UPDATED, Mar. 17–What a difference a day makes! Hot weather has fired up the shad activity and all around the lake the warmwater fish are coming up: not just bass, but crappie and even some wipers 12 to 18 inches long.

It’s a little on bladed baits, a little on plastic–and a whole lot better than yesterday.

Mar. 16: Chamber of Commerce images were something I wasn’t looking for this morning, but that’s about all Lake Elsinore wanted to give up. While FLW’s Gary Bradford and I hit all the prime stuff (plus a few niches I didn’t even want to show him) there was no way to tell the good stuff from the bad.

South shore dike, Lakeland Marine jetty, Perret Park to “Elsie,” Seaport Landing brush patch, (more…)

It’s hard to back up 26 pounds with another big sack, but John Wick of San Diego went hard at it today at Diamond Valley. Back-tracking through his hot spots from Saturday, he took me from dam to dam and the same baits worked–but the bites just didn’t measure up.

Big worms, fished Texas-style, easily out-paced wacky jigging, drop-shot and even Carolina rigging. (more…)

Though Diamond Valley got worked over pretty good this weekend, it’s still springtime and I’ll be giving that pond a visit on Monday morning, ushered by Saturday’s Top Sticks winner John Wick.

John and his partner Mike Phua have been tearing ‘em up pretty good over there of late, but JW still wanted some more preparation time for future events. Otherwise, I would have liked to see him perform on the natural lake on my side of the tracks.

But what the hey? I still get to see him first hand in action. (more…)

It’s now been a couple of years in the development, but back when Uncle Josh purchased Kalin Lures, I discovered that the new owners were ready to breathe new life into the ancient pork back fishing business.

Their purchase of Kalin was one sign, and there were other additions. But the fish-to-contact, Bump-N-Run lure series is an obvious huge leap forward for the small company.

Collectively there are three baits: A buzzer, a spinnerbait and a swimming jig, that have a “billed head” that the angler can rotate (more…)

We all did the “double take” when we saw the price tag of the super sharp TroKar hooks that hit the market in the past year. Approved by the pros, but not necessarily embraced by rank and file bass anglers, they had a different look and they had a heck of a point.

But while the pros have continued to rely on these pricey terminal tools (Hey, the Professional Anglers Association, PAA has added Lazer TroKar as a sponsor to their Tournament Series) there have been a few naysayers. The most common complaint: (more…)

Any hard bait is made up of components, especially our array of blade baits. You’ve got connectors, swivels, hooks and of course, the blade. But as you scale down your offering, as with an under-spin, what has the greatest influence on what you deliver in your presentation?

Since I’m writing this, I’d have to say it’s the trailer.

For all the clever painting of lead heads and the reliance of some on ball-bearing swivels, those components are dwarfed in impact by your choice of a lure body. And I don’t just mean your sexy, hologram, peppermint shad-colored grub. (more…)

Persistence pays off–for Brent Ehrler in winning at Table Rock Lake, and for me to track him down–and I did. And the grub story–it’s real–but with enough variations to make the story interesting. The location, of course was big. But more than that, the nature of the spot.

“It was an inside bend,” he described. “You know, the outside bend of a creek is a wall, but the inside bend forms a sort of flat point.”

That point gently faded from 12 to 15 feet before (more…)

I called the back-to-back FLW event winner this morning about 6 a.m., but I did’t get a pick-up. I was thinking, with a 2-hour time difference at Table Rock, Brent might be up and around if he decided to drive back to California.

But then I figured, maybe the La Sierra University grad has reached such prominence, he might have somebody else drive his boat so he could fly home–yesterday. If so, my 6 a.m. call was probably going to roust our favorite son. (more…)

There’s no perfect science to make a determination, of course, but what a professional fisherman says often speaks worlds about his approach, his command and even his understanding of the task he must perform. And if that is true, then there really are lessons still to learn from them about one’s own capacity to fish professionally.

As a long-time observer of competitive fishing, I have pulled out three quotations from the last year and a half, from winning as well as non-winning finishers. Read what they have to say, and then see how your interpretation compares with mine. (more…)

Because conversation today often has less to do with fish motivation and more about baits and conditions, we don’t so often hear what used to be spoken commonly. That is, that advancing in the ranks of better fish catchers, it was seemingly necessary to “think like a fish.”

However, whether we’re conscious about the issue or not, the fact is, our most successful anglers do think like a fish–and like a predator. What catches our attention most certainly catches theirs. (more…)