"think Smallie" With Stephen Headrick, The Smallmouth Guru

[Phil Lilley]

I get to meet a lot of fishermen in my work, and I love talking with them. Fishermen are the salt of the earth and some of the best people you could ever meet.

One of the things I love about bass fishermen is that we're always trying to learn more about the sport we love — a new technique, a new lure, a new way to sharpen hooks, whatever.

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[Al Agnew]

Nice blog, although I'm not as interested in lake fishing for smallies as I am river fishing.

Had to laugh a bit at the yellow jig deal, however. I don't think crayfish change color while lying dormant in the winter. And as for the yellow color, even in a lake as clear as Dale Hollow, not a whole lot of light penetrates to the 30-50 feet he says he's fishing. And yellow is one wavelength of light that fades out fairly quickly underwater. That "bright" yellow jig is actually going to look light, dull gray at those depths. A white one would show up a bit better if that was your goal. And a black one would probably be just as noticeable.

In my opinion, fish don't think like us. They don't see that jig and think, "Alright! A faded out crawdad! I think I'll swim over and get it before it gets away!" Instead, there is something in the movement and profile and maybe the color that triggers their instinct to feed and overrides any learned response to lures. It's moving and small enough to eat, therefore it's edible...Besides, I've never seen a crawdad, especially a sluggish winter crawdad, hop up off the bottom unless it was fleeing a predator already, and even then it's a LOT more likely to scoot along the bottom than hop off it. Whatever is triggering the fish to take that yellow jig fished that way, it ain't because it looks like a crawdad!