Dream Catcher Guides Top 5 Favorite Techniques

There are very few things as cool as fooling an apex predator! That's why I think so many people enjoy bass fishing. You are fooling one of the most dominant freshwater predatory fish to strike your a lure that resembles something in their diet. I think that is so fascinating! There are so many techniques, lures and presentation to use to catch fish and some work better than others in certain times of the year. I wanted to highlight my 5 favorite techniques to use when fishing for bass!

#1 Swimbaits
Swimbaits are among the most fun lures on the planet, from big jointed hard swimbaits to soft body and hollow body swimbaits! Baitfish are the main food source for a bass and when they feed on baitfish they inhale them into their mouth to ensure that they wont escape. When you're mimicking a baitfish with a swimbait a bass absolutely crushes it, sometimes it will feel like they are trying to rip the rod right out of your hand! You can catch numbers on a swimabit and size depending on the conditions and lure! They are pretty easy to throw as well, most swimbaits all you need to do is cast and reel!

#2 Frogging
Whether you are throwing a hallow body frog in shallow water or on top of grass or throwing a soft body frog cruising the bank it is fun! Watching a giant bass explode on the top of the water is the craziest thing and hooking the aggressive monsters can be a fight of a lifetime! Frogging explosions are never the same and can show you how creative a big bass can be when ambushing prey!

#3 Jerkbaits
Jerkbaits for essentially the same reason as swimbaits. When you are ripping a jerkbait and you feel your rod load up it is an exciting feeling! Make sure you hold on to your rod tight!

#4 Flipping Jigs/ Texas Rig 
When you are flipping a heavy weighted craw and/or flipping jig your heart will skip a beat when you feel the hard THUMP from a big bass! It can almost feel like somebody is hitting your lure with a sledgehammer! Then you set the hook with a stout rod and it doubles over and you can't help but to smile!

#4 Flukes
Flukes dip, dive, weave and jump out of the water and it is unbelievably fun to watch a bass chase a fluke. When you get them chasing it at what appears to be 100mph and then you stop it and they crush it, you will go just as crazy as the fish!

Top 5 Fishing Lakes in Western North Carolina

What a blessing to live and be able to fish here in the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina! This place has it all! GIANT fish, numbers of fish, spotted bass, smallmouth bass and largemouth bass! All of these lakes have what I call "The Secret Formula" for being world class fisheries. First, almost every lake has a great abundance of shad (threadfin, gizzard, herring)! A shad is to a bass as a glazed munchkin donut from D&D is to a human! Bass don't stop eating them (EVEN IN COLD WATER)!!! These fish continuously gorge year round which produces above average size fish and feeding frenzies when you run into them! These lakes also provide bigger forage once a big ol' fish gets to big to be efficient chasing shad. This is when your bream, perch and trout become your big players! Mimicking this bigger forage can and will produce STUDS! But here is the thing, there is such an abundance of big fish you can hone in on them and not only have a great day for size but numbers with size!

Here are my Top 5 Fishing Lakes in Western North Carolina

#1 Lake Glenville, Cashiers NC

Lake Glenville is the best smallmouth bass fishery in the southeast! It's one of few lakes that has the odd combination of Blueback Herring and smallmouth bass! The abundance of herring, bream, yellow perch and trout make this lake absolutely lethal! A lot of big largemouth are caught year round to compliment the great smallmouth!

#2 Lake Chatuge, Hayesville NC

Lake Chatuge is almost identical to Lake Glenville except a few minor differences. Chatuge has big spotted bass instead of smallmouth. These spotted bass eat like you wouldn't believe and they really do look like a football! There are also Florida strain largemouth that swim around in Chatuge, they can grow up to 1.5 pounds per year! That combination of fish leads to some incredible days on the water!

#3 Fontana Lake, Bryson City NC

Fontana has some of the craziest fishing you've ever seen! With depths that exceed 500ft this lake is a big, clear, deep, honey hole! There are tons of shad which make for crazy top water explosions fishing for smallmouth, spots and largemouth! The fish are always schooling and if you can find some shallow largemouth on the bank you can bet they will dandy's!

#4 Bear Lake, Tuckasegee NC

Big largemouth is the only thing you need to know! Very few shad in this lake but the bass feed very heavily on bream, trout and crawfish! The largemouth grow and grow and grow. There is not a high population of fish but that means more food for the ones that are swimming around! 

#5 Lake Burton, Tiger GA

Lake Burton is not even in NC but is about 15 minutes from the state line! It's combination of Florida strain largemouth and big spotted bass make for a trip worth taking! The bass eat blueback herring and trout! They get huge, they get crazy and this lake is a little secret! 

Replacing Boat Carpet with Durabak

I fish hard, sun up to sun down and even at night if the conditions call for it! I'm constantly on my boat whether it's by myself prefishing or out with clients. My boat is my office, my work space and if there is one thing I have learned it's that you're only as efficient as your work space allows you to be. Carpet for me is extremely inefficient! Carpet absorbs water, carpet stains, carpet gets very dirty, carpet wears quickly and carpet is a hook hassle. After determining that I needed to either replace or recarpet my boat I started thinking of surfaces that would solve all of the inefficiencies of carpet. Something that doesn't absorb water, that doesn't stain or was easy to wash off and clean, something that is durable and doesn't cause me hook problems. After brainstorming surfaces that were as I just described, the roll on bed liner in my truck came to mind! I proceeded to Google roll on bed liners for boat surfaces and that is when I found gold!

Durabakcompany.com was the first link that came up. Durabak is an epoxy that has shredded rubber granules in it. It has great grip for the bottom of shoes and is all that I was looking for in a surface. Durabak also comes in a wide range of colors that will match your boat! It is also way more cost efficient to do a Durabak surface than to recarpet your boat! The entire project costed me $140 and a total of about 1 week of my time. My wife and I traveled a lot around Christmas in addition to some poor weather and other work obligations which elongated the project. I am unbelievably satisfied with the final product and highly recommend using Durabak to resurface your boat!

For more information on Durabak visit Durabakcompany.com!

We will be posting our video soon!

Best Glide Swimbaits for Bass

Glide baits have really taken the bass fishing industry by storm here in the past few years! These things are definitely nothing new for the guys on the west coast but as their popularity continues to grow I wanted to discuss the conditions I use them and my 5 favorite gliders!

Water Temp: 45* and above
Clarity: at least 3-4 foot visibility
Depth: 7 feet and shallower

These things have crazy "draw power" with their seductive slalom! They are great baits to throw on bluff walls with lay downs on a slow retrieve, down the sides of docks to pull big fish from the depths and they are great for locating bedding fish. If you remember anything from this post remember this, 8" gliders get bit! The longer/ bigger gliders have a more pronounced and realistic action (to me) and they get chewed up by 2 pound fish and bigger! You see, bass are opportunistic feeders and would rather spend less calories eating something big that will keep them full for a while than burning more calories having to chase and eat something little regularly. That's when you're glide bait pulls in the big ones!

Here are the 5 Best Glide Baits for Bass:

#1 Deps 250 & 175 Slide Swimmer
I know these things are pricey, but you will not find a better glide bait for all around realism than the Deps! Real look and real action and it's incredibly durable! The 175 is just a tad under 8" and can catch #'s like you wouldn't believe and is a great tournament sized swimbait! The 250 is right at 10" and does nothing short of catching MONSTERS! Slow retrieving these baits with small twitches will produce the best! There is a reason why these baits are anywhere from $150 to $300! They are proven!

#2 Gan Craft Jointed Claw 178
The Gan Craft Jointed Claw 178 is LETHAL! With colors to match any and every bait fish in your lake Gan Craft makes it happen! Byron Velvick almost took home the Elite Series win on Lake Guntersville in 2015 on the Jointed Claw in 'Real Ayu'! It gets bit and produces all over the world! Great action and comes ready to toss right out of the box!

#3 Fatback Herring Glide Shad 7"
If you have gizzard shad or threadfin shad on your lake or river this glider has a beautiful shad profile and can absolutely roast fish! Most big bass eat big shad, this realistic action mixed with the realistic profile can put is them in the boat! You can burn this one too!

#4 River2Sea S-Waver 200
I haven't fished these as much as I would like but I have had some incredible success on them! I've caught a total of 8 fish on the S- Waver 200 and the smallest one was 5 1/2 pounds! They have a very realistic swim and come in some great colors. I will almost always put suspend dots in the joint to make the swim more fluid and sink faster. At a price point of $45 these are a must have, must throw!

#5 HighPower Gizzard
Big gizzard shad glider, catches trophies and is proven! Give it a shot to put some hammers in the boat in the south east!

Top 10 Drop Shot Lures

The drop shot is without question one of the most game changing rigs to ever hit the bass fishing world! Understanding it, knowing how to use it and having confidence in it can be the difference in having a good year and a great year. A lot of people argue that the drop shot rig is a vertical presentation only rig and I'm here to say that's not true! You can cast it weedless into fallen tree's, in and around docks, drag it down a deep bank or hump and work the outside/ inside of a grass line, all which involve casting. When the fish load up in these areas a drop shot can put a lot of fish in your boat and good ones!

I'll tell you why a drop shot is such an effective lure presentation. How often does a bass feed directly on the bottom? Answer: Not as often as you think! Sure a bass will nose down to eat crawdad but not all crawdads sit on the bottom. They often suspend on the side's of pilings, stumps, tree falls, lily pads and grass but here's the kicker... A crawdad is just one part of their diet! For most lakes in the country the #1 food source for a bass is a baitfish (bream, shad, hitch, trout, anything that swims and is smaller than them). Do baitfish swim directly on the bottom? Answer: No! Very few fish swim directly on the bottom. Most fish will swim a foot or two above the bottom to scan for food and cover. Are you envisioning this? When you have your lure about 10" to 20" up the line from your drop shot weight you are in the ultimate natural strike zone, thus leading to more bites! Now which lures get bit the most? Here are my top 10 drop shot lures!

#1 Finesse Miki- Damiki
For profile, action, texture, durability, colors and fishability this bait just simply has it all not to mention it gets bit more than any other drop shot bait I've ever thrown!
#2 Straight Tail- Roboworm
Their color selection will match the hatch of any lake! They're soft but have tremendous action and will get bit in the toughest conditions! Great bait to cast and vertically fish!
#3 Cutter Worm- Damiki
Damiki is the top drop shot quick stop! The cutter worm in a baby bass color is lethal on bass year round and it gets bit, very versatile bait and helped win the BASS Collegiate Series Eastern Championship on Lake Norman!
#4 Finesse Worm- Zoom
The good ol' finesse worm hasn't stopped catching fish since the beginning, their color selection combined with durability and versatility makes for a great DS lure! It could catch fish in a fishless lake!
#5 5" Senko- Yamamoto
Wacky worms always produce, put it on a drop shot and watch it work as well as ever!
#6 Fat Minnow- Basstrix
For vertical fishing this bait is just a catching machine! Very life like and the small profile can get bit when it seems like nothing else can!
#7 S Stick- Molix
Great action and colors great bait to work around brush piles, in schools and everywhere in between!
#8 Twitch Tail Minnow- Berkley
These things don't look fancy but I assure you if your graph is lit up and you drop this down you will get bit! great minnow profile!
#9 Dream Shot- Strike King
Just simply versatile, with great action and colors!
#10 Tiny Fluke- Zoom
BEDDING FISH DROP SHOT....... That's I have to say about that!

This is my buddy Josh Milner I guided on Lake Chatuge in October! Everything on a drop shot!