There's lots of guys that hype up that color, on FM and other places too. Being discontinued and hard to find has added to the mystique of that color, if it was still available it would receive a lot less hype. It's a good color and I run it lots of times, but there's other colors that catch more fish throughout the year for me than that color - tiger and perch patterns, chromes, clowns, some oddball color that gets hot like purpledescent did for us this weekend, etc.

On the subject of your particular bait being a good one that catches fish, I do believe that some baits are just better than the others. I used to have a firetiger rogue like that, it would catch fish no matter what other baits were going. Tony talked about that too in his seminar, he said if he has baits that catch fish they go in a special place in his tackle box, while the unproven ones go to a different place in his tackle boxes so he can keep them separate.

Friday it seemed like 2.1 to 2.2 was best for us although we did get 1 fish below 2 mph. On Saturday it was 2.3 for all our fish.

Even though the fishing was extremely tough, I still had a great time with the FM gang again. Mille Lacs in the fall is an awesome place and the colors are just about as good as they'll get.

Now the bad news... Transmission in the GMC puked on me right after I pulled out of Appeldoorns. She jerked hard as I was slowly accelerating out of Paul's drive way, so hard I thought the front wheels came off the ground. Truck kept moving forward so I kept my foot into it all the way back to the Cities. No overdrive and she didn't want to shift down out of first from a stop. Parked too close to the garage when I got home and learned later Reverse is out of commission as well. Strange thing is there were no symptoms that the transmission was heading downhill, other than the nearly 200,000 miles on my truck. Oh well...

Dude, that sucks big time. Sorry to hear about the tranny, that is not fun at all there.

Our group enjoyed the weekend even with the tough conditions. We suffered through the accomodations and food provided by Paul and crew at Appledoorns Sunset Bay Resort. If you haven't gone there yet... Go. It is that simple. Paul thanks again for putting this on and for all the work.

Our report (4 guys- 2 boats)
Friday Night
18" smallie
20.75" smallie (just a beast of a fish! By far biggest smallie I have ever seen)
Both on 1st pass and that was it for the night.
Saturday
Perching in Isle Bay and brought back 10 good ones to clean, 4 really nice ones and 6 to fill out the bag.
Saturday Night
Nice Jumbo, small eye and couple of bites on bobbers but that was it. Again all fish early in the night before moon went down.

Anyone try X-Raps?

I spent some time pulling a couple different x-raps. My smallie came on an X-Rap Shad #9 in purple. We switched up often, but it seemed like most fish came on shallow shads, HJ's and leeches.

Me and my buddy pretty much pulled everything. I used a silver black and perch x-rap and x-shad for quite a bit without any luck. I got my lone fish dragging a FTB (firetiger) Rattlin' Rap of all things.

Yup. Those and just about everything else I could think of.

We ran x-raps, shad X raps, shallow run shads, regular Raps, huskys, rogues, regular shad raps, jointed raps, jointed shads pretty much everything under the sun (or stars as it was night.)

Interesting. I'll see if I can get the ball rolling in a positive direction starting Thursday of this week.

im not glad the reports have not been so good. but it is a little reasurring to know really good fishermen are saying the bite is tough. i was up saturday also. the first trip this fall. im hoping to make it every saturday from now until ice. i started fishing around 3:00 saturday afternoon and fished until about 9:30. i caught a 14" & about 10" during the day in 25fow rigging with a leech. marked lots but couldnt get em to bite. now in retrospect im sorry i didnt try the small suckers i had on a rig in the deeper water...didnt try crawlers either...dahhh. around dark i started trolling the shoreline in 5-7fow. speed was from 1.7 to 2.2mph. i may have had one attempt at a hit, but that was it...nothing. my thermometer doesnt work so i dont know the surface temp but from the sounds of it, it needs to cool down some to get the bite started. ill be ready, everything is working just the way its supposed to, except the thermometer.

regards,
minnesotatuff

I too ran a few differnt X-raps, including a Deep X-rap with nothing to show for it. Other oddities to hit the water for me were Fat Raps and Hot-N-Tots...

Sorry I did not make the Fenzy this year - I had a great time last year. I fished solo on the west side Sat evening - caught one 26" walleye on a #7 firetiger deep shad in the weeds, ~9 ft.

I'll be on the west side again on Fri & Sat the next two weekends. After that, maybe some Fri or Sat nites, but not likely both in a weekend.