Live Bait

[Flipnripem]

Crawlerman, $200 rod and reels do not catch fish. $30,000 bass boats will not catch any more fish than a 14ft bass/duck boat. I`ve proven that a few times and the looks you get when you fire up the old 20 horse for the blast off is great. Especially when you lay a limit and big fish on the scales. If you love to bass fish and are willing to experiment try soft plastics. They will catch fish all year around. Texas rigs, floating worms, and carolina rigs are three options to try. After all thats why it`s not called catching, but fishing. Keep jerkin Flip

[Steve Foss]

I've caught lots of bass over the years on artificials, but there are plenty of days when I can barely raise a fish.

That's when my wife and I tie on slip bobbers and dunk small leeches for sunnies, and we end up catching tons of bass in the same places they weren't hitting our artificials. Four pound bass on 6lb line and light spinning equipment is a blast. Crawlers under slip bobbers bring the same results, as do minnows, though crawlers and leeches are better usually.

It's gotten to the point that, especially if it's cold front conditions, we don't bother with the Power worms or jig-n-pig or the spinnerbaits or walking the dog, we just go right to live bait.

It's a lot more relaxing than working the trolling motor with your foot, balancing in the bow and casting, casting, casting all day long.

Plus, on days when the fish are active and hitting artificials, they'll still usually hit live bait too.

And yet one more plus: You fish on light line with live bait, you catch sunnies and crappies and the occasional walleye as well as largemouths.

Now, don't tell my wife I'm saying all this stuff. If she knew I felt this way, she'd make me put away the trolling motor and we'd be anchoring all the time. Guy's still gotta be able to do the Bassmaster trolling-motor, cast-all-day kind of thing now and then.

Have a blast, and don't worry about painting the boat when it gets scratched up. Fish can't tell.

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Steve ([email protected])

[Crawlerman]

I know Live Bait is something often overlooked or "shunned" by a big part of the Bass fishing community. Sure it's considered more of a "challenge" catching them on lures and stuff; but I also don't consider using 20lb test spiderwire or such fair either. A lot of bass in the lakes in my area, such as Orchard, seem to be pretty acustomed to artificals; esipically topwaters. I spent a whole day flipping out poppers, frogs, and jitterbugs and didn't get a single strike; I switched over to a slip set down two feet with jumbo leeches and ended up catching 5 bass; one three, two twos and three small ones within the last 2 hours. I still have yet to try a floating crawler rig though, altough it will likely be done soon. The ONLY artifical baits that I have caught any reasonable number of bass with is stickbaits and crankbaits; and these seem to only produce for me in the mid summer months. Just wondering if there are many other live-bait Bass fisherman and what your opinions on this issue are. I for one like to catch bass but could do without a small overpowered flatbottomed speedboat and $200 rods/reels with 30lb superline and $7 lures. I'm not going after the BASS masters classic after all...