to catch them. Then you can adapt those techniques to any bait you want. I love these 3 books, but my favorite, BY FAR, is In Pursuit of Giant Bass. If you want to catch bigger bass and don't have this book, then go buy it!

I remember I already have a name for that bass: it's Hannibal! lol Because the two times I caught her was on bass colored swimbaits. Hannibal the cannibal.

I hope I catch that fish a third time! It will be my new PB for sure! It's been 3 years since I caught it and my PB is only 5lb. By the way, my PB was 19.3" long and this fish was also exactly 19.3" long, so it tied the lenght of my PB. In Japan people give more importance to the lenght than the weight. A bass over 60cm (23.6") is a trophy to them. I kind of agree that lenght should be more important than weight. The lenght of a fish is always increasing. The weight varies a lot. As you see this 4 pounder I caught was less heavy the second time I caught it. Of course changing the importance to the lenght would change a lot of things. Florida would start to have the "biggest" bass instead of California, because of their long fish. Either way - if you give more importance to lenght or weight - a trophy is a trophy.

Ahah. Thanks everyone! This forum looks a lot nicer than other forums. Some places are full of haters. I don't like that. Fishing is our passion and something that should make us happy, not something to get angry. We're here to share, teach and learn. I'm mostly learning right now, but as I gain more experience I'll not think twice: I'll share as much knowledge as I can with all of you. If someone says something you don't like, just talk calmly with that person. I've seen pictures here of people bank fishing and showing fish full of dirt. That's not good for the fish. But in other forums there would be a lot of haters replying to that picture. Here I've not seen that! Just calmly say to that person that it's better if he tries no to get dirt on that fish (I bank fish too and I always go to the edge of the bank to lip the fish. If I have to put it down I'll put it on top of grass or something like that). I think I'll relate more to people from the NE because as in Portugal they have northern strain and in many places bass eat mostly sunfish.

Can't see any of the 3 videos. Says it's private...

Nice fish! I haven't caught many swimbait fish, but my biggest was on a 7" Slammer (you can see it in my profile picture). From this experience and from what I see others do there's no doubt it's one of the best swimbaits for big fish (and numbers too!). It also proves that a swimbait doesn't need to have a shape a color exactly like a fish to catch a lot of big bass. Many times the action/water displacement/sound is more important. By the way, I caught that fish in water with 1ft visibility.

Thanks! Actually it is just one fish caught 2 times in the same year. You can compare the markings on the fish in my last picture. I guess most people will not read the entire post because it's huge. I'll try to write less next time.

Hi everyone! I live in Portugal and I've been fishing swimbaits here without much success. Some people here might know me from other swimbait forums. I had some of my best swimbait days 11 years ago in February/March. Those days I caught from 3 to 6 fish from 1 to 3.5 lbs on a 6" swimbait (Osprey style swimbait). Not big fish... Then I had some years without fishing much, In 2013 I caught a 4.13lb bass in February on a 7" bass colored MS Slammer fished slowly on top. My 2rd biggest bass ever (my PB is only 5lb)! In July of the same year I caught a 4.02lb bass on a Mattlures Baby Bass. Actually the 4.02lb bass was the same bass I caught earlier at 4.13lb! That was the last swimbait bass I caught. I only fish from the bank and bass here are northern strain. Prey is mostly red swamp crawdads and pumpkinseed sunfish (sometimes baby bass and in a couple of lakes a fish similar to hitch too). I've been throwing 6" swimbaits and the 7" MS Slammer at about 50% of the time I'm on the water. The water in some places is crystal clear, but even so I haven't had many followers. Some 8 or 9" bass on the few times I had followers. I'm starting to think these lakes don't have many bass in them. When I'm not throwing swimbaits I throw mostly jigs and only catch 2 or 3 fish on them in a year! Even when I occasionally fish senkos I don't catch many bass. In these lakes (and in almost all lakes here) 99.9% of the anglers keep all the bass they catch, specially the bigger bass! I have a reservoir here that is absolutely huge and with very deep crystal clear water most of the time, but I don't get to fish it often. Most of the lakes I fish are small reservoirs, usually with 15 to 20ft maximum depth. Some have many weeds while others are more rocky with steeper banks. Some have crystal clear water while others are stained. The weather here is maybe like North California. The lakes don't freeze (but in same very shallow places less than 1" depth I've seen some ice on the surface). The air temperature rarely gets bellow 32ºF and that occurs maybe a couple nights, usually in January. In the summer the air temperature during the day can get up to 110ºF a couple July days, but usually less than that. From March 15th to May 15th is closed season, so I can't fish right now. With all this information what do you recommend me to do? Should I keep throwing the 7" MS Slammer and the floating 6" BBZ's? I have 2 Mattlures U2 Bluegills. Fished them many times without catching anything on them. I'm thinking about fishing mostly swimbaits this year. Even more than before. I really want to start catching fish consistently on them. Maybe I should start throwing them to deeper water more? Maybe I should fish even bigger baits to attract some bigger fish that no one catches? I have an 8" Hudd and fished it sometimes but haven't had a single follower... I'm also thinking about matching the hatch more. Fishing Mattlures U2 and Ultimate Gill in pumpkinseed colors more. The baby bass colored MS Slammer (my 2 biggest swimbait catches were on two different baby bass colored swimbaits, and those were not the baits I fished most of the time). I'm thinking about getting a Jackall Gantarel. It's expensive to me, but it floats, so it's more difficult to loose it. I'll fish pumpkinseed/bluegill and baby bass swimbaits most of the time, fishing some shad/hitch style swimbaits when I go to the lakes where the main forage is a fish similar to that. With all this information what do you think are the best baits for me? Am I right in the baits I'm thinking about using? Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post! (I'm showing you the 4lb+ bass that I caught two times the same year with a picture to compare the markings on the fish).