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Since retiring Mrs Mike and I full time in a motor home and currently we're on the east coast of Florida. We got a new neighbor last March who lives in Canada but spends the winters down here. He bought a 18ft skiff and wanted to go bass fishing for the first time. Since Stick Marsh was only 30 min from us we made a plan to go. As we were driving around I saw an area I wanted to try but there were 2 boats too close to it so we kept going as I don't like crowding someone off a spot, but I kept an eye on them. They were both throwing sq bill's but after not catching anything for 45 min they left. I told my neighbor that I have a hunch about that area and wanted to try it out for a few minutes. I set him up with a wacky rig and myself with a Fat Max ribbon tail rigged on 14# Sniper with a 3/16 tungsten weight as I immediately found that we were over a submerged grass flat in 7 fow. It must have been fairly heavy as I kept getting hung up so I tighten the drag a bit and made a few long casts keeping an eye on him as he kept reeling too fast. After about 1/2 doz casts, working that worm through the grass it just felt different. I set the hook and just knew I had something special. She started to come up but no matter what I did she jumped clean out of water and my heart rate went up. All I remember about that was my boater let out a groan and said "What do I do?? What do I do??" I yelled "reel your line in and stay where you are"!! When she got within 5 ft of us she went straight down and dived under the boat. I thought the rod was gonna break but then I remembered I tightened the drag earlier and didn't back it off! As soon as I did she came straight up and jumped again! I said get the net! but he didn't have one!! He leaned over the side and said "I'll get it". I said in as calm a voice as I could "NO! Leave her." Anyway, I lipped her in and as I was pulling her up, she kept coming out.!! She was 11.34 and the prettiest fish I ever saw. He grabbed his camera as I left mine in the truck, but before I let her go I kissed her on the head, thanked her, wished her well and she was gone. He said he would send me the pictures but 2 days later he left for Canada again. It took 2 weeks to track him down and when I did he said he would send them. Anyway, finally after 2 months of unanswered calls and sincere begging he finally did. This is the best picture but doesn't do her justice. Mike

Went to a family reunion today down in Saline, La. on Mill Creek Reservoir where my family has a camp. Got some bass fishing in. Haven't fished there since I was a kid. Had 4 bites. 2 didn't commit, 1 shook the bait at the pier and landed a 1lb 12oz beauty on my trusty ole 1/2oz breaking bream Project Z chatterbait with a green pumpkin Rage Swimmer trailer. Waded out to an area that I couldn't reach from the bank or the pier and this girl smacked it. Was great being there with family and reliving some youthful days. Can't wait to go back! ? Threw in a few pics of the lake from the foot of the pier that's in one of the photos.

Managed to go out last month to Minnesota with my brother for a few days. Our best double was this pic with his 5 and my 6. Always fun when both people in the boat have a 5+. After my wife had our 4th and FINAL kid a couple weeks ago, I was able to break away with my oldest for 2 evenings of fishing in here Fond du Lac, WI. First pic is her holding a 5 (small head but long body) and a 4. She is so precious and tough as nails. The other day, we were able to get out prior to walleye weekend and fish a local lake here. Was able to catch this 4+ and 6+ pound fish. Gave an awesome fight.

Pre-storm finesse fishing after work. Got run off in under an hour by the storms, but managed 18 fish in one pass before that happened. Fish were up a little shallower than expected. Fun stuff.

Take a little break from my Jig fishing (so far only 7 caught). Went out early morning and water look good for some whopper plopper, so I tied on and caught two. After awhile with no bite, it seemed the fish want something slower, so I switched to my faithful Zoom Magnum fluke. Caught either 3 or 4 on this one. Video add***

Went out last night with topwater bass being the goal. Had on a weightless Zoom O’l Monster in June bug. Got a bite with it but switched to a plopper for a little more noise and a better chance at short strikers and within a couple of minutes got a nice little 2-2.5 (forgot the scale, kicked myself as we were leaving in the car but figured I probably wouldn’t need it... I was wrong) Kept working around the pond just casting parallel to the bank. Very little cover in the pond and LOADS of critters. Probably 75 geese and 7 beavers in two acres of water. Came to a nice creek arm and cast deep in there and this big girl wanted the plopper. Measured 22 inches putting her around 6 lbs. Could be my new PB, But I don’t really care about that so much, just glad to have caught her. ?

Grandson commandeered the new truck this evening

Caught this bass today on a Cavitron buzzbait. As soon as it hit the water and before I could start the retrieve she was on. I don’t know what it weighs, my scale wouldn’t power on.

No, it is not a cross between a striper and a largemouth. It's called a spotted bass. Spotted bass usually (but not always) have a rough patch on their tongue.

Admiring a resident of Boston's water supply.

I caught about 10 of these monsters yesterday. Put the kayak out at the end of the rain storms and they started hitting. I'm thinking about becoming a professional dink guide!

Cause I love fishing in the spring Spinner baits with a fling I love pitching in the brush Rat-L-Traps in a rush I love that big bump When you flip by a stump I love flying across the lake The sound a 2 stroke makes I love fishing in grass Kicking bass's @$$ I love hawgs on a bed Trying to hit em on the head And I love twins! ?

Largemouth bass are not real bass , rather they are in the sunfish family . I imagine its impossible to have a striper / largemouth hybrid . I agree with Scott F .

^ Previous [June 08, 2018] WolfyBrandon

Great day on the water. All quality fish. Poppers, frogs, spinnerbaits and jigs caught them today. Caught them deep and caught them shallow. 2nd cast of the day, the MegaBass Pop Max yielded a 4-0. Got some more decent fish on frogs and spinnerbaits. PB Rock Bass slammed a jig in a laydown. And I stuck a 5 right at the end, courtesy of a @Siebert Outdoors jig and Paca Chunk trailer.

In this video Dean Rojas talks about fishing frogs in heavy vegetation as his last resort!

Sooo I have been going out as much as I can 2-3 times a week but haven’t had many good results. Been catching lots of small ones but nothing picture worthy. Finslly decided to try something new since I was getting lots of bites and finally caught my first frog fish!! I wanna keep learning how to use this and when but it was super exciting to watch them hammer it.. and seeing how we had overcast skies I brought out the buzzbait , I saw it to under , no huge explosion no big vacuum just a little tug. I thought it was a dink so I set the hook and started to reel.. well it wasn’t no dink! Drag started pulling and I finally got a decent fish little under 5 pounds but very pretty fish

I don't eat fish, so taste is irrelevant. Long way to the ocean from Kansas. If your buddies can figure out how to catch big wipers, flatheads, or blues more regularly than I can catch big bass they have something really special, bass really aren't that hard to catch. Other than catfish and carp there's not many bigger fish in Kansas. I'm an avid multispecies angler though, so I go after all of them. I fish for bass because each day is like figuring out a puzzle and I like the challenge.

I fish mostly weightless or lightly weighted soft plastics and most of the time I get 2-3 taps per hit. I find if I set on the first tap I miss more often then not and if I hold off until the second one I tend to get them. I also tend to keep my lures moving, so maybe that is a factor? I do get a lot of hits where my only indication is my spider-sense going off and then setting the hook, but the double/triple tap really seems to happen more often than not when I am fishing soft plastics.

Your problem may be as simple as replacing a $3 - $4 pawl. Pawls get a lot of wear, especially if not lubricated frequently. oe

Nice little 4 lb’er.........Spawn this year is like playing with a rubrics cube?

The fishing has been great lately. 95% of all the pike I've been catching out of the local bay have been 23 inches or less, but still a fish is a fish. Never get tired of the fight Quick story on how I got my PB from this bay a few days ago. Not overall PB, just from this bay. I pull up to my first way-point and the water is glass. This is just screaming for me to throw a topwater. I pitch out a Heddon One Knocker Spook in bone color. First cast and a big pike rolls right next to it, but won't commit. I throw a weightless super fluke as a follow-up bait and he smacks it but doesn't get hooked. I decide that it's time to get serious. If this pike is this aggressive I think I should be able to get him. I throw out an olive X-Rap on a steel leader and jerk it back to me. I start to wonder if he's going to hit it first cast or not. Oh there he is! Just dead-weight on the end. I crank him into the net with little problem. Alright not bad! Came out at 28 inches and 4.25 lbs. Then last night I wanted to try something new so I went out to the shoreline with a headlamp and netted around 6 sculpin minnows to use as bait for this morning. I threw them out on a 1/8 oz firetiger jighead and almost immediately was met with success. Ended up 4/5 on the jig and sculpins and the one I didn't land snapped me off. Felt good

Fawn I spotted yesterday bedded down in high weeds next to water

Wind was gusting yesterday, so stayed close to shore. Caught just 4 LMB on a senko and spent most of the time having fun with the ultralight setup catching dozens of good sized panfish. Couple pics of one of the many colorful sunnys, as well as a massive crappie caught near the end of the day when wind went down. A bonus was sighting a fawn laying in the high weeds close to water. Was able to paddle my kayak into about 6" of water and zoom in with my little point and shoot camera.

Went out for a few hours with my buddy yesterday. Only caught one little catfish on a crankbait. Not sure what kind of catfish, but it was pretty neat. Fished a little pond for an hour or so tonight, and caught 8 small bass on a topwater.

New PB: 5.8 lbs. Caught on a wacky rigged Senko. Also caught a 4.6 lb'er on a @Siebert Outdoors black/blue chatterbait earlier in the day.

Why? So many other tasty species out there. So many bigger ones. So many more predictable ones. Saltwater buddies give me a hard time but timing up the tides, slapping a shrimp on a 1 oz and throwing it close to a bridge pilling isn’t exactly angling to me. Man, I think I’m at the point where figuring them out is as fun as catching them. There’s magic on the water at daybreak with a top water, or junebug worm when it’s 157 degrees outside and there’s 2 waters left in the cooler but your thumb is raw from lipping so many that day. I’m not sure they get that part..so why do we fish for bass?

I think it depends on the type and size of jerkbait. In a tournament scenario I like to have two rods for JerkBait fishing, the preferred Rod is a 6ft6 Medium Fast Spinning Setup with 8lb mono or copolymer for 1/4oz to 3/8oz and the 2nd Rod is a 6ft6 Medium Moderate Fast Casting Setup with 10 or 12lb Mono or Copolymer for 3/8 and above. Both of these rods can also pull double duty with Sammy style Topwaters and Poppers.

All right then, we have a "spotted bass" that has stripes- fits my world just right?thanks.

I fish for bass because I catch catfish, carp, bluegill, and tons of crappie by accident. Too easy to catch those. I don't fish for bass as much as I "hunt" for bass. It takes study and planning to catch bass; where, when, with what. For me it's a real challenge. A real hunt on the water. I can't image it will ever get easy for me, but if it does I will probably move on to something else.

Finally after almost 3 long months she's home. Too bad the dealership couldn't register it. Will have to wait a few days for the maiden voyage.

I believe jigs are much harder to detect strikes with then Texas rigged worms with slinging sinker. Bass nearly always engulfs a worm and keeps it thier mouth longer then a jig. Depending on the type of bass and the size strikes feel different, for example both spots and smallies tend to grab the claws of a crawdad before engulfing it so you feel several fast taps or ticks and need to adjust your hook set timing accordingly. Small size LMB often grab a jig and run off with it before engulfing it. Adult size LMB don't fool around and engulf the jig crunching down on it to hill it and can quickly reject it. The bigger a basses mouth is the less you feel the strike until they move with it in their mouth. Unfortunitly most bass anglers miss detecting the really big bass strike and miss it. Tom

This^. I find the first tap is more like a tick, and the second like a thud. The trick is to know how your bait feels and behaves as you retrieve it. Sure, sometimes you may miss a bite, or mistake a branch, rock or other stuff for a bite, but the more you do it, the more it becomes second nature.

The biggest bass I've ever caught tapped like a bluegill... better to set the hook and be wrong, than to not and be sorry.

It depends on the reel and how it's cared for. A well built reel services annually and cared for in the interim can last a lifetime and be handed down. On the other end you can get throw away reels and replace them every couple seasons. The PQ is a good reel at nearly throw away price when on sale. For about 1/3 the cost of a replacement I can replace the levelwind and go through the whole reel. The level wind itself done right requires opening the side plate to do right.

Went out yesterday (2-8pm) Wind was gusting, so stuck close to shore. Caught 4 LMB on a senko, the biggest was about 3#, the rest were maybe 1# each. Spent the most of the time having fun catching dozens of panfish with the ultralight rig. Also saw a fawn in the weeds close to shore which was really cool. Pics posted in Other Species fishing reports section. Saw a guy that was also in a kayak , reeling in a laker. Paddled out and talked to him and recognized him from last year. He targets the lakers and is really good at it; had hooked into 8 at that point, using a flasher type depth finder and heavy metal jigs for them. He showed me his technique last year, however, I don't intentionally fish for lakers; but it was good to talk to him again as he was really friendly and just likes to catch lakers and releases them all. One other thing of note was there was cotton type stuff from cottonwood trees all over the water. Had to constantly pick this stuff of the lure as well as from the line. This stuff is really fond of the braid line and almost seems to weave its way into the line, which is another reason I stuck mostly with the ultralight set up and floro line. In spite of dealing with pulling this stuff of my line and lures, it was a great day on the water.

If you feel a tap when the lure is falling , reel down and set the hook . If you feel a tap when lifting , you may have just ticked a limb or something .

I wholeheartedly agree the "rat-a-tat-tat" bite of Bluegill but on many occasions I've set hook on than "rat-a-tat-tat" & it was a bass. There's a spot on Toledo Bend we call "Machine Gun Ridge" because that's how the bass hit. I find that Kentucky/Spotted bass hit the same way except a whole lot more aggressive!

I highly recommend an over the shoulder sling pack. When you aren’t getting into it, it swings around to your back out of the way and does not interfere with your fishing. When you need to get into it, you swing it around to the front. Check out fly fishing tackle sites. You’ll find all kinds of solutions. Fly guys have the best gadgets.

Every tap is different for me. On the creek behind my house the rat-a-tat-tat is almost guaranteed to be a bluegill. So I let it swim and then swing and still get nothing quite a bit. On the lake it's a lil different but I always swing for the fences there. Caught quite a few 4-5 lbers that just double tapped it. Especially when I'm fishing brush piles at night. Cuz if it's a bass I gotta get it up outta there can't afford to let one just swim you around in brush

The 1st tap is your worm or jig going into the basses mouth, the 2nd is going out. Tom

Old Marble Eyes ~ A-Jay

Pike and bass coexist all across the country without issue, except for the unfortunate angler that loses an expensive bait to the toothy critters. Pike will eat bass, bass will eat pike, but neither is going to eat the other out of a body of water unless it just wasn't the right habitat for them to begin with.

Half the fun of a Ned rig is the accidental catches. My dad and I got out on Monday to chase some walleye and saugeye. Caught a bunch, just no keepers like he was hoping. I was having fun smacking them on spoons though.

All released to swim again but speaking of sammiches... Changed up and decided to target crappie today. Another fun afternoon on the water!