Well, it’s another winter season, that grey, soulless, unwanted downtime from fishing. I’m attempting to put it to good use, sorting and cleaning my giant pile of tackle, ripped up soft plastics, and the rest of the stuff that somehow found it’s way into my tackle bags over the course of the past season. In the back of my mind, I’m also planning for spring and getting out on the water again. So, of course during this planning I have to check out new (to me) tackle, and the best way to do this is on the net and Google my spare time away. As I’m doing this, I’m finding plenty of cool tackle, but no reviews or real world information on any of it.
My focus is slop fishing. I’ll be getting down and dirty in the nastiest grass, weeds, reeds, pads, mats and any other cover that those donkey sized bass hide out. I’ll be flipping, pitching, punching, buzzing, swimming, jerking, frogging, shotting, and every other technique I can try to get those slop bass to bite.
Being the tackle junkie that I am, I’m interested in the coolest gear; awesome techniques and baits that those bass haven’t seen before, tackle precision tuned to deliver those baits to slop fish in the toughest circumstances with the heavy duty muscle and durability to get those big boys out of the nastiest of situations, again and again.
So, my plan is to combine these two interests, fishing the nasty junk for big bass and the technique specific tackle used to do this into a review site slash fishing blog that will hopefully fill the void regarding this type of fishing. Until next time, here’s a reminder of how cool fishing in the junk can be:
Slop Smallie on a Keitech Swimjig
Seems like you have some worthy fodder for pondering (and a good reason for spending your dough) in the off season. I too think of stuff like how to punch the mats on lake A or how to best present a lure to fish suspended at 20ft on lake B . . . a lot of times when I lay my head in bed. The only problem is I’m usually in dreamland before a solid answer comes around. I guess that’s what makes us keep trying. Fishing is a metaphor for life itself . . . ah, maybe I just had a few too many.
Anyhow, you got a nice bog here. I wish I could help you with fishin the thick stuff, but I got nothing but the usual crap in my bag of tricks. (One more, actually, thanks to your post on bassnj . . . included a few of those keitech swimjigs in an order today. I have plans for that thing.) In those conditions, I’ve had good luck with buzz frogs (specifically horny toads) and pegged t-rigs, but must admit I usually end up retreating to weed edges. I know the comfort zone is not always the right zone . . . I probably miss out on some nice fish that way.
I hope you get it all figured out.
-D
I hear ya about lying in bed thinking about tactics and approaches. That’s 1/2 the fun for me, when I’m learning, experimenting and gaining knowledge about fishing. The other half of course is when that knowledge actually pays off with a donkey bass. I’m glad you enjoyed reading it. There’s plenty more planned.