Quote:
Originally Posted by nate01
I'd love to figure this out too. I fish for smallies pretty religiously during summer with soft plastics and topwaters. Last weekend on the Delaware (I.e. 9 days ago) we crushed smallies on those baits after the water temps came up 7 degrees in 4 days. Wanted to use bait with two youngsters on the boat (both of whom got their first bass and many more) but oddly enough medium shiners only caught one fish. By this weekend that just passed water temps had come back down and the same plastic and topwater baits didn't work nearly as well. We still caught fish but they were tentative and not aggressive at all, playing with the plastics instead of engulfing them which resulted in many many missed fish. Only one on topwaters also. And search baits don't seem to be the answer for me at least.
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Caught this fatty on Paulingskill River Sunday on way home from Poconos. Stopped at White Lake since it wasn't far off 80 but shore access there is awful so I decided to try the stream I drove over on my way to the lake. I didn't even know the name of the stream until I looked it up later. The water was clearer than I have ever seen in jersey and the bass were feeding in tight schools. I have seen schooling behavior like this in dinks but never seen a school with 6-8 14-18" bass in it. Ended up just sight fishing a green senko Texas rigged. Even 20 feet downstream with senko at bottom of a 6 ft pool I could still see perfectly the exact moment when a fish gobbled the senko. Then my leader broke and I left the mono in car so tried just tying same senko straight on 30 lb power pro braid. As I suspected the braid completely spooked the same fish that couldn't stay away from my lure when it was on 8 lb mono leader.
