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Topwater during a September Sunrise ~ A-Jay

An accurate scale ruined a good, long run of "five pounders."

Caught a bunch of these yesterday. Not exactly a hawg but it's who was with me that matters. Drop shotting humps on ouachita can be so much fun. First time I went fishing just for fun in a while had a blast and so did he.

My son broke yet another reel this summer so we headed to Dick's to get him a replacement. While there I noticed a Lew's American Hero baitcaster on sale for $69 and was tempted. Then I saw that Dick's had a promotion to get $20 off when you spend $100 and they had a $10 off flash sale. I couldn't resits. I set it up with some 20lb Spiderwire braid and my son and I headed off to Sun City Hilton Head to do some fishing for the afternoon. It was a little breezy out and within 15 casts I bird nested the reel so I went back to my spinning reel for a while. We decided to take my dad's golf cart and try some other lagoons and before we left I cut out the bird's nest on the baitcaster and was determined to give it another go. We hit a few more lagoons but had no luck. The good news is that it was pretty easy to get the hang of the baitcaster. I kept reducing the brakes and within an hour or so I was close to free spool and could bomb some casts when needed. I got the occasional loop in the line but no bird's nests. I'm sure I'll have my fair share of those in the future. The hardest part is getting used to the right hand retrieve. My cadence is really off trying to reel with my right hand even though that's my dominant hand. And holding the pole in my left hand seems odd as well. It just feels uncomfortable right now. This Lew's MH 6'6" rod is also a lot different than my 6'6" MH Ugly Stick. I liked the baitcaster, but everything felt "off". I hadn't had a bite yet and was wondering what it would be like to land a fish on this new setup. But as the sun went down I got my chance to find out. I was throwing a Rat-L-Trap lipless crank and didn't even feel the bite. I was casting far out from the bank and the line got heavy. About halfway in I was dragging the fish on the surface. It turned out to be a crappie just under two pounds. Throwing the Rat-L-Trap turned out to be a good idea because it helped me get a better feel for this new rod. The thump-thump-thump as I raised the bait felt a little more pronounced. It was also easier to feel when I hit the bottom as well as the slight "tick" when a fish bumped the bait. Then something slammed the bait and it felt pretty big. As I'm trying to reel in a decent sized fish, trying to get used to holding the rod in my left hand, trying to get used to fighting a fish reeling in with my right hand, and trying to adjust the drag, the nearby 10 foot gator takes note of the action and starts cruising over. As it turns out this fish wanted to fight. He makes a run away from the shore but lucky for me away from the direction of the alligator. I finally started gaining some ground on him and he gave me a scare when I got him in close and he paralleled the bank in the direction of the gator but luckily the alligator had backed off and stopped 15 feet from shore. It wasn't as big as I initially thought while I was landing it but still tipped the scales at 4.5 pounds. All in all, it was a good day for my first day with a baitcaster. I threw a lot of different baits with it today and overall it felt pretty good although I wonder if I should have picked up a left hand retrieve instead. Right now it just feels weird holding the rod in the left and reeling with the right. I like the feel of the Lew's American Hero rod and it seems to offer a lot more sensitivity than my MH Ugly Stick. I have no doubt this will be my primary rod even though I love my Pfleuger President spinning reel. And suddenly I'm a two rod guy. Next thing you know I'll have eight!

Soooo today I got to go out this morning, 5:30 am, slight wind.. sun has barely started to come up.. pick up my new cavitrons and booyah buzzbait and start slinging them.. well I had 3 blow ups and 3 fish all pretty good!(idk what it is about buzzbait but they just produce big fish) .. so I keep following the weedline with this random tree sticking out, of course I cast over and BOOM! I thought a shark hit it.. got hooked up but it buried itself in the weeds and lost it... so I keep tossing the buzzbait and what do you know he strikes again! This time no hookup.. I tried for another 15 minutes but nothing. So I keep fishing, it's been about an hour now and I decide to try once more for that fish.. I changed buzzbaita for a different sound and omg! Came flying out of the water a good foot and smashes back in! This time I know she is hooked up good .. after a few minute battle this 4 1/2 pound beauty comes out.

Cirrhosis. As you can see from my catch. Alcoholism runs rampant in the underwater community.

Went out to a buddy's cabin out by the cape for a few days and hooooooooooooooooooooly smokes... My shoulders are SHOT. I don't think I've ever seen so much fishing action in a week as I just saw in a couple days. Surf casting spooks, chunking with fish finder rigs, jigging out on the boat... You name it, the fish were slammin' em. Just the sheer number of the fish, the ferocity they strike with and the fight they put up in heavy surf was unreal. I've been fishing in salt before, but NOTHING like that. Black Bass fish fry tonight with the crew, couldn't think of a better cap to my fishing season, as it's not panic time at work and I likely won;t see another day off until after XMas. I guess my only question is who wants to buy a bunch of freshwater bass fishing gear to fund a Van Staal? Lol

I've never posted results on here, but this old man is kinda proud of himself.. This past weekend I was fortunate enough to win the 2017 Gator Div BFL Championship! It was a long time coming but feels good to check something off my bucket list Mike

Hello everyone! I just wanted to share this picture. My son just turned two and I’m beginning to introduce him to the art of fishing. I got him a bass fishing toy and so far he loves it. I can’t thank all of you enough for the information on this site. It has helped me to become a better fisherman and I look forward to passing what I’ve learned on to my son. Tight lines everyone!

· Got back yesterday from our annual end of September, Blue Mountain Lake vacation trip. I fished 5 of the seven days I was there, each day in the afternoon between 1 pm and 5 pm in various area lakes. Spent the morning hiking and doing things with my wife and then in the afternoon after fishing and having dinner went to the swamp that is called Lake Durant for top water. I took 4 set ups - all spinning. As much as I like my new Mojo bass rod and some of my longer lighter set ups, I took more durable, shorter rigs as follows: 2 Pflueger President 6' combos; one with 6# PLine and one with 15# braid and 8# floro leader. Note that PLine is tough, tough line. 1 6'9" medium Veritas with Mitchell 300 pro reel with 30# braid used for the Booyah Pad Crasher Jr. with a Lake Fork Trailer hook 1 Okuma SST 6'6" 2 pc. ultralight with a Pflueger Supreme reel with 10# braid and 6# floro - rigged with a 1/16oz. VMC mooneye jig and 1.5" Crappie Magnet It was a great week. Caught at least 2 - 3 dozen fish each day I located some areas where there were rocks/boulders next to the shore and in the water and fallen down trees along with sparse weeds where I was catching SMB on almost every cast. On the 6# PLine, I was using a 1/15 oz. Z man Shroom jig head along with a 2.75" TRD (what do you call this? LOL) this was working so well that I switched colors several times just for kicks - note that pink and coppertruse did not work so good there. I hooked into dozens of SMB each day doing this. Also, the biggest LMB were caught this way. I also used T rigged weightless senkos and Owner ultra shakey head jigs with GY mini craws in the weedy areas, however, I had so much luck with the TRDs that I stuck to using that 90% of the time. I also took all sorts of other lures - spoons, crankbaits, chatterbaits, spinners, etc. which I never used. Occasionally I would play with my ultra light on the outside of fall downs near the weeds and catch perch and sunfish on almost every cast. The topwater bite wasn't too good until near the last day. I caught only one at the end of each day (including a bluegill - which I will post on the other species thread). On the Saturday before we left, the last hour was magical, I hooked up with 6 LMB on the frog. Most of the SMB that I caught were on the smaller side maybe 1# or less, although several were close to 2#. I caught some really great LMB, four which were over 3# and two of those were in the 4+# range. I have never weighed anything besides a salmon, so these are just guesses; but the big LMB were very impressive especially coming in the ADKs. I have attached some pictures from a really great trip. One is from the top of Castle Rock looking over Blue Mountain Lake toward lake Durant, one was taken by my wife with her Ipad of me on Lake Durant and the rest were taken by me which may not be the greatest since I had my little camera in hand at the same time I was holding a fish or reeling one in. Hope you enjoy these.

Sitting in a line of traffic at the moment, trying to get to the lake.

While we're talking Keitechs...this will prolong the life of your baits.

Seems to me you'd be better off adding a chain saw to your list of must haves.

Getting way up the creek yesterday.

Anyone following me around has accrued a nice collection. This weekend, while trying to impress a hot bikini clad chick in another boat, I threw. WP into a tree. Being embarrassed, I told a kid it was his if he wanted to climb. He did!

Ya ever try to cast a putter??? It's an ugly sight!

Any Lures with a Perfect Record? Nope .

Is that thing robotic and does it really bite? If so I need one. Errr, for my son.

I can't speak for downsizing the Whopper Plopper as I haven't picked up any, but I can tell you that going from a Strike King Sexy Dawg to a Sexy Dawg Jr. did help me land more and bigger smallmouth. It also made unhooking a lot easier as I didn't have to worry about getting a treble hook stuck in my hand from a flailing smallmouth.

There's gotta be a 1001 uses for toothpicks when fishing.

I've been kayak fishing for about 3 years in a cheap $200 pelican from Academy. It wasn't stable at all but did the job and was super light. Recently I bought the Tamarack Angler 120 from Walmart (I know) and I really love it. It was $215 WITH a paddle. I bought that, use my upgraded paddle, and bought a stadium seat from Amazon that I put on it. The thing is super cheap and I really can't imagine a more expensive kayak being worth the extra money. I can't stand in it but it is plenty stable for long casts and hard hooksets. At $215 I don't mind dragging it across gravel etc. Still light enough to easily throw in the back of my truck and carry down to water access.

Thank you for the post @J Francho. Lately I've been super gluing them onto jig heads with mixed results. The toothpick seems much simpler.

Ha-ha, yup! I much prefer my "hand scale"...

Thats what I say too .

Nope. Pop-rs aren't exactly super finely balanced, so a little more or less weight in the hooks isn't noticeable.

http://www.chatillon-scales.com/products/handheld-scales/in-series-fish-and-game-linear-handheld-scales These are great, accurate scales.

3.8" is going to be your standard size but you can go bigger or smaller as the situation dictates.

If you begin to whine about how much a fishing trip cost then the sport is not for you, go find another hobby like watching paint dry ( of course you can always whine about how much half a gal of paint cost ).

Rich F, You right on target. Before, A guy had to have decent job, 3 weeks vacation and a dream. Now he needs truthfully, a great job o, 5 weeks vacation (which is rare) and a dream. And also some angling ability in both cases. Also before IMHO, a guy had to live geographically near the Opens to be competitive. Now, a SE or midwest angler has the advantage. It's possible a Northern angler can be competitive but he is at a financial disadvantage when trying to reach the Big O in FL. Also a Western angler doesn't stand a chance. It would take him days to get to ANY of the scheduled events. Why BASS doesn't have a Western division is beyond me. It's simple. Divide the country in 4 or 5 sections and have a championship if you want . maybe add a few Classic for the additional Opens. I don't this format will last long. Also why do Elites get to fish the Opens anyway? I view the Opens as the Minor leagues and the Elites as the Majors. Open guys can't just jump in elite's They have to earn their way in. Elite's shouldn't be able to jump down a level just so they can have a shot at the Classic because they didn't qualify.

Thanks tom. That is a big bass. Maybe one day I will catch one that big. I sent pics pics to the dept of wildlife. If they answer I will post it. If they show up here in haz mat suits. It may be awhile before I post.

Heck No. A-Jay

Yes - I fish the 2 smallest Finger Lakes frequently. Learned how to bass fish here by applying what I learned on this site and trying different things. I don't use any electronics and am still working away at learning. These little lakes are a grind at times, but to me they are challenging and fun.

Only lure I had with a perfect record was a lunkerhunt kraken popper. Only perfect because on the first cast I hooked a nice smallmouth and my line broke. So it was 1 for 1

The liver, you say? What do you expect? He's been drinking his whole life.

This pic from the summer of 2013 is one of the last times that my Dad went fishing after he got sick. He bought my daughter the UL rig he is holding, and wanted to show her how to use it.

The fishing has been pretty dismal lately, but everything changed today. I only had 1hr 15minutes, one of those unplanned trips where I just hoped to set a couple hooks and relieve some stress. I started out fishing the shallows for the first half hour like the green book says, but with only two bass to show for it I moved offshore for the last 45 minutes. Boy I'm glad I did. It was completely insane, with 38 bass being caught in the 45 minutes left. That's averaging a bass every minute and ten seconds or something like that, I barely had time to start the retrieve before I got bit. Hands down the most bass I have ever caught in 45 minutes, I got one almost every cast with one stretch going nine bass in nine casts. The school of 14-17 inch bass had moved up onto breaks in 10-12 feet of water, particularly one brush pile set on a break line off of a point. I fished that same brushpile the entire time, just slowly circling around it to keep showing them different angles. Had to leave em biting, there's no way to know how long that movement would have lasted but I would have liked a crack at breaking 100 bass. Shaky heads caught all of them, but I think they would have hit just about anything I threw at them. Not a monster limit, but almost all of them were over 14 and about 20 were over 15 inches, with the largest going about 17.5". And this is on a lake that hasn't had a limit weighed in a tournament for over a month and a half!

Kayaking the Susquehanna sunday with 2 friends

we were camping down at the shore this weekend...

Though the belly isn't as big as @A-Jay's pb from the other day, this little guy sure put on the feedbag over the last few days...lol The structure was a rock finger between a point and an island with current coming across it from left to right, and then finally going over a small dam a little ways downstream. Caught a whole bunch tonight on the Strike King KVD 2 Hook Jerkbait in ayu pattern and the old reliable, the Rapala Shadow Rap in yellow perch pattern.

caught this one this pm on a homemade frog sorry for the poor pic casting left handed and trying to take a pic with my junk right hand is a real pain forgot the pic of the frog I caught a couple pounders after the one pictured

I went out the other morning trying to get back on a top water bite. After not getting bit on the plopper and a buzz bait, I decided to pick up the pompadour and see what happened. On my third cast, I got my first pompadour fish when this guy crushed it like he was a fish twice his size. Cut him loose, and picked up the senko and threw it in the same general area and felt that familiar tick. I set the hook and battled this chunk to the boat...

The TSD sale got me to give the Hippy Rat a try; Took it out this morning and felt a bit silly, until I got a blow up. I missed the hookset but I buckled down and keep casting around the same area. A few casts later the rat got smashed. I was delighted that the rat worked and kept casting around the same area, about 10 more casts then this guy hit; My scale battery picked that moment to die, but he was a bit smaller than the first one. I was throwing the rat on a Fred's Magic Stick and it felt really overpowered. The rod is only rated for 2oz, but it throws a 2oz Huddgill perfectly, so I was surprised at how hard it was to cast the rat. I can bomb it out there, but any kind of close range lob was very awkward and inaccurate. I bought the Fred's as a frog rod, but I have been throwing big baits with it far more often, so I might look at replacing it with something more powerful and finding a new frog solution.

Well, we finally got power back and I finished my power pole install. After trying many possibilities, I had to lose half of a dry storage box to mount the pumps. Went ahead and added a master cut off safety switch too.

I thought this was a fun thread, so I'll bump it up with my find from yesterday: I added new split rings and trebles and she's ready to go again. Usually the lures I've found were better off lost anyway, so this was a real surprise.

And the fish did trembled in fear, knowing that the small lakes and streams hidden deep in the forest were no longer safe.Yes little fishies, be afraid, be very afraid.

KVD sexy dawg jr., my new mostist favoriteist lure of the year.

If I am fortunate to be catching fish and someone asks, I will try to point them in the right direction. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't that the reason for this forum?

That had to be rough. I know I was tired out after a day floating downstream with a short paddle.

Watermelon Senko for my wife. As for me...I'm a skunk farmer! Plenty of skunks in my neck of the woods. ?

I would love to find a boat that long and barrow. Do you have pictures of it? Personally, a small jon is my dream vessel, with a trolling motor. I will toss it in the bed of the Ranger and fish I disagree off. I think, given your circumstances, a wide canoe like the new Wenonah Fisherman would work well or if a canoe is a non-starter, maybe a 1248 jon.