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« November 2012 | Main | January 2013 »

December 31, 2012

More Sport Show Dates

I've gathered a few more details on specific shows coming up in the area. If you have more specific info, feel free to either post a comment with specifics, or e-mail me the info and I'll update the post as I get new info.

1/5 - Indiana on the Fly; State Fairgrounds - Ag. Hort. Bldg.

  • Brian O'keefe, Tim Holschlag, Joe Mahler

1/12-13 - Honey Creek Tackle Open House; Bargersville

1/19 - The Outdoorsman; Greenwood

  • Todd Hollowell, Billy McDonald, Mark Rose

1/25-26 - Poor Boy's Baits/Lurecraft Open House; LaGrange Shop

  • Hours are 8-5 on Friday and 7-4 Saturday. Coffee and donuts will be served in the morning, and hot dogs at lunch.

1/25-27 - Outdoor Sports, Lake & Cabin Show; Ft. Wayne

  • Small Boat Fishing on L. Michigan

1/26-27 - Ted's Aqua Marine; S. Indy

  • Jay Yelas, Jacob Wheeler, Billy McDonald, Shad Schenck, Terry McWilliams

2/2 - Hunting and Fishing Expo - Westport Christian Church; Westport, IN

  • First annual "Hunting and Fishing Expo" at the church.  Several area fishing and hunting related vendors will be at the event and it will culminate with Terry McWilliams giving a seminar at 3:15 PM.  The hours will be 8:00 AM until 5:00 PM.  The contact for this event is Mike Bartlett at (812) 593-2805.
  • Download Fishing_Expo_flier_pdf

2/8-9 - Angler's World; Greenfield

  • Jack Kerner at Anglers' World in Greenfield, IN advised he would be holding his annual open house on February 8th & 9th. His contact number is (317) 462-0715.

2/15-24 - Indpls. Boat, Sport & Travel Show - State Fairgrounds

  • Babe Winkelman, David Dudley, Jacob Wheeler, Ted Takasaki, Billy McDOnald, Todd Hollowell, Joe Thomas, Mike Del Visco, Chae Dolsen, Charlie Hildreth, Randell Gibson, Mike Hulbert, Gil Huxley

3/2 - Indiana Smallmouth Alliance Strav.; Zionsville

  • Jason Doll, TBD

Also, from the Internet reports I've seen, there will be no Johnson County Show this year.

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December 30, 2012

IOTF 2013


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December 28, 2012

The Physics of Running/Walking in the Rain

I know, not necessarily fishing related, but I love this stuff. Have had this discussion numerous times with friends. If you need to, just imagine yourself in a boat out on the lake caught in a storm, or when you try and get back to the truck in the parking lot in a downpour if it makes you feel better :)  

 

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December 26, 2012

Disposable Reels

No question, everybody likes the high dollar fancy stuff that the pros throw. And if you're a pro, or fish as often as one, you might need it, too. But I've come to find out that you can often get by quite well catching a good deal on a not so popular or inexpensive line of reels. This especially applies to spinning reels.

Like everybody else, I've bought cheap rods and reels before and found out that you often get exactly what you pay for. Often...but not always. I've gotten a lot better at sorting through the truly cheap stuff, and stumbling upon some pretty good deals in the process. There have been a few examples recently, but an Okuma Hardstone got me started in this line of thinking. I picked it up in the Bargain Cave over at Cabela's a couple years ago for $19.99. The reel had good reviews/ratings, and came with a nice slate of features;

  • Elliptical Oscillation System
  • Aluminum spool, anodized and ported
  • Eight ball bearings
  • RES-balanced rotor with instant anti-reverse
  • Hydro Bloc water tight seal

I thought, 8 ball bearings for $20 and a few other nice features, how can I go wrong? Turns out I couldn't. At that price, the reel became disposable. I've had it in regular rotation for both sissy jigging and crappie casting for 2 years now, and so far not a single problem. When it finally acts up, breaks or becomes troublesome, in the trash it will go.

It becomes a calculated decision. For example, I've got a Shimano Stradic Ci4 spinning reel - wonderful piece of machinery; smooth, nice looking, big features - and it costs $200. If I weren't to get another year out of the Okuma, it would take 10 similar Okuma purchases ($20 each), each lasting 2 years, to reach the breakeven point from a dollars and cents perspective. From a longevity perspective, I'd have to own the Stradic for 20 years before the two lines crossed. Since I'm not a pro, and I don't throw this reel day in and day out, it seemed to make a lot of sense taking the gamble. So far I'm not disappointed.

Keep in mind, while I'm paying $20 for these reels, that's the clearance price. In most cases you are buying a $35-$60 reel, so I'm not buying a cheap piece of crap, just a decent reel for a greatly discounted price. You can also play this game at the next level up if you'd like. For example, Cabela's currently has a 2500 series Shimano Sahara (the perfect bassin' size IMO, and a 4.8 out of 5 score), a regularly $80 reel clearanced for $45. Now, I wouldn't be trashing my Sahara when it started going bad, even at just $45. It would get a trip down to Texas for a good cleaning and repair, but I think you get the point.

Similarly, I just picked up 2 more $20 spinning reels over the holidays, Cabela's Fish Eagle® Tournament II Spinning Reels in the 3000 size. Again, I have a very specific setup and purpose for these reels, none of which requires everyday use. The reel got a 4.5 out of 5 review score based on about 15 purchases, and comes with a nice set of features;

  • Six-bearing system
  • Lightweight, sturdy graphite body with aluminum fold-down handle
  • Aluminum spool with titanium-coated lip and anti-twist titanium line roller

So don't feel like you have to 'keep up with the Joneses' to catch fish, because you don't. Yes, I'll keep the Stradics and the Symetres for heavy duty everyday bassin' use. But I'm going to catch a hell of a lot of fish on my $20 reels before they have to hit the trash can, and do so with no regrets.

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December 23, 2012

Year End Stats - Where From Here?

Well, another year gone by, and more stats from the site. Big Indiana Bass celebrated its 6th anniversary as a weblog a couple weeks back, and I always find it interesting to compare the newest years metrics against the previous years. I've compiled the last 3 years worth of stats into a table, and it was more good growth again this year.


So now a question to all readers...what would you like to see next year? After doing this for 6 years, I can say that most all the "easy" targets have been talked about a lot. It now gets tougher and tougher to come up with new content to write about, which means posts might become more infrequent. I also contribute to a pair of other sites, Bass Parade and Bass Fishing Archives, and have regularly worked with a couple different In-Fisherman contributing editors on various pieces...lots of writing, time and effort.

I stopped by friend Dave Maas' Bass Pundit site. He maintains the largest linked list of bass fishing related sites on the web that I'm aware of. I counted them last night, and we're talking at least 600 different sites you can visit and read - tons of information. Obviously, this makes it very tough to stand out in such a crowd, and one could even argue whether it's worth trying to run a website in lieu of such accessible info. So what say you...

  • What do you like, and what do you not like?
  • What are we not covering that you want to hear about?
  • What are we covering that you could care less about?
  • Do you follow the coverage of our Indiana pros on the site? More or less stuff there?
  • Should we reach out to include more state and club level stuff?
  • You want to see more PR stuff from manufacturers? More advertising related stuff?
  • Would you like to see more organizations reporting their results via this site?
  • More and different lake reports?
  • Stay mostly bass or branch out and cover more fishing info on other species?
  • Close down the site and just run everything through the FB Page?
  • More video content? Any need for a forum?

Lets hear what you have to say, either as a comment here or as one on the . And as always, thanks to all for dropping in and visiting as much as you do.

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December 20, 2012

Paying Attention to Little Details

Here's a little tip for everyone. It really pays to pay attention to little things you see around a lake. Once you know what to look for, these 'little things' start becoming more obvious. What am I talking about? Take a look at this picture and see what comes to mind (click to enlarge).

On most any body of water that either gets drawn down for winter, or that has gotten really low due to summer drought or some other related phenomena, anglers will mark things out in the water. Not everyone owns a GPS, and even less people own handheld GPS units. When the lake is down and you can't reach a stump or brushpile or rockpile with your boat, the next best thing to do is to mark something up on the bank somehow. That's exactly what this little guardrail painting is. There's a submerged laydown right out in front of this thing that sits well under the water at normal pool.

Locally, I've seen this done at both Morse and Eagle Creek - sorry, you'll have to figure out what type markings were used on your own ;-) Haven't been out enough on Geist to know if they have done it there or not. Chances are other lakes in the state have had cover objects marked. It's not always paint marks either, though that seems to be the most popular thing.

Bottom line is that if you see something a little 'out of place' while out on the water, it might be worth a couple minutes of your time to check the area out a little closer. You might be surprised to find a "secret" fishing spot if you're lucky.

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December 18, 2012

More SI Screen Shots Interpreted


This first screen shot is of a very large and solid school of baitfish, likely gizzard shad. Notice how I just caught the far right side of the school, as the majority of the bunch were just off to my left. Check out the length of the sonar shadow they threw on the left side, suggesting to me that they were pretty high up in the water column.

This next one is pretty cool - an old submerged bridge. You can see a road running off the corner to the bridge at a 90 degree angle (bottom of the pic). There is a bunch of riprap down the side drop of the road as it falls into the channel running under the bridge. The two slanted white streaks right of the bridge are the original bridge pilings. And check out all the schools of fish hanging around the bridge. In this case, they were mostly crappie and white bass. Notice how loosely they are grouped (you can easily see individual white marks for each fish) compared to the white mass suggesting tightly schooled baitfish like in the image above.

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December 17, 2012

Browning's Brute

Paul Browning of Bass Boat Saver with a brute of a largemouth caught this weekend on a jerkbait.

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December 15, 2012

Cagles Mill Lake - 12/15

Not an easy task these days, but got my crappie mentor to set down the guitar and go fishing one last time this year. Burned 5 hours of vacation time at work to catch a nearly perfect weather day to be out on the water. Surface temps 45 degrees. Lake down 3' to winter pool with a light stain. Only 2 other vehicles in the lot when I arrived, though I heard there were a few more earlier in the day. Took a little bit to figure out the bite, but when we finally did it was a blast. Lee said he just wanted to keep 10 today, but then every time we caught another 11" or 11.5" fish, it would be, "Geesh - Go ahead and toss him in the well, too".

Think he ended up bringing home about 18-20, and we threw a bunch of 10" fish back today. No giants, but we're not complaining either. Left them biting at dark when we couldn't see our lines any more.

VMC Mooneye's along with Kalin's version of a metal keeper jighead in 1/16-oz. topped with 2" tubes or panfish assassins in chartreuse glow did the trick today. Deep bite was very sporadic and poor, but the shallow bite on isolated wood was the deal for us.

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December 14, 2012

They Do Exist - Crawdad Colors

Black and blue jigs - gotta' have them. They're a staple in the jig arena, probably the #1 selling color of all time. But how many (blue craws)  have you seen running around on your lakes. There are the red craws of Texas and Louisianna, and tons of green, brown and gray craws up this way. You even see some with those bright orange highlights. Just not that many blue ones, at least not on the waters I've fished...that was until yesterday.

I was walking the shores of one of our central Indiana reservoirs that is in drawdown mode, and kept finding empty crawdad shells and parts. Guessing maybe an otter or raccoon had gotten to them. Cool part was, about 90% of them were blue. I finally grabbed a couple within reach and shot this pic to share. Wasn't going to stop throwing black and blue because I hardly ever see blue craws, but might throw it with even a bit more confidence now after this excursion.

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