Slip’s 2016 LOGS, STATUS AND STRATEGIES

[Slip Sinker]

The past few seasons it’s been season outdoing the last. Knowledge base on top of knowledge base. Building on some great info from this site and time on the water. I’m anticipating and looking forward to even better results with more citation fish. Anyway that’s the game plan.

Last year was the season of fishing TINY. Thin UL Lines loaded on tiny 50 series reels and light UL rods tossing tiny baits in front of fish targets…quantities of quality panfish and trophy SMB. Tossed the baits into thick cover with reckless abandon. Tiny presentations under slip bobbers thrown next to thick weed slop and weed pockets. Mid day fishing out of the kayak in less than two feet of water and tagging quality fish. Never really had another fishing boat come close to me fishing. it was like i had the lake to myself. looking forward to making some more good memories in the upcoming season.

Looking forward to any hints suggestions or comments from the BBG membership… sharing is the best way to learn and progress!

hope everyone a successful "2016 Open Water Season"

[Slip Sinker]

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[Slip Sinker]

I havnt been keeping up as I should on the log… its just that the two things that I like doing most … blogging at the computer and fishing have been causing the most neck, shoulder and arm pain. Im trying to ease myself off the computer and use voice translation to text on the tablet to ease some of the pain.

[Slip Sinker]

Well the herbicides have finally taken their toll on one of the slop areas I fish thru-out the summer period. Just some sporadic edges and small area pad patches were left. I was ready to give up thinking the fish have moved out to the deeper break line. I noticed b.gill activity underneath the pads. B gills would try to attack the dragonflies tipping the water surface. I drew closer to the small pad areas and started bushwhacking one or two fish from an area. Great time! The thin 3 and 4# braid cut thru the pads excellent when the fish tried wrapping around them. Did not lose one fish!

Areas that produced the best were where the pads and remaining weeds along the original creek channel where it came closest to the bank.

Paddling thru an adjacent popular spawning area for the panfish I did notice one or two solitary fish. One of them I could of easily doubled up on my Master angler tally for gills so far this year. A bull easily over the 10” mark. I decided to leave them alone and hopefully I’ll be able to tag him in the future.

Towards the end of May this area was loaded with spawning fish… one month later the cut is loaded with bass and b.gill fry nearly ¾ of an inch long!

Best fish of the Day!!

Today’s better fish collage… all CPR’ed

[Slip Sinker]

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[Slip Sinker]

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[Slip Sinker]

20160624-Had a hard time finding them at first and then visually spotted some small bluegills in a group in a shallow eel grass weed bed. thru the slip float fly waxie pass the group and slowly reeled it in and started hooking up with the small ones. hoping the bigger ones were in the background and would bite eventually and they did. I had to weed out through a bunch of small ones but hey that's part of the fun.

one of the better fish today:

catches of the day all CPR'ed:

[Slip Sinker]

20160626- ...----~~<")))))><(----------------------------

[Slip Sinker]

20160626-not wanting to set out on the main lake on a Sunday with the high speed boat crowd i chose a quiet cut to launch my kayak. Right away I sensed it was going to be a tough bite. Several of my waypoints proved fishless on the Spring Cricket jig and Slip/Float/Fly/Waxie. Saw many fish rise near the pads for dragon flys… a fly rod would have probably worked here. I did manage to coax quite a few smaller fish that seemed to be bulging from the sides… possibly gorged from all the energized food chain activity.

I felt the lack of good quality fish. They could of vacated the flat and moved on to cooler deeper waters… post spawn. I did manage to tag a few quality fish in between the little biters.

I missed quite a few fish on the hook set and decided to offset the hook a bit on the fly and spring cricket. A quick twist with the needlenose is all that is needed An old trick I learned awhile back and it seemed to solve the problem straight away.

 

Some of today's tagged fish all CPR'ed

 

[Leo Nguyen]

Well played. Normal hooks can be a pain without the barb. Using circle/octopus hook, or certain offset style hook, it increase the hookset greatly, although we not suppose to hookset using these hooks. Oh well..

The kirbied and reversed hook was traditionally used by quite a few of us cane-polers. It's not that significant, but enough to either land a rare fish on a tough bite day. Keep trekking and providing more fishing pleasure Ken. Great job thus this far, especially the off-setting of the hook. Most people don't know this trick.

[Slip Sinker]

Thanks Leo!

Going barbless lately did have a bit of a drawback in stolen bait off the hook I have not noticed any notable changes however in catch ratios. I however enjoy the ease of unhooking the fish and it became habit forming in that respect.

When im out on the water and notice missed strikes on the hook sets are start looking at the hook geometry. I have noticed on a small jig head that I use in particular on my tied jig the “Spring Cricket” especially in the 1/64 oz I get a lot of missed strikes or hook sets. The offset bend I induce with a set of hemos or needle nose seems to cure it right away. Ive heard of it being illegal in bass tournaments and I believe some states are talking about banning the hook style all together. If im reading you correctly California may have already.

[Leo Nguyen]

For tourney wise, yes, bu recreational wise without any cash prizes involved, no. If they band any type of modified hooks, then octopus, circle, and several angled hooks will be banded as well. Good luck with that regulatory enforcement, aside from tourney strict rules.

I know how you feel about transitioning into barbless. It took me a solid year to have my family get used to the style way back when. They hated the lost of fishes on traditional hooks, and they didn't like the idea of off-setting the hooks either. They indicated the off-set was hard to add on baits properly. However, they had no objection to the circle/octopus/Owner hooks, and the recent years sickle style barbless hook. Hard to please crowd. I still have hundreds of traditional hooks, so, I'll use them with an off-set barbless style, while the family uses the others.

[Leo Nguyen]

You might try the VMC SureSet Hooks. These are slightly modified circle hooks with some nastiness in mind. Too bad they don't make it for jigs and fly styles.