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I launched again this morning at my pond. I had a Heddon One Knocker Spook, Whopper Plopper, T-Rigged worm, underspin with a blue Mayor, and spinnerbait with an orange crawfish. They all caught fish and I finished with 11 before the wind blew me off the pond. Here's my first bass. And here's a spinnerbait bass. This one was a chunk. The chunk came off this shoreline. "The entree comes with a salad, ma'am." Then I reached a river mouth with an area free of weeds and switched to my Heddon Spook. This spot and this Spook: And a special bass hit it. If you read my trip reports, you know my pond is great for numbers in May and June. And you know that the average size of the bass is good, but you might also remember that I don't catch five, six, or seven-pounders in it. Well, the girl I hooked wasn't a five, six, or seven-pounder, but she could be. She has the mouth to gain that much weight. And she has the frame to hold it. At one point in the fight, I was facing port and she jumped off starboard as she'd run under my canoe. Isn't she beautiful? Note how her jaw juts from her weight and note the size of her tail. I had to position my camera way back to fit her in the frame. She was probably four pounds. Now, I catch a lot of four-pounders and it might seem weird that this paticular four-pounder would thrill me, but again, she has the mouth and frame to be bigger, plus she's in her prime. Fingers crossed she lays a lot of eggs in 2025. On my next cast, a bass exploded on my Spook, but I didn't hook it. On the following cast, I caught this one. Another beauty: I love walking the dog! In 2024, I learned how to catch bass with a spinnerbait and a Spook. Pretty cool, huh? As always, thanks for going fishing with me.

Pair of 5lbers

Big fish of a half dozen bfs rats this morning. Couple blow ups on the frog right at change of light, unfortunately this is the only bite that connected. That's back to back weekends landing the completely wrong species

Fished Lake Michigan for about 3 hours. Cracked a tube, caught one smallie

So far in 2024 I've caught at least one 5 pound Bass each month. I finally caught my August 5 pounder today on the last day of the month. Many people around here catch more and bigger Bass, but I'm happy with a 5 pounder every month so far. I caught 9 today, 3 Largemouth, and 6 Spots. I launched my boat at 6:10 AM. I caught the 5 pounder (5.42 pounds, 21 5/8" long first picture) on my 3rd cast.....but my first 2 casts weren't "real". I pulled up to the first stop on my "milk route". I aimed my sonar toward a spot where a bush is overhanging the bank a foot or so above the water. I saw the Bass on sonar. I had decided to try a Devils Horse today. I needed to skip it under the overhanging bush. I made a couple practice skips out of the other side of the boat, toward the center of the channel. After those 2 casts I made a perfect skip under the bush right on top of the Bass. It gently sucked it into it's mouth. I set the hook and it went crazy, walking on it's tail, like a decent sized Largemouth is supposed to do. 2 casts later I caught a 3 poundish Largemouth, and another 14 inch Largemouth a few minutes later. After the Sun came up the LM bite stopped, but I started catching Spots. None of the Spots were huge, but the smallest one was 14". I thought it was a big cat for a while. It's tail was crooked.......either an injury or deformity, but it sure didn't make it any weaker. (2nd picture) We've discussed Spots spawning multiple times a year. All of the Spots I caught (including the deformed/injured one) looked to me like they were full of eggs. The last picture is an 18 inch Spot I caught on my last cast a 8:51AM. Depending on the weather I may go tonight around Midnight. Regarding cuts, nasty stuff in the water, fish slime, ect. I always have cuts on my hands due to my occupation. I put some hand sanitizer, and rubbing alcohol in my boat to clean my hands with after handing fish, or getting them wet.

Got on 6 nice fish this morning before my pepperjack omelet, bacon, hash browns and coffee Only took tubes as I thought it'd be a brief session before a downpour - a downpour that didn't happen

Been learning through this past year and these are my more "recent" catches.

Super fun day chasing shallow reds. Landed 9 ranging from 14-26”, broke off 3 fish and missed maybe 3 bites. I had my drag locked down from bass fishing and had to back it off. They were busting my line and opened up a snap. Caught all on a paddletail under a popping cork. Never tried this technique before, super fun and effective.

First time out since 4th of July. We’ve had a lot of rain, so the lake is at full pool. Fish were real spread out. I caught 7 by 8:30, then nothing else til I quit at 10:30. I spent 45 minutes of that talking to a friend that was on his dock though … I caught all the fish on a june bug uv speed worm…

Ya know, I think it’s really nice in the last few weeks of summer when alarm clock goes off at 0330 and I could turn it off, go back to sleep because there’s no 0500 sunrise. So when I finally get out of the rack, get underway and missing the morning topwater bite is an afterthought. When I get to the launch ramp I find no sign of a breeze, the tide has about an hour left before it bottoms out and almost 73 degree water temps. Good thing the fish were unaware of this, that air temps were gonna hit 98 degrees, because the bite was pretty good. Best fish of the day was a 4.29lber punching and a 4.58lber on a GYCB stickbait.

I’m sure we’ve all had those days where nothing you cast is getting bit..except that one bait. Today was that day for me without a doubt. This morning started with light rain but no wind. Tried a PopMax and a Whopper Plopper on top. Nothing doing, so I switched to jigs. A 3/8 oz. blue/black jig with a sapphire blue craw trailer as well as a 3/8 oz. green pumpkin jig with a green pumpkin Rage Menace trailer. Still nothing. Went down to a 1/4 oz. green pumpkin jig and still nothing. I then tried a black 5” Senko WR and a green pumpkin Zoom Magnum Trick Texas rig with an 1/8 oz. tungsten bullet weight and still drew a blank. I thought maybe today just was going to be a big ol’ skunkfest. Then I took off the worm and rigged a green pumpkin Rage Craw. First cast. Bass. Second cast. Bass. There was zero doubt they wanted this bait! Didn’t catch the first bass until 10:42 and ended up with seven (lost a nice one). When I was prepping gear last night, I saw I had 4/0 Gamakatsu EWG and a 1/8 oz. weight rigged on a Daiwa Aird-X 6’ 6” MF rod and a Garcia Black Max with 10 lb. Berkley Big Game. Don’t use it all that often after I upgraded to better rods and reels. Well, truth be told, that’s a fun rig to fish with. Glad I took it. I haven’t had bass thumb in a while!

Originally planned on going tomorrow (and I still might). Either way, I called an audible and hit local Lake Menderchuck for an afternoon trip. Surface water temps were still 75, despite a cold east wind and mostly bogus on & off rain in my face. Been a while since I've fished in the rain but I knew the boating traffic would be non-existent in that mess, so I went for it. The brown bass were, for the most part, fairly cooperative. A swinghead with a Keitech Swing Impact FAT Swimbait did all the damage today. Got plenty of bites and I needed every one. A-Jay

Didn't know exactly where to put this - mods, feel free to move it. Since I've been shore fishing a lot this year, carrying my rods has been awkward...I'd just been grabbing the four in one hand, but the tips went everywhere. So instead of dishing out $70 or more for a rod carrier that had things I didn't need, I built my own. Using some scrap aluminum left over from the Bass Trek build, I built a basic frame, putting 1/16" plastic 'Polywall' into the box-frame of the rear. Now I can neatly carry 4 rods and the 'box' in the rear carries my net and fish-basket for the keeper crappie and 'gills. Carry handles are just some oak dowels with paracord going to the washers and sheet-metal screws in the frame. Entire unit pops into the back of the truck with a cargo bar keeping it from sliding forward and possibly damaging the tip-tops.

Just showed up to my front door. I mean..not a fan of a looks, and not a solid feel like stella. I cant wait how this perform on a small topwater 😁

I launched at a small, boggy pond this morning, the pond where I caught my PB last spring. I have gone there again and again looking to catch that girl again or her big sister, but other than a few four-pounders, I have failed to dance with a big mama. This morning appeared to be perfect conditions with calm and fog. I caught 26 total, but my first 16 were the size of this bass, which was my first: Finally, my 17th bass was bigger: I was working weed fields: My 19th bass was solid too: I also caught some that were short, but fat: And one more thick fish. The requisite pretty pic: I finished the morning like I started, with another cookie cutter, smallish bass:

Hit the Columbia on Sunday the 25th and I caught a beast of a smallmouth. At 21.75" it was the longest smallmouth I have caught and it tipped the scales at 5lbs even (well short of my heaviest which was a 5lb 14oz bass from 2023). That was definitely the best summertime smallmouth I have ever caught. It really turned a somewhat mediocre day into a great one!! I got the the river around daybreak and the wind was calm and forecast to be light out of the West all day long (that turned out to be a lie) so I decided to head East for the first time this year. I was a little nervous about that decision since I don't know that part of the river very well since it is not often that it is fun to fish from the kayak. The other things that gave me were different for this trip is that the shad smolt are out-migrating and it looked like it was raining there were so many dimpling and the river was probably up a foot or two from anything I had seen this summer. I thought the shad smolt would be there but I was surprised by the water height. I dd hit the point by the ramp to start the day and promptly missed a couple of topwater bites and caught a smallish fish. I then headed East and picked up a small smallmouth just upstream from the ramp. I was starting to feel like this was not going to be the greatest of days. I headed upstream to a point I have done well on in the past but only managed two bass off of it. One was decent (2lb 4oz) and the other was a little over a pound. After fishing that point I gave serious consideration to turning around and heading West but for whatever reason I decided to keep going East. The next couple of spots each produced a handful of fish. Mostly dinks but with a couple of decent ones thrown in. Overall it was a grind with a lot of work going into every fish I was catching. The fish were in 15-25' of water and it was a lot of slow and tedious probing for each bite that I got. I was rotating between a Ned rig, drop shot and wobblehead jig and each produced some fish. By noon I only had 11 bass, about one every half hour. Definitely not lighting it up. I had two bass that were over 16" and a lot of the rest were dinks. Several spots that normally produce were completely empty and I kept thinking I had made a mistake in heading East. I had not given up hope completely since I had not yet reached my favorite spot but I definitely was just hoping to catch at least a few fish off my favorite spot. By the time I made it to the spot the wind was starting to pick up which I was hoping would stimulate the bite. I started carefully probing the spot and it was crickets. I was starting to really feel bad about the day at that point. I stopped to eat my cherries and think. I said to myself, "There have to be fish on this spot". I realized that the wind was making it hard to control my kayak so all my fishing a bit haphazard. I decided to extremely carefully re-probe the spot making sure every cast had a purpose in sifting the water. Since the wind was making it hard to fish I decided to make the wobblehead+Zoom speed craw my primary weapon. It gets to the bottom quickly and is pretty easy to fish effectively with even in the wind. After a bit of careful probing I found a section of that spot that was holding fish and quickly caught a few nice bass and big (3lb) pikieminnow on the wobblehead. I switched to the drop shot for a bit but realized I was having a hard time keeping contact with the bottom. After a bit I realized I should mostly keep the wobblehead in my hand. Three casts later I felt a thump and then no weight at all. I reeled in quickly and when I caught up to the fish I slammed the hook home. It was one of those beautiful moments where you rear back on the hookset and it feels like the tip of the rod does not move an inch - oh yeah, this is a big one! The fish fought hard but I was able to get it to the surface pretty quickly. When I saw that fish I almost lost my mind. Fortuneately I was able to keep my wits about me and keep good pressure on that fish. I was not going to make a stupid mistake on this one! As I went to scoop it with the net it made a thrashing jump and sort of bounced off the side of the kayak. I was able to scoop it up on the rebound and the beast was mine!! Just a beautifully healthy 5lb 0oz, 21.17" piggy. I stopped fishing for a few minutes after this and texted that picture on the board to a handful of friends and my family. A somewhat mediocre day just became epic! When I got back to fishing the bit just kept getting better and better. To try to keep them biting I switched up to a Ned rig for a bit and picked up a 19.25" 3lb 1oz bass. Then it was back to the wobblehead and I picked up a couple more decent ones and then a 17.5" 2lb 13oz fish. For most of the day I could not find a decent fish and now the small ones I was cathing were as nice as my best fish from earlier. I am not sure if the bite just turned on or if my careful probing is what made the difference and I don't care I ended the day with 20 bass and the 1 pikieminnow. My best 5 went 91.25" (21.75, 19.25, 17.5, 16.5, 16.26) and weighed 15lb 1oz (5lb, 3lb 1oz, 2lb 13oz, 2lb 4oz, 1lb 15oz). They were still biting good when I left but the wind was becoming ferocious (turns out the light winds turned into a 20mph blow). It took my 55 minutes to slog back to the ramp through the wind and the waves and I did not regret a single second of that ride Here are some other pics from the day and my video.

Your learning curve is advancing quickly with all the new baits. The southern bass population is probably lucky you are confined to the NE.

Bait Monkey's recommendation.

Twins arrived a week earlier than expected!

I’m lost, why do you need the fish to move? If you know it’s there, set the hook?

Quite simply, I don't see the need to try any reel other than Zillion. But Bates has been discussed and reported on the forum, and the owner of Bates reels contributed to the discussion linked below: Also noteworthy, Roy's Bait&Tackle in Corpus is carrying them now, and the most followed fisherman and videographer on the TX Coast "Prof Salt" is raving his - the closest Glenn gets to sponsors is swapping meat fish for tackle credit at Roy's.

Another couple days of slow fishing this weekend. Fished dawn until 1pm with my son and a friend of his on Saturday. I only caught a few 1.5-2.5# largemouth, my son caught a nice smallie that was long and surprisingly light at 3.4# (take a look at the photo and tell me what you think the two dents could be from?). Wes’ buddy caught only one 1# largemouth early on. The boys are both 14 and when the fishing proved to be slow they got acting goofy, not listening and then Wes was whining about how hot it was (it wasn’t hot). His friend was casting very aggressively and thought all the bluegill nibbles were big bass he had to violently hookset then say oh, I missed it that was big. I tried to coach him a bit, but he didn’t listen so I gave up and concentrated on not drowning anyone. 🙄😒#yerbugginme Sunday I took a good friend and his 13yo. son to a favourite small lake. My friend used to fish the lake with his dad, and his son had only been there once before when he was young. They were great guests and it was a pleasure to take them to experience that together. His son has a great sense of humour and despite slow fishing he stayed in good spirits. We had some good natured ribbing when he declared it a tournament and kept changing the rules when I was winning. It was a weird day and seemed I caught the first and only fish at each new spot, then there’d be no other bites so we’d move to a new weed bed or hump and I’d do it again even when I hung back and let my guests take a few casts first.🤷🏼‍♂️ I caught 1/2 doz. including one solid bass and a pike that could swim through the eye of a needle - he had some gill damage (not from me) and was obviously struggling, but still fought like a pike does. My buddy got 1 pike and unfortunately his son struck out (had one pike bite him off, that was it). I’ll be trying again to get his young lad out for a better day. 🤞🏻

I knew I only had an hour and a half to fish this morning due to a family obligation and that scared me, for it sometimes takes time to find the bass. I guessed well at first, for I went to a shallow corner of the pond and caught five bass there. I started with this one, a thick 16-inch smallie which I hooked on a Kardashian-garish spinnerbait on the edge of the shallow water. Then I caught this well-shaped, 17-inch lmb on a chrome Whopper Plopper three feet from the shore. The Whopper Plopper then caught this smaller bass. And the spinnerbait scored a thick one. Then I hooked this medium one, giving me five bass in the first half hour. So, I paddled across the pond to my favorite shoreline, expecting more fine fishing, but in 45 minutes, I could only manage this one bass, a skinny 16-incher: It was time to paddle back, so I trolled my spinnerbait and crossing the middle of the pond, discovered where they'd been: DEEP! I hooked this one: I cast to where I'd caught ^this^ one and hooked vthisv one: I hooked one more about 15 inches on the next cast and I made that my final cast, lest I be late. If that dang end-of-recess bell hadn't rung, I would have run up a nice total, but settled for nine, an average of one bass every ten minutes. Oh, yes, I cast a creature bait for the first time. T-Rigged with a tungsten weight. And I couldn't even provoke a bite. Total failure. They wanted my clownish spinnerbait and Kardashian-shiny Whopper Plopper with the big bum. They wouldn't even sniff at finesse.

Me, if I gave away all the baits I can't catch bass on.

I would start off with a weightless fluke or a weightless senko. If conditions are such that you need a weight then I would use a Texas rig with a very light weight on it.

Hit one of my happy places yesterday morning. (Only unhappy thing is the ramp is an old dockless, steep and sucks). We are in a bit of a weather funk right now. And thought the smallies would have shut down. But there was a bite. Felt the need to go because I’m not interested in holiday boaters, fisherman and highway traffic. I’ll pass on that. Sort of a numbers day for me. No pigs or anything like that. Caught close to two dozen Smallies, but only 7”-14” fish. Did have a topwater bite that’s alway a plus. Even a couple of larger Bluegill on topwater. Majority of fishing was with worms, tubes, craws and creatures. Been on a real Zman kick lately. What’s NED fishing? Water condition were nice and I didn’t see anyone else out. Did run into two younger gals doing a kayak trip of about 30 miles and they were finishing in the city. They wanted a pic going through the national park. I took that for them. God bless them, I couldn’t do it. Didn’t see them carrying much in the way of supplies. Asked if they could use a water. Said they had them. Packed in the hull? I don’t know? I’ll be back to a happy place but it won’t be before Tuesday.

If the fish doesn’t move, it isn’t a fish.

are you sure it's a fish?

Say, pdx, I've read enough of your trip reports to say that you're a heckuva angler. You are consistent and given how conditions and bass are always in flux, so you have to have a nimble, angling-oriented mind to keep catching them...and you do. You're also a tough hombre, given that you take to big water with your health challenge. You average good-sized bass too. You're not fishing for the gobie-gorged tankers of the Midwest. You're fishing for lean river bass, so a five-pounder is a rare specimen. It's apples and oranges when it comes to river bass and Lake Erie bass. As I wrote earlier, you're one of the BR gang whose great days make me as happy as my best days.

Heck of day Congrats

Awesome! Thanks for catching and sharing.

I have been running 20lb PowerPro on my old school Shimano Citca's and Curado's for many, many years. No issues what so ever.

I guess I am the minority here. I mostly fish clear water and rocky bottoms with not much weeds, and 20lb braid with 12lb FC leader is my most commonly used line on baitcasters, for 1/4 - 3/8oz jigs and other bottom fishing techniques. I don't have digging problems as I only set my drag on 3~4 lb, and I don't normally have abrasion problems either, unless a muskie gets my lure.

I have the c3000xg and absolutely love it. I'm using mine inshore, and while I'm yet to hook anything large while using it, it's handled speckled trout and slot redfish with ease so far. I've had the FK, CI4+ and Vanford in the past, and also have an FL still atm and the FM is my favourite so far.

That is true forward facing sonar! Beautiful pictures!!

I just wrapped up cutting my lawn so I figured I can enjoy one of these😉

10mph is a good day out here but when it is in the 20s I start to doubt my life choices I liked your analogy of having to constantly re-crack the code of a changing combination!

I don’t have any experience with the brand. They are using aluminum frames which is great but the price isn’t. Honestly just have him buy a JDM Zillion. There is a reason you hear everyone saying the same thing. I own 4 and an HD and they are fantastic.

If the bearing is calling for lube, then no. Magseal isn't a miracle, and it isn't critical for the proper operation of the reel. It will get expressed out of a bearing like any other lubricant. In fact, I've seen it migrate out of the relatively slow-moving outer crank bearing and weep into the IAR bearing causing it to slip. My advice: Just use it until it needs service then have it serviced locally with conventional lube, even if it sees occasional unintentional salt water. Forget using Daiwa for a JDM reel too. They'll bop you on the head for $ and take forever to turn it around as your JDM reel won't be considered eligible for the executive service plan as you didn't pay the up-front premium from a US retailer.

One is going on a 7’4” HF Tatula Elite AGS for frogs and the other is going on a 7’3” HXF Legend Tournament for T-rigs

For those who know me know I’ve stuck to one beer forever. Well, I figured I’d try something else and boy is it good!

I worked 10.5 hrs yesterday. Home at 4:30. Fed, showered, and in bed at 6:00. Back up at 9:30. On the lake at 11:00. Chucked a double 10 until 6:00, then alternated between double 8's, a single 6, and a 5" tuff shad until I called it quits at 10:00. All just to catch this little fella. 😂 Oh well, I was on a roll for a couple weeks there. This heat wave really messed up the bite. Water temp is up 6 degrees in the last 5 days. I was on fish, but they wouldn't react to baits at all. I had one lazy follow in 11hrs of grinding.

KISS. Rage Bug weightless, or up to 1/4 oz worm weight. 1/8 is under- appreciated, IMO. This isn't said often enough. It may be counterintuitive, but adding a dangly weight doesn't hurt much in the gnarliest wood.

Dont forget the buzzbait. Incredibly snag resistant.

This is EXACLY WHAT you're looking for. It's essentially a light punch rig. Consists of a bobber stop, a bullet weight, a shirt on a hub, an ewg hook and the plastic of your choice. Rigged right, comes through anything. I use this when fishing new water when I'm not sure what type of mess I might be throwing into. A lighter weight can slow you down, get more bites and save you from constantly being snagged. Takes a few seconds to rig but totally worth it. A-Jay

Since the Bait Monkey is already winning! 6th Sense Hogwalla 😉

Caught my first Flathead today(not ever), while actually targeting catfish, dragging chicken.

Well, the early start proved to be a good call. I wish I'd started even earlier. They were chewin. I got into the bay where I wanted to start at 02:30. The first fish hit the net at 02:50. I ended up with four by 06:10, and missed four more. Four bites on the 5" Tuff Shad, zero hookups. Four bites on double 10's, four in the bag. They're killing that thing. I have to rewire it and put new hooks on it today. Both of the 7/0 Mustad's got mangled this morning. 36" - 38" - 42" - 44". The 42 and 44 are stout for summer fish. I had three follows after the 44, with one taking a half hearted swipe at the bait in the 8. Never moved a fish after about 07:30. Fished until 11:00. That spinner ain't the only thing that got mauled. My left hand is getting fairly well thrashed at this point. Those slimy critters aren't very cooperative when you're trying to lift 'em outta the net. Lol. I can't wait to get back out there tonight!!!