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I finally caught a couple decent largemouth the last two days. Sad to say but these are the only largemouth I can recall catching that were over 1lb since almost New Years (and they werent much over 1lb). I usually catch smallmouth white bass and drum, probably more because of how far upstream I typically fish. I also had another breakthrough in my learning curve this morning, I caught a fish with a spinnerbait. Luckily the fish hit the crap out of it so there was no guesswork, a skinny beat up smallmouth that fought like the devil. Followed him up with a deeeeeep Texas Rig largemouth, I love setting the hook with a worm down deep

The picture doesn't do this girl justice. She had a lower jawbone like a porkchop. Actually went 9 pounds, 6 ounces on the scale. I think my scale is broken. Gonna test it later.

Our nephew never gets to go fishing unless we take him, so we decided to take him and my son bridge fishing. Well it was a good night. Until last night a bluegill was it for him. He caught a 1-14, 2-4 and this 3-1. My son got a 2-5 and surprisingly enough a 3-1. Thankfully they were both exactly the same weight so there was no pouty or gloating boys, just one who was on cloud 9 and another who was pretty geeked too.

Caught this one on a zoom lizard this morning.

Went out yesterday evening and tried some new spots. Game wardens were in full effect as they talked to me at the first pond I went to. Nice guy and told me about some areas I hadn’t been to. The first pond had about 15 people already fishing at it and I caught nothing as I couldn’t hardly fish any of it. The second spot I hit was almost at dark and another game warden found me. As he was talking to me I started to see the bass hitting the top. Threw out the whopper plopper and caught the bass in the picture. Think I may of found a nice morning and late evening spot.

Incurable Diseases No Situational Awareness A-Jay

Actually I am that way. I have a basic 5 rod/reel setup that I use and a modest (by comparison) selection of lures. If you totaled all my rods and lures together I probably don't $1200.00 invested. I fish to relax and enjoy myself an learned early on that I tend to stick to a few basic lures. Most on this forum will out fish me without breaking a sweat, but I enjoy myself, that's all I care about.

Went out this morning and caught only one bass but it is my new personal best it weighed 10.52 and was 24 1/4 long and 18 1/4 girth

Details about this catch and others in "Flakes in the Sun and the Wind."

I'm now on the laptop because that post was so long and uninformative, I threw my phone at the wall. Thanks guy.

My biggest is the people who back down the ramp and they are not prepared to launch . They get out , unhook the transom straps , remove the motor brace , dig out the life jackets , put sun screen on little ones ....on Memorial day weekend with a dozen boats waiting and then the next person repeats it .

If it's anything like one of the ponds like I fished today try a frog. They normally stay calm when they're covered in weeds until they can see then its light a light switch. Almost every bass caught today came in like this.

Grandson’s 2nd birthday and first time on the boat.....guess I am going to have to start wearing a PFD...

On the water: Parents letting their kids throw rocks in the vicinity of where I'm fishing. The lack of awareness is astounding. Fishing videos: "Do you guys see that, right over there? You see that bass?" No, Scott, we can't - because you've got polarized sunglasses on and we don't. In general: It's a fishing rod, not a fishing pole. Other: It's a poe-tay-toe, not a puh-tay-tuh.

I thought a fun topic might be: What specific lure (brand and model) do you own the most of? To take it a step further, name a hard bait and a soft plastic. I'll start with what surprised me: Bill Norman Deep Little N crankbaits. I have eighteen in my box and another seven on my pegboard of spares. (I thought Spooks would win out, but when I broke it down by specific models, they came up short) For soft plastics, overwhelmingly, the 7.5in. Culprit worm takes the honors. I own way more tubes than worms, but they're divided up so no one company can take honors here. I know we've done threads on favorite lures before, but this may be an eye opener for some as it was for me. I know........Papa has too much time on his hands.

I don’t know what was going on this morning. I tried posting before coffee. I hope you see it now. Here is another pic of it.

If I don't keep it simple I become stupid. Mike

I'm not looking at it as a bother; more of an adventure & learning experience. There's a few motivating factors. While I may not categorize any singular deal as primary, collectively they're sufficient to stimulate change. A V-8 4-stroke XS, that weighs the same as a 2-stroke seems long over due. The advertised all around performance improvements as well as the redesigned size & shape of the unit is appealing to me. I want to & I can. A-Jay

Those are some goods ones. Here's 2 more; 1. The false belief that big bass are "too strong" for spinning reels. This has to be one of the biggest fallacies in bass fishing. I can tell you from my experience that a quality size 4000 spinning reel can handle trophy sized bass and land fish much more powerful than any largemouth bass alive( big snook, muskie over 40", juvenile tarpon in the 10-30 pound class,jack crevalle,etc). 2. Jet skiers, fishermen on boats, and pleasure boaters than get too close to land based fishermen.

Got the tiki torches lit, flowers planted, and a few cold ones in the cooler

Stanley needed 4 wheel drive today with the hydrilla and muck. Couldn't find any bass except in the slop. Missed more bass than I caught due to the slop factor. Ended up with 2 pickerel 2 crappie and 13 bass. Biggest was 4.5

Hit Monday late morning after the rain then about the time they started firing up, here come the rain again and shut em down, but got 17 anyway's, 5 of which were perch! This 11 3/4"r was the big boy of the week! a few 9 and 10" but none under 8". But they are on the beds heavy, I put up 117 this week with limits every day after the 2 weeks of rain ended Monday night. this weeks efforts, 9.8# scaled and filleted, finally last night ready to bag & freeze. They were all males but 6 or 8, so it's just starting!

Went out for a couple hours this evening. Very windy. The fish have been as active as can be all month. Today I lost a 4 pounder by the 4th cast or so to a jump.Caught a dink and 2 pound size fish. One on a fluke, one on a senko , and one on a pit boss. Just not biting good. So with a little daylight left, I put on a black grape 10 inch Mr Twister worm, threw it up against a pontoon boat, and the pictured fish nailed it when it hit the water. Another 5 pound 11 oz. Fish. Pic. Turned out grainy for some reason.

Amateur instructional video makers on Youtube who intro every single video with "hi guys" and then proceed to throw in "guys" "hey guys" "look guys" "what I mean guys" and any other form of "guys" to address their audience over and over and over. That and taking too long to get to the actual meat of the video. Glenn does a great job of not wasting time on what isn't necessary. We liven an age of the 1 minute attention span, some would do well to remember we are all ADD now. lol

First Smallmouth of the year! 2.14lbs from shore on a wacky rigged Dinger in Bama Bug color

Not catching fish is probably my biggest fishing related one.

1. Litter 2. Jet skis 3. Threads about pet peeves. 4. Cars that feel the need to beep or yell out the window when you're bank fishing.

I fish from a kayak and this has happened a lot recently but 1. When I’m in my kayak and everyone around me has a bass boat so they make fun of me and say I need a bigger boat but then I out fish them ? and 2. After they all see me catching fish all the bass boats hurry over and start casting lines where I am and everyone is in the same spot with no respect for me

A change of pace Thursday as a buddy and I decided to chase crappie on a local reservoir. Water was warmer than expected (82-83), with too much sun and not enough wind - lol. Started shallow but got little to show for it, so we moved out and started graphing and finally put a little something together. Ended up keeping a nice limit of crappie out of the 60 or so we caught. Also managed a nice keeper bass and channel cat, along with a few small walleye. Light traffic, and a fun trip.

Anybody I fish with climbing in my boat with muddy shoes... Fresh clean carpet in my boat and you thought it was ok to climb in with 4inches of red clay mud on your flip flops??? Haha

As a retired Enlisted man, I'm certainly grateful for my situation. I earned it. Big Money may be a relative term. Living frugally and prioritizing larger purchases helps. A-Jay

Fished the Foodland Tournament on the Big G this morning. 200 boats. Pic doesn’t do it justice. We caught short fish all day. Couldn't put anything together

Now I gotta go count jigs and spinnerbaits too???? NOT! Whose idea was this anyway?............................................Uh

The bass is so big that us mere mortals cannot see it even though the picture was posted.

Got the last bits of construction done on the boat today! Cut the hatches in the front deck without any errors, big relief. Just need to cover them now and we're pretty much ready for the start of the fishing season on June 16th.

Man, I bet Reaction Innovations is kicking themselves for not coming up with a worm called the Ribsnake just so they could write this on their bags: Ribbed for her pleasure.

Dont worry about it . I have caught fish like that also . Its not exciting but some of those bass have been huge .

For me a short pistol grip rod is better than longer rods for top-waters like Spooks and poppers . I believe that most people who use 7 foot and longer models have never tried the shorter rods for top waters and dont know what they are missing .

There is no substitute for cubic inches.

Bass time is always better than TV time. Like @WRBmentioned why only top water, not an easy thing to handle at night and those trebles hooks. Last night I came home from work at 11:30PM, went to kiss my wife and told her be right back in a jiffy. Came home an hour later with 3 keepers bass caught all on wacky Senko until that Senko got cut in half. Tonight I prepared a whole bag of Senko, Magnum Fluke, pitboss, missile bait D stroyer and big spinner bait hahaha.

Why limit the lures to top water? If the water is in the low 60’s the bass could be on beds, so T-rigged worm or lizard would work. Tom

So yesterday mid-morning my boss text me and ask if I wanna take off at about 3 pm and go fishing...that was an obvious Yes! The lake was an 1.5 hrs away and we had to make a couple stops so we were fairly late getting over there. We launch the boat and the wind is smoking it pretty fast across the lake. We start off shallow in some stick ups and I'm fishing a T-rig with nothing to show for it and then my boss spots a lure hung on a small branch sticking out of the water and he says someone grab that as we troll by. So I quickly kneel down with my worm rod still in hand and attempt to grab it as we go by. Well I'm not sure what all happened but between the wind and waves everything else I lose my balance drop my rod in the water, I grab for it but it's sinking fast so lunge out of the boat and grab it! I swing back in and look, and I kicked one of my other rods over board when I lunged out. It's about $170 crankbait setup my wife bought me for Christmas. So I end up jumping out in waist deep water and tip toeing around until (thankfully) I found it! I still haven't caught a fish yet as we come up to a place where the rip rap makes 90° turn. I'm throwing a excalibur square bill (on the setup I just retrieved) when I hook into a good one. As I get her up to the boat she keeps surging and taking some drag and when I finally see her I start freaking out because she's only hooked by 1 little rear treble hook. So they grab the net and thankfully we get her in!! So all in all it was a good evening! She weighed 4.40lbs Not sure how this got posted twice. Mods, if you wanna remove one of these that would be fine.

I like to play on the margins, and my only isssue was knot strength in the lighter pound tests, both direct and leader knots. Seems like once you get around 8lb. and above, it becomes less of an issue. Was enough of a problem that I finally moved on after about a year and a half of trying to make it work.

I know this isn’t much of a fish, but this one has been on the same freekin dock for years and nobody has been able to get her........I small victory, but a victory none the less

Still waiting for that first topwater action of this season . . . . . . A-Jay

Had the first run in with a flathead that there's been since winter time on Monday. Gave Lake all the fight he could handle.

My 2nd (7.1 pounds) and 3rd (6.81 pounds) biggest largemouth in New Hampshire came from designated trout ponds. I would highly recommend giving it a shot, even though I am not sure about the rules for night fishing. Good luck!