Josh D. : Fishing Forum Posts

Interesting to hear Casteldine and Gluszek talk about the Hybrid Hunter, it was another fantastic discussion, and a bait that holds a special place for me. Well before this video release, I was fortunate to pick a few up from Tackle Warehouse in the early summer and put them to work in my first ever national level BASSMASTER Kayak win on Pickwick in July. I had bought them specifically for the TVA, because they excel in grass, but haven't been near as productive for me in clear/open lakes. Speed killed here, the faster I reeled it in, the harder the fish hit it. Deflections and pulls through grass were amazing as it sheds grass really well. This bait might be the most buoyant on the market. If you intend to fish it like a crankbait, I think a glass rod is the way to go, but because of the stout hooks, if you are going to stop and go a lot more, a stiffer rod is needed to get the hooks to really dig in, because unlike a jerkbait, a beefy #2 hook needs a little bit more force to penetrate, something a glass rod doesn't necessarily offer. That is a point of view that hadn't completely set in for me, but lessons learned - I feel like if I was to commit to fishing an event with the HH as a primary bait for a day, I would want to have two different setups for the same bait to tailor the retrieve.

@JoeyV hit a lot of things well here. Fishing the national trails as well, the content here on BassU is a cornerstone to improving your abilities to find and locate fish and then applying the right techniques to catch them. Regardless of whether you are in a kayak or bass boat, the approach is quite similar. Although I can understand and relate to the idea of watching more kayak guys on here providing information, for the most part, from a big water competition perspective, this covers the major sections and many of the features in our national events. What BASSU could potentially add is sections on super skinny water, rapids, shoals, and similar types of fishing content that kayak anglers tend to find more on smaller waters that aren't as commonly talked about because those types of waters don't host the premier national level events and bass boats may not have as much access to.

One thing I tell people about fishing from a kayak that is different comes back to your ability to relocate if the fish aren't in an area where you expected them to be. When I fish from my bass boat, I fire the gas engine and make a bigger move; however, when I'm in my kayak and I've committed to an area I have to be more intimate at breaking down that specific area or choose to make a ramp switch. The latter is not always helpful and can be time consuming or frustrating. In either situation, this is where PMA comes in. You got to trust in your ability to find and locate fish and continue to improve on that capacity.

On a side, to the other part of this thread, I run a Hobie PA 14 360 which has the Guardian on it. From being in the bass boat world too, I've seen transducer heads take a lot of damage and still function flawlessly, and the Guardian by itself will protect your transducer 99% of the time if its flush mounted as you are more likely to hit something with your kick up fins or motor first, before hitting something at speed on the transducer, which retracts on contact due to its design (which is best out there). If covering your transducer makes you comfortable, do it. I've been up to my armpits in grass, scraped over rocks, and crashed into or stuck on stumps from Fork, to Chick, rapids, and even the upper Mississippi and my transducer is just fine.

Based on the handful of kayak guys on here already, I'm pretty sure if someone has got a kayak specific question someone can help answer, plus with Ike, Lee, and Evers all more engaged in the kayak world, there is great opportunity to see more kayak content.

In an effort to make the live show discussions more searchable for future studies and event preparation, would it be possible to add the lakes to the tags? As an example, in mlf-bass-fishing-league-bfl-bonanza-october-2021 there was good discussion on Ouachita and it would nice to type in Ouachita in the search bar and find the applicable videos (to include live broadcasts) that match up to it. The same goes for possibly adding a fisheries section to the video topics section? Just a thought, could see this being super helpful and low drag to implement. Thanks!

Thanks Jason, appreciate that. One other thought I had would be to enable the viewers to add global tags to the videos. Obviously the admins would have ultimate control over what did and did not get added, but it could leverage some BASSU crowdsourcing to help with that. Thanks again!