zach

good luck. i want to go! lexie and i will be there next weekend for 2 days. this is one of the fish on my new lures. 6 hits on this one lure in 2x out and is now resting on the bottom of waneta after i found out it can hit 25 ft. these are two of a bunch i am bringing to chautauqua next weekend. foils look cool to me, i have a bunch of firetiger, orange tiger, redhorse, and perch colors and i hope to only run my lures. we will see.

old man- good luck and good fishing.

11 hours out, put 41 miles on the triplog yesterday and 2 small one to show for it . good news is the rockets never got touched, the perchbaits never got touched but my lil sweeties got 2! tough day to be out but fine tuned the sweeties to run fast and deeper than a tuff shad. its all in the weighting and lip. now i have about a dozen prototypes for fire wood this winter that didn't perform how i wanted. nice job again bob!

that is what i plan on doing for some suckers. my kids pool.

thats how you do it bob!!! fattie for sure. those musky rockets are nasty huh? that guy must think your last name is BUCHER. Good job once again, you are making up for lost time quickly! hope i can get one like that tomorrow when i am down there!

bty i always thought canadice was the nicest water i fished (ice fish) but when my dad just moved down there he was told that it had the highest PCB levels of any finger lake. i quess that there was a guy up on the hill that used to scrap transformers and over the years all the chemicals washed it the 'dice and is still in there. wait until solgrande posts some pics from yesterday. he heard that drag rip once or twice!

at conesus i have actually gotten all of my tiger this year ( on the phantom softtailed jerkbaits. haven't been there in awhile but it is fun. if you don't want a plastic lure and don't want to spend big $$ on wood baits i am at a loss. wood lures are more expensive and i believe each one if different. if i could reccomend anything to start it would be to get a wiley, a tuff shad and a perchbait. i have said many times that i think a person could run these 3 lures all year and do as well as anyone else who has 500 baits like solgrande does. they have been proven time and time again in this area but cost good $. check ebay for good deals, i have picked up tons of baits on there. good luck and make a note of everything cpt larry says and that should point you in the right direction. my love for pike fishing also led me to be stuck on muskies for over 15 years now and am 31 years old now. bty august seems to be a great time to throw topwaters. if i could only recommend one topwater it would have to be a joe bucher topraider. easy to fish, "fairly" inexpensive and they do well.

i have heard that crappie work also. probably any panfish will do. problem is i never cast long enough to do it. cool to know for those tough days.

got to fish yesterday morning and the weather was great to be outside but not for fishin' . took lex out at 7am and got this one 10 minutes into our day. . (that is NOT the bell tower behind her lmao) she was happy and by 8:15am she convinced me to go get breakfeast at camp chautauqua where we were staying. ate some bacon and eggs and went back out sometime after 9am. well we get back out to where we were fishing another fish is on less than 30 minutes into our pass. she got it but was wearing her bikini and made me hold it for the pic b/c she didn't want all you looking at her. i laughed and held the lil guy we worked that area for awhile before leaving and i missed another one that was on for less than 6 seconds. oh well. head towards the casino for lunch and lose another one 10 feet from the boat at the no wake signs off the casino. we ate some greasy food at the casino and then decided to walk around bemus. we ended up renting bikes and taking the rest of the afternoon peddling around the small town. we fished for a total of less that 6 hours and went 2 for 4. i am starting to get better about realizing that i am fishing w/ my son's mom and not some hardcore musky fishermen. she loved taking time off for breakfast, lunch and the couple hour bike ride we took. i would have stayed out fishing until dark but i knew she would enjoy seeing something other than the boat and my ugly mug. i think it was a total success and we left by 6pm to go get the little goober. all fish came on my prototypes w/ hits on all differant colors. some of my lures ran killer and some need alittle weight to make them handle speeds better. it was cool b/c these muskies were on the lures i whipped up this week and wanted to try out. well they got eaten alright. i had to fish these new lures b/c i gave all my good ones to solgrande this week! all fish hit going fast and lexie has a new favorite color, she now likes the "pretty baby" color. its a good thing b/c those are easy to paint! i started a cool barnyard fight by not feeding the king billy and i really enjoyed watching them butt heads and chase each other around. oh the fun that can be had at the campground! on the way home i stopped into the happy hooker to get solgrande and myself some perchbaits and brain asked me what we got our fish on and i showed him my "little sweeties" and he said he wants a couple hundred dollars worth of them to put into his shop! i showed him a couple of bucktails and he said the same thing! how freaking awesome. i now have a little side job brewing. these were the two that boated fish for us. also the silver perch types got blasted 2x. i did all these in one morning so the paint jobs were just enough to get them done. next batch will be alot nicer paint jobs since i will actually have more than one day to get some ready.

i enjoy casting a lot more than more than trolling but trolling can be very effective at times. this weekend all of lex's and my fish came from places that would be very, very difficult to cast to. there is a strong movement back into the weeds coming up and this will get me casting again. give me a sunset on a nice day i stop trolling and throw on one of my favorite topwaters and go to work. you have a big fish explode on you and your hooked. to me thats as exciting as it gets. i complain the same as you do about nothing local but this year i have gone to conesus a half dozen times and have found the tigers fun and at times tough to get. i cast at conesus and find its a blast working jerkbaits for them around the weeds. good luck and i fully understand your situation and wish that i didn't have to drive 80 miles to the closest musky lake. i hope that one day you get out and get to experience what drives some of to almost obsession. casting is fun and i cast for myself, trolling can get boring but it puts fish in the boat. both have there times.

good luck to anyone going out the next couple of days! off to chautauqua to try to get lex some fish! she wants to beat her personal best 2x this year. she hasn't been out since she got her new best during the first tourney, she has yet to lose one also. thats alot more than i can say for myself.

sounds great! lexie and i are leaving to tomorrow night and i better get her on some fish or i'm gonna get to hear about it. was there 2 weeks ago and didn't do as well as i wanted to fishing the south end (tons of bait south of 86 bridge). thanks for all of your info. i read every post you make and take everything you say as word. thanks again larry! i have no problem at all fishing that fast, in fact that is where i do most of my summer fishing, over 5mph except at night. i think from what i have seen people tend to go faster at chaut than waneta but people at waneta make more turns on purpose imo. i try to combine the two. go fast and tons of turns, if you have seen my ugly butt on the water you know what i mean. a drunk guy makes a straighter line than i do while trolling. maybe her and i will see you out fishing, we are staying until saturday morning and i would hire you but i am poor and have a two year old kid, so nope- it ain't happening any time soon. i am refinishing that big 16" grandma copy i got from you, what should the color it be in your opinion? i am going to bring a bunch of homemade crankbaits to try to decide what style i am gonna roll w/. good luck.

giving away all your tricks. big or small gills or doesn't it matter?

awesome colors thanks!!!!!! $9 bass is a favorite of mine for clearer water.

she knows i would marry her tomarrow but she says why rush it. as long as she remains committed i don't push it too much. she likeS going fishing for events like just driving to a lake that isn't near home, she loves the time spent together, she loves some of the talks we get into when the fish just aren't jumping on the hooks, she loves the vineyards and all the grapevines on the drive down. for me, all i think about is fishing, fishing, fishing, muskies, muskies, muskies and she goes for the whole experience and fish are just a bonus. she reminds me to do that when i get all frustrated between hits and g*d forbid i see someone else catch a musky, i get all goofy. i start b*tching and complaining, saying what are they doing differant than me? how come i'm not getting any??? and she reminds me to just enjoy the lake and the company of each other and enjoy just even being out. its funny b/c she has only caught muskies in her limited fishing career. if you asked her how to catch a bass, walleye, crappie or anything else she would be lost but when we go out she wants certain lures in certains colors out. i narrow down the colors and lures some and let her pick and choose 3 of them to run. i run one of my choices but the rest are here choices. thinking 95% south basin chautauqua to take her. her and i do well down there and have done some good #'s in that south end. i guarantee you guys $5.00 she picks a white lightning color tuff shad to run first .

she won't be disappointed if we skip waneta and head to the big lake. she loves hearing that bell tower ring.

hey sweet-lips, i dont know where lexie and i are going but we are leaving thursday night and are gonna be out until saturday. i know she likes chautauqua better than waneta so i will leave it up to her on where we go. her and i need some time together b/c with a 2 year old it is very limited. i am just her driver and net man when we go out and i love it that way. i learned my lesson last year. after she got 3 fish in a couple hours i took the next hit and it ended up being a 44" and all of hers were 31's and 32's. i got to here about that all year. she sits there and reads and does work until a clicker goes off, shes not much of a caster as of yet. so if i get down to waneta i will call u sweet-lips. breakfeast sounds awesome if we are down there, thanks! perch colored bucktail. i use the best materials i can get my hands on. i think marabou has no equal in the water, 3/0 up front and heat shrunk 5/0 in back, every series of wraps is glued in and the final wraps are epoxied (these don't come apart!) and i try hard to make the smallest "head" as i can w/ the final wraps. newer holographic blades look neat imo, been tying bucktails since i was 14 years old.

thanks guys, keep them coming- joe- i like black and orange tails also. nitro- seems almost like a emerald shiner pattern u are talking about. what do you guys think about a 4 oz bucktail just for trolling?

inside edge was where i got 2 blow-ups on topwater in 10 casts last time out. right where the lily pads end and the weeds begin in like 4fow. bob- i have a starter solinoid go on me last year and it took 15 minutes to change if that is your problem.

nitro- look shallow as that is where i saw most of my fish last time in addition to the normal spots. good luck and i have done well at night this year. i throw topwaters at dusk and cranks after dark imo. lex and i are going thursday night and all day friday to test my new cranks, she needs to get out. she hasn't gone since the opening day tourney and needs to hear that reel rip zzz, zzzz, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, fish-on baby!!! wish her luck b/c she needs a fish as bad as nitro does . nitro- i think u need one of my bucktails, i did this one for solgrande as a sucker color- this is a bluegill color crank i gave him to try out also- its looks like a waneta killer for sure.

if you guys could please take a quick moment to let me know what is your favorite crankbait and bucktail colors. the only reason i am asking is b/c i am making 150 musky crankbaits and some musky/pike bucktails and want to make sure i have some good colors. for me, my favorites are- crankbait- perch/ black perch color. bucktails- gold blades and brown & yellow tail. thanks for your time. zachary baker.

those bogagrips and vertical holds aren't the best but nice one. you hooked yet? i have to people that the easiest way to get a musky sometimes is to go bass fishing. pretty neat huh? was that the north end? nitro asked if you guys could be his fishing guide next time down you go to waneta. he is very jealous of your fish.

i am thinking pressure and the fish are starting to get back into the weeds with the temp drop. every year this happens to me, real hot june/ july and then maybe one or two rips a trip after that for august.

bring a screw driver and some glue with you on the boat for those lips on those hi-fins bob. have heard they loosen up at the worst times.