I've always hated my boat carpet. Boat after boat, it was always dirty and stinky. Once you cleaned it, you had to let it dry for a week before the carpet wasn't holding water. The knock on SeaDek for a bass boat is the gaps it will leave between the lids. I have a couple ideas to counter that thought. I'm also willing to put up with gaps if it means no water logged carpet that takes forever to dry out. Stay tuned as I update this project.

If you want a site that gives you fishing reports, recommends tackle based on the species and time of year, then head over to Omnia Fishing and use the code BASSBRAWL to get 15% off your purchase. Another way to save is by signing up for their yearly membership. Once you do, every purchase you make will result in credit put back in your account. By using our code, you help us create funds to help us with our time and equipment. 

My favorite lure to throw in 2020 was hands down the Megabass Uoze 3/4 jig with a 5" Spark Shad on the back. You can find both at Omnia Fishing!

I love to bass fish, plain and simple. But if I see a submerged tree branch on my Humminbird Mega 360, and it's loaded with fish marks, I'm grabbing my spinning rod with a 3" Megabass Hazedong Shad and finding what's up! I caught a half dozen crappies and they were all over 14", with the biggest being a hair over 14.5" and 2.1lbs on my digital scale. Wow is that fun!!!! Fishing for multiple species improves your skills. It makes you think, work your mind, try new things and be ready to take advantage of something at a moments notice. Right before this I had just stuck a 5lb 2oz bass and was totally in the mindset to keep hammering down for more. I'll gladly take 15 minutes out of my trip to mix it up and boat a bunch of trophy caliber fish! Always have a spinning rod on the deck, rigged with a small swimbait like the Hazedong Shad, and you''ll be ready for all species of fish.

Equipment Used:
Daiwa Tatula Reel
Sunline 8lb Fluorocarbon
Megabass Hazedong Shad

The 5" Megabass Spark Shad was hands down the bait that caught fish day after day. Shallow or deep, it didn't matter. Up shallow you can run it on a belly weighted hook and keep it weedless. Out deep I put it on a 3/4 jig and cover water. The fish destroy it, so you need some super glue and soft plastic glue to keep things in place!

Click here to see my favorite spark shad
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We're approaching the 4 year anniversary of the state record fish we were fortunate to catch. It was time to dig through the saved footage and give an inside look at the entire day. There was a lot of cool stuff captured on the drive to the lake. There's some map breakdown that really details the catch and the spot we fished.

My favorite bite of the season only allows a short window, but the fishing is so good, little else matters! Water below 40. Jig bite faded away. Now is the time to break out the modified cranks and punish the largemouth bass. Carefully attaching suspenstrips and suspendots along with upgrading the hooks allows you to catch more fish. Before any of the catching can begin, you need to put the time in graphing your lake and finding where the fish are bunching up before ice up. On a 600 acre lake, we've found hundreds of bass bunched in a 100 yard stretch of shore. You can scan for hours and not see a mark on side imaging, but keep going and force yourself to continue the search. If there are no fish where you cast then it's impossible to catch no matter how good your presentation is. Find the fish, then unleash your custom cranks at them. I'm partial to a Rapala DT14 in perch color, upgraded with Owner Stinger or Mustad Triple Grips. A Megabass Deep X 200 LBO in GLX Gill color will also punish the fish. Perfect balance to keep your deep crank in the fishes face is the final piece to the puzzle. You want it to sit perfectly still, using 5 to 10 second pauses to let the fish come up to the bait, look at it, then have time to bite it. Watch your line, as it lays slack on the surface, many times you'll see it pop as a fish inhales your crankbait.

This is a perfect example of what to look for to find Fall fish. Some of the shorter strands are grass and a little coontail mixed in. The tall strands are cabbage are what we look for. One key in this picture is that the cabbage was losing it's leafs. The water temp shown was from a major week warmup after we already had low 60 water temps for a couple weeks and the cabbage started thinning out and losing some of the green leaves on the stem. Also a key is the thickness of the patch you find, this was the thickest area in the whole weed line so it was a key area to fish around.

Whenever our weather is frontal, the crappies flock to deep wood and hover tight on it. Using our 360 and Livescope, we pulled right up, kept the fis 45-50' in front of the boat so they wouldn't spook, then peppered them with casts and caught a bunch of 14" plus crappies. These ones are very tall and have thigh broad shoulders. When you set the hook it feels like a bass pulling back!

After our water went from 63 to 75 due to warm weather for a week, some crashing temps mixed with snow and rain brought it crashing back down into the 50's real quick. The fish have been in a little funk, but if you keep searching you can still find biting fish. These were caught in 48 degree water in 3'. It was small points with a little wood mixed in. Slow rolling a swim jig and grub was our best bait on this day.