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The First Temperture Drop: Cracking the Fall Transition · Sac-A-Lait Talk

• Dwain Turner: Hello anglers, welcome to Sackolade Talk. I'm your host, Dwayne Turner. The first temperature drop has landed and we are cracking the fall transition today. We're tracking Lake Darbone Shad with Wesley Miller of Big Sash Wash Outdoors for our slab bite segment. Then Ross Wager joins us for the Jig Is Up segment, showcasing premium hand-tied jigs from Wager Bates. If you woke up this morning, stepped outside and felt that brisk cool north wind hitting your face, you know exactly what today's show is all about. We have officially had our first real temperature we have officially had our first real temperature drop of the season. For weeks we've been grinding through that brutal late summer heat, waiting for the weather to break. Now that the Mercury is finally sliding down, the game has completely changed out on the water. In this episode, we are cracking the code on the fall transition. We're looking at exactly how this initial code snap shatters old summer patterns, where it forces the bait fish to go, and how you can capitalize on the most aggressive bite of the year. Grab your coffee, turn up your monitors, and let's get into it. Let's talk science for a minute, because understanding why the fish move tells you exactly where they're going. Before this front hit our Louisiana Sacole, they were stubborn. They were locked tight into deep treetops and heavy brush, staring at jigs, turning away because the water was too warm and stagnant. But once that water temperature drops out of the 80s and falls into the mid to low 70s, A biological switch flips the first temperature drop signals to the Sacchola that winter is down the road, triggering an aggressive pre winter feeding frenzy. The critical factor right now is the thread fin shad. During the summer, the bay fish are scattered all over the place. But the moment that cool water hits those shad ball up tight and start moving. They migrate out of the deep river basins and start pushing toward creek edges, shadow flats, and pockets. The Sacolade don't care about water depth right now. They care about the contour of the bottom and following the food. If you see bait fish popping the surface on a calm morning, you can bet the slabs are sitting right underneath them. Now, depending on how hard the cofront hit your local bayou, you have two primary ways to target these transitioning fish. If the temperature drop is steady and gradual, look for schools roaming the shallow flats or staging along creek mounts. They are hunting actively. For this, you want a slow falling jig. Cast it out, let it slowly glide past the structure, and watch your line like a hawk. The bite right now can be incredibly subtle. Just a slight tick, or your line tracking sideways. If front brought a severe drop in the temperature and high barometric pressure, those fish are going to drop deep and hug tight to structure. They'll group heavily around the deep brush piles and river shorelines in twelve to twenty feet of water. When they get tight like that, you have to change gears and fish vertically right on top of them. To pull these plate sized slabs out of heavy cover, I'm using a sensitive light action twelve foot salter stigging pole. When you're tipping and jig directly into cold front brush piles, that extra length keeps the bolt back so you don't spook the school. I get asked all the time, Dwayne, when the first front hits, do I throw plastic or live bait? Here's my playbook for the fall transition. Start with your favorite soft plastic so you can cover water quickly, locate the migrating schools, and figure out their depth. But you better keep a bucket of small crappy minerals on the deck as insurance. If the cold front has the fish acting stubborn or lock jaw, hook a live minnow right through the tail, let your jig slowly pull the minnow down into the treetop. That lively tail action creates irresistible vibration, creates competition in the school, and forces those sluggish deep slabs to strike even when they don't want to. ⁓ that is a wrap for today's breakdown on cracking the first temperature drop. The summer heat is gone, the water is cooling down, and the slabs are getting aggressive. Don't let a little north wind keep you on the porch. Get out there, find the bait fish, and load the live well. And to really help us crack the code on this first temperature drop, we are calling in one of the absolute best to ever drop a jig in Union Parish Water. He's a dominant tournament angler, the owner of Big Sasquash Outdoors, a man who knows Lake Darbone like the back of his hand. Joining us right now via Riverside Wesley Miller. Wesley, welcome to Sackley Talk. Hello anglers. It's time for Slab Bites, the segment where we track down Louisiana's heaviest Sakole. Joining us today is a legendary North Louisiana guy, the man behind Big Sasquash Outdoors, Wesley Miller. Wesley, welcome to Sakalay Talk. Thank you for having me. It's my my pleasure, man. Thanks for joining us and sharing sharing your knowledge with our listeners today. Wesley, we're locked and loaded, so let's get started, okay? Sure. Wesley, tell us the backstory on how Big Sasquatch Outdoors was born. Big Sasquatch Outdoors is born as ⁓ I'm a registered nurse and ⁓ around COVID, I started guide my guide service, and at my my last job I had, I showed up every day with big beard and big hair, and they called me. The Sasquatch anyway. So when I was looking for trying to figure out what my guide service name was gonna be, my CEO at the time, a guy named Keith Cox, said, Well, you're the Sasquatch. He said, It's big Sasquatch outdoors. So that's how the name that's how the name happened. And I fit the I fit the picture, so that's how it came to be. Man, I love I love that name, man. I remember when I was a little kid, man, we heard all kind of Sasquatch doors. We were scared. Yeah. Yeah. So ⁓ you know, it's just something that's ⁓ it's a lot easier to it it's a lot more catchy than Wesley Miller fishing or something like that. So it's just a catchy name and ⁓ you know, good name for it. That's a great marketing ⁓ play right there. Yeah. I love it. It is, it is. But I've always loved crappie fish. I took my I took the opportunity to quit my nursing job back in twenty twenty on January the first and or actually twenty twenty one and I've been guiding full time ever since. Awesome. That's great. Hey, Wesley, what is the main bay fish crappie are feeding on on on Lake Darbone? ⁓ right now, actually Darbone's one of those places that the crappie are generally always feeding on shad. But this time of the year and all through the summer, leading in the fall, all your stuff is spawned. All your brim spawned, your bass spawned, your crappie spawned, catfish. So your your your fish shad spawned. Crappie are still really eating a lot of really small things right now. So I'm keying in on real small baits, natural baits. Just try it because they they're eating these schools of fry. And it can be anything they're eating it. So right now they're keying in on little tiny minas and shad. So that that's what I'm looking for. And that's what I'm keying in on is using small jigs or natural colors ⁓ to match the, you know, the available forage. Okay. All right. Also, ⁓ what makes ⁓ the Auburn A great fishery for crappie fishing. In my opinion, what makes Darbone the best crappie fishery is because the fact that it has fantastic spawning grounds. You can go around that that lake during the spawn, and there is literally fish spawning from one end of it to the other. It's got a great bottom makeup, a lot of sand, a lot of rocky banks, and that makes for great spawning conditions for crappie. So Darbone always has great spawns. So when you have great spawns every year. You're gonna have a lot of crappie and Darbone is known for having a lot of crappie. Okay, so that's that's basically what makes it great. The spawning conditions. It's got tons of cover. It's just a great leg. It's got a big deep creek channel run through it. It's got everything that a lake needs to grow, a bunch of crappie and a bunch of nice crappie. Okay. ⁓ that leads up to the next question, ⁓ Wesley. What is your typical The all the album crappy size and weight. ⁓ you know, the way they got the the the new rules changed over there now, you're catching a lot, you know, you're some really nice fish. But I'm you know, I'm ⁓ most of them are probably averaging a pound or so, you know. That's a that's a great fish. Right. You know, for good eat, you know, as I'm guide fishing, I'm not looking for big giant fish. I'm looking for the next fish. And over there they just all you know, it's a lot of good size mixes and just a lot of good fish. Some of them, you know, some big ones and some little ones, but just, you know, a good mix of fish, you know, is what I always catch at Darbone. So what speaking you mentioned ⁓ the the new regulations. What are the regulations for Darbone? ⁓ you can only have ⁓ seven fish over twelve inches per person. You can still have fifty pit fish per person, but only seven per person can be over twelve inches. ⁓ okay. All right. All right. Wesley, what is your signature setup for catching crappie in the fall on Darbone? ⁓ I'm using I like to use a 13 to 15 foot pole. I'm using four-pound line. I'm using only the only baits I use are snacky lures plastics. There's one called a FS two hundred and snacky milk color, it's a real shad colored bait. I always use it on a ⁓ It's a it's a small inch and a half bait, so it's a little bit of bait. It ⁓ matches the natural forge real well. And on all my jigs, I always use a minnow head shaped jig head. It's a little small jig head with a number six hook. Usually a sixteenth ounce is what I try to stay with. And what I'm trying to do, a lot of people don't, is I don't put a weight above my jig and I use I use four pound lines. So that little bit of jig sinks a lot faster with four pound line. And I feel like if I present That jig to a fish without a weight above it and a real light setup, I'm getting more bites than if I'm using bigger jigs and big weights and all that. So I I'm kind of a finesse fisherman. I like to use a little bit of stuff and real light line, but you know, I still like the 13 to 15 foot poles. Okay. Awesome. ⁓ moving on, ⁓ Wesley, how drastically do your tactics on Darbone change between a hot October versus when the first true Kufront finally resets the lake. I'm going I'm gonna use the same baits. Nothing really changes. What's gonna change is your fish are gonna become more aggressive. And when they become more aggressive, it just makes them easier to catch. But I'm not really gonna change my setup much. I use that same setup every lake I go to, everywhere, all around the state. I catch fish on it everywhere. So that that's my basic setup wherever I'm fishing at. If if it's not broken, don't fix it, right? Amen. Okay. Awesome. Okay, ⁓ let me ask you this. Do you how heavily do do you lean on ⁓ live scope? ⁓ use that's that that's that's the we ⁓ one hundred percent. Use it. That's how we find every fish we catch and we use it all day, the every day during the time we're fishing. Okay. Let me ask you this now. Let me ask you this now. For someone that's never used live scope, how do you determine bait fish on the monitor? They look like a cloud. They just look like a cloud. They look like a big wad of what you would think if you took a school of bait fish and we're looking at them like outside the water. That's exactly what they look like on the live scope. So do your bait fish just look like little clouds or smaller fish. One thing I like to use on the live scope is I use the grid system and when I've got my my grab scanned out at fifty foot, my grid little grid squares are two foot squares. So whenever you're looking at fish, that's how you gauge what size fish you're looking at using the LIOS scope. And that's how you can differentiate between your schools of shad, your brim, and your crappie and your bass, you know, what you're really looking to catch. Okay. All right. That makes sense. ⁓ now, Wesley, when you when you're out on the water with clients, you aren't just fishing, you're you're teaching, right? What is the biggest misconception everyday anglers have about catching trophy sacchole and w and what's the one habit they need to break to put more slabs in the boat? One of the biggest things you ever want to not do is when you throw that bait out there and you get that it comes down there and that fish notices your bait, never move it again. Always keep it above them and hold it dead still. So many people they want to pull it away from them and make them chase it. Well, these big fish, they're lazy. They don't want to chase anything. They don't have to chase stuff. There's so much stuff in these are these lakes for ⁓ to eat. They don't have to chase anything. So I see people get it down there and go to shaking it and all, and that is so much against what the what you need to do. Put that thing down there and hold it still. And then the other thing I I parp on every time you pull your jig out of the water. I don't tie loop knots, I tie a tight knot. I want my jig sitting horizontal in the water every time. So That's something I'm looking at every time I pull my jig out of the water. And between that and holding it still when the fish notices it, then you'll catch a lot more fish doing that. So you don't you don't tie loop knots at all? You you tie them tight to the jig? Okay. That's different. That's different than than a lot of people. Well, whenever your jig's sitting down there flat and you move it up and down with your rod or whatever, it it'll move up and down the water. flat like this and that's how a live minnow using his using his swim bladder that's how they move up and down the water column. When you got that loop tied and you pull up on it, that jig turns like this. And it it's just it gives it unnatural movement in my opinion. Okay. All right, Wes, you might have answered this partly, but I want to ask it ax it again just in case. ⁓ when the foul migration begins, what technique are you using to catch those heavy slabs? I'm just saying the same thing. You just you just want to ⁓ you know, just that little small jig or whenever, you know, the bigger when they really get moving, the water cools down a little bit. You get to where you can start maybe catch them on a little bit larger jig. But it's the same thing. You want to get it down there, and when you flip it out there and you watch it go on a live scope, you get down about a foot above him. And you just stop it and you stop it well above them. Cause you want to stop it far enough above them to where when they see that jig, they think it's their idea they've seen it. When you drop it right down there and drop it on them and hit them with it, oftentimes that spooks them because they didn't see it to begin with. So you want to get down there close enough to them to where they when they see it, they're like, ⁓ there's something I can go eat, and then they'll go eat it. So you just need to get it, you know, get good with your live scope and being able to place that jig. Right down there with the fish, hold it up above him and let him come sit, let him come do his thing. Okay. Wesley, in full blown fall transition mode and the fish are feeding aggressively, do you upside to bigger s snacky lures to match the bait fish profile of the local shad, or do you stick to the standard finesse jigs? I generally always stick to the little jig, 'cause I feel like I'm getting bites on a small jig that you might not get on a big jig. There's an old analogy and it's been told before that If you go to a steak, you self, you go to a steak restaurant, eat a big old meal, and after that they bring you a big old piece of cake. A lot of times you're not gonna want to eat that piece of cake. And you're trying to give him something else that's too big to eat. Now, if I was the same thing, I was able to give you a a Hershey's kiss, you're gonna eat that every time. So by giving these fish, you know, they're opportunistic feeders. By giving them that little small bait, natural looking bait, you get that bow down there by ⁓ It is really hard for them to turn that down. And you're gonna catch more fish by using smaller jigs just because that they they're opportun opportunistic predators. They're always gonna eat that little bait, even they'll they'll find somewhere in their gut to put it, even though if it's full of shad. Whereas I feel oftentimes that bigger bait, they're not gonna eat it maybe because they're so full. Okay. All right. Wesley, for a crappy angler fishing darbone for the first time, what advice would you give them to put some slabs in the boat? ⁓ go to go like say I go I like to fish like Stowe Creek. You can go to Stowe Creek. You can come out, you can where it Stowe Creek comes into the channel, you can get into Stowe Creek right there. There's almost always fish right there, and you can start fishing towards the back of the creek. You can do the same thing at Bear Creek, Dozer Point. Any of these places where it's creeks, the creek channels run off the lake. You can get into those secondary creek channels, and you're going to start finding fish. Start right out by the channel and then start heading on back in there, and you're going to find some fish. So that's what I'm looking for in the fall. You're looking for the fish coming out of these shallow areas. They've been in the summer and been in the early fall. They're starting to transition more towards the channels. So they're gonna use those creeks as like highways. So somewhere on that creek they're gonna be. So you maybe start deep and go shallow or go up shallow and start deep, but you're running to them somewhere. Okay. All right. ⁓ Wesley, here's the the last question, man. ⁓ where can the Sacolay Talk community follow your catches and book a trip with you? ⁓ you can find me on Facebook on Wesley Miller or Big Sasquatch Outdoors and get with me for a trip. My only issue with my trips these days is I'm staying booked out six, eight months in in advance. So when somebody calls me, you really have to look way out there, maybe even next year to get a date. So I'm I'm I'm blessed for the fact that I'm I'm as busy as I am, but that's where we're at right now as far as booking trips. Okay. Well, that's that's not necessarily a bad thing. No, it's a blessing for me. Well, Wesley, thank you so much for ⁓ for joining the show. I do appreciate it. And ⁓ and thank you for sharing your knowledge with our listeners today. And ⁓ Yes sir. Yes, sir, and thank you for having me. Okay. ⁓ yeah I I'm looking for ⁓ for guys like yourself to give me reports. So ⁓ maybe we can ⁓ we can talk again and ⁓ you can give me some fishing reports. Sure. Okay. All right. Thank you, man. I'll talk to you soon. All right, sounds great. And that wraps up this week's slab bites. A huge thank you to Wesley Miller for coming on and sharing those incredible insights. If you want to put more slabs in the boat. Make sure to take Wesley's advice to heart next time you hit the water. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and drop a comment below to let us know your favorite takeaway from today's segment. Until next time, tight lines, keep your bait wet, and we'll catch you on the next episode of Sackolate Talk. Alright y'all, now that Wesley has given us the exact map to find where those false Sackalae are staging, the next question is Why are you gonna drop down there to make them bite? To figure that out, we are heading down to Opalousis, Louisiana to talk to a man whose custom creations are legendary for holding up to a hundred fish without falling apart. He is the mastermind behind Wager Baits. Let's welcome Ross Wager to Sackley Talk. Ross, welcome to the show. Cypress knees rise where the shadows Mossangs low like a ghostly shark. Soft and pale. My steps down on whiskey trail. Chasing dreams in the Bayoufi. Sing deep where the cattail sway Freedom neath the cypress tree. A shotgun crack, a hound sharp bark. Welcome back to Sackolate Talk. I'm Dwayne Turner. It's time for our favorite segment. The jig is up, where we stop guessing and start catching. Today we are with the mastermind behind Wager Bates, Ross Wager. We are breaking down the exact colors, profiles, and presentation styles you need to trick those stubborn, heavy slabs into biting. ⁓ Whether you are vertical jigging or casting, get ready to upgrade your tackle box. Let's get right into it with Ross from Wager Bates. Welcome to the show, Ross. Hello, how y'all doing? I'm doing great, man. Got it phone. Ross, let's get right into it. The first question, ⁓ Ross, what motivated you to start wager baits and what gap was you trying to fill for Angress? ⁓ for the most part, it was about about 10 years ago, 11 years ago. ⁓ my dad was tying, hand tying crappie jigs, ⁓ sakolade jigs. And ⁓ I went over one day and he was kind of showing it and I I was like, man, can I try? And he was like, sure. So I tried. I liked it. I told him I was like, look, why don't you start it as a business? And he was like, I'm not trying to do a business and this and that and then whatever. So I was all right. So after that, he gave me advice to use to try out and a couple materials here and there. Came home, started messing around with it, took some pictures, posted it up on Facebook, instantly started getting messages, instantly started getting people wanting the product. So I said, All right, well, let's go ahead and try to start making this into something and one thing led to another. Next thing I know, I had ⁓ started a business and became L L C and ended up with ⁓ a few years later ended up with my own twelve by twenty four shop and doing this full time. Man, that that is awesome, man. Do do so you really get satisfaction from making making your custom handmade jigs, right? Absolutely. Yeah. ⁓ little backstory. When I was in high school and ⁓ childhood, I was always a big artist. I love to draw, love to design stuff, and this kind of like substitutes that. So I can literally with my hands make a product and that it'll hold up to over three to four hundred fish. And not fall apart. And then see the reactions from my customers telling me, you know, how well it performs, how well it holds up, the amount of fish they caught on it. You know, you get to see the smiles on their faces, you know, and the pictures, and just it's just an amazing feeling and accomplishment to be able to provide something to an angler that can hold up, it's quality made and it's not made from across the pond. So that yeah, that's There's no better there's no better feeling than that, man, to get satisfaction that you have a product that that people really enjoyed. And like you said, it's made not only made in USA, but made in Louisiana. Absolutely. Absolutely. Ross, in in your opinion, what advantage does a custom hand-tied jig that you that you make have over ⁓ plastic style jigs? Well, I feel like they kind of work hand in hand because you know you have you have live bait that people can catch on, and then there's days that live bait don't work. And then you have soft plastics that do the same thing. Some days they work, some days they don't work. And then you got a hand tied jig that does the exact same same thing. It works and then it don't work. But what's really nice about a hand tie jig is is the action in the water. You know, I use marabou feathers for the tails, sometimes silicone skirts, and the action is hands down non-comparable to anything else that I've ever seen. ⁓ it flows really nice in the water. And the fact that you have like a custom made product. You can literally take your favorite plastic, soft plastic col product, and have a hand tied product made to match that same color. And then you can go fishing, and instead of burning through, let's say, a whole pack of plastics and a fishing tip, you find the color the fish want, swap over to the matching hand tied product, and then you can mop them up for the rest of the day. And you don't go through so many products. You know, you can't always find Every color soft plastic and a hand-tied jig from a big box brand store. You're gonna find your generic colors, and that's pretty much it. So having somebody that can sit down and custom make it to your specifications, which we offer 25 colors automatically on the website. We can make it specifically to your favorite color that you want and how you want it. So so basically you can use the plastics to say, like search for them. And once you find them, then you can switch to the ⁓ you can switch to your custom A jigs and like you said, catch them all day long without having to change plastics that that rip and tear and and so forth, right? Absolutely. You can literally I tell a lot of my customers that are like kind of new to hand ties, I recommend going out with two rods. You have a rod for your soft plastics and you have a rod for your hand ties. Take your soft plastic rod, figure out the color they want, you know, just taking taking them off the jig head, putting them back on. And then once you find that color, go to your hand tied box, find the color that matches it the best, put it on, and go to work. Ross, got a question that our listeners want to want to know about. From the second you you set the jig head on the vise, what is your process to making the custom hand tie jig from start to finish? All right. Well, once you once you get the jig head and the vise, you're going to want to take your tying thread, which I use a 210 denier, and I lay down my initial wraps on the shank of the hook. And then after that, I use whatever tail material I wanna use, whether it's feathers, silicone, some people use hair, you know, it doesn't matter. ⁓ you're gonna you're gonna figure out the length you want it, you're gonna cut it, you're gonna put it on the hook, you're gonna tie it up, and then you're gonna put the body material on or any kind of flash material. And then once you get it all the way fully tied up and wound up, you're gonna tie it off behind the head, you want a whip finish knot, and it's pretty, it's pretty simple. It's it's easier said than done, but once you once you get you know get going and you've done it quite a few times, I've done it with my eyes closed sometimes. So Right. How many jigs I know you c you probably can't estimate, but how many jigs you think you've made in your ⁓ in your lifetime? ⁓ in ten years that I've been doing this, if I had to guess, I I'd say several ten thousands of them. ⁓ I was I was I was thinking you probably may Yeah. I I've kind of got got it down to a science as far as like time wise to tying them. So depending on the styles, you know, we do some with three feathers where you have a wing behind the head and you have two colors of the tail or just a single tail color. ⁓ we can knock ⁓ out as fast as about forty five seconds to fifty seconds when we're really ⁓ wow. Really really hustling at the desk ⁓ all the way up to about a minute, twenty seconds. I have a personal question. This one's this is coming from me actually. It's this is for my information. I've always fished with plastic style jigs. I want to build a custom hand-tied box. What are three to five jigs I need to have on the boat for ⁓ catching Sakalay? ⁓ that's easy one. I would recommend going with a monkey milk or a shad pattern. We have several to choose from ⁓ on the on the website. As a matter of fact. ⁓ this one right here is our number ⁓ twenty four. ⁓ no, I'm sorry, this one's ⁓ twenty twenty-eight. So this one's a good shad pattern for those sunny days. It shows a lot of flash in the in the water. Right. ⁓ we also have our Toledo Bend favorite, which is our bluegrass. We actually have a guy that ⁓ fishes this on Toledo Bin and it's his number one color that he throws all day between that monkey milk and ⁓ Cajun Cricket. So I would I would recommend probably the bluegrass, the monkey milk, or that number twenty eight. And ⁓ you can do Cajun Cricket would probably be another good choice for for muddy water. Here in Louisiana, we have a lot of muddy water areas. More north you have a lot of clear water. So, you know, just that those three right here would would would I fish I fish a lot in the chat fly sp I fish a lot in the chat fly spillway. So would those colors you just showed me, would that would those work in the in the chaflaya? Absolutely. Yeah. Monkey Mug for Shore, Cajun Cricket, ⁓ that number twenty-eight color, bluegrass would work just as well because it's got that shark trees chartreuse green in it. And Henderson loves short roots. Okay. Awesome. Okay, how has interacting directly with the fishing community impacted the way you design or test new product lines? ⁓ I mean, we usually ⁓ we'll put it out there on social media if we have something new and I'll try to get a feel for people to see what they think, how they like it, you know, what they might change. ⁓ besides that, we have pro staffers that we have on our team that will send out product or, you know, kind of get a feel from them what they think. And ⁓ whenever I get a chance to actually go test out products I do. ⁓ but yeah, I mean that's that's the three main ways of trying to see what works and what doesn't work is getting my pro staff to use it, ⁓ throwing out a sample on the on the social media to see what they think and you know, testing it personally. Okay. Now ⁓ have you noticed a change in what sacklay anglers look for in a jig such as weight or profile changes since live scoping fishing has become popular? ⁓ man, live scope, that's a that's one of those that's one of those things that's that's got a big controversy right now in the fishing industry. it just depends on where you're at. I find that a local a lot of different areas depending on water depth and how people like to fish. Some like a heavyweight, some like a lightweight. ⁓ you know, some people like to vertical jig, some like to use a cork. ⁓ it it it really all comes down to personal preference with the angler. ⁓ there's so many different people with so many different ways of doing things that it's it's kind of hard to give like a definite answer to that. But I I would say a sixteenth ounce is a good starting point because you can control it vertical jigging, how fast it falls. ⁓ you know, if not you'd have to add weight to it. So it it's just you don't sometimes you don't want it to fall too fast. It just depends on how deep your fish is. in the area. Now, do you fish these? Like I said, I've always fished with ⁓ the plastic sound jigs. Do you fit do you like for vertical jigging, do you fish them any differently than than a plastic soil jig? Or is there a different technique that that you should use for Not not really. No. As long as you're using some sort of a loop knot. ⁓ because you want to keep that you want to keep that jig, you know, horizontal in the water. Yeah, that's they don't want it to be that's the only kind of knot I tie. Absolutely, absolutely. Now we do offer on the website, we do offer what's called the easy snap. ⁓ it allows anglers to tie their line directly to that, and then they can literally clip their their jigs off and on their line instead of having to constantly untie and retie. ⁓ so what's nice about it is is it's it automatically has a loop, so it gives you that loop knot presentation in the water. ⁓ And it makes it a whole lot easier for people to just kinda change out of color on the fly instead of just having to retie every time. Yeah. That makes sense. Now we we may have covered this on s on some of the stuff, but I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and ask you this this one again. ⁓ looking ahead, what are some of the new profiles or secret projects you are working on that we can look forward to? I mean, most people might not know this, but we we do more than just ⁓ sockolate jigs. I mean, we do ⁓ bluegill jigs, which we hand tie bluegill jigs. We're one of the only companies that actually hand tie the bluegill products. ⁓ and then we also have bass fishing products too. So we do a lot of hand-tie bass jigs, ⁓ bladed jigs like AK chatterbait style. So we just released a new ⁓ chatterbait style bladed jig called the Calcutta. ⁓ for bass fishing. As far as Sakhalate fishing goes, ⁓ we really really not really working on anything new at the moment. It's kind of more of a tried and true product that we have. And if it's not broken, don't fix it. Right. What does it mean to you when local tournament anglers or guys put your hand tie jigs on the lines and when money and reputation is on the line? What does it mean to you? ⁓ it means a personal achievement. You know, I've I've been able to create something that someone can can use to to change their life or, you know, make a difference in their community. You know, we have several guides that we we use on a underneath our name. ⁓ in several different areas around the United States. ⁓ one of ⁓ is in Toledo Ben. His name is Gerald Mitchell. And every time he posts pictures of his clients on his boats after using our products and seeing the fish they caught, it it it really means a lot to me. You know, it puts a smile on my face, you know, because it's like they caught something that I actually tied at my desk. You know, I didn't I didn't order it and then repackage it and then send it off, you know. So it's it's more personal. It's more of a personal feeling for me. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Ross, thank you so much for joining the show, man. ⁓ I really do appreciate you giving us f a few minutes and sharing your your knowledge ⁓ with our listeners. Absolutely. I've got one more thing for you. All right. Where can where can the Sackolade Talk community find your baits and stay connected with Wager Baits? Absolutely. So you can find us on all social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. We have our website, wagerbaits.com. ⁓ if you don't know how to, you know, find it, just go to Google, type in wagerbaits, and you'll find us. It'll pull it up. ⁓ one other thing that you can do is when you go to our website, you can actually find the store locator section and you can find a store near you if we have one near you, and you can go there and support the local community in your area by purchasing from the from that store. So we have like three to four stores in Louisiana, one in Texas. And several in other states. So so Ross, I I live in central Central Louisiana, just outside of Baton Rouge. Is there a is there is there a store close to me? Or should I just order up part? Well we're working on trying to get some stores around the Baton Rouge area. The closest one to you would be ⁓ probably I'd say Port Barry. and the base and land in in Henderson. Okay. ⁓ yeah. So when I go when I go go there I can I I can get my base there 'cause I ⁓ I go I go to Miller's Lake. I pass through Port Bear. I go to Miller's Lake and I f I fish Henderson also. Absolutely. Yeah. No matter if you're on 190, we have a store. And if you're on I 10, we have a store. And we're looking to try to get into a few more places and stuff as well. So ⁓ yeah, like I said, just if you go to our website, we have a store locator tab. Click on it, it'll show up all of our stores that we currently sell to, and and you can go there and find products. Okay, Ross. Thank you, man. I appreciate you jumping on with us. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much. You're welcome. All right. Later. Later. And that wraps up this edition of The Jig Is Up. A huge thanks to Ross at Wager Baits for coming on and dropping his knowledge on us today. Now it's time to take those baits. Hit the water and go catch some massive slaths. Until next time, I'm Dwayne Turner. Keep your lines tight and your jigs dancing. That's a wrap-up for this week's episode of Sacolade Talk. A huge shout out to Wesley Miller from Big Sash Wash Outdoors and Ross Wager with Wager Baits for the Jig Is Up segment. Don't let that first temperature drop scare you off track, those lake darbone shad. Dial in your loot presentations and go get those heavy slab bites. If you love this week's episode, subscribe to Sacklay Talk on YouTube right now and leave us a five-star review on Apple and Spotify. Until next time, Tightlines, and we'll see you on the Bayou. ⁓ Knees rise where the shadows My steps down on whiskey trail.