top_dollar

Cant help with fly fishing. I generally use short rods and im in tight quarters.

Yeah its been a lot of fun, anything small they will attack. Even your bobber! Plenty of fish in the 8 inch range, no real big redears though.

Bluegill and redear are going crazy right now. Tiny jigs, live bait under a float, and small topwaters will work. Some are holding off the beds 4-6ft deep amd others are right up on the beds 1ft down (truck tire size circles/holes in the vegetation).

Also....if your just looking to have fun and catch fish...its the time of year where if you look for gravel runnouts you will find all kinds of fish hanging out there. Heres an easy way to catch em. Get you a few boxes of night crawlers. Rig up a med light power fast action rod with 6# mono (ned rig rod). Slide a bobber stop, then a bead then a 1/16 to 1/8 oz weight, another bead and another bobber stop. I prefer the lighter weight, but you may feel more comfortable with a 3/16 or 1/4 oz. Space each of the components out about 1/4 of an inch above a #4 or #6 baitholder hook. Run the whole crawler up the shank of the hook as straight as you can get it. Thats the rig I use...a normal split shot rig will also work well, but you will eventually have twist and kinks in the line between the hook and weight and you need to retie often. The setup i mentioned above, spaced properly will alleviate that issue. Drift that rig a few feet off the bottom of any long gravel point or gravel rolloff into the main lake. If you dont have any electronics just drift around the point starting shallow and getting deeper trying to keep the deal near the bottom. You'll catch plenty. If you have some electonics on board you can look for certain things: 1.) Large humps on/near the bottom are usually catfish, walleye, and bass. 2.) A continuous squiggly line just above the bottom are bluegills, cut that crawler in half if they are biting the tails. 3) Clouds in the water column...shad...there will be predators near. 4) Fish humps in the middle of the water column are usually spotted bass and or white bass. Both will eat the crawler happily, but if you can find some spots stacked up, you can catch lots with a crawler. I generally start in about 12-15 feet and work out to 30-40. If your not seeing/catching anything you can move out over the channel, quite often you can find em at the same depths as the flat but suspended out over 100 or more FOW. I know live bait is generally looked down upon from bass fisherman, but a couple boxes of night crawlers can find bass about as easy as 2000$ worth of electronics.

Holy cow thats a lot of options. I often feel most confident with sticking to just a few techniques all day. Maybe cuz im not a particularly versatile fisherman, but its hard for me to see if somethings working if i don't fish with it for very long. Could be laziness too, but i try different presentations of the same bait before switching techniques. I think a crawdad bait, a shad bait and a worm will always work, table rock bass will undoubtedly be feeding on those. For me it's a spoon, a keitech, a dropshot and a jig. Ill often times try to force a topwater bite that isnt there, but thats my own stubbornness cuz i know the spoon would work better.

Ah gotcha. I just now saw the line tie up on top.

Does the heddon cousin float or sink? Its shaped quite a bit like the stutter step lure.

Interesting to note that that 1 of those pilings consistently fishes better than the rest for me.

Ive noticed this as well.

I like that bigger size one in white, shad, and cole slaw. Med heavy power casting rod, moderate fast tip. Metered braid with a few feet of leader. That little setup does the job on spots in the summertime.

I generally use a war eagle slab spoon. Its about an oz maybe a bit less.

This is what works for me better than anything this time of year through fall. I drop spoons in dock stalls, tree tops, gravel runnout points and bridge pilings. Walleyes and giant white bass are also suckers for em.

This exactly. Ive also been in a bad slump lately. I feel as if my last 20 or so trips have been full of missed blow ups, errent casts and few fish in my hand. If you fish, however, 3 or 4 days a week that "slump time" decreases. Just a few weeks ago with all that rain i was doing extremely well...seems like a distant memory. They will come around, you just gotta be fishing when they do. Dont be afraid to fish water nobody else does if it means you get to fish. I fish a little poop shoot runoff pond in st louis on my lunch break, its gross but full of decent bass, anywhere that you can cast to is worth casting to. Getting to fish everyday, if only for an hour or two is great practice. ...Also...too much internet/article reading can be a detriment. Its obviously hugely helpful, but its no substitute for time on the water and making mistakes. If one can figure out how to set that up, that individual may not care about fishing anymore.

Its my opinion that if your topwatwr fishing you need a buzzer and a walker, sometimes for some reasons (idk the reason) they really want one over the other. Ive had several times where the crazy flapper outfished the pad crasher and vice versa when fished in the same area. Same thing with buzz baits and top dollars. Sometimes they just want one over the other.

They have different actions. The si fats have more kick in the tail and catch more water. This results in not only the tail to kick back and forth, but the belly gets a rocking motion moving the entire bait. Then regular ones move with little motion in the body of the bait but the tail still swings. The regular ones can be fished like a small finesse worm as well as a swimbait. Long story short, fats have more action, and they both work well.

Welp...weird guilt trips and awkward arguments aside....there are plenty of fish to be had with all this rain. Rivers are toast, and will be...but some smaller creeks and streams recover quite quickly after a good rain. Also, any pond in the area that doesnt turn to chocolate milk will be quite fish able. Just this past weekend, I was in Terre du lac, and my buddy and I were bank fishing the spillways of the clearest lakes there (most of them are quite clear). We found bass stacked up in good numbers when the water was moving well. Caught lots of <14 inch fish, a few that were maybe 16 or 17, and 1 big one. Busch wildlife also has lakes that stay clear all the time. All this rain gives the water some much needed color, and positions fish where there might be some current. Yup...thats a transformers tackle bag.

That ned rig head is hard to beat for the 2.8" fat. Personally i go with a 1/16th, 3/32, or 1/8 ball jead jig. No collar, with a light wire #1 or #2 hook. Thats the perfect jig for the 2.8 fats and 3 skinnies. Need some super glue. The little hook saves the bait from getting torn up as much, and im a believer that smaller hooks give your plastics better action. No collar on the jig also saves it from getting ripped up.

I fished the big river for a few hours yesterday. I almost always fish the same stretch of it around leadwood. It has never been a producer of big fish. Prior to yesterday it was very rare to catch any smallies over 15 inches. Typically i can catch 20 or 30 smallies in a few hours but all would be 8-12 inches long. Yesterday though using the same tactics i always do, i caught a 15, a 16, and a 19! That 19 is a personal best for me and wayyyy bigger than anything we ever catch. My buddy also caught 2 that were 15. I know that is not all that spectacular, however, coming from that particular stretch of river where decent smallies are not common for me i find it perplexing. I am not going to complain about mysteriously bigger fish showing up though. longear sunfish will eat any little lure you use. Bass were caught on a top dollar, swing impact fat, and wacky worms. lots of little fish were in current near riffles. Bigger fish came out of slow deeper holes. Also caught a few goggle eye, largemouth, and a little crappie. Water is clear, can see several feet down (5 or 6ft).

In heavy vegetation (not much of an issue on tr) they do well on a texas rig, or slider type jig. 90% of the time for me though its just a no collar ball head jig with a light wire hook. Med light power fast action spinning gear and 4 or 6 lb mono. I like to keep a nice "bow" in my line by keeping the rod tip up or at least straight out. If its really windy youll have to go tip down. As your reeling in the "bow" in the line will remain fairly consistent. When a fish grabs it though youll see that line straighten, jump, or occasionally even go dead slack. Often times you just barely feel a slight tap, or feel mushy weight.

Look for a no collar ball head jig. The collar on em rips keitechs up fast. As mentioned a few drops of glue to hold ot in place. Another thing ive learned is to use the smallest hook you can get away with. Usually fish inhale the entire bait easily so a smaller hook will work fine, plus it gets less torn up that way. Those ned rig heads everyone talks about work well for the smaller ones. I also generally use a light jig head like a 1/16 or 3/32. It allows you to slow down your retrieve quite a bit and no matter how slow you go the tail is always swimming.

Random yet interesting fact, sort of relevent. Last winter (february) i caught a mess of crappie, tossed em on ice and went home. The following day i went to cut em up and low and behold they were all still alive. Well, outta morbid curiosity i took em back up to the pond and released one. It floated.....for a minute....then swam away! I couldnt believe it! The rest in the cooler were not so lucky. I just could not believe how long it survived outta water with a low metabolism.

My ultimate conundrum.....when im catching fish on my usual junk, i dont think to try other stuff cuz im catching fish. Then when my stuff doesnt work, i think outside the box with stuff i have zero confidence in, fish it for a few casts and quit. Hence i end up fishing with the same 3 lures 99% percent of the time.

Kincaid lake.

Never broke a tip off, but it can be like fishing with razor wire. Dont ever wrap it around your finger or hand and pull expecially when wet. I have cut myself pretty badly before.

for crappie try a 2.8" swing impact fat on a 16th oz ned rig head and a ned rig rod. Cast, count to expected depth, keep the rod tip high (10-12 oclock) and reel in slow and steady about 1 turn every 2 or 3 seconds. The 3 inch swing impact regulars work wonders on the same jig head. The crappie at TR are obviously huge, so the bigger keitechs work fine, for little crappies use the 2 or 2.5" on a 1/64 or 1/32 oz head. Plain bluegill is the best color if you can find it....bluegill flash is also good and easy to find. All the colors work though.