singingdog

sugarpacket summed it up nicely. On the shield, early fall can be one of the best times for bass fishing. Not only are they feeding activly, but are often schooled up - both LM and SM: find one and you will often get 3-4 fish in that spot. The trick can be finding these feeding bass. They will normally be shallow, quite often on the 'warm' side of whatever body of water you are fishing. I quite often find them keying on current as well. If they aren't feeding, good luck finding them. Smallies especially can become quite nomadic, moving around all day. Average 6 lb? Do the math. That means that for every 3 lber you catch, you caught a 9 lber to balance it! Lord help you if you catch a 2 lber....

Definitly find a furrier/taxidermist and get in good with them. You will get hair that is out of this world for tieing. If you like black hair jigs, try and get a patch of black bear fur. It moves much nicer than bucktail.

That is completly uncalled for. He deserves to have his opinion, as you deserve to have yours. He doesn't deserve to be insulted, and have his family insulted. Very bad form.

Here's a cool option to the super-expensive wacky jigs. Still way too expensive, but one of the only viable weedless options I have seen: http://www.northlandtackle.com/Category/main.taf?cat=302

No problem. I started doing it when I saw the price for those Zappu Inchi jigheads: $2/jighead!

Garry's description is good. I use circle hooks. If you are deadsticking the bait, the bass will sometimes swallow it and get gut hooked: a circle hook prevents about 99% of gut hooks. The jigheads you are thinking or are for wacky-jigging. It's a more active version of wacky rigging....kind of a cross between wacky rigging a shaky-head fishing. The specialised jighead are ridiculously expensive. You can get the same effect by crimping a 1/16 or 1/8 oz split shot just below the eye of a 1/0 light-wire offset hook. It's a great technique for bass that are highly pressured and have seen lots of other presentations. Some techniques for making your stick baits/senkos last longer: 1. put an O-ring around the middle of the senko and put the hook through the o-ring. It will move up the line when landing a fish. You can catch lots of fish on one stick-bait like this. 2. cut the cheap, thin-walled tubes up into 1/4" wide 'rubber bands' and run the hook through the stick bait and the band. 3. if you t-rig stick baits, save the ones that get torn up on the ends and use them for wacky-rigging. If they are torn up in the middle as well, a lighter will fix that in a second.

Hopefully it's better than the Ontario BPS. I have gone in twice this year, looking for lures that are widely available in the US, and widely written about in various mags. Both times I have been told by staff "there is no such lure". Thankfully, the place is layed out well enough to find things on my own.

There's only 3 colours of senkos: dark, light and in between I would never head out without watermelon/black, white pearl, and one of the laminates. I use size 1 or 2 circle hooks for wacky rigging.

Definitly attach a rod holder: it is the single most important thing you can do to make any kayak a decent fishing platform. Check out the forums at http://www.yakfisher.net/ for pics of rigged boats. The most important thing I have found is to test paddle the boat with the rod holder in place before you drill holes for it. You often will need to mount it much further forward than you think.

Don't worry about it. We all did the same thing until someone showed us how to rig them.

Thanks for the input. I may take the 8 wt. I don't plan on nymphing with it, but tossing decent sized muddlers and other streamers. Yep, the Magpie has some decent water and amazing scenery: it has been rated as one of the top 10 multi-day whitewater trips in North America. A few big trout will be icing on the cake.

Don't get sucked into the gear ratio hype....the only stat that matters is how much line the reel takes up with one turn of the handle. Having said that, any larger spool spinning reel will give you faster line take-up than a small spool UL reel.

I will be kayaking/fishing the Magpie (the Quebec one, not the Ontario river) river for 5 days. I have heard that it has world-class brook trout fishing. The only 3 piece rod I have is and 8 wt. Is that too much rod for 4lb+ trout? My next best option is an 8' 5/6 weight. I appreciate the feedback.

You give up distance (probably not an issue) and line management (can be a big deal) with a shorter rod. I used to fish short, until I got a 7'6" light spinnng rod. I took a few inches off the handle so it's a touch over 7'. The big advantage is being able to keep more line off the water to get a better drift on light jigs and weightless plastics. It really comes into it's own when fishing across current that will drag your lure out of the strike zone really quickly if you can't keep line off the water.

One less than I need....always!

Try a spoon/fly rig: tie a 12-18" leader onto the back of your spoon tipped with a streamer fly. Big muddlers work well.

BPS has some nice 2 piece baitcasters. I have the Bionic Blade 6'6" and it is a fine rod for search baits and jigs. There is a lot of prejudice against 2 piece rods, but modern ones are just as sensitive as one-piece rods. Once you experience the accuracy of a baitcaster, you will have a hard time going back to spinning set-ups.

Topwater is just like any presentation: sometimes it needs to be slow, sometimes fast. Sometimes colour doesn't matter, sometimes it does. Look at the classics...they are classic for a reason. My personal preference would be a prop (Tiny torpedo, Crippled shad), buzzbait, or a walk-the-dog (spook, sammy). For some reason, I am cursed when it comes to poppers.

Uni knot isn't hard to tie. The mistake most folks make, after seeing those illustrations, is to "thread" the line end through the loop. I make the loop BIG - so that I am holding it open with both hands, and then it is super-easy. A properly tied palomar knot is stronger than a uni, but can't be used to tie a leader on.

John, PM me your address and I will send you some smallmouth flies. It doesn't need to be complicated: floating line will work fine and be far easier to cast, 6lb mono for a leader, a few topwaters and a few streamers is all you really need. River fishing is really another beast altogether. Topwater will quite often work all day: you aren't calling fish up from 20' down.

JohnF don't worry so much about matching the hatch for smallies. Some wooly buggers, some streamers and a surface fly are all you really need.

Thanks for the replies. For now, I am just going to stick with single-hook lures, jaw spreaders, long nose pliers and bolt cutters. I had a very fiesty fish yesterday - probably about 35" - that I just clipped the spinnerbait hook on: small price to pay for watching a 3' fish charge a spinnerbait in 16 of water. For the record, I have no intention of putting a musky in my lap, especially one with treble hooks in it ....seems like a great way to get hooked in parts that I don't ever want to get hooked. For those folks that are doubtful about musky fishing out of a kayak, check out what is going on these days in kayak fishing. Compared to some of the fish that are being caught by kayak fisherman, a musky is not that big: 400 lb salmon sharks, threshers, bluefin tuna....

If you want to learn jigs, you have to commit to them for a certain length of time. Think about going out several times with nothing but jigs, otherwise it is too easy to get frustrated and switch up. You can catch the same fish, in the same places, with t-rigged plastics: tubes, creatures, grubs. They are sometimes easier to fish, and easier to get a good hookset.

1/16 oz jigs would be my lure of choice. Take lots, because if you aren't losing them, you aren't putting them in front of fish.

Everyone is going to catch OOS bass occasionally. If you are catching them in 20 feet of water, or they are slamming a fast moving spinnerbait, they likely are not on beds. BUT, if you are dragging salamanders or craw imitations purposefully through beds, then you should be pushed into the water. The reason we have a closed season here, especially for smallies, is that breeding success is so low compared to places like Florida. In any one season, about 1/3 of the smallies will even try to breed. The folks that are targetting them are usually the same folks that are the first to complain about "the fishing isn't as good as it used to be".