Bass_Fanatic

Pretty much spot on! Hard bottom is key. And what you see on your graph is only a fraction of what is there. The DI beam is very narrow. Just last November I caught 81 bass off a spot that I saw about 12 fish on. I only fish when I see what I’m looking for, as Amateur Hour said. Hard bottom+a group of fish set up right. HUGE difference. The new v4 card or the Plus v2 card has the entire lake in 1’ contours.

Ok, here goes. Hard bottom is the single most important feature for offshore fishing. Even when fish are on points, ledges, piles, etc, they will use hard spots on those features. A brush pile that is sank in muck will rarely if ever be an effective pile, while one on hard bottom may hold fish year round. Finding hard bottom starts with with looking at your map. Most hard bottoms on Toledo can be found on the north side of a main lake point or ledge. I think thi is due to water current flowing north to south, washing the muck off of the north side of stuff creating hard spots. In creeks, start on the inside edge looking for hard bottoms. The current running from the back to the mouth creates hard spots on the inside of the structure. Creek bends are also prime areas to find hard spots. Outside bends typically will have hard spots. Dont overlook roadbeds either. They seem to be better fall-spawn, but they are highways (literally) that fish will use to travel and feed on. Crawfish love gravel and roadbed fit the bill perfectly. Once you have found areas on a map, idle them with SI and look for bright spots. Hard bottom has a hot return and will appear much brighter than mud. On you sonar, a hard bottom will show a much thinner line. Mud bottoms will be thicker lines due to your sonar penetrating the mud. I can say that I catch 90% of my fish on areas that have hard bottom.

The bass fishing is good, but the white perch fishing has been off the charts. I’m doing some white perch trips if anyone is interested. 12-20’ with brush seems to be the key.

My dad told me he met you. It is a small world lol. We ended up in 39th in basschamps with 15lbs. I was on a good drain bite last week. Hit 3 drains and had 23-24lbs. One drain I made 3 cast and caught 3 over 4lbs. I just knew it was going to get better and I could catch 20-25lbs in the first couple hours. Well, as usual, that didn’t go as planned. The drains were empty. We then went out to a school of barfish to see if we could catch 1 big bass in. Last week we had one over 6lbs out of them, this week, a billion barfish and 2 12” bass lol. Finally started flipping bushes and caught a 5.5lber and a limit. Should have done that all day, but the weather shouldn’t have had them in bushes. But fish don’t always do what they “should do”. We finished .5lbs from a check. An 8lb would have won it for us, so I feel like we fished to win, just didn’t work out.

He knew the weight. I asked if it was 7 or 8lbs and he was quick to tell me 10.5. He even told me where he caught it, so it didn’t get caught in a trap. I’m not saying he was cheating, he may have been using it as a livewell for the weekend. But it was strange to say the least

It was an interesting day for sure! I was convinced that we were going to catch a lot of shallow fish on a frog, but only had 1 blowup. We threw chatterbaits, senkos, and frogs with only that one fish to show for it. We did find quite a few offshore fish. Caught most on a dropshot, but the biggest came off of a Carolina rig. 15-18’ seemed to be the key depth Friday. I always enjoy sharing a boat with Chris. Stand up guy and a lot of fun! I’ve never seen anything like what we saw with the barrel. I’m still not sure if he was saving them for later (cheating) or if he just stored his fish in there while camping. Still really confused by what we saw. One thin is for sure though, it was a GIANT bass!

That makes more sense. I didn’t realize you could just cut the tag and not have to bring in the fish lol

Hard to tell in his pic, but I can’t imagine them tagging fish under the legal length limit. I could be wrong though.

Minimum legal length is 14” for largemouth and no minimum length on spotted bass.

Congrats Catt!

The big one was deep on a Carolina rig. She was spawned out or she would have went over 10lbs easily. The rest were shallow, but not on the banks

Didn’t get many bites today, but did get some good bites. Had at least 4 bites over 5lbs and lost another real big one we didn’t see. Also caught one really good one. I’ll try and get a pic up later. Fish seem to be moving up

I would suggest putting in at Mill Creek Park. You won’t have to go far to find fish. There is hydrilla, bushes, cypress trees, etc all close by

I fished Six Mile today. Caught about 30 in 15-18’. Had 2 pretty good ones, between 4-5lbs. Creek bends are key!

I’ve got a Megabass Destroyer X7 EMFT. It is the sweetest Senko rod I’ve ever used. Not cheap, but sweet!

The only sure fire way to tell a spot from a largemouth is by the jaw line. If the jaw line didn’t extend past the eye, it is a spot. That is how wildlife and fisheries check them. I’ve caught many spots with no patch on their tongue.

We fished today. Spent 80% of the time trying to get around the lake in the “light and variable” winds? and graphing. Three foot rollers out there today. Found plenty of fish, they just didn’t want to play. Caught 12 today in 12-18’.

Look for bare spots between the bushes and grass. Hardspots seem to be holding good fish

If all goes well this round, I plan on doing this atleast once a year. I do a lot of electronic trips in the boat and I teach electronic classes in the classroom, so we will see how it goes putting them both together. I think it will be the best of both worlds.

BTW guys, if anyone here is interested in an intense electronics learning weekend where you will learn mapping, image interpretation, and establishing patterns in a classroom setting along with a half day trip in the boat to put into practice what you learn in the classroom, please contact me ASAP. We will be doing this at Cypress Bend on May 9-11. We only have 12 spots left available.

I’ve been on good fish the past few weeks, but yesterday in basschamps the spots moved in on 6 of my 7 schools. Had 10lbs at noon. Finally hit a school of largemouth and culled every thing we had in the last 3 hours. Ended up with a little over 19lbs and finished in 7th out of 319 teams. All were caught in 15-18’ around channel swings.

I would check both lol, but my spots look more like “B”.

Cassel boykins is open

Fished Friday and for a few hours Saturday. Caught about 25 Friday, biggest going close to 7lbs. Jigs and Alabama rigs on channel swings got the most bites, but we did catch a few in grass. Saturday I found a new swing with some fish, but they wouldn’t bite right. Missed a lot, caught 6. Dropped one good one about 5lbs on a Crig.