Big Indiana Bass:

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December 31, 2010

The winter bite's getting better

Made another trip today given the warming weather. Yesterday was pretty much exactly as I expected, and today was too, only a little better. I figured with the continued warming and the melting of ice, the bite would pick up a bity today. Turned out it picked up a lot. Water temps were 3 degrees warmer, running 38.9 on the surface. Water clarity was still good at about 3'-4', perhaps a smidge murkier, but maybe just my imagination given the lack of sunshine today. There was a little bit more current though.

Fished from about 2:00-5:30 today and managed to hook 10 more smallies, 9 of them making it all the way into the boat. I made up for my rusty performance yesterday by catching 7 of them today, though nothing was near as big as Jacob's fish from yesterday. Still, some really healthy fish, just gorgeous in that clear water, and a very welcome reprieve from the winter doldrums/depression that had set in. I think I can make it to March now, even if I don't get another trip in, though I predict Sunday should be even better still, at least for quality. I won't be able to go though.

Who's going to complain about catching a bunch of chunky smallmouth like this on New Years Eve?

I was on fire today :) a lot of carbon copies...what fun!

A couple more closeups of some new "finny friends" I got to meet today. Hey Don, look real close at all these fish :)

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December 30, 2010

How Bad Has this winter been?

After the crappy weather we've had this December, some of us will go to great lengths just to be able to make some open water casts for a chance at a chunky bass. Witness my last minute trip to the river with Jacob today.

Start by shoveling an open path down the ramp and salting well, then wait for some sun and a little chemistry to open everything up safely.

Next challenge - it might not look too bad, but it was 5"-6" thick, to the point where we could safely walk out on it. It was also seriously blocking any chance at a launch. Notice the ice pick in the picture below, which made short work of a clear lane to launch the boat.

Next, launch your boat into the little lane you've cleared out. Water temps were 35.9 degrees surface, and water clarity was somewhere in the 3'-4' range.

Next, make a run to your secret deep water wintering hole, trying to avoid all the floating ice sheets coming down river - they're not real good to hit in an aluminum jon boat.

Finally, know that everything you went through just to get out on the water for a couple hours and be able to make some casts was worth the effort. Get the net!

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The Fish Meister back on TV

As you may have read over at BassFan, Fish Fishburne looks to be back on the air with his own show. I can't tell for certain whether it will be geared towards adults or kids, perhaps both. Check out the following links to get a bit more info from the new website, as well as view a brief trailer of the show below and judge for yourself. First airing is scheduled for this weekend on the Outdoor Channel (which I don't get), so if you do get to catch it, post back here with a report and a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down".

The Fish Fishburne Show website

The Outdoor Channel - show info

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December 29, 2010

Screw Ice Fishing

In celebration of the lengthening days, the 50 degree forecast for later this week, and a general celebration of open water, I give you this short video clip to get your blood pumping just a bit. I can't read Japanese either, but you might recognize the face: former FLW and B.A.S.S. Tour pro Toshi Namiki, now back in Japan and heading up his company, O.S.P.

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December 28, 2010

quad hook trebles?

I was reading an article about Mark Rose when I came across a picture that caught my eye. He had a quad treble hook on his spoon. So I looked around a little more and found another reference to the quad trebles, this one from a Tackle Tour article from January 2009 about the new stuff revealed at the 2009 International Sportsmen's Expo in Sacramento. If you scroll down the article to the mention of the Hoochiemomma from Tater Hog, you'll see two pictures of the lure with the quad trebles.

It seems like this might be a little something that hasn't quite caught on or gained much notoriety yet, or I may just be sleeping under a rock and haven't noticed. Can't say I've heard of or seen anyone around here using them, though it might be a well kept secret at the moment. I have found what is probably the source for these terminal tackle items: The Decoy X-S21 Quad Hook from The Hook Up Tackle.

Anybody seen or tried these babies yet around here?

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December 26, 2010

On the subject of rod breakage

Just how much force does it take to break a fishing rod? Turns out the answer is, it depends. I found an interesting piece over the holidays in Field & Stream from John Merwin that dates back to 2006. Looks like a fun test. Buy a bunch of "off-the-shelf" fishing rods, lock them solidly into place, then add weights to a bucket hung off the end of the fishing line until the rod snaps - finally, record the weight at the breakage point. Not overly controlled or scientific, but cool none the less.

Turns out there is a reason for why Shakespeare Ugly Sticks have been the best selling rod in the world for quite some time - 55-lbs. into the test and the rod still hadn't broke, and the tester ran out of additional weights to add. Several other popular rods were in the test, some of which you might own. I've created a couple tables/graphs based upon the data in the article, along with my research into what the base material for each rod is, but read the article and be certain to scroll through all 9 pages (they're very short) for the specifics, including the descriptions of the 4 most common reasons for rod breakage.

High Sticking
Split Shotting
Superline Spooling
High Handing

Give Me a Break! Fishing Editor John Merwin Tortures Seven Rods Until They Snap

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December 24, 2010

10 Minutes that could save your life

I try and post this one every year somewhere. I've already heard of nearly half a dozen people going through the ice already this year, and the ice fishing season is only just beginning. Be sure and watch this video if you have any plans of venturing out onto the ice, for whatever reason.

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December 23, 2010

For you northern Indiana bassers

For all you natural lakes bass anglers in the Northern part of our state, there is a new fishing blog that just started in your area you'll want to keep an eye on. Dan mans the helm over at the Fishin' Michiana blog, which will cover his thoughts as well as his fishing trips to the lakes in the area. As I understand it, Dan is a teacher which allows him to have a good chunk of the summer off to go fishing, so he gets to hit the water more frequently than most. So as soon as we get through the next couple months, things should start hopping over at the site.

The other great site from up in the NE corner of the state is Rick's Ultimate Bass Fishing run by long time friend Rick Vogelbacher. Much more of a forum and fishing reports type site than a blog now, but always loads of up-to-date reports from around the Tri-State area.

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December 22, 2010

36,449 bass anglers can't be wrong

December 6th marked the 4 year anniversary of the site, so I went into Google Analytics and pulled out some data comparing this past year (2010) to the previous one (2009). Here are some of the stats:

I was glad to see that the site continues to be growing well, with traffic this year more than doubling the 2009 data. Overall, site traffic increased 112.31% in 2010 vs. 2009.
36,449 absolute unique visitors (online anglers) made it to the site this year, visiting 84,548 times (visitors) and viewing 133,720 pages (page views). That averages to over 11,000 page views per month in 2010, though I recently hit a new monthly site milestone with 14,000 page views.
42.5% of all visitors were new, finding the site for the first time. What is, to me, a much cooler stat though is that 57.5% of those 36,000+ anglers returned to the site at least one more time after their initial visit, meaning they must have found something of value to bring them back more than once. Even cooler still, all you hardcore fans that visited the site more than 200 times this year. Might have to start a special fan club just for you guys :)
There were angler visits from 108 represented countries/territories, giving us a pretty good global presence, and showing you just how broad based the popularity of bass fishing is around the world.
97.1% of all traffic was from anglers here in the U.S..
No surprise on this one, but Indiana anglers comprised 56.1% of all U.S.visits to the site. If you add in the next two most visited states, Illinois & Ohio, the Midwest threesome account for 69.8% of all site traffic.
A big shout out to surprise visiting state #4 - New York. I never would have guessed that one: You guys rock!
#1 referring site to Big Indiana Bass this year: the recently defunct Riversmallies.com
Keywords are those terms placed/typed into search engines that people are using to try and find something. The top 4 keywords were all versions of the site name ("big indiana bass", "indiana big bass", "bigindianabass", and "bigindianabass.com") which tells me that word of mouth is probably the largest driver of anglers to the site. Keep spreading the word!
Number 5 on the keyword search was "indiana bass fishing", which doesn't really surprise me. The #6 most searched term though was kind of interesting, "jon boat livewell". Actually, when you scroll down the list even further, it's surprising how much traffic is out there searching for information on jon boats and jon boat conversions. Definitely a largely untapped market from what I can tell. Might have to work on that...

Hope you enjoyed the little trivia tour of the site. Hopefully I can continue to provide you with information that you find unique and relevant. Thanks to all those that have e-mailed me this past year. And as always, don't hesitate to contact the site if you ever have any questions or ideas, or thoughts on how we can make it better - outside of posting GPS coordinates to my favorite hot spots :)

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December 21, 2010

Big Bass (No. 505), big baits, and a growing concern

The first ShareLunker of the season (number 505 to date for the program) has been landed down in Texas, and there's some neat details to the story. The fish weighed 14 pounds and was caught by Bobbie Gayle. Turns out this is the 3rd ShareLunker submission for Bobbie, the only lady to have that many to her credit, and among an elite group of just 4 others who have caught and entered that many into the program. This particular fish was caught on a live perch, but her previous two entries were caught on waterdogs. Though not a common bait around these parts, they are very much used down in the south and southwest part of the country for catching bass, typically either as a bedding bait, or on a version of something along the lines of a Carolina rig. Also interesting is research that shows that most commercially sold waterdogs are vectors for several different types of amphibian diseases, many of which inadvertently get transported to new and previously uninfected waters after capture, transport and sale to local anglers. Many of the unused waterdogs after a day of fishing get released back into the water, most anglers not realising that the little critter wasn't a local resident amphibian to begin with.