merc1997 Bo

since he hardly have trees as we used to, i fish it more on the bottom. after bottom touch down, you can just steady crank, but i most often crank and pause and let it coast back to the bottom. i will vary duration and crank speed. speeding it up somewhere during the retrieve will often trigger strikes. it works very well during the day also. bo

night time is the right time. bo

night time is the right time. bo

it would depend on how deep they are going down to when not at the surface. spoons can be fished at any depth. one other factor would be the size of the shad they are eating. sometimes, you have to be very size specific to get these fish to bite. bo

had nothing pressing to do and decided to make a short trip with one of my retired buddies that lives in emerald beach. put in at 8:30 and was back on the trailer at midnight. actually just after dark, we had the lake pretty much to ourselves. started out just hunting and pecking trying to figure out if anything was key to finding some. fished some flats to begin with , but not much going on there, then hit a couple of points, and that did not work. went to a long bluff that has many terrain changes and started down it and found the key to the specifics. had to be fairly vertical down to an extended ledge occurring around 15 ft. best lure was a 1/2 jig, but did catch a few on a beaver type soft plastic rigged on a 3/16 head with a 1/8 slip sinker. the next key was definitely the retrieve. knickmeyer had me down 4 to 0 and the difference was that he was picking his jig up and letting it coast, and i was letting my jig drop. as soon as i started coasting mine, i immediately went to catching and not just being the guide keeping the "customer" where he could catch fish. we ended up with 10 keeps, with 4 in the 3+ range. lesson to be learned here from staying on the move looking at different types of areas to having the correct lure but not fishing it in the correct manner to make the bass strike. paying attention to details makes a big difference between success and not getting a bite. even though we both started out throwing the same lure, we were both fishing with a different type retrieve. when knickmeyer was getting bite after bite and i had not had one, i knew that i needed to change what i was doing retrieve wise. do not get stuck into fishing your lures the same way everytime. i have watched way to many people in the boat over the years that fish, say a worm, the same way everytime. they never change the type of retrieve they are using to see if a different retrieve type might trigger strikes. many of those same people will however change their retrieve speed on a crankbait. the same principles apply to fishing drop type lures such and jigs, worms, spoon, drop shots, or spinner baits. bo

night time is the right time. bo

yes, they sure do weaken. you will notice they change by having to turn up the gain more than usual. marine repair center can check the one you have. at least, they used to. george had a water filled tube and would measure how many times your unit would double the reading at a certain percent of gain. anyway, if you are having to turn the gain way up to see anything in 20 ft. of water, you most likely need a new transducer. bo

maybe you should take up guiding for those red eyes. those critters are sure good eating too. bo

bill back in the early 80's, we had a summer that the temps were over 100 for about 2 months. I would suppose that would be when we had the highest water temps on this lake. the thermocline got down to 45ft. mike sowders and I were just mopping up on all the tournaments because way back then, it was unheard of to fish past 30 ft. the water back then was also much clearer, which also had an affect on how deep the thermocline went. even with the high temps we are having now, the thermocline will not go as deep because of water color. bo

i caught several bass on them last fall and this spring. so, yes the bass do seem to like them, but as with any fishing tool, they have their time and place. bo

here are some options for fishing a deep clear lake. both have the vibration and wiggle factors somewhat similar to crankbaits, but where they differ is in the ability to fish the entire cast in the strike zone. a crank bait can not do that. plus, you have better hook ups and not lose so many bass on the way to the boat. they can also be fished through heavy cover much better than a crankbait. bo

forgot to mention they also have oval split ring line ties. bo

Don Iovino sent me a care package, one dozen of his Zoner Hunter crankbaits. I will add that the production models have a nice black nickle treble hook. bo

brownie fishing at night is still good, but changing. i took linda out friday evening to go chase the brownies. the bite seemed to be a bit slower, but we still managed several of the slick critters. ended up with 8 keepers and linda had one that was 3 1/2 plus. the rest were just keeps. still caught a good amount of shorties. depth was still around 15 ft. it did seem that something was changing though. still caught them on the 1/2 jig with bluegill skirt. last night was a different story. could not get one bite in areas that had been working. remember be saying that it seemed something was changing? well, the difference was the bait was not present in the areas that had been working. so, several stops later, i located some areas that had bait fish present and got back to work. we caught multiple fish from to different spots. depth was still the 15 ft. range, but we caught them on some pretty flat stuff. especially when comparing to what we had caught them on previously. the 1/2 jig was still the ticket. ended up with some pretty nice ones. 10 keeps total. in the brownie department, one pushing 4, one black in the same range, and 4 other brownies over 17 inches. the presence of bait fish is really key to fishing the right area. you can fish areas with bait present and not catch anything, but we did not catch anything without the bait there. really do not know just how much the shad are going to move now from day to day, but does appear to me that it might be a go look for them every trip. spring fishing is that way too. they change daily, but more do to weather. this time of the year, it is really based on where the food is at. never forget to spend some electronics time to help with location and depth you need to be fishing. bo

really great trip and looks as though the suckers were biting too! oop, sorry. just could not resist. hope the removal went fairly easily. bo

those the type of days that keep us coming back. bo

nice fatties! bo

bill, we really did not get out early enough to check the thermocline during daylight hours. normally at night the clutter on the graph will end pretty close to thermocline. i could see a 22 ft. thermocline because at night bass will typically move up just a bit at the beginning of the night and can get shallower than that for a brief active eating stint. brownies most of the time seem to roam shallower than the blacks. both of the nice lmg's we caught came from closer to 20 ft., which again fits in with the black typically being deeper than the brownies. we were just having way too much fun catching the brownies to make us move out a bit deeper. bo

no, i did not, and after dark, most of the shad and fish were at 15 ft. to the surface. the surface temp was showing to be 87, and that was when we left at 12:30. bo

went down stream to chase some brownies and try out a new 1/2 Elite Series GrassJig. caught a lot of shorts, which was still a hoot, and also allowed me to see that the jig hooked as it should. we did end up with 5 keeps. three brownies and a couple of bonus 4 lb. lmg's. where we did find our bites was in very specific places, and i am sure that i probably raided some of dave's places. most bites occurred in the 15 ft. range. we tried enough places to find out that where we did find bass to catch and seemed to be bunched up, they were all exactly pretty much the same specific type of place. you had to have that semi-flat areas with lots of water butted right up to it. attached are a couple of pics of the bluegill skirted jig and blue trailer that seemed to to the trick. bo

i have found them to catch bass, and that is the important part. but, there are times, as always, that one crank bait will out fish anything else on any given day. for me personally, i have caught way more spring time bass on a model a bomber than a wiggle wart here on table rock. on bull shoals, the old rebel deep wee r was darn hard to beat. on loz, i have done consistently better on the wart. i can remember one year a rapala rap crankbait was the hot ticket. guess we just all need to go to live bait, and then we would only need shad or crawdads. bo

loz continues to really produce quality bass. there was a hs boy that brought in a 5 fish 26 lb. sack two weeks ago. he told me that he caught them from 12 to 32 ft. deep. that is sure a great job by a young angler! bo

you are preaching to the choir about catching deep fish on loz, but maybe you can explain that fact to my buddy. he never listens to anything i say. yep, this time of the year, there are plenty of big ones caught 20 plus feet. we were close enough to hear the official give the update to curt dove. bo

i watched the last period on tuesday. we just jumped in behind a boat and followed and it turned out to be the shyrock kid. he was doing his usual, flipping, and we did watch him catch a couple of those 12" monsters. we then went looking around and came across dove, and got to watch him catch another one of those mlf lunkers, and also heard the tracker update. seems like short had somewhere around 30 lbs., second had 26, and shyrock was third with 24 and seemed as though dove was 4th with 18. the way loz was fishing, i would bet the most damage was done in period one, while there were some good fish still up shallower. my buddy that i fished with is one of those that believe bass do not live past 15 ft. deep in loz. so, he is a boat dock beater. so, i was pretty much bored the entire time we fished as boat dock fishing is pretty much a one man project. if i got a chance to throw at anything just about the time the lure hit the water, he was on the troller and my line was wound around the corner of the dock. however. i did catch a couple of 4's and a couple of 3's, and several smaller ones. we actually did a test while fishing. we started at 4 in the afternoon, and in the gravois arm, where the water is quite clear. this was a test of floro, 12 lb. against florescent braid 50 lb., me using the braid of course. results were i caught 4 more bass, and also had two more of the bigger bass. for lures, he used a tungsten weight and the same 10 inch worm that i used. i fished my worm on a 3/8 oz. Elite Series jig head. most bites were coming from 10 to 12 ft. deep. my buddy admitted that his "invisible" line did not help him in getting more bites than me, and he was getting first throw at everything. bottom line was to fish the right depth at the right speed to trigger bites, and in this case, i was falling slightly faster than his setup. we did compare sink rates before we began fishing. we did conclude our test at 6pm. i wanted to do the test with plenty of sunshine. well, back to the mlf guys. most fish at a hectic rate looking for the next pecker head. i do understand that the intention is to make it viewer friendly so there is plenty of catching footage. i wonder if they might consider a point system that rewarded catching bigger sized bass? it would be nice to actually watch how some of them would go about catching better quality bass. one last thought, i wonder why in such a pecker head battle that i have never seen one contestant put on a little in-line spinner?? bo

fishing that area, i have learned that this time of year, you really do not need to think about putting the boat in until around 11 pm. most of the time the lake traffic has dissipated to a more tolerable level. just have to get a good afternoon nap in to fish the later hours. i sure remember my early night time outings. of course way back then, we did not have all the recreational boats churning the water, and it was safe to be out at a much earlier hour. bo