Moswimb8slinger

Gizzard shad I've seen upwards 15" long, bluegill, longear sunfish, black and white crappie, chubs, shiners, northern hog suckers, etc. Unlike some impoundments/reservoirs, our areas lakes literally have a buffet of prey

If you have an extra 55-65 dollars you can get one from TW

Happy birthday Bill

I fished at and below fall creek with the s-waver badonk-a-donk and had some followers and tail slaps with s-waver and nothing on the badonk-a-donk. Its was very windy today and hard to keep the boat straight with the wind blowing the front of it around

Flipping stick should work fine, the SoCal guys usually use 20lbs test mono either green or clear. So for the only issue I've had with hook-ups is when the fish go for a head shot on the Strike King "king kong" and they hit the bill on it and it flips the bait over and they completely miss the hooks. Other than the 4" shad, and a bunch of missed strikes due to tail strikes which a remedied with painting red near and around the hook, that improved my hook-ups

You've got some nice fish there bluebasser

I was glad to be there and chip in my 2 cents and share my baits

Haven't snagged any baits yet, had a bass break me off due to a bad knot

The BBZ1 baits have hardly any resistance at all. I mean if your breathe on the line and the bait swims, they swim ok with the line tied directly to the eye, but use a snap(no swivel) with it and they really move with little effort. Get a 7' or 8' medium heavy action rod with a long handle, you make pendulum casts with low effort. A guy in California showed me that with a 10' surf rod...lol Casting swimbaits is a little different from casting small baits, almost like casting livebait, long sweeping cast

I lived in SoCal for a couple of years and grew fond of Panda Express and their orange chicken or the walnut shrimp, and haven't made it to this one yet so i thought we'd eat there tonight while we're up there.

I would but me and Amanda are going to stop by the Panda Express for my favorite orange chicken, glenstone and chestnut i believ.

So far for me with retrieves, slow... just enough to get the bait to swim or suspend with retrieving(slow sinks), and small twitches. I haven't spotted any followers at a distance yet to really make a hard 180 twitch (BBZ1) work although i have practiced it, but most of the time its more of a subtle twitch (or twitch-twitch), but not like a jerkbait retrieve where you'd twitch it after every 3-5 turns of the reel.

So for i catch them mainly 5-7 inch baits, the heaviest maybe 4oz. I'm really hesitate to pay over 25 for a bait. Thats why I've stuck with shopping on ebay, mainly BBZ1, castiac, and River2Sea

I've only caught maybe 2 undersized (15") fish since late October. Most of them are in the 17-20 inch range, most of the time i go after work with only 1.5-2 hours of daylight. So it's not like it's taking all day to catch a limit. Pretty much- probe a spot with 5-10 casts if there's a follower or a blow up on a floater try tossing a sinker or recast the same spot and do a different retrieve. If there's nothing after roughly the 10th cast or so move on to the next spot Bill, I've talked with a couple of other guides and like some people, they expect immediate results and if they don't get that feedback from the fish they may think its not working right, or they just lose confidence and revert to what they're used to catching fish with. At first i did the same thing, but i was set on using these baits for a greater chance at catching bigger fish. Plus its been several years since i got a LM over 6lbs, a SM over 5lbs and a spot over 4lbs, I'm just increasing my odds.

I change the hooks on the S-waver, not the BBZ1, unless they're damaged, I've read the S-waver Hooks like to snap/brake. If you look at the pics with the 4"shad, i painted a little red ahead of and near the hook. If you look at the bait from the bottom, the whole belly is white except the tail which has a bronze yellow tip. I had 15 hits on that floater one day and about 13 of them slap the tail, some flipped the whole bait out of the water. So i painted the red on it to create a different focus point that afternoon and the next day i hooked 5/5 fish that hit it. Another tip with the floater 4", you can wrap lead wire around the hook and make it a super slow sink, or suspenDots or strips could work too

Mhumke, there is a cable that hangs across the lake just up from the first outlet, that is the boundary line

I do swap the hooks on several baits that don't come with good hooks. I've had pretty good lucky so far with Mustad triple grips.

Thanks for the compliment buddy. I get tired of seeing all the tight lipped guys... lay it out there. The thing is the swimbaits, like jigs, spinnerbaits, crankbaits, etc... is just another technique that requires practice, proper equipment and application of the technique.

Also with larger baits is that your not going to go out and catch 30-50 fish day. Your looking for 1 or 2 bites, but those usually will be a wall hanger worth bragging about. You can go days maybe weeks without any hits maybe a follower. This technique requires some dedication and time put in looking for that one fish... Start small, 6inch baits, and build your confidence like i have. I threw that King Kong for a couple of weeks before i figured out how to fish it then the first cast i made into Table Rock off a secondary point over in the Kimberling area, thats when i got that 22inch smallie. Put your time in and be patient, trust me the anticipation will almost kill ya and when that bass finally explodes on that bait, you'll giggle like a little school girl and once you land it, pat yourself on the back. Once that happens you'll be hooked on tossing swimbaits

This should be a good year for keeper males, i caught alot of 17.5/17.75 inch fish last year and they should be a little bigger this year.

Kinda like that. The S-waver just wonders in a slithering S pattern but give it a twitch, and it rolls slightly and darts, a dying shad is pretty much what you'll try to imitate. The floaters work very good with just a slow steady retrieve, if they were hitting it and stopped, i would occasionally twitch it to entice more bites.

I might make an appearance... i have Saturday off so i can stay up friday night.lol

that's a advantage of fishing from the bank but also the point of that is funnels or pinch points with the bass can pin down its prey. ambush point like rocks timber ledges even the surface of the water can be a pinch point. that video is pretty loaded with information, you just got to adapt the information in your style of fishing or your area. you're not going to go out to a lake that doesn't have docks and try to go dock fishing.lol

Yes, all from the bank, deepest fish was probably 15-20 ft.