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Quick 4lber before the rental boaters ran me off the lake. This fish fell for a 13” worm stitched over main lake structure. Super hot, calm conditions combined with pressured fish called for a less orthodox approach.

Nabbed a couple of small bass this morning. Both of em on the Mepps #5

Took a trip over to family doctor. Have been having congestion, hacking, hockers, some shortness of breath, wheezing for quite a while. All stuff that we all have had. Pulled an abdominal muscle from coughing so much I decided to make that doctor visit. I’m pretty stubborn so I’m one to keep trudging along from one day to the next figuring it will go away. Someday. He checked me out pretty decent and had a plan to put me on a few meds for the condition. He didn’t like my elevated heart rate. Took EKG and stuff. I couldn’t tell it was elevated. Sent me over to hospital for other evaluations. Hospital did a quick job of getting me hooked up and getting me in the right direction (I hope). They thought higher heart rate was from dehydration and an infection. I never thought that was gonna be an issue. Didn’t feel dehydrated. A couple of IV’s and heart rate came down to normal. Handful of tests and scans show I have pneumonia. They have me on some meds and a steroid. Is not a COVID pneumonia. Most likely from allergies that festered over time. Sucks and stupidity on my part. Not keeping in tune to what your body is telling you but I really never picked up on any elevated heart rate. They suspect our current weather pattern we are in with excessive heat and humidity has not helped. I hope to be back to the fishing hole in a few days, will take a few down day from working around home and on the water. I never thought dehydration was an issue, have to take in more water. And the only thing I can really only pass on is, if your body is trying to tell you something don’t ignore it. Maybe get looked at sooner than later. Should have reacted to the shortness of breath stuff and not be my own doctor back a while ago. You guys stay hydrated. I don’t drink a lot of coffee, ice tea or soda normally but they don’t help you hydrate. Sorry for rambling on, I’m sure others have bigger issues than I do but it’s not fun when you know you might have eliminated the problem long ago if you just react to it.

Got in some of what I believe was earlier referred to as squishing (squishing in fishing before a social function) from 7-11:30 today , captured a couple. One Kentucky spot on the besotted popper, also got to use my new seaguar braid. Pretty cool stuff ! That popper is light and I was throwing it quite a ways. The smallie hit half a purple worm on a jighead. Water temp 75 upriver here’s the line tied to backing via alright knot, it’s pink and yellow like a fly fishing strike indicator

I picked up a 4th of July Bento Box from the Hook Up Tackle. For $100, this is best box ever. All good stuff and great colors.

The night bite continues to be slow. I got started about 02:00 and by first light just after 05:00 I only had half a dozen bass and this nice eater eye. Best bass was this 3.42#. I also lost a much better eye while trying to turn my light on to net it. That's the second time in two weeks I've lost a big eye like that. They're all getting boat flipped going forward. After daylight I found some muskie stacked up in the back of a bay, right in the creek channel. 6 follows with two of those buggers nipping the grub off the back of my double 8 spinner. 🤦‍♂️ Grrr... On the way back to the ramp I stopped to chat with a buddy. He also moved six fish this morning. Difference is, he put four in the net, with two over 40. He also got a 47 yesterday afternoon. Thus proving... I suck!!! 😂

Ol Monsters have been working out pretty good for me this Summer. Tried to send a few more pics but they won’t go through size feature

Gold, black back, orange belly Rattlin' Rogue

I’d have to disagree. The spicy burrito I had Thursday bit back but I’d have another one. 😁

More delicious treats.

We got quite a bit of rain yesterday, and it was still raining too much for me until late morning today. I didn’t fish yesterday, so decided I’d go ahead and get a little wet this afternoon (I don’t like the idea of my boat carpet getting soaked - I need to get over that, as I feel it may be an irrational concern 🤷🏼‍♂️). So I launched just after noon, with some off and on misty rain but the overcast and light wind were perfect for throwing a Whopper Plopper. I started by letting the wind drift me along a 5ft. flat that drops off into 15-20ft. with weeds on the slope. I caught a 2# smallmouth, then a 1.5# largemouth, and a short while later a 4.1# smallmouth. I tried a crankbait very briefly, but there’s just enough weed for that to not work. I dragged a worm in the weeds a bit with zero success, then went off to try another offshore hump that rises quickly to 10ft. from 50ft. of water. I threw the WP around there with only one small miss, then caught a small one on a dropshot. This is the very clear water lake that I’m still learning (it’s called Loughborough Lake, if y’all want to check it on a map). I went to explore a bay and found it too shallow, so started exploring and covering water again with the WP. The shore I went down is also 5ft. deep flat rock with very sparse weeds for a good distance out, before dropping off into 15-20ft. of water. I started catching a few, then the pattern finally dawned on me I was getting fish along the dropoff from 5ft of water - lmb if I threw more over the 5ft. flat and smallmouth off the deeper side. Once the lightbulb went on I stayed on that edge and caught 1/2 doz. in about 20 minutes, including a pair on consecutive casts. I would have liked to stay, but had to get home to help with dinner and prep for a family beach day tomorrow. Side note, I picked up a Diawa cc80 off FB Marketplace recently, to pair with a 7ft. medium bait caster I have. It casts like a bomb and I’m very impressed with it for a $100 CDN reel (I paid $60). 👍🏻 @ol'crickety - note that I took your advice and fished in the rain.🙂 Making long casts and covering water like @Pat Brown recommended… and yes I got a lot of my bites shortly after starting to retrieve, so more or less at the ends of the casts. Good coaching, both of you. 😎 The best 4 fish from today…

'MERICA

News flash 😉 Just like all bass aren’t the same size, not all crawfish are the same size. Oh yeah guess what the Shad, the bluegill, & the rest of their food source also comes in various sizes. They hatch, they grow, they die!

If you have handled Crawdads you know their pincher claws can hurt. Crawdads use these claws for defense when a predator comes close and juvenile bass are not big enough yet to defeat the crawdad. Tom

Was dragging a spinnerbait through Lilly pads in 2 feet of water and thought I had a 10lb largemouth.

We throw gold blades on spinnerbaits/gold jig skirts/gold flakes in soft plastic - gold hard baits work great. Gold and Chartreuse are both very natural 'bold' colors that work well for LMB. There isn't really a water clarity for gold. It just works.

I wouldn't use a $150 lure in my bathtub. If I need a $150 lure to catch fish, I'll pick another hobby.

I also love them, free rig and weightless to go with @Big Swimbait's suggestions. Great death spiral and erratic twitching. scott

A quality 20 lb mono if it is a treble hook bait. 25 lb fluro if it is a jig hook bait.

How you gonna cut braid with a Glock? Wait don’t answer that 😂

Just arrived - Took advantage of the July 4th sale/discount and did a mid-year Ned restocking along with a @Pat Brown special just to play around with 😎

Caught these two bass this morning to lift my spirits. Last two times I fished two weeks ago, I lost SIX in a row due to a combination of poor hook ties, getting caught in weeds, and me not checking my equipment for proper functioning-- my Shimano Coriolis quit reeling and wouldn't do anything, ended up losing a couple fish due to that. I believe it has a bad gear, gotta open the chassis and check it out. But swapped my daiwa over to my new lews speed stick 7'0 and got these two out of thick grass. Tied a Palomar knot to the hook this time and there was no slipping. It felt good to get back on the board and get some confidence back. Also felt good that recognizing where I messed up and correcting it paid off immediately. Not giants , but they were both great fighters. I LOVE that speed stick rod. Gives me some extra leverage to fish weeds.

A little pre-work fishing. All very average bass, but any size is fun.

I tried to go to a lake I haven't been to this year on Sunday. Should have stayed away. By about noon, I'd caught 5 little ones. Moved to a nearby lake and felt like I knew what I was doing again. Biggest one was 20.75" and 5.26lbs. Also had one just blast my Besotted pencil popper.

I started fishing a lake a few years ago, and all I could catch were dinks. I could catch them along the entire shore line, and even out in the middle of the lake away from any structure, or cover. At first I thought I needed to try bigger lures, I still caught only bass less than 1 pound. I tried fishing jigs, because they have a reputation of catching big bass. Then one day I found a tree in deep water. First cast with the same spinnerbait that I was catching dinks with hooked a giant bass but I lost it. I returned to the same spot a week later and caught 2 bass over 10 pounds, one on a spook, the other on a spinnerbait. The water dropped exposing more trees, and I caught more big bass. I will still catch dinks off of those trees, but only on days when I don't catch any big ones, or I have caught a big one or two first. The big bass seem to hit right away, and if I keep pounding the spot I may catch a few small bass. Sometimes I hook a small bass on one of my first few casts, but most of the time if I'm going to catch a big bass it will come right away. One time I hooked a small bass, and I giant bass came up and ate it two feet from the side of my kayak. It was then I realized the dinks don't want to hang out with the big bass because they may not survive if they do. If you catch a couple dinks off of a spot I would give it a few more casts, there may be a big one you missed. If you catch many baby bass, I would recommend going somewhere else. You can try a different bait, or retrieve, but most likely you are in the wrong spot.

I was gifted this old girl a while back, and after some oil, cleaning, and some casting in the yard, she casts pretty good. I've fished with it some, but ain't caught anything when using it. I plan to though, give it at least one last hoorah. Does anyone know what year range this was from? I couldn't find anything about it when searching. Was it like.. top of the line when new, or was it a budget reel or what? What is graphite bearings? Oh, my boy who is 4, about to be 5, LOVES it. He is learning to use a baitcaster with it. He can cast some of the time without backlashing. So far, we haven't had to cut the line off, just get dads help to untangle it. He's learning the art of removing a backlash too.

I always find it interesting on catching something else when you were bass fishing, I asked before what you caught besides bass, but thought it may be interesting to follow up and see what lure triggered these other species. 1. musky on a chartruese/white spinnerbait 2. crappie on a chrome/black rattletrap. 3. eastern chain pickerel on a (junebug trick worm) (a chartruese/black squarebill), (electric shad kietech) (white spinnerbait)- more pickerel than I wanted.😒 4. mudfish/bowfin on a white spinnerbait. 5. channel catfish on a yellow roostertail. 6. big bluegill on a shad color pop r. 7. gar on white spinnerbait. What you got?

This helps

Try a rock bass. Lol

A little pricy, but a great bait that has a lot of roll. I really like them on a scrounger head. They don't stay in stock very long for a reason.

Daily carry this Kershaw. I carried a Leatherman everyday I worked on planes.

I would suggest you make a mental note of each of the suggestions, reason being, not all ramps are the same and many of these fit their unique situation. After about 60 years' experience of launching boats all over the country, there is no one method that's going to work every time. You will find some ramps don't even have docks. Some are so shallow you have to back your vehicle a good way into the water to get the boat deep enough to float off the trailer. I've had to use the back tire to climb over the side into the bed of the truck and them walk down the trailer to get to the front of the boat to keep from having to walk in the water. Some ramps are so steep, they are actually scary to back down and the boat floats off the trailer before your hitch is even close to the water. Some ramps do have very long docks right beside them so you can pull the boat way back out of the way as soon as it comes off the trailer. Some have the docks 30 feet or more away and extend way out so you have a pretty good walk to get back to your vehicle to go to park it. Usually, you have a area you can move the boat over to, to get it out of the way of the ramp. Some off the beaten path ramps are not "ramps" at all, just where they took a bulldozer and made an angled path into the water. So, while one might fit your favorite place to go perfectly, it may not work at all for another ramp. The ideal situation is to have a partner, one gets into the boat before you launch and the other backs it in and goes parks the vehicle. One thing to remember doing this, if it's a steep ramp, only back the winch strap off several inches but do not disconnect it until the boat is in the water. I have seen a couple of boats launched onto the ramp before it made it to the water where they slid off the trailer. I also hope you are levelheaded and not subject to road rage. A lot of public docks with have big signs saying no fishing off them, but you will find people fishing a get ticked at you because you need to park your boat where they are at. I've even been to less use ramps and people in the middle of the ramp fishing and give lip about launching the boat.

This is me too. I have to remember to remove it when I enter a federal building, courthouse, or go to the airport. No weapons permitted there. Keep a leather man type multi tool in both the truck and wife’s SUV.

It’s actually supposed to be pretty nasty up here too. Temps over 90 and dew points approaching 70 which makes for a tropical-type feel out there. I had really good fishing last week even on a major holiday here but I’ll be taking the weekend off with this heatwave in town. Next week has relief. Highs back in the 70’s again. That’s my desirable summer weather.

I carry a Kershaw clash, not a bad little pocket knife.

Greetings All, The bigger than typical bass that I've caught have frequently been on crawdad sized imitations (grubs on jigs, and related soft plastics). These seem to do better than the other size presentations. I generally find keeping the baits in the 2-4 inch size range is helpful to keep me more in the catching rather than just casting. THXs Tom for that characterization. Go get'em!

Here's a few pics of Ocmulgee PFA before it was filled. It has a good bit of rock & man made structure with alot of brush along the banks. I only fish it during the Summer at night. It does have big swimming lizards so I'd advise against swimming.

Gold, black back, orange belly is an standard color. Kinda like bone with an orange belly topwater. My #1 Rat-L-Trap color

I rarely carry a knife, but when I do, it’s this Beretta, because it is super lightweight. I think it’s one of the largest pocket knives I have at five inches, and almost as light as some of the smaller ones at 2.9 oz. I’ve got about 10 more pocket knives I’ve found over the years around the lake, also a bunch of folding utility knives. Of those, the Milwaukee is by far the best. My most recent find was a switchblade. That thing must be made of lead. It’s 7.9 oz. I don’t know how someone could have dropped that much weight and not noticed it. Maybe it was intentional lol. I carry nail clippers on an elastic string clipped to my pocket for mono and I keep Cuda scissors in my backpack for braid. I also keep an x-acto blade in my tackle.

7/11/2024 Private Lake solo kayak Water temps??? Winds E 5-8mph, overcast Last trip in NC on the private lake yielded a bunch of small bass and one big grass carp. Bass would not eat topwater but the carp sure did. Ol monster 1/2oz black grape, coda lures apex jig 3/8oz Sassy Chica Rage Lobster caught bass. The grass carp ate the same Baby Bass PopMax. Weird that the bass would not hit topwater on a still, overcast day. There were many bass hanging out underneath the small homeowner docks. The big dock on the lake produced no fish over leave. I have a feeling there is a very old wise bass or two dominating that dock. It’s the only explanation I can think of because that dock should be loaded. Best baits over this leave were the rage lobster and Megabass Popmax. Biggest bass 5.57lbs out of Ol Muddy. Very good leave! I learned a lot and will be bringing back some tricks to TX! I do think that fishing in TX has made me a better NC fisherman and I look forward to the next time I can see @Pat Brown, @FishTax, and @IcatchDinks!

I use to fish those and you have to have light line, around 6lb and you have to run them slow (like dead slow). They are great for shallow water bank fishing so it's really just a niche lure for me. The ones I had rusted and got pitched. Not the best quality bait in my opinion. I really haven't bought anything to replace it in an 1/8oz. I pretty much stick to a 1/4oz now. I like the OSP High Pitcher. It's bigger but still small. But for pond fishing for bluegill, crappie, and bass, this lure has out produced the small spinnerbaits by a mile. It has been my cheat code as of late. If you want to just go out, have fun and catch some fish this thing below is a blast. It's the Z-man Flashback Mini. It's doesn't seem well made but I have caught over 100 bluegill on it. The supplied softplastic is not the best and will fall apart but they make a bait called the Shad Fry Micro. It works great and lasts.

Koz, since you have a kayak, launch at water too small for bass boats, pontoon boats, and jet skis.

The Steez 'Real Control' rod I ordered from japan Lure Shop showed up yesterday. I ordered it on July 4th, so got here quick via UPS. It is light for a 7-3"H @ 107g's, and I like the taper. I was disappointed in 2 areas...the lack of an exposed blank reel seat like is on the steez bottom contact rod. Also the lack of a butt cap is a head scratcher. It did come with 2 rod socks...a nice full zip, and then a light duty slip on deal.

The Delta is a tidal fishery making timing critical. Juvenile bass and adult size usually don’t mix because they are a prey source. Lots of juveniles indicated a good recruitment year class which is good. The Delta the bigger bass target jigs that look like crawdads and juvenile bass avoid crawdads. Tom

Hey @Norcal angler, it’s been a complaint from anglers fishing the delta for awhile now. In my opinion the spawn is towards the end of its cycle, a lot of those smaller fish you caught are probably fry guarders with the bigger females trying to recover off the bank. And in the State’s aggressive efforts to eliminate all vegetation the bass use as cover, predation by sea lions during the spawn haven’t helped the fishery. Unfortunately, I haven’t been on the water in over a month so I can’t offer any help from recent trips. But judging by recent tournaments bigger bags are showing up with most guys covering water until they find them. And welcome to Bass Resource and the Forums