Tag: Berkley Trilene

Jerkbait Choices for Right Now!

0
Jerkbait Choices for Right Now!

OK, so the water’s cold and the air is even colder. I don’t care. I want to go fishing. And, I want to catch some bass so I’m going to break out my jerkbait box. They’re one of my go-to baits for right now. But, I don’t carry just one size, shape or type. No, I carry a whole collection of them. The differences between them might be subtle, but they’re important. Let me say it again: Subtle differences are important in cold water. Don’t forget that! I carry at least three different ones for three different sets of conditions. […]

Soft Plastic Jerkbaits and Fall Bass

0
Soft Plastic Jerkbaits and Fall Bass

Some things just go together. They make a team. And that’s definitely true for soft plastic jerkbaits and fall bass — largemouth, smallmouth and spots. Now’s the time when bass are moving shallow to take advantage of easy feeding on baitfish. So, when you think about it soft plastic jerkbaits are a natural. They look exactly like the real thing, they’re easy to rig, they’re affordable and they catch fish. I’m going to share a few tips about how to rig them and make them even more effective than when they’re fished in the usual way. I developed these modifications […]

Suspended Bass in Rivers?

0
Suspended Bass in Rivers?

Life’s crazy, man! A few weeks ago on the Upper Mississippi River I had an experience that might help you sometime in the future so I’m going to tell you all about it. Usually you find river bass shallow. That didn’t happen to me, though. They were deep and they were suspended. It sounds crazy but it’s true. I caught them in two types of places and with two different lures. Here’s how it went down… The first place I found them was out in the main river over the channel. They were suspended anywhere between 10 and 30 feet […]

The Soner Euro Cup

0
The Soner Euro Cup

After some street fishing in Paris late this summer, we moved on to Spain. We — Becky, myself and the youngest kids — spent a couple of days in Madrid before I fished the Soner Euro Cup on Lake Cigara near Madrid. My partner and I won it! How cool is that? The Euro Cup was a really exciting experience for me. There were something like 125-130 boats with two man teams in them. As best I can remember there were something like 25 or 30 countries represented, some of them from thousands of miles away. And, as you might […]

My Second Favorite Winter Bass Bait

0
My Second Favorite Winter Bass Bait

Last time we talked about jerkbaits, my favorite bait in the winter.  This time I want to talk about my second favorite, the Rapala Rippin Rap Lipless Crankbait.  But you should know this: Just because it’s my second favorite doesn’t mean I don’t use it all the time.  In fact, when the water’s cold I never leave the dock without one tied on and ready to go. I fish this little jewel two ways. The first is with a traditional yo-yo type retrieve.  I just cast it out, let it fall to the bottom and then make it lift and […]

Winter Bassin’ with Hard Jerkbaits

0
Winter Bassin’ with Hard Jerkbaits

Becky and I got back from vacation last Saturday and I decided to fish a Winter League tournament up here on Sunday. The air temperature was really cold and the water was in the low 40s. The bite was tough. Nevertheless, we won with four bites that put four bass in the livewell. They weighed 6.86 pounds. Here’s how we did it… We used what’s probably my favorite winter bass lure — a hard jerkbait. But, we didn’t fish with just any jerkbait. We spent a lot of time matching size and figuring out how we wanted the bait to […]

Ike Targets New York City

0
Ike Targets New York City

OK, so hopefully everyone had a chance to watch the first episode of FISH MY CITY WITH MIKE IACONELLI on NAT GEO WILD last night. If you had as much fun watching it as I did making it, you had a ball. Here’s the thing about shows like that–they are real. We don’t fake film footage and we don’t cover over our mistakes or our struggles. We show it all, good and not-so-good. You get to experience fishing just the way it was at the time. The one about New York City fishing was especially fun for me. I grew […]

My ICAST pick: The Rapala RipStop

0
My ICAST pick: The Rapala RipStop

Sometimes a concept comes to reality and that reality creates something special. That’s what happened when we designed the new Rapala RipStop. Probably the best way to describe it is to say it’s a finesse jerkbait with a special tail that makes a world of difference in how it performs and in what the bass sees when it’s in the water. It’s new so it won’t be available for a few weeks but when it is I’d strongly suggest you put a couple of them in your tackle box. They’re 3.5-inches long and weigh 1/4-ounce. The initial offering will be […]

My Sleeper Crankbait

0
My Sleeper Crankbait

Every so often I think about a lure that everyone who want’s to catch a bass should know about, and so it is with the David Fritts designed Rapala DT Thug. It’s a small balsa crankbait — 2-1/2 inches long with a weight of 3/8 of an ounce — that’ll dive to between 4 and 8 feet on a normal retrieve. It has a hard, wide wobble, is hand tuned and comes in 15 colors. I don’t care where you live or where you fish you can match the local forage with one of them. What really makes it special, […]

Monofilament Line Still Has Its Place in Bass Fishing

0
Monofilament Line Still Has Its Place in Bass Fishing

We don’t hear much about monofilament line anymore. That’s understandable in some ways, I suppose. Fluorocarbon and the new braids are taking over. However, the real story is much more complicated. Monofilament still has a place in serious bass fishing, even if it’s a somewhat limited one. The reason it still has a place in our sport is because it has some qualities that, when put together, no other line can duplicate. For openers, it’s buoyant. It floats. Another thing is that it has stretch. Sometimes that’s a real advantage. And last, but not least, it has low memory when […]