> That’s not something that most anglers can do…I know that. It’s too expensive….

> The solution to replacing your hooks is to keep a good file handy and touch up your points throughout the day. …I will suggest you practice before the next time you go fishing. It’s that important.

> Something else I do is bend the point out a few degrees — not much, just a little — on every single point hook in my box. This will radically increase your hooksets.

> “A lot goes through your mind when you’re fishing with a little-bitty hook and 8-lb test line.”

> …in 2006…”I was in Japanese angler Shinichi Fukae’s boat at Beaver Lake. What immediately struck me were Fukae’s methods, which mirrored the finesse tactics my friends and I had adopted back in KS. Using a 3/32-oz jig and shad-style worm, Fukae retrieved the lure a few inches off bottom, reeling and shaking as it went along.”

> “A lot of folks think finesse bass fishing started in CA, on those deep clear reservoirs, back in the 1970s and 80s. Actually, in the 1950s, a Kansas City angler named Chuck Woods was already fishing a soft lure called the Beetle on a spinning rod. Woods designed the Beetle, Beetle Spin and Puddle Jumper…and also created the first TX-rigged jigworm.

> “Guido Hibdon…regularly wielded a spinning rod rigged with a light jighead and soft-plastic bait long before western anglers. The first time Midwest finesse met western waters was when Drew Reese fished the first ever (1971) Bassmaster Classic at Lake Mead. Reese finished in 7th…fishing a jig-worm and Beetle Spin.

> “…during a 1980s trip to Mille Lacs, MN, Ron Lindner put a Gopher mushroom jighead in my hands. I was amazed by how you could drag this jig over rocky terrain and rarely get hung up.

> “…a no-feel retrieve. Most anglers prefer to fish a jig so they’re in constant contact with it…But the way we prefer to fish, if you’ve got constant contact it means you’re using too heavy of a rig.

> “…sort of let the soft ElaZtech material naturally shake, shimmy and do its thing without getting in its way too much. It sounds more complex than it really is because when coupled with the right line (Kehde prefers 15-lb braid), you immediately detect any resistance the lure encounters.

> “I know a lot of anglers think a #4 hook is too small, but to me, a bigger hook doesn’t slide through brush or vegetation nearly so well as a #4, which is almost snag-free.

> “Years before that, Gopher Tackle owner Conrad Peterson would constantly urge me to fish ‘red, red, red’ regardless of water clarity.”

> In the winter I position my boat directly over the brushpile and vertically jig it with a spoon or jig.

> …the colder the water, usually the more pauses you need [with a crankbait] because the bass are more lethargic and will follow something halfway, and when it stops in colder water they have a greater tendency to strike.

> Bass generally like high spots in the summer and creek channels in the winter.

> In winter bass avoid the current so you’ll find them holed up in the upper ends of tidal streams and creeks, far from any structure such as a sandbar that speed sup the flow.

> …cold-water bass don’t strike hard — they just sort of stop the lure. I use fluorescent line and watch for the slightest twitch….

> Winter bass are very logy and you have to work to make them notice your lure.