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Finally put one in the boat worth sharing, been a few weeks since I was able to do so. After a ton of small 1-2 lbers lately this one felt like 10 LOL. Tipped the scales at 4-12

Hi everyone, As some of you know, this Spring has hit us kind of hard. My wife and I both lost our moms a month apart, and for some time fishing was the last thing on our minds. However, life has started to even out for us, and this last Wednesday we got some fishing in. We hit one of our favorite lakes and were surprised and pleased to have just about a perfect morning. We expected it to be crowded so close to Memorial day, but it was deserted, just us and one other boat on a 1000 acre lake. The wind has been crazy this Spring, but the lake was a mirror, not a ripple. Air temp was perfect at 65 degrees Water temp was 55 degrees and the smallie spawn was just starting. Water visability was 10 + ft. and we saw fish everywhere. All and all this was just what we needed , some time on the water, to get us moving forward. We even caught some fish! Here's a few pics. What a perfect morning. A couple of nice smallies 2.5 and 3 lb. even Thanks for looking Jim

Biggest one of 2020 for me.

Took the kayak out on a local reservoir until 3 am and ended with a 4 species night, including my PB White Bass. I was fishing for smallies with a tube and got about every species in there but a smallie. I caught the White Bass and Crappie with a Creme Mini Tail and a 1/16 oz crappie jig and the Saugeye and Catfish with the tube.

18 inch river smallie. Caught and released very quickly.

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Thunder Goby Strikes Again ~ ! A-Jay

Took the kid out for another pike fish this morning. With the consistent, hot and sunny weather we’ve had all week here, and a rain system moving in on Sunday, I figured they’d be set up to eat. Water was like glass first thing, we started getting some decent fish to follow but they wouldn’t commit until we got a bit of a breeze to break up the surface. This particular lake is gin clear, and they like a bit of a chop to make them a bit less edgy. We managed a 30”, 36” and a nice thick one at just a hair over 40” that we got to watch absolutely inhale a swimbait right by the boat. Saw a few more big fish and my son lost one about 36” at the boat ( gotta work on those hook sets), all in all it was a pretty decent morning.

I fished some wacky rigged Senkos (hooked through the body) recently, and was successful, but those Senkos took a beating. Wanted to try using O rings, but wasn’t sure if I should try HD, Lowe’s, etc. Then I remembered I have a hoard of 100 grain Rocky Mountain Revolution broadheads for bowhunting that use O rings to keep the blades closed until impact. I bought about 100 of them for $125.00 (that was a real steal), and they came with numerous packs of replacement O rings. Hmm-m-m...would they fit? Lucky day today!

I know bumping up old threads is taboo on this site but ran across it today and thought why not, interesting read. Happy Memrial Day weekend. Tom

About 4 years ago when I was living in the SC Lowcountry we used to fish a private pond that the owners were gracious enough to let us fish. On one end there was a lot of tall, aquatic grass and on the other a small dock with a tall safety rail around the perimeter. This made is awkward to fish, but back then my son was only 10 years old and it was a nice added measure of safety. We caught a decent number of bass in there, but nothing over two pounds. One day we were out there fishing with a buddy of mine and his son with the kids fishing from the dock. Suddenly they yelled out in amazement. The water was clear in this pond and they spotted a big bass near the dock. A really big bass. A really, really big bass. They started tossing baits in its direction but it wouldn't bite at anything. On the way home the kids dubbed the fish Big Hank. We fished that lagoon again and again and occasionally we saw Big Hank just sitting there near the dock. Try as we might, he never hit at any bait we tempted him with. Then one day my son is fishing the dock while I'm fishing the bank nearby and he yells out, "Got one!" I look in his direction and I'm immediately taken aback and start running in his direction. At the time my son was fishing a 6 foot, medium-light Abu spinning rod. I was taken aback because when I looked over at him the rod was nearly doubled over. Whatever he had on the line was big. As I get to the dock the fish comes to the surface and does a roll back to the depths. It was a big bass. It was Big Hank. But now we have a problem. Not only does my son have the wrong rod for this situation, he's only about 4' 9" at the time and there's no way he's going to get that bass over the rail. Not only does the rail surround the dock but it also surrounds the walkway to the dock. Luckily, we brought a net. Unfortunately, the net was still in the car which was way over on the opposite side of the pond. I tell my son to try and keep tension on the line as I start running to go grab the net. I make it no more than 10 feet off the dock and Big Hank breaches, the line slacks, and he slips off the hooks. My son was crushed. The next day we went out and bought him a better rod. Fast forward four years and I'm living in the SC Upstate and I get a text message from my buddy who my son and I fished with at that pond years ago. He was fishing that same pond with his son and landed a big one. A really big one. I think that after all of these years someone finally caught Big Hank. Unfortunately, he did not have a scale with him and was so excited he did not grab some fishing line to measure the length and the girth for a weight estimate. Anyway, below is a photo of what might be Big Hank. Any weight estimates would be welcome. If it helps, the angler is about 5' 7" tall.

What that’s doing is wetting and temporarily lubricating what should be cleaned and properly oiled. Purposely dunking a reel is a horrible idea.

I loved my Daiwa Coastal TWS that I got a few weeks ago so much that I decided to give the Coastal SV a try next. Something tells me I’m going to like this one just as much. This is replacing a Curado 200i that I have been looking forward to getting rid of.

Having lived in the same 50s to 80s era as Tom, I know where he's coming from. Back in the 60s, if you had the insane notion of actually releasing a fish you just cranked to the boat, you'd better hope that no one witnesses that unseemly event (They'd likely call the men in White Coats). That's in wild contrast to what we have today, which underscores the power of contemporary sentiment. Roger

i lost count but i caught a pile of them this morning. after several days of heavy rain and gusty winds, it turned off sunny and hot here in western NC. this nice spot came off a brush pile in 20 fow.

First river Smallmouth of the year. The old Panther Martin came through in the clutch. He was no monster but I was so happy to catch him. It's been 6 months since my last Smallmouth catch. http://

Upped my pond PB again this year with this fish going a little over 6 lbs. today, Midwest finesse style.

Fished our Montana B.A.S.S. Nation Spring Open and weighed my new tournament PB 5.59! Fishing was wet but absolutely spectacular. Managed to finish 11th out of 30 teams. Bottom photo is a friend who missed the state record by ounces on Sunday with an 8.26 giant!!!

I was able to get out yesterday on the tail end of a passing storm front. With a little early morning wind blown chop, I was able to get ‘em on topwater to start on a shallow flat. Picked up the bladed jig, two cranks of the handle and the rod tip stopped its rhythmic thump like I hooked a stump. The rod loads as I set the hook and what I now know is a heavy fish heeds to deep water. A couple of runs on both sides of the bow and I am able to welcome her aboard, a 6.79lber released to fight another day.

Got out today 8-4. Fought a wicked wind all day. Caught 16 bass on 7 different lures with the buzzbait bringing the days best to the boat at 5-1. Also got a 3-11 on a spinnerbait.

Sounds like you can give us the tips lol

Yea I ended up getting some ploppers @25 percent off! Thank god for gift cards

This Ito arrived yesterday from a great member on here. TD-Ito with Megabass purple spool, Zillion TW SV G1 spool, and he even threw in a free reel cover and Megabass bait! Class act for sure! Thank you Scrapiron!

A day like no other!!! Got on the lake at 7:00. Supposed to be a nice day with a slight chance of thunderstorms. Hahaha... who says weather folks don’t have a sense of humor? Anyway... Put in at BigBass Marina go to Texas side and hit Oilwell area. I look for fish on the various humps and ridges but no luck with that so I start banging the bank with a 1/4oz. One Knocker. Put one dink in the boat. This ain’t working. Lotta thunder, little bit of lightening and rain... yeah that’s gonna help. In between rain squalls I decide to head to a hump that no one knows about but me - and perhaps whoever put the brush pile on it. This hump is just north of millionaires point. It tops out at 22’ and has a near ledge drop on one side. Oh yeah... it also has a brush pile on it! The 10XD will just nip the brush pile. I’m chunking it with a Dobyns 805 and pulling it back with a Revo Beast 4. That reel is kind of like a Shimano Curado 300 - on steroids. On the very first cast I get hung up in the brush pile - or thought I did. I was getting ready to break out my brand new Hounddog lure retriever when the brush pile started moving! Well I’m no scholar but I do know what to do in this situation! I lean back on the Dobyns and start cranking on the Beast. For awhile there the match was a draw between me and the brush pile. Finally I started making progress taking in more line than I was letting out. I’m not sure what I’ve hooked on to. Catfish? Gar? Submarine? After what seemed like hours I finally get my first glimpse of what I hooked. It’s a bass - the biggest one I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s HUGE!!!! I manage to get it in the net and in the boat. I start screaming like a frikkin maniac! I rummage through the boat and finally find my scale to weigh this monster with. Takes both hands to hold the scale! Finally the scale blinks then displays the weight - 14.2#s I weighed it 3 more times and each time it settled on 14.2#s. So I’m guessing it weighed 14.2#s. I get my phone and take multiple pictures. Then not knowing what else to do I release the fish. That, my friends, was the beginning of the day like no other! For the next three hours I sat on that spot catching a fish on almost every cast. I’m talking BIG fish. The very next fish weighed 13.8#s. Of my best 5 NONE were single digit fish - NONE!!! For the record books - 14.2 + 13.8 + 12.6 + 10.12 + 10.6 + 10.1 - 71.42#s!!!!! Each time I caught one, took a picture and released it I figured that was the last one. In all I caught 108 fish. None was under 6#s! Truly a day like no other!

At least 2 lbs.

@Delaware Valley Tackle ?

It's been a good spring so far.

We have fished this small lake for about a 2 yrs now trying to catch a bass. To say this lake is highly pressured is a gross understatement. There are a lot of smaller bass in this lake, with some in the area of 5-7 Lbs, but we have never witnessed them being caught. We went out yesterday just to mess around and catch bluegill. I hear my son yelling that he has a fish amazingly he caught this little guy on the jerkbait. First jerkbait fish for him.

This is my go to for punching weeds. 1 jika rig usually will last a year. (the line tie on the tungsten weights pulls off) Real easy to make. I have these in 3/16, 1/4, 3/8 and 1/2 oz

Way off topic- but I know that last comment to be true. I've been an on and off alcoholic for 5 years... I've gotten way more fishing in since I've been sober and in the 18 month span (a couple years ago) that I was sober. (Yeah i fell off the wagon for a year) no alcohol has made big difference on the amount of fishing I've done and where my fishing was as a priority.

He did. He was so concerned about getting her back in the water he didn't take time to cut some fishing line to measure the length and girth.

The reason I use a less strength leader is so I can break off when snagged and just lose the lure and leader instead of losing a long bunch of expensive braid that can float and get tangled in someone's TM or engine prop or the lure they are fishing.

I will share with you when I use braided line and maybe it will help you, or possibly others. FinesseGenics basically covered the whys, so I’ll just give you personal experience. I use braid on my spinning reels as I find its much easier to use as it doesn’t coil up, comes off of the spool very nicely which gives you much better casting, and it’s very sensitive because of the no stretch. I use 10lb - 20lb braid and then tie on a fluoro for most of my spinning applications like wacky rigging, shaky heads, weightless Texas rigs. However I won’t use the leader for top water baits that are to light to throw on a casting reel. If they are treble hook too water baits I set the drag a little looser so I don’t rip the hooks out of the bass’s mouth and I’ve found a lot of success in that - not everyone does but I have. I personally use Fluorocarbon for basically everything but top water and I use a backing of mono for about half of my spools on casting. Just the cheapest 5-600yd spool of mono I can find that way I’m not spending or wasting money on the expensive Fluoro respooling line that didn’t even get used.

The reason braid to leader is popular is because of the advantages of braid. Braided line has a smaller diameter per lb test. 40lb braid is usually the equivalent of 10-12lb mono, so as you can see, you can spool on more strong line compared to spooling on 40lb mono. The line diameter of 40lb mono is something like 0.6 mm which is thick. this leads into another advantage of braid. It is much easier to maintain and is much more user friendly than fluoro or mono. Fluoro and mono have “memory”, meaning they will warp to the spool they’re on and coil up. Try spooling 40lb mono onto a bass sized reel and the line would be jumping off the reel. The memory leads to line twisting issues and this is especially noticeable on spinning reels. Braid also lasts much longer since it does not have this memory issue. Some people keep their braid on for 3-4 seasons. If braid is spooled correctly with appropriate backing, you avoid these problems or the potential of the braid “digging in” on itself. Third biggest advantage of braid is the way it cuts through weeds. Since the line is so fine, it’ll slice through weeds when fishing weedless presentations. That’s why it’s overwhelmingly the line of choice for punching and frogging. There are some disadvantages to braid, such as poor abrasion resistance. It gets frayed easily around rocks, wood and places infested with zebra mussels. as for leader strength, it can be anywhere you need it to be. Braid is popular cause it is so versatile and you can use it anywhere and adjust your leader to your situation. You can do just about anything with 40lb braid (I’m talking on a baitcaster for this paragraph) and just adjust your leaders. Fishing wood and need abrasion resistance and need to horse the fish out of the cover? Tie on 20lb leader and get to work. Clear water pond and using a finer wire hook? 12lb fluoro can do the job. Frogging? Ditch the leader and use your straight braid. It can be super advantageous even for a bank fisherman with one setup. You can determine your leader strength based on the cover you’ll be fishing or the gauge of the hook on your bait/lure. You won’t see anyone using leaders over 20 lbs though, at least in my limited experience. Not really sure why this is but trust me, you do not need a 40lb leader. That’s just overkill. I feel like someone else can answer that question better than I can so hopefully somebody else chimes in. On spinning reels, I think braid to leader is a necessity. At least for me, but plenty of folks use straight mono or fluoro on spinning reels and there’s nothing wrong with that. Funnily enough, I fish straight fluoro on my casting reels . Since I don’t frog fish or punch weeds. Hope this helps!

It would be a real hoot if an O ring that was on a broadhead that passed thru a buck or doe wound up helping to lure in and land a nice bass.

The water current generated by wind tends to stimulate the feeding urge in predatory fish. For this reason, windblown water is something you would seek rather than avoid. Even in a strong wind with whitecaps, you can usually position the boat so you''re just outside turbulent water; game fish are doing the same thing. Roger

I've seen a friend catch a few big fish on Hula Poppers. Generally I think a pop, pop, long pause works well with them. They gurgle more than spit. Sammy fish.

Live bait doesn't locate bass regardless of the skill. I understand anglers wanting to have every bass returned alive and healthy, it's the current thing anglers do. I was very active in the 60's and early 70's trying to educate bass anglers to release the fish they caught and very few did. Stringers of 10 to 15 bass per angler per day was allowed in tournaments and anglers kept every legal bass they caught. Fish fries were common following tournemnts in lieu of hamburgers and hot dogs served today. Boats had ice boxes not livewells. I learned over decades that bass are a renewable resource and very profic fish that will servive this years extra fishing pressure. Every California public lake has fish cleaning stations with running water for anglers to clean the fish caught by the public anglers. We have about 500 anglers on any given weekend day during the summer on lakes less then 2,000 acres. This is Memorial Day Holiday weekend, sit back and enjoy your beautiful family. Tom

Exactly. It was just a few years ago I was the happy medium. I just bought 3 reels on a steal of a deal and didn't bat an eye when I saw they were all 6.5:1.

^^^^^ Best advice in the house. ^^^^^ jj

My elderly conservative parents have both tried CBD for a few reasons. Older folk can come around, especially if the pain is bad enough. My step-dad is very old school, old Kansas boy. He was always against weed but he's tried CBD for pain. He's also a Christian - he said "God made weed, right?" Hey, whatever allows it to be okay in your mind. What does "never done drugs" mean? No alcohol ever either, no pain killers after surgery (opium! now that's a drug)? Ibufrofen? He probably means them d**n hippie drugs. "Never done drugs" is a hurdle you may not be able to get the old man over. It's just ignorance and deeply ingrained bias, but it's very powerful. And what would his friends think if they found out? That's probably the biggest part of it. But then again, you can't usually reason someone out of their long held beliefs. "What a fool believes, no wise man has the power to reason away" - The Doobie Brothers (ironically)

Cast right, reel right. Switching hands is a non factor as the switch is already done before the line hits the water. I don’t use spinning gear. Mike

Birthday fish! My biggest Spot ever

First decent Largemouth of 2020 And one of these toothy, slimy, critters

First fish of the year, and first ever pandemic fish... No biguns, but quantity. All caught on a Pad Crasher Jr (which I found at another lake) and a T-rigged Rage Tail Structure Bug. All in spars emerging lily pad between 1-2 fow.

My pup finally had the courage to sniff a fish today.

Bait finally showed up in the mail yesterday after a long quarantine in Japan. Took it out after work this morning and it got blasted right on the edge of some emerging water willows.

Just another wonderful time on the water , jerkbait and small swimbaits are the ticket this time of year.. slower day than normal with around 30 fish for the day but I had to snap a couple pics and the random northern that decided to eat. They wanted them faster as the water temps are reaching 54-56 now , soon we will see those beds forming and chaos begins ! They are all so fat!

First trip back to the home lake since it shut down a few weeks ago. Felt great getting back out there despite what seemed like half the bass and kokanee fishermen in CA being out there with us. Picked up around 60 with 2/3rds of the fish coming between 10-12 until a mid-day lull sent us home for the day. One of the better ones... Pops with a nice spot... Good news was it was a new species PB on this lake. Bad news was it wasn't the right species. Thought I had a DD LM for the first 15 seconds or so, then it just turned into the catfish v. carp v. trout quandary for the next few minutes.

Boated 11 more bass and a huge crappie yesterday all falling for Spinnerbaits and chatterbaits. Best bass just under 5 lbs.