Tag: Casting Reel

Now’s the Time for a Buzzbait or a Walkin’ Stick

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Now’s the Time for a Buzzbait or a Walkin’ Stick

At this point it’s postspawn or early summer almost everywhere. That’s important because fish are totally controlled by their environment. They’re slow when the water’s cold and they’re active when it’s warm. The water’s warm right now, and that means they’re active. They need to eat.  When they’re active and feeding heavily there are lots of ways to catch them. One of the best — big fish and explosive action — is on top. And, there’s not a better pair of topwater plugs to do that with than a buzzbait or a walkin’ stick. The reason I picked these two […]

How to Fish a Squarebill

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How to Fish a Squarebill

A bait that’s really started to shine over the past few years is the squarebill crankbait. Their shine is well deserved, too. They catch bass in heavy cover when they’re shallow, and there are always a few good ones shallow regardless of the season or the weather. Squarebills will create a true reaction bite and often catch bass when other lures won’t. My favorite is a Rapala Balsa Xtreme BX Brat Squarebill. It’s made from balsa, and that’s a good thing. It floats high and has that unique vibration that only balsa can produce. But because it’s covered with a […]

My Second Favorite Winter Bass Bait

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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

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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 […]

Austin, Texas: Blue Cats, Guadalupe Bass and Smallmouth Buffalo

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Austin, Texas: Blue Cats, Guadalupe Bass and Smallmouth Buffalo

Austin, Texas, is one of the truly neat places we visited doing the show. There’s no doubt that the fishing there is fantastic but the city itself is equally fantastic. The music is really cool, the art scene is one of the best I’ve ever been around and if you don’t gain weight eating the barbecue, it’s your own fault. We targeted three species this time — blue cats, Guadalupe bass and smallmouth buffalo. Here’s the story… Blue Cats Blue cats are big and they are bad. A giant can grow to five feet in length and can weigh upwards […]

Taiwan: The Land of Aggressive Fish

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Taiwan: The Land of Aggressive Fish

In a lot of ways our trip to Taipei, Taiwan, was one of our best. It’s an amazing place. The culture is so different from ours that it’s striking. You can see and feel the magic the minute you step off the plane. I’d never been there before. And like I said, everything there was really neat but there was one thing that really stood out — it’s such a clean city. The streets are clean, the drainage ditches are clean and even the buildings are clean. It’s an example of what can be done when everybody pitches in and […]

Ike Targets New York City

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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 […]

Fish Wake Baits This Spring

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Fish Wake Baits This Spring

Wake baits are seriously underfished. I really don’t know why because they are super good in the early spring and the late fall. The forage is up in the water column. That means the bass are up, too. Wake baits are an obvious choice. My idea of a wake bait is any lure that runs right under the surface on down to about a foot or thereabouts. Hundreds of lures fall into that category, but my favorites are the Rapala DT Fat Crankbait, the Rapala BX Balsa Waking Minnow and the Storm Waking Crank. All three baits give you a […]

My Sleeper Crankbait

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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, […]