Nice man, what setup are you using to throw the lunker punker? It seems to be an awesome big bass bait.
Maybe you could help me plan out a big bass tactic for my pond bro. It's a neighborhood pond, water is clear to semi-clear. Lots of hydrilla-like weedbeds, possible structure also (we know of 1 rockpile). I've been wanting to throw big baits in here but the weeds are now grown up so much that topwater is almost useless. The only solution I can think of now is either using a big frog (like the spro king frog) or a big tube bait rigged texas. Help me bro, an 18lb bass was caught out of this same pond this year! My fishin buddy saw the pic. I wanna break DD this year!
Oh and sucks about the punker. Those guys are expensive!
Although the Punker do catch big fish, it also catches little fish like this one I caught this morning.
Unless I'm getting weed on every cast or every other cast, I'll still throw the topwater (punker, shellcracker, wake jr) along the weed edge or even in the middle. These bigger bait will call up fish from the deep especially if the water is clear. But by the pics you have been putting up, you seem to be doing good at that lake/pond. The only thing I could think of is up the size of your bait, use flouro (which you probably already do), and low light condition (but my friend have been proving this wrong by catching punker fish in the middle of the day when the sun is high in the sky).
My current sb setup is a Shimano Crucial swimbait rod with a Chronarch 201B loaded with 65# Sufix 832 with 25-30# mono/flouro topshot. Its not an ideal sb reel but it does the job. The gears do take a toll with the big bait. Im looking for a Curado 301 but not in a rush.