Big Indiana Bass

It's Yoder (and Deal) Again

Got an e-mail from my good friend Rod Yoder. Seems like he has pulled off another win on the Co-Angler side of the BFL. This makes the 2nd time this year he has won from the back of the boat. His first victory came down at Monroe in May. The stingy waters of the Ohio River near Evansville provided the bounty this time. It also makes the 2nd tourney in a row (both on the Ohio R.) that Ryan Deal has won from the boater side. Talk about a couple guys getting on a roll. You can read the BFL write-up HERE, or Rod's story with all the tackle details HERE.

I've mentioned this before, but one of the cool things about Rod is that he has his own little online tackle store. And a good majority of the time, he is using the exact same stuff to win these tourneys that he sells. As such, he is not hesitant to promote the baits and lures that he is using, which is a rarity in Indiana. Our little waters are so pressured, it's pretty tough to even get the truth out of someone as to what baits they used to place well with, let alone the specific area or spot they fished. You can find Rod's site here: RedShad Tackle 

The Trouble With Trebles

Not to be confused, of course, with the Start Trek episode of nearly the same name: "The Trouble with Tribbles". I spent the weekend organizing and digging through my crankbait boxes, largely due to the Risto Rap sell-off on E-Bay, which is going better than expected. I've got a nice cache of custom and older specialty cranks that have won me a lot of money over the years. Since I haven't been tourney fishing of late, these guys had sort of been kept in the closet so to speak, as the risk of losing them in a 'fun fishing' session was a little too great. But I think it's time to reorganize and pull some of these baits back out and see what I actually have.

One thing I noticed right away was the need to replace many of the older stock hooks with new trebles. Ironically enough, it seems like the long standard treble hook sizes just aren't quite appropriate for many of my baits. I'd get ready to rig and it would seem like a #2 was too large but a #4 wasn't quite right either. Several baits would appear to be perfect with nothing but #5's on them. Used to be you could only find even numbered trebles in any quantity or easily available supply. Times are changing though.

I went online and placed a good sized order for all sorts of odd-sized trebles, especially #3's and #5's this weekend. A search of the Internet revealed that most manufacturers now sell odd-sized trebles. Rapala even has their own treble replacement kit over at Cabela's, Rapala having a big penchant for using the odd sized trebles on many of their most popular baits. So next time you read an article about upsizing your trebles on cranks, don't just jump up to the next even sized hook. Take some time to really fine tune your crankbait hook setup, even different sized fronts and rears if necessary. It will pay off in the long run. 

Thailand - Untapped Bass Market?

So I'm in the process of selling off my Rapala Risto Rap collection over on E-Bay this week, and I keep receiving e-mails from buyers in Thailand if I'll do International shipping there should they bid and win. I've now had 3 requests so far which has me wondering, what the hell is going on over there? I'm guessing they don't have largemouth, so it must just be an underground market for Rapalas. Must be a pretty good one at that to be able to buy 2 or 3 lures for $10-$15 and then be willing to pay at least that much to have them shipped over there. I've checked the feedback and past transactions of the requestors and they have all been purchasing various Rapalas off the site from other sellers. My first thought always falls to avoid being scammed, but I'm beginning to wonder now.

UPDATE: Just thought I'd add an update. I've had several buyers of my various Risto's now from Thailand and they have all been great communicators and fast payers, so certainly no scam going on. Still not sure of why the hot market for what seems to just be Rapala lures though. Rather interesting...     

Site Milestone Update

You know how we like numbers and stats on this site, so thought I'd pass along another set for the site. Just this week the site passed the 20,000th page view mark and is currently averaging about 1,750 per month.

On another note, I had this pic sent to me this week wondering what the baseball like growth was on this bass. There are no guarantees without having it verified by a path lab like the one at Purdue University, but it is most like a tumor of some sort. Tumors in fish are usually considered non-infectious and can be either genetically predisposed or a result of some type of environmental contaminant such as some metals or chemical compunds in the water. Certain types of infections can also lead to abnormal swelling of organs or other body parts. Fish tumors can also either be malignant or benign, again requiring an examination and biopsy to know for sure. Looks kind of painful either way. You can read a bit more about common fish diseases and parasites in the 2008 Indiana Fish Consumption Advisory Booklet (see Page 7 for tumors) found at the link. 

(Not So) Starving Artists

Anyone as old as I am will probably remember the advertisements on television for the starving artists art shows that would be held at local hotels. This goes back a ways. Now I don't know if they were truly starving, just trying to make a buck or actually a good way to obtain paintings direct from the artist at a good price. I never attended one, or I should say, my parents never did as it was well before my drving age days. But I've been hanging out on E-Bay recently and it appears that there are some new artists on the block, and they don't seem to be starving at the moment.

Custom painted baits have been around for a while as have custom carved lures  In some parts of the country there are local "legends" on the scene, especially in the crankbait carving business. Some probably make it big and get famous, others are more local or regionally influential. For instance in my parts, the Dee Bait along with the Wee Bait were locally made cranks that were infamous for winning tourneys on the Ohio River. In spinnerbaits it was Timmy Poe's little baits pulling the same trick on the same waters. In the custom painting arena you have guys like Tim Hughes from Missouri, who I have had the pleasure of sharing the boat with once over on Table Rock Res. Well the market for custom painted baits is alive and well from what I'm seeing.

Just for the heck of it I found a sweet little painted bait in a color pattern dear to my heart that I thought I'd bid on. Now this lure is a Lucky Craft knockoff, selling for $4-$5 in a large southern retail establishment. Said artist buys the baits and then applies his magic and you get some wonderfully painted lures. So I thought I'd bid on one just to see what would happen. Mind you this bait was already at $19.50 when I jumped into the bidding process with about 3 hours left. My bidding immediately shot the price up to $26.00 based on other bid maximums that were already established. My bid maximum was $30, and if you kow anything about E-Bay, you know that holding a high bid means nothing if you aren't there at the last 30 seconds to protect your bid.

With one hour left to go and the auction not ending until nearly 11 PM local time, I didn't want to stay up that long on a weeknight as 4:30 AM comes awefully early. So I went ahead and thought "what the hell" and increased my maximum bid to $35 before calling it a night. Figured I'd give somebody a run for their money even if I couldn't be around. Also figured there was no way I was going to win since I wouldn't be around to protect my bid. So I woke up this morning, went right to the computer and wasn't disappointed. I didn't win as I expected (OK, I was a tiny bit disappointed), and the ultimate winner ended up paying nearly $39 for this bait. Remember, this is just a single knockoff crankbait that can be purchased every day for just $5 at the store, minus the fancy paint job. Average price for these works of art have been running in the $19-$25 range, this one just happened to be appealing to several people with money. Would it have caught any more fish than some of the $5 stock baits I own? Probably not. At that price would I have even tied it on and risked a scratch on the bait for that price? I can't really say. Does this experience speak to the strength of 'color' belief in our baits we throw, and ultimately the confidence we must have in them? Apparently. And is this crankbait artist and others like him starving? - I don't think so :)     

On the Subject of Books

While we're still on the subject of books and quotes from books, I wanted to add another favorite that I found online. Actually, I found it as an excerpt in one of those cheesy Airline magazines while flying somewhere many years ago (I honestly don't recall where I was flying to). The minute I read it I was hooked. The author was John Gierach and I have since picked up about 6 or 7 of his works, most autographed. The excerpt I'm specifically referring to that first got my attention can be found at the following link: "The Happy Idiot"

"The Happy Idiot" is the first chapter in the book, "Standing In a River, Waving a Stick". John is actually a fly fisherman, beside being a well reknowned author. You bass guys probably have never heard of him as he focuses on trout angling and the West, but see if some of his comments in the excerpt don't strike a chord with you. He actually goes on in some of his books to talk about largemouth and smallmouth fishing, pond fishing, even carp angling, all with the fly rod. Even if you don't care about trout or own a fly rod, if you love fishing you'll probably find something enjoyable in his story telling. Remember, crossover applications - it definitely applies here. You can read some other excerpts and get further info on some of his books here: Fishing Books and Videos.

Sometimes The Fishing Is Secondary

Started practicing with one of the Jr. Bassmasters for their upcoming championship to be held in August on Glenn Flint Lake. This lake was on fire about 3 years ago, but has become pretty darn tough since then. No real explanation that I've been able to gather. I keep waiting for it to turn on, but it just isn't happening. It's not just me either. Tourney results on this lake have been pretty dismal, with one fish usually getting a check. There has been at least one or two tourneys where no fish were weighed. There have been a couple good stringers weighed, but it is certainly the exception for most anglers.

We struggled along for a good bit of the day, but finally put something together late. Managed 3 keepers out of about a dozen bass fishing during the heat of the day from 2:00P - 7:00P. Water temps were low 80's and well stained. Neat occurrence of the day was this fish to the left (click to enlarge). He hit cranking a DT10 and when I got I got him in, I noticed he had something in his mouth. Look close in the pic and you'll see me holding a slider head that I removed from inside his mouth. You can even see the red sore in his lip where it had tried to start healing. It was actually hooked in two spots and from his skinniness, might have contributed to difficulty in swallowing prey. He still managed to eat my crank, but you'll notice he was hooked by a single hook of the rear treble.

This is the first fish I've caught on the DT Series of cranks, and this particular lure had the Sure Set trebles. Ironically enough, he was hooked on the long EWG hook of the set, on the back treble. Would I have caught that fish if the bait had standard round bend hooks? It will  take a lot more fish to see how the pattern evolves, but I'll be certain to be tracking which particular hooks I catch fish with when throwing this bait in the future. Might make for an interesting report in the future.

As for the title of this post...We ran across this bald eagle sitting in a dead tree in the very back end of a little cove. Truly awesome birds that we don't get to see around our parts much. I can now add this lake to my list of ones where I've seen bald eagles in Indiana (I'm up to 5).

The Challenge of Applied Science

Clear Lake, California...Frequent Bassmaster stop, stomping grounds for "Fish Chris" Wolfgram and operator of what was the best big bass site on the Net before he throttled it down. Still tons of great info, pics and articles on the site to browse through despite the forum being removed. But Clear Lake is also the subject matter for one of my favorite little chapters in what is a wonderfully detailed read about the Putah and Cache watershed. The particular chapter deals with the differences and difficulties of applied science vs. basic science. Written by Pete Richerson, "Data: The Lovely, the Flirtatious, and the Ugly" is a quick read at under 5 minutes. Not sure why it sticks with me after finding it many years back, but I think it is its simplicity and line of thinking that resonates with me, applied science (scientific research being applied to my bass fishing) being why this website was largely created. The full online book can be found at: "Putah and Cache: A Thinking Mammal's Guide to the Watershed".

They're Back - Conditioned Response

I posted this once back about this time last year, but with all the recent talk of conditioned responses I thought I'd bring it up again. I'm referring to the bass that live around the marina on one of the lakes I regularly fish. These fish get fed at least twice a day by the operators of the bait house. All the dead minnows that either didn't survive overnight or those that die during the course of the day get collected in a pail and fed to the wolves. You can click on all the pics to make them larger for better discrimination. Those are a bucket full of dead minnows about to be sacrificed on the left.

Here is a shot of one of the lurking bass I took today that is just cruising below the surface and checking things out. Notice all the live shad swimming around in the pic above him. They don't attack these shad, at least not that we've ever seen. Instead they wait for the dead minnows to be fed to them. This might also speak to the principle of OFT or Optimal Foraging Theory. You can find a big write up on that in the archives under 'Not Another Juicy Steak Story'. Hard to say how long you'd have to fish using dead minnnows "in the wild" before you caught a bass.

Here is a shot of one of the bass blasting on a dead minnow just floating on the surface. It is not unsual to get as many as 8 or 10 bass feeding in the morning on the free food. They'll actually start cruising up and down the boardwalk once they know you are there, waiting for the food to be dropped in. The attacks can be pretty violent, to the point of splashing people on the edge of the walk observing the feeding frenzy. Again in this shot notice all the shad cruising by in the lower 1/3 of the picture while the bass is well off the walkway feasting on a dead, floating minnow. These aren't little bass either. these fish range from 2-4 pounds in most cases, and we occasionally see one larger. Last year there was even a giant crappie that hung with the bass for a good part of the year and got in on the feeding.

You Could Learn a lot from a Walleye

Another big line of thunderstorms rolled through Friday night and Saturday morning. Locally we received between 2-3 inches of rain in a short amount of time. This was enough to jump the water level in the local reservoir to the point of an idle only restriction. When things finally cleared after lunch Saturday I loaded the boat and headed out, hoping to get some fishing in before the next line of storms made it over. When the water makes a nice jump, it is not unusual to get a good group of fish push shallow into the newly flooded cover. In this case we were only talking a 12"-18" rise, but that is still rather significant on this particular body of water. How fast bass react and move to these changes varies from water to water.

I was planning on whacking some nice bass flipping jigs to newly flooded shorelines. That turned out not to be the case this time. Instead, I found fish still holding out slightly from the bank, not right up in the heavy cover. I was able to run a shallow crank around a catch several fish up to 3 pounds, but it was fairly slower than expected. After a bit I figured I'd try something different. Out came the walleye gear.

While I actually spend about 90% of my time on the water chasing bass, I probably only spend about 50% of my time studying bass. The other 50% is spent studying other fish and fishery related issues. I'm a big believer in understanding as much as I can about fish and how to catch them - all fish. As a tournament angler I always felt there were little "secrets", presentations or adaptations I could make to my bass fishing based upon how the pros and experts fish for other fish. These would be things that my competition most likely never picked up on because they were always focused on bass. A lot of this type information came from studying walleye sticks.

I had been graphing the lake as I moved around from area to area and seeing lots of fish stacked up in 8'-12' of water. These were larger arches of what were most likely either bass or eyes in this lake. So I grabbed a rod and set it up for trolling and started making passes out in this depth range. It didn't take too long until I figured out some of what I had been marking. Walleyes.

There are numerous cross over applications between walleyes and bass. Graph reading is a biggie which I already mentioned. Boat control is another, learning how to stay on contours. Trolling is also a very effective technique for covering water. While it is illegal during tournaments, it is perfectly valid as a search method in practice. This never registers on most bass anglers minds. Walleye trollers are pretty fanatical about their trolling setups. They've gone to great lengths to completely understand exactly how deep their baits run in all scenarios; different baits, different weight lines, different length lines, trolling versus casting, etc.. They have probably researched and spent more time learning this stuff than most any bass angler alive. And a lot of this information is available for public consumption.

If you love throwing cranks, you're really missing the boat if you haven't spent some time studying walleye. Mike McClelland started the whole thing off years ago (~1989) with the publication of the book "Crankbaits: A Guide to Casting & Trolling Depths of 200 Popular Lures". I have one of these original guides and believe me, it has a lot of bass crankbaits in it. The concept was expanded and became incredibly comprehensive when Mark Romanack ran with the idea and published the book Precision Trolling. Click on the link to learn a little more about how the whole thing came about. Even Rapala created their own "Tackle Box Guide" based on the Precision Trolling data for all their lures. I've included a little snippet in the picture box to the left of what type information you can get for bass lures, in this case a Bandit 100. But trust me, this little table barely scratches the surface of what is covered in the book.

Understanding Water & Color

Lots of discussion on various boards over the year on red line, red hooks, solar/yellow line, lure colors, etc. Thought it might be appropriate for a real good overview on the subject of color frequencies, filtering, optical properties of water and vision. I came across these fine articles that have a nice balance of both technical and non-technical info on the subject. Certainly not scientific journal articles but much more detailed than run-of-the-mill fishing articles. You'll be way ahead of most after reading and understanding these.

• "What is Hydrologic Optics?" by SERC's Phytoplankton Lab
• "Colour in the Fishes Eye" by Max Garth (from Sexyloops)
• "Colour in the Fishes Eye - The Light (part 2)" by Max Garth (Sexyloops)

Inside the Belly of a Frog

In the name of science, and bringing back memories of high school biology class, I pulled out the Exact-O knife and went to work dissecting a frog last night. Not to worry, as no creatures were truly hurt as a result of my efforts. The patient in this case was one of my $9.00 SPRO Bronze-eye frogs. This one had served me well over the past couple years, finally getting torn up enough to make patching and repair almost an impossibility. So I thought it might serve a greater purpose to open it up and see what makes it tick.

It is really a simple little organism. A nice Gamakatsu frog hook with a soldered swivel/link creates the guts of the frog. The hook runs through a small hole in the belly ahead of the weight to get the right angle. On my frog it is this little hole that got ripped open more than an inch toward the mouth that was its final undoing. The legs are created from a single set of living rubber strands run through both leg openings and secured in the middle via a tight knot. This probably serves two purposes, one to keep all the leg strands even and together, the other being a centered mass that sits between the hole openings and acts again as a stabilizer to the legs being yanked out of whack. It would take some great effort to pull that knot through the tiny leg openings. My legs had been trimmed to an overall length of 6" including the knot. Out of the package they are probably more along the lines of 8", knot included. Mine was composed of approximately 20 strands of material.

The weight in the frog is actually a grommet weight that has a nice slot running around its circumference that the edge of the rubber hole fits into. On my frog, the plastic was thinner in this area, probably to snug into the groove better, and was also attached (almost melted) to the weight. My first attempt to remove the weight resulted in a slight tearing of the plastic with a little bit left attached to the weight. This could pose a problem for anyone wanting to remove the weight to make modifications to the frog.

As for modifications, I know a few potent frog sticks that customize their SPRO's as well as their other frogs to get unique attributes. I've also seen queries on message boards about replacing legs that were either cut too short or had been ripped up. It seems like you have a couple ways of attacking the mod issue. One is to carefully remove the belly weight and use this larger opening as a way to access the frog internals. As mentioned though, it will be a delicate operation if your plastic is sticking to the weight. You'll also have to play a little with getting the weight back into place correctly. That said, going through the belly lets you do things like insert rattles or BB's for added noise. It would also let you cut out and remove the knotted section of the legs, thereby easing the removal of the existing strands without tearing the leg openings.

As for threading in new legs of whatever color combinations or lengths you'd want, that could be accomplished easiest by using newly cut living rubber strands that haven't had their strands individually separated yet. Just clump or layer whatever color combinations you want together before tieing off in the center. You might be able to get away without tieing the knot, though I'd have to try first to know for sure. As for threading, use a piece of lighter weight braided line that gets threaded through the leg hole and then tied with a sliding (slip) knot. Put the very end of the living rubber strands into the slip knot and then cinch down tight. Then pull the ends of the living rubber strips through the leg openings. You can try to pull straight through both sets of leg openings from one side to the other, or use two strings, one through each leg opening and attached to each end of the living rubber. The latter works if you have removed the belly weight as mentioned earlier. I'd stick to the 20 strands as in the stock frog as I'm not sure you could squeeze more through the openings without tearing. Of course, doing fewer for a less sparse set of legs would be an easy mod.