Hemi6677

Welcome back home!!! Hope you get many more trips with your wife! (Although I bet the ride home was rough being she caught the only fish) ;D

I just purchased my first ghost minnow and will get to use it for the first time this weekend. Was unsure about the color but it looks like it will produce!! Nice fishies!

I recently culled some small bass out of a 1 acre pond that is to populated. They were all 1lb or less and boy they tasted so good. Put a little batter on them and fried them up along with fresh okra from the garden (that stuff is awesome fried) and home made maccaroni and cheese... YUM YUM YUM My father-in-law is making me go out again this Sunday to cull more fish so we can repeat the process. I have two ponds that I have been instructed to cull due to over-population of bass and bluegill and I'm going to get as many as I can before the weather gets to bad.

Who else has this problem. You have fished for hours, hardly catching a thing but try as you might you just can't quit. Well, I had another one of those moments last night but this one turned out a little better than normal. Now before you read, be aware that I'm in Indiana so you won't be seeing any Florida or California monsters in this post! Went to my fathers 2 acre pond after work. It's come to the point that his pond needs culled of smaller bass as you can catch 1lbs or less all day long but 2 to 4lb'ers are few and far between. My neighbor has been wanting me to catch him some fish to fry all summer so today I was going to oblige him. A storm front was coming in yesterday and as soon as I got in my truck after work it started to sprinkle. Rain is a minor nuisance so I continued on with my plan. After getting to my dads I quickly hooked a couple small bass using an *** trick stick in Pumpkinseed Chartail color and Black Blue Laminate (love these two colors). Not long after getting those two the rain picked up and a very strong wind came in and the fish quit biting. I roamed the banks for another hour not having much luck when the weather decided to get it a rest and the rain and wind quit. I snagged another 3 smaller bass and decided that would have to be enough for my neighbor today. As I was putting my plastics away I noticed a neat colored 6" Duper Fluke had fallen out of one of my Armed Robbery bags. The color was Watermelon Clear Gold Laminate. I knew the wife probably wanted me home but I just couldn't go without giving this beautiful colored bait a try. After a few short casts to see how it swam I gave it a big chuck across the pond and slowly began a twitching/pausing retrieve when all of a sudden my line got spongy. Now I have fished this pond for 25 years and have caught a few nice bass but nothing so far has compared to what I had on the end of my line. Being that I only had one spinning rod and my plastics bag I didn't have a scale handy as it was in my big bag at home. I'm bad at guessing weight so I'll just let the picture speak for itself and hopefully catch and weigh it at another point in time. Tight lines and good luck fishing this weekend!

I searched all summer for a small plastic pontoon. Went to several auctions and browsed Craigslist everyday. Boats with Tm and battery were going for $600 - $900 at auctions and craigslist was usually $400 - $800 depending on size. Got lucky a few weeks ago and found a 8' Sportsman Mini Bass Boat with 30lb TM and battery plus a Humminbird 525 fish finder for $400.00!!! It's been great to fish out of so far by myself. A little concerned about putting someone else in there though.

32 yrs old and work in the IT department at the leading industrial forklift manufacturer in the United States. If anyone rides around on a gray and orange forklift hope you enjoy the ride!!

Amazing fish! It turns my stomach seeing you lucky folks catching monster bass like that everyday. Maybe one day I will get the chance to make a trip to a nice fishery in Florida or Texas and hook some of them hogs.

For the fish that were out in the open water that I could see real well I was using my spinning real with 12lb Vanish fluoro. The two fish I caught under the bridge were on 30lb PPower braid as there was trees and other stuff I was bumping my lures off of. I'm thinking the weather conditions were the main factor. It was bluebird skies and about 88 degrees. I'm off work next week so I'm going to go out there one morning or evening and give topwater a good try. Thank you for all the suggestions!!

I really though the Senko would be the ticket but other then bluegills nibbling on it they just swam on by. I did try my cavitron white and chartreuse buzzbait but no taker on it either. tried flipping a pumpkinseed and blue and black jigs at a fallen tree but nothing hit. I'm guessing a late evening trip right before dark may be my best choice. I should have tried my rage tail shad but I figured since they weren't hitting my buzzbait they wouldn't hit it either. After thinking about it some more I'm guessing that since the water was clear enough for me to see them they could get a good look at my bait and tell it wasn't real right when they got up on it. Might have to invest in a good swimbait.

Sorry roadwarrior, it says on the General Fishing section that it can be used for questions but I guess since I talked about what happened it should have been placed here............ :-/

Okay, a little prelude to the question I am going to ask. The wife and kid were busy after work yesterday so I decided I was going to go fish a small body of water that I have driven by a million times but never tried. Basically this piece of water is an ending point for a very large creek channelthat branches off the White River in Indiana. In the picture below you can see the length of the channel. I've seen people down there fishing before but never really gave it much thought but yesterday I had the free time so I went to check it out and HOLY COW was I surprised at what I found. There were fish EVERYWHERE! Bluegill and bass and some small gar all floating around right at the surface just hanging out. Underneath the bridge there were schools of fish (not sure what kind but something kept spooking them) so there seemed to be plenty of food for any bass to eat. Along the banks were concrete slabs plus fallen trees that had tons of fish around them. Here is a up close picture of the area. The box in red is the area I could get a lure too. So herein lies my problem.... For all of these fish (I probably counted 40 bass in that small area and more bluegill then you could shake a stick at) I only caught 2! One on a chatterbait and another on a spinnerbait and both from under the bridge. I tried weightless senkos, brushhogs and powerworms, jigs, floating and suspending rapala's, buzzbaits, crankbaits, and a spro frog and although they would swim to the bait they just wouldn't bite. I know when you can see fish they are hard to catch but what I experienced yesterday honestly kept me awake last night wondering what it would take to get them to bite. I was there from 5:00pm to 7:00pm so I know the heat had them lazy but surely something I threw would have enticed them. So does anyone have any advice on what I should look into? I'm also going to get a small boat with trolling motor and see work the bank cover more as I suspect the big boys were hiding. Thanks for any advice forthcoming!! 8-)

Just tie on some 2000lb PowerPro and give it a sling! I'm near the Ohio River about every weekend but can't find anyone with a boat that frequents the river to give it a shot...

That's a neat looking place to fish! Congrats on the first catch with your baitcaster!

I recently upgraded my baitcasting arsenal this year. There is one tackle shop in my town with inflated prices on most things so I went to Wal-Mart. I now have two Abu Garcia Black Max baitcasters paired up with Abu Garcia Colonon rods and love them. Each setup ran me right at $100.00 if I remember correctly. I also bought an Abu Garcia Cardinal spinning reel with an Abu Garica Colonon rod and that thing will cast a stinking country mile!! 99% of my time is pond fishing so these fit the bill for me perfectly. Now if I had a boat and was doing serious fishing like many on here I would probably spring for some higher end stuff.

I had been struggling with buzzbaits myself...until last night. Went to my fathers 2 acre pond around 8:30pm. No wind, sun was on the way down, and my black on black Cavitron buzzbait tore them up!! Last night gave me renewed confidence in buzzbaits!

I let a buddy sniff my rage tail frog this past weekend and I think he almost tried to take a bite... Man they smell good and work great!

Ah, so exactly what it sounds like. Thanks for the straight answer. I was expecting something along the lines of "You tell it it's adopted". Where's Muddy when you need him? I hadn't heard of electro-fishing before. I can hear the fish yelling "don't taze me bro!". Ok, bad joke. Dude that's funny right there!!

Trust me that was noticed immediately upon catching those fish. I'm beginning to think that with the small size of that pond and the size of the bass they are probably eating up the small bait fish pretty quickly. I'm not sure what needs to be done whether we need to remove any smaller bass we catch or transplant the big ones to another pond that is close to there and much larger in size? Any recommendations? :-/ If the owner of the pond is ok with you taking some of the dinks out then thats what I'd do. Less competition for food. I definitely wouldnt transplant the big fish! Might just ruin a good thing I'm going to talk to the land owner and see about doing that. It really doesn't seem like there is a huge bass population in the pond but it doesn't look like there are many bluegill in there either.

Yes. Stop laying the fish on the ground. Damages the protective covering on its body and makes it open to invasion by bacteria etc. I knew that would get a comment and I do apologize for that. I guess I got greedy wanting to get a picture and the only way was to lay it down. It didn't flop around any and was quickly back in the water!! I do promise not to do that again though!! :-[

Trust me that was noticed immediately upon catching those fish. I'm beginning to think that with the small size of that pond and the size of the bass they are probably eating up the small bait fish pretty quickly. I'm not sure what needs to be done whether we need to remove any smaller bass we catch or transplant the big ones to another pond that is close to there and much larger in size? Any recommendations? :-/

I've been fishing at night before but only for catfish and usually with a group of friends or family. That night I was out there alone with nothing around but frogs, crickets and bugs. The amount of noise being produced by the frogs was so loud I couldn't hear my topwater baits if they were powered by a 5hp motor. Fishing in the dark definitely takes things to another level that's for sure!

Long story so those of you with short attention spans may just like the pictures! Two weeks ago I got permission to fish a small (and I mean real small) farm pond that rarely gets fished. I had been hearing stories from the owner that there were big bass in this pond and I was eager to try it out. That weekend we made a trip over around 4:00 PM on a Sunday afternoon. I soon as we pulled up my heart skipped a beat when I saw the cat tails and lilly pads blanketing this small piece of heaven! Although the fish weren't real active I still managed to sink into this nice 4lber. Catching this fish only made me want to fish this place more when it wasn't so warm out and the bass would be more willing to come out from under the pads. This past Friday I was sitting at home chasing my kid around the floor (he just learned how to crawl and is into everything now) when I told the wife I couldn't stand it anymore and that I had to fish that pond at night. We loaded up the kids and dogs and I dropped them of at the father-in-laws and I headed to the pond. Got there around 8:30 and my nerves were literally tingling at the notion that I could pull something really big out of this place tonight. I soaked down in bug repellent and started working my spro frog along the lilly pads. After a few casts I got my first bass interested in my frog, unfortunately the pads are so thick the bass can't punch through them to get the baits. (Not sure how to rectify this) This happened about 4 more times before I finally got discouraged and switched over to a chatterbait. After fishing the chatterbait along the cattails and edges of the pads I had 4 nice 1 to 2lb bass caught and released but still nothing to write home about. I had worked up a sweat so I hopped in the truck and listened to the Nascar truck race for a bit and then decided I would break out the jitterbug. Nothing, nada, not even a look. My jaw hit the floor. Next I tried a black on black cavitron buzzbait and once again the fish were not interested. It was about 10:30PM and I was on the verge of loading up and going home when I got one last idea. Pulled out a 10" Berkly black and purple powerworm T-rigged weightless. After a few casts I got the bite I was looking for! The Mag-Lite is 18 inches long and this bass easily surpassed that! I didn't have a scale with me but I would say it was easily over 4lbs as it was heavier than the one I pulled out of there the week earlier. Twenty minutes later I cast the worm into the open water and wham, another just like it. At this point I was satisfied with the nights catch and loaded up with a big smile on my face. A pond less than an acre in size with bass like these... Who would have thunk it! This pond has a LOT of big bullfrogs which I suspect is a main source of food for these bass. The three big ones that I had caught so far were really long but not real fat and are very lightly colored. I had a 12 or so bass chase a frog right up to my feet scaring the living daylights out of me. Next time I go back I'm going to work my rage tail frogs a lot more I think. Anyway, just a small story I figured I would share. Take a look at a few of the nicer fish I have caught this year if you are bored. Nothing super special but nice fish for coming out of small 1 to 2 acre ponds in Southern Indiana. http://s25.photobucket.com/albums/c63/Knoke77/Fishing/

That's going to be cool as heck when it is done. I plan on undertaking a project like that one of these years once I find the right land for it.

Just wanted to drop a line (bad pun...I know I know...har har) and say thank you in advance for the incredible information that is presented on this board. As for me I began fishing as soon as I could walk and continue to do so 32 years later. My grandfather had a camper permanently located on Lake Monroe here in Indiana so I grew up on the water but primarily catching bluegill and sunfish. My grandfather would bass fish but he would leave me with my grandmother while he went out and did that. (Surely a 5 year old isn't that distracting hehe) Since then I have loved to fish when time allows with my main areas of fishing being small farm ponds located throughout Southern Indiana. The last two years I have really switched my fishing mentality and started targeting bigger bass. This year I am seeing the results pay off and hopefully I can build on that with all of the great information here. I'm also looking at doing some bigger lake fishing which is my weak spot right now. Once again, thanks for this great site and see you around!

Had the same thing happen to me a few weeks ago. First cast, 3lb'er. Next two hours I stood there in the rain and didn't catch a thing.