Leaderboard

An Australian Bass and its close cousin the Estuary Perch from a hot bite the other night.

There should be an event in the Elite series where all of the anglers come back to the dock at the end of the day and tell Trip Weldon what they estimate the 5 biggest fish they caught that day weighed.

Some of the lightest most subtle bites you'll feel will be from the biggest bass! In my personal opinion there are 4 elements to feeling the bite. Line, rod, hands, & brain ? The absolute most essential element is the brain, interpretation of what's going on with our lure. I've found the fastest way to speed up interpretation is to take my students night fishing during the New Moon phase. In total darkness your sense of feel heightens to a degree that will surprise you. Ya know how it felt the first time you used tungsten? Darkness does the same thing!

With the temps rising, the midday bite has fallen way off. So I’m hitting it in the morning with success. 7 this morning on the black/blue and junebug Dingers. Largest went 3.2. I was catching them in twos, on almost back to back casts. And this one(top middle of the collage), was just mean. He smashed the bait, and fought like Ali. Then I discovered a potential reason why—obviously some eye trauma(not caused by me).

A-Jay

I built these stone signposts a few weeks ago as a donation for a piece of property my sons school bought next to them. They put in a large trail and outdoor learning spaces for the kids so they can have more time to experience the outdoors, the project was kind of a memorial to a young boy that died a few years ago while playing in the forest with his parents. Rather than contribute money to the cause, as a fourth generation stonemason, my wife thought it’d be a good idea for me to do this instead. The neat thing for me is that all the stones used came from a large fireplace/chimney that my grandfather built over 60 years ago. I tore it down and salvaged about 10 tons of stone so it’s pretty cool to use the very same stones my grandfather shaped so long ago, and as he was a hardcore outdoorsman, I’m sure he’d really appreciate this gesture towards the cause.

Caught these last Saturday in Minnesota flippin pads and swimming jigs. Had a 22lb bag between the 2 of us

Used Sexxy shad 5XD to catch these Bass. All with in 1 week..

Finally got one on a Magnum Squarebill (or as I like to call it “the Mondo”).

Your PB grew a pound in this thread

Casting is like throwing a ball. It's all about the release point. Under hand cast, bait sailing high means a late release.

Mrs Mike went shopping and the house is quiet and it got me thinking. What gives you the most Peace where your mind goes blank and you just get lost? Some may say sitting in a boat at dawn and watching the fog lift... Or, Sitting on the bank of a mountain creek watching an Eagle... Me, laying on the couch with my grand baby laying high on my chest matching breath for breath, and feeling her heart beat on top of mine. Guarantee that for the rest of my life and I'll give you everything I own. Mike

Ever have one of those months? It's working out to be that way. We hit the lake EARLY. Chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon so we were on the water at 4:30am to try to maximize our chance at catching good fish. Didn't exactly work out that way. 6:30 am thunderstorm pops up, and at this point we've been fishing two hours without a bite. After the storm blows through, I switch to the same swimbait I've been catching fish on for the last three weeks. A 4.8 Keitech on an Owner flashy swimmer. Couple casts later and I've got the first fish of the day. The stumpiest 2lb bass I've ever seen. About 10" long It looked like a big bluegill... big head, big shoulders, tiny tail! Tried to get a pic and he shook out of my hand and back into the water before I could. Around 11:30 I've got three, and my buddy is still working on a blank. The bite just isn't happening on Sandy on this day, it's time to make a switch... To Briery Creek! With a good breeze and a little chop we start grinding crankbaits through the underwater forest. After an hour with no bites (and I've washed about half a dozen different lures) I hook up on a decent 2lber on a rapala dt10. Not convinced, I switch to a 6 foot luckycraft and catch another about 20 minutes later. My buddy gets the drift and starts chucking a BIG chartreuse square bill (he's devoted to the big bite). Another hour or so goes by and he finally hooks up on a hungry 2.5lber. Maybe 20 minutes later my buddy yells for the net. He's hooked up on something big. His rod is bent like a bamboo twig and I can see the headshakes in the tip of the rod. Problem is... This is Briery, and this fish was 100 feet out from the boat. He gets it about halfway and hangs up in a tree. Snap, line flies, fish gone along with his crankbait. We come across a flat where I know I can drag the Keitech through some stumps. Couple casts and I bring in another 2lber. I know I've got a pattern of some sort now, and I tell my buddy where we need to go to catch more fish. We move along and three fish (for me) later he's tying on a Keitech :Lol: Around 4pm we pull around a point and I hook up with my biggest catch of the day (the pic). We'll call it a generous 4lbs. Nice solid fish in 6Fow not far from a dropoff. Still working the Keitech for all its worth another hour later I hook into another decent fish, and pretty quickly it gets pinned against a tree and shakes the hook. Catch a handful more in the 2-2.b range over the next couple hours and we start seeing clouds building on the horizon. BIG Thunderstorms north and south of us, and some seriously dark clouds heading towards us, but somehow we escape with not a single drop of rain. We haven't had a fish bite in about an hour either. We move back onto a flat where we caught the most fish we've pulled out of one spot all day. It's 7:30ish dragging the Keitech and it just goes mushy, then my line starts to pull back a bit. Set the hook straight up and BIG head shakes and pulling drag! The bite I've been waiting for since two weeks ago. Time for my revenge!!! Line stops, I can see where it's against a tree and a belly flash just under the surface. I feel one more head shake then the line goes slack, Solid 7-8lb bass jumps 3 feet out of the water 20 feet from the boat. Grrrrrrraaahhhhhh!!!!..... I at least got my lure back this time, but the frustration and sunburn are nearly killing me at this point. Par for the course I suppose, but d**n am I tired of losing big fish on a tree! This should have been a PB story, instead I'm switching my two heaviest rods to braid and so help me I am getting the next d**n one in the boat if it kills me! We finished out the day with a couple more fish. My buddy snagged probably the biggest of the day on a plopper right at dusk and I had another 2lber on the Keitech. I shouldn't complain, we put close to 20 in the boat for the day, which I'll cnonsider a d**n good day. Just need to figure out how to get that big girl to the boat. Until next time Buela...

Because I'm a firm believer in our lord and savior - Green Pumpkin

We are not all equal in sense of touch, hand eye coordination and reflex reaction time. We can improve skills with practice but reach our limitation and start to loose those skills over time. Catt has repeated more times then I can recall how important it is to fish at night to improve your focus on feeling jig and worm strikes. At night our sight isn't good and our sense of feel becomes more important and strikes seem more intense because we are not distracted and consentrate on feel. When fishing we use our sense of feel using our finger tips because they have lots of nerve endings, some of us are like a safe cracker and others numb with little feed back, most of us are somewhere inbetween. During day light we combine our senses of sight and feel to detect strike. If you can focus more on feel, like night fishing during the day, detecting pressure strikes becomes easier. Pressure strikes are very common with split shot or Carolina rigs because you feel the weight and not what is going on behind it due to slack line until the bass moves away with the soft plastic in it's mouth. Pressure jig strike feels similar until the bass moves with the jig in it's mouth. Focus every second on what the underwater lure is doing and react to any changes you detect. Tom

I think part of the problem anglers have is self inflicted, they go into each cast, flip, pitch, or punch expecting to feel that classic "tap" or see that classic "line movement". My mind set is I'm expecting the lightest most subtle bite...anything more is lagniappe! When in doubt, drop the rod, reel the slack, & set the hook!

I can't say enough good things about the tournament mb. You can get them from retailers through eBay for $109.

If you want to cast light lures and unweighted plastics a longer distance, then as it appears you already know, it will require a lighter action rod. As far as the trajectory of the cast, you are in complete control of that. If you don't want the lure to go up high, then don't cast it up high.

100% correct! Todd, you know how the bait feels by itself and when it feels different you set the hook. You can go from a snag to a new personal best. But you set the hook. To add what Catt penned, Hank Parker always says, "It doesn't cost anything to set the hook." I do the same thing you do when the bait feels "different." Better to be safe than sorry. Just be careful not to set the phantom hookset too hard and knock yourself out of the boat!!!!!

I "weigh" my bait constantly. I'll also watch my rod tip for any sign of movement, this has tipped me off to tons of fish that I could feel nothing but saw the tip move very slightly. Usually by weighing the bait, I can tell if there's a fish or not. No way to explain how to tell the difference between a bass, stick, rock, or grass, but it feels different when a bass is just sitting there holding it than it does when it's stuck on something.

We got on an INSANE topwater bite tonight in the north metro. We found a gigantic school of bass at around 5pm that were on an offshore, underwater point busting on bluegill. We started walking poppers in the area and were getting fish after fish after fish. They were inhaling the popper. I've never seen that many topwater strikes in one session. It went on for like 2 hours. We also fished shallow and worked some bluegill beds & reeds with jigs & wacky worms and caught a few nice ones too. Was just one of those amazing nights. We easily boated 60+ (seriously lost count) bass in 5 hours. It was ridiculous. It helped that we had the entire lake to ourselves. Just a few canoes and kayaks.

2 weeks ago the bass in my local lake were hitting my plastic worm with a definite "tap". We caught several that morning. Last Saturday, the first fish was simply there when I lifted the rod. I figured they were striking much lighter, and they were. It always varies for me. Even between 1 or 2 days the bite can be different.As Catt says, go ahead and set the hook. If I would have waited for a definite tap last trip, I wouldn't have caught any fish. I've set the hook on nothing a lot of times too. By doing this your increasing your chances to hook more bass overall. Nothing wrong with a false hookset.

After walking through the deer woods for several hours starting at daybreak, I find just the right spot to sit down and have lunch usually near a pond or beaver dam somewhere. Being a mostly solo hunter, on a huge tract of public land that no one else hunts, when your several miles off the road and there’s nothing at all to hear but the sounds of the November forest, that’s peace.

taking my boots off, kicking back in the recliner, and Gunsmoke on the big screen.

I didn't catch them all but the ones I caught were good. We caught Larries, pickerel, white perch, crappie, and one bluegill (Tom). Tom caught more fish and species, but I lucked out late and horsed a 4-5 LMB out of lili pads as we headed back to the launch to grab the biggest of the day. Probably my best day of the year. A big thanks to Tom for giving me the front of his canoe and staying a little longer than planned....

I wrote a jig fishing article for In-Fisherman back in '95 titled Horizontal Jigging, the presentation technique of making a cast with a jig and retreiving along the bottom. In this article I discribe my hook setting technique as a "reel" set and rod sweep, the same as Hackney shows in his recent video. I bring this up because strike detection when casting a jig over 30 yards becomes difficult if you loose contact with the feel of the jig, you can't know what it's doing. Pressure strikes are really a nothing or rubber band resistant feel when a bass has engulfed the jig and not moving, this happens more often then we realize. When you fish the same weight jig on the same diameter line with similar types of trailers you will learn what that jig feels like as it moves along structure by feeling the line. Most bass anglers rely on feed back from the rod without realizing all feed back is generated by the line movement, changes in resistance or lack of resistance and line movements going through the rod guides are all detected using your finger tips. Controlling "controlled slack" requires keeping the rod tip down in lieu of up to shorten the distance and mount if line between the rod tip and water surface. Using the rod to move the jig is necessary to lift the jig over obstructions or shake it free on snags, otherwise I point the rod tip at the jig and move it using my reel. When I detect any changes in line tension it alerts me subconsciously something is happening and often I just make a few quick handle turns to increase line tension and sweep the rod back firmly when I suspect the tension is a bass. After years and years of experience all this happens very quickly without thinking about it and often results in hooking big bass you miss otherwise. Casting a jig the jig design become critical, you want the sharpest possible hook and a longer distance between the jig head and the hook point so when a bass engulfs the jig the hook point is back inside the mouth. The bass often crunches down on the jig and the sharp hook point makes contact with tissue, when you put more line pressure the point penetrates deeper so the bass can't easily spit it out, the reel moves more line faster to initiate hook penetratration and the rod sweep completes it. Tom

Its hard to explain. I lift the lure slowly at first as if weighing my line . When I sense the lure is not moving sometimes I set the hook sometimes not . A lot of trips I miss a fish or two at first but usually dont miss many more after that .

I caught my eighth species for the year this weekend. A Fallfish. Fought like a demon on a light action rod.

Seems to happen pretty often for me...

Gotta show off the little grandson reeling in an Oscar at over 1 pound

I looked in my bags and sort of realized that I have a lot of "old school baits": jitterbugs, Lucky 13, Rebel popper, Hula poppers, Rapala wooden cranks, Rattle traps ànd Cotton Cordell Lipless, Arkie Jigs, Daredevil and silver spoons, Creme worms .... Does any one else have old school stuff they fish a lot?

A family friend came to visit this weekend and asked me to take him fishing. We asked my son to come along and he did. While we were fishing my friend suggested we have a competition to see who can catch the most fish. My son is very competitive. Little did I know that was all it took to get him into fishing. We fished 2 days with my friend and 1 day together after he left. So far I am winning by 1 fish. I didn't have to use my excuse that I am the knot tie, snag and tangle person on all our trips. Luckily we are doing quantity over quality because he had the biggest catches.

It's my wife's car, hence why the pink sunglasses were there to be worn. She's a couple years older than I am and still has a huge collection of CD's. Most of mine are so scratched they won't play anymore. My car has a cassette player in it ? East side of the house @ 2pm West side of the house @ 2 PM

Just have to be patient with the Ned. We were dropping them on a sheer drop at Beaver a few years ago that went from 10-40 straight down. Fish were mostly coming up to meet it but we were getting some near the bottom with it too. Takes over a minute for that 1/16oz head to get down that far but it didn't take long when it got there. It's really a trick when the wind is blowing, almost like flyfishing the way you have to watch the bow in your line.

Just wanted to share some info. Academy in stores and online has the H20 Express hard baits on sale 2 for $5. Military can take another 10% off. I picked up about $140 in crankbaits for just under $50. Now if I could just ever figure out how to get my tackle box organized so they will fit.

Lakes that have palegic baitfish and dermasel prey tend to have more bass off shore. Lakes that have only dermasel baitfish that live near shore don't have off shore bass populations. Islands are off shore shoreline, underwater islands called humps are off shore structure, both offer dermasel and palegic fish a place to hide and feed should have bass taking advantage of the food source. Natural lakes are a different ecosystem then man made reservoirs,no dam, no underwater man made structure, only a soft bottom with some reefs and islands. Stumps indicate a man made lake that should offer off shore opportunities for a bass population utilizing the cover and structure. Tom

in the 70’s i was throwing Shysters, Mepps Minnows, Little Cleo’s and pre-rigged Creme worms. like some of the others, the names have changed but i still play the game the same way.

Not necessarily old school baits, though I did just buy an original Arbogast Muskie Jitterbug, but more so old school techniques. I still troll spoonplugs regularly, fish Sliders the way Charlie Brewer meant them to be fished, throw hair jigs ala Westmoreland, Gee, Sias, Kennedy, and Crawford, and even some Nightcrawler Sectets and Lindy Rigging mixed in now and then. I also pull out the old Fish Lo-K-Tor from time to time and just run a flasher.

(Striped) Bass Cape Update With the passing of the solstice and the arrival of the full June moon, its just about peak Striper season on the Cape and this past weekend did not disappoint. Best two days of inshore salty fishing I can remember. The bass are up in the shoals off the southern point of Monomoy and are munching on mackerel and an abundance of squid. Saturday in the fog especially, there were hour long blitzes going on and while most fish are on the smaller side, there were some bigger ones lying below the fray. Here's a 40" fish I got Sunday on light tackle ...hit a bone white 4" Daiwa SP minnow

View from a jobsite a couple days ago, looking west across the St Johns River near Jacksonville. I live around 15 min. From there.

Slowly nodding off kicked back in the reclining love seat with my wife next to me. Youngest daughter on my lap and oldest daughter on my wife's lap with the dog in between. Just knowing at that moment my entire world is right there, and all the other stuff is just that... stuff.

I fish a lot of discontinued baits .

The reason you still use them, they still work. When I'm river fishing for smallies early or late in the year, I still use Tadpollies.

No comprendo "small swimbaits" Me gusta grandes...

A lot of folks think of catfish as scavengers or scent feeders. While most cats will not turn down a meal that shows up on the bottom, certain species, particularly blues and channels in our waters are nocturnal hunters, that will chase live bait. Some of the best cat fishermen I know use live bluegills and shad as bait. I once had a pet catfish that terrorized a bass about the same size in a tank. In and around the Potomac blue cats hit bass baits on a regular basis.

Apple doesn't fall far from the tree.......

Had some more success on the stream after work this past Friday. Here's a quick snipnet. I get to the spot where I last caught a brook trout. It's really shallow and I wonder how on earth I caught a fish from here. I pitch out my spinner a few times and nothing hits. Alright time to move a little further downstream. I round a bend and my eyes light up like it's Christmas. Right in front of me is about a 25 foot long cleared off stretch of stream that is perfect for casting into and the stream runs tight across an undercut bank with a tree bulging out of the water. It looks like the deeper portion will be at least 4.5-5 feet deep. This should house a couple big brook trout. I wade into a position where I can cast from and wait for the mud clouds to settle. After a little bit, I fire off a cast and watch as a big brook trout comes up from under the bank, slaps my spinner and darts back under the bank! I throw the spinner right back and then something truly remarkable happens. I got it all on GoPro so I'm hoping the footage turns out. The big brook trout comes up to the spinner and slams it but somehow is barely hooked so he pops off right away and as he pops off he jumps out of the water and lunges for the spinner! He misses it so I reel it back in and know what cast number three will yield FISH ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's the brute!!!! He's going crazy and is barely lip hooked! I get him in close and flip him onto the bank. Yes! My new Personal Best Brook Trout at 12.5 inches long (at the time haha) Alright!! That undercut turned out to have 5 brook trout stacked under it. Craziness!

Accidental tiger muskie when I was bass fishing yesterday morning. Smoked a buzz bait in 8 feet of water. I initially thought it was a pike. Measured 33 inches, and released fully alive.