MFBAB

Nice job. Any plastic will work, I have made pvc attractors and caught crappie off of them the same day at times. I pick up those plastic hose carts that always leak and the white plastic chairs that always break every time I see them on the side of the road. They make great mats!!

Wiz, It's just a little sd pond, nothing on the regular park rotation. I have a non fishing friend there, they don't live right on the pond and didn't even realize it had happened. The strange thing about it was that there were thousands of bream still alive in the pond, they were all feeding up top on an insect hatch when I was there, but as I said, there were dozens of bass carcasses picked clean by the buzzards all over the bank. I don't know if this is normal for some species to survive or what caused the kill. One resident said she thought it was ecoli.

Another thing not mentioned is that kvd has it harder than all of the others. He basically cannot fish a spot twice because of the spectator boats. In a 4 day tourney, he has to find 4 days worth of fresh big fish water to contend. A lot of the other guys can fly under the radar and manage their fish for 4 days, but his spots are usually just burned because 20 spectators will waypoint and fish them behind him. Spectators can impact bass tourneys way more than other sports, one of the down sides of his success I guess. This is one reason why he dominates at ky lake. It is so vast, and he is so good at reading the ledges there, he can just basically go fishing and run different spots each day and still have success. Most lakes just don't have the real estate for that.

Most of the best ones are already taken. I didn't see Glen Lau Bigmouth Forever mentioned. This is a book, but he also did the Bigmouth videos, 3 of them w Homer Circle. They are pretty fun to watch and like Bob Underwoods Lunker, are largely based on scuba diving observations. Another book series not mentioned is Tim Tucker's secrets of the bass pros, these are full of Tucker's old articles from Bassmaster. Spoon plugging, bill Murphy, these are required reading for sure...but there are about a dozen other books already mentioned that I also reread every couple of years. Big Bass Zone was only mentioned one time and I've seen it sort of trashed here before, but there are concepts presented in that book in ways I've never seen anywhere else. If you read and comprehend that book it can have a strong positive impact on your fishing. I think the book could have been edited down to about 40 pages, and the whole bbz thing is a little corny, but there is still some wonderful info there.

Ha, I laughed out loud when I read that about carp. I've had a few times recently where I accidentally threw my buzzer or whatever I was using right on their head this year, in the dark....It sounds like someone threw a bowling ball in the lake when they take off!! That sound will let you know you're alive, for sure!! As far as finding the carp, just start going to ponds and walk the banks with polarized glasses, they are not hard to spot. Ponds with grass and silted ponds usually seem to hold a lot of them. Herb Parsons has carp too, I caught a 40 lbr once there on a redeye shad, in the mouth. I fished a pond recently that had a fish kill (or I should say I had planned to fish it). There were 4 or 5 40-60lb carp floating, probably 30 buzzards hanging around, and a lot of nice bass carcasses on the bank, it was a very sad sight. Catfish are just about everywhere, I think I've heard mention of one being caught at Grove on a Senko If you're not worried about size, Glenn and Herb Parsons stock a ton of cats and people seem to catch them off of the bank pretty easily. I caught a cat on my buzzer the other night at a private pond too, that was a first. Good Luck!

I love buzzers, but they don't always find them as good in muddy water. If it's super muddy, I'd start with a slower moving topwater like a popper or prop bait, then colorado blade spinnerbait, then a flipping jig w rattles - tight to cover. If that doesn't do it, maybe my advice to get out of bed wasn't so good Hope ya wreck em!

I'd fish. Warm muddy water is totally different than cold muddy water, which is generally known as the worst fishing you can get. Especially in a farm pond, you should be able to find them on the bank and they will be active in warm water. Dirty water puts them on hard objects, and the bank is an object, make multiple casts

I think the survival rates vary by season, summer being the worst. The studies I've seen have been on tourney fishing. I have confidence that the overwhelmoing majority of fish released at boatside (or bank) will survive in most conditions. They might be bleeding, they might get dropped on the ground or boat deck and flop around some (tourneys, other than MLF, disgust me in this regard), but they will mostly survive if released immediately. The question is, if we were second on the food chain and there was a species who liked to catch and release us for fun, and we didn't know if we were going to live through it until they let us go, would we be cool with it? I guess what I'm saying about cruelty is this: Everyones definition is going to be different. I saw a recent survey that showed a pretty high %, I want to say close to 60%, don't think waterboarding is torture. But I bet people who have been waterboarded might disagree, and I don't think 100% of that 60% would want to find out first hand. Don't fool yourself, while it is a lot of fum for us, getting caught is a life and death struggle for a fish, and on whatever level they feel things, they are traumatized by it. If you're doing this, you're signing off on that. It's not complicated. I try not to kill them, but I understand that what I'm doing is almost definitely not OK with them either, ya know?

I think everything is getting printed smaller, the older I get. I can barely read bassmaster these days, it is sad :) I mean, not just their content, my vision :)

This is a circular argument to me. If people are that concerned about the welfare of the fish, just leave them alone, IMO. Not trying to pick a fight, but this is like a vegetarian who wears leather telling me about cruelty to animals There's no credibility there. I'm a lifetime hunter and fisherman, and I don't believe in cruelty to animals, and I don't believe in wasting what you kill (not harvest) either. Having said that, on some level, even C&R fishing is a little cruel. This is just a sport to us, it is life and death to them. They should be handled with care, but as I said before, at some point how is it better to catch the fish, stress it, put it through trauma, get your pic, or worse, take it somewhere and weigh it, and then let it go, and you get to feel like a prince for doing it, but a lot of them still die later, especially in summer. If you do this for very long, whatever your intentions, you will kill some fish. By continuuing to do it at all, you are saying you're OK with the collateral damage. You are justifying it, as all of us humans do. My bass fishing is well over 90% C&R, not so much on the panfish, but I do C&R more than I keep even with them. There is nothing wrong with keeping a few bass within the limits as they are set. C&R works, but it can be overdone, and it is causing smaller fish in MANY lakes and ponds across the country. This is well documented. In fertilized ponds especially, there are recommended take-out per acre rates, this ruins a lot of private ponds, people don't take them out and they overpopulate and become stunted. As stated, mash the barb or fish moving baits, they don't take them down as deeply. And again, I'm not trying to start anything here, just throwing some perspective out there. We've all got out opinions and we all justify the things we do, however good or bad they are. It is human nature.

I have an idea for a nice survey sticky: - Basically, set it up so only members can take the survey, and you can only take it once. - This would eliminate a lot of random data, and we would end up with a very interesting data set. Some Questions: - What bait caught your biggest bass? (Answer Options would be selected from a list by bait type, Jig, T-rig Worm, Spinnerbait, etc...so it could be displayed on a bar chart by %) - Size of your biggest bass? 1-2, 2-4, 5-6, etc... (Set it up to show a bar graph or pie chart with percentages for each size bracket or bait category) - Favorite Bait - Favorite Lake - How long have you been bass fishing? under 1 year, 2-5, 5-10, etc... And yes, I know a couple of these are on our profile already, but wouldn't it be cool to see a large data sample by % for these types of things?? - What % of members are over 5lb PB? - What REALLY constitutes a BIG Bass? This would put it in context. - What % of members caught their biggest on a Worm? Frog? Buzzer? I would love to see that!!! There are a ton of great questions we could add. If people chime in on this thread with more ideas, what are the odds of getting something like this started? Thx, Rob I also post on a grilling forum, and they have a survey like what I am describing stickied, here is a link as an example: - It is in bar chart form and very easy to read and understand. http://www.kamadoguru.com/topic/27-char-griller-akorn-kamado-satisfaction-survey/

I think you can still use a trolling motor there, right? That's what I was saying with the roadrunners. For bream, micro jigs like a trout magnet or crickets will work although I wouldn't expect to find a lot of them still bedding this late. Orgill is a decent little lake, it just doesn't have a lot of the obvious visible targets most people like to throw at. I hope y'all find a few for him!

No permit required. It is full of bream and crappie. If you bring a boat, drag a couple of road runners around and you'll catch them all day. Bass fishing is OK too, and some good sized ones live there, but they tend to suspend a lot when the sun is out. The coves are mostly pretty silted in and there isn't a lot of cover. good luck!

Picked up a fiver at Grove this morning, and lost a bigger one.....as usual I Only had 2 bites there. If you bat 500 in baseball, you're a millionaire. If you bat 500 on big fish, you just have a lot of sad stories!

Sun and Muddy water both tend to position fish tight on/in cover. Muddy to me is big flipping jigs w rattles, colorado blade spinners bumped into something solid, large profile creature plastics w appendages, present it tight to cover-any available cover, use scent, fish slower, try to help the fish find it. If your worried about color, go dark. Everyone says to use dark baits in muddy water, but every fish I ever caught out of muddy water was bleached out, white-ish in color, so why not imitate that? It's the least important IMO, if you're doing the other stuff. I caught fish this morning in muddied up water equally well on black and white skirted baits at the same pond, I started with a white skirt and a very big bass wanted it more than me (my fault for not changing my line enough), so I had to switch baits and still caught fish. I had the biggest blow-up of the year so far later on the black one, but no hook-up, it looked like someone threw a cinder block in the lake And no, I ain't sayin where!! If anyone is thinking about respooling, DO IT!!!!!!!! My line broke at the reel, on the end of a long cast where the big fish hit. I must've had a bad spot or a kink from a backlash or something, who knows. The bad thing is, I already knew I was due for a respool and didn't take the time. I found some time later this morning though

I don't think of it that way, meaning I don't think it's a good idea to let your game plan be fishing with one specific lure on any given pond no matter what the conditions are. It's got to be a little more situational than that, IMO. I don't even fish the same buzzbait for every pond or set of conditions, there are different blades for different conditions just like there are different spinnerbait blades and plastic worm tails for different conditions. Just take a look at the conditions you see, and then start checking them off on the list one by one. 1 - Is it Windy or Calm? 2 - Muddy or Clear? 3 - Hot or Cold? 4 - Cloudy or Sunny? 5 - Dark or Light? 6 - Cold Front, Stable or Pre-Frontal? 7 - What time of Day? - The first 5 on that list are leading you towards power fishing on the left side and finesse fishing on the right. A combination of rights and lefts might indicate baits in the middle of the spectrum. An example would be: - Power Spinnerbait: Big Colorado Blade with a twin tail trailer - Muddy or Night - Medium Spinnerbait: 3/8 Oz w Double Willows - Medium stained water with a breeze - Finesse Spinnerbait: 1/4 Oz. willow w a grub and no skirt - Clear water with a little breeze and partly cloudy - The next step down is a swim jig: Clear water and Calm Just apply that type of logic to all of your baits. In other words, the finesse worm (not covering water - fished slowly on structure) that might be your best bet on a sunny/windless day in the afternoon at Grove, might be a terrible choice on a breezy early morning when a spinner bait or topwater (covering water) would almost always be a better choice - assuming reasonably warm water temp. Hope that helps someone, there's no guarantees in fishing but you better believe you can play the odds and get more consistent results. Having said all of that, never leave home without a few shaky heads and trick worms :)

Attached how? In the mouth? I like a good scavenger hunt What kind of plug? BTW, here is one I saw below the dam at Cub Creek Lake in Natchez trace SP this w/end. I was about 30' from him, so the zoom / pic quality isn't very good. This snake was probably over 4' long and I'd say as thick as a baseball in the middle Fishing was fair and not enough of it, biggest was a 4lbr at Browns Creek but no pic, I dropped the fish right when I got the hook out. It was hooked in the bottom lip and I didn't have a good hold, boo hoo. He received freedom and a good headache for his efforts.

Hope y'all have a good w/end and get some fishing in!! We're camping up at Natchez Trace SP, I'm going to take a shot at the 16 lb bass TWRA shocked up out of Browns Creek lake

That is strange. I fished both of them this morning and never saw a no fishing sign, but I did see the other signs. Could they have just put those up today or did they look like they had been there a while?? You're saying there are multiple signs around the lake that you would see if you were using the walkway? I've got to see an eye doctor EDIT: I just thought of something, if they are temporary signs, I think they have a fishing rodeo this month in that pond. I bet they stocked it w catfish and put up signs to save the fish for the kids. I know they usually close the rodeo locations prior to the event. I still don't think those signs were there this morning.... I looked it up, this years rodeo is June 6th!!

Where did you see that sign? I was there this morning and never saw anything about fishing. There is a sign that says no wading or swimming, but G-Town parks allow fishing as far as I know. The website lists it as a fishing pond too. https://www.google.com/maps/search/2970+Johnson+Road+Shelby,+Tennessee+38138/@35.085184,-89.812943,1373m/data=!3m1!4b1?source=s_q&hl=en

Don't lie RW, those are your trained pets :)

Yep, Glenn Springs is going to be tough bank fishing due to the grass. Your best bet is going to be topwater at dawn and dusk if you're talking fishing the bank there during summer. Herb Parsons has a trail around the lake and no grass in it so you can get more access, just fish it like you would a normal pond. Don't forget about the riprap there either, there are fish on it year round. Just bring a lot of jigs because you need to get down in the rocks to get them most of the time, and the rocks like to eat jigs Topwater at dawn and dusk is a good option there too along the rip-rap, but you're a prisoner to the gate there as you are at Glenn Hatchie has some ponds, you can get a map and free permit at the ranger station. I used to hunt there but never have fished it, you can try to ask someone at the office for info I guess. Orgill park has a good sized lake/pond with easy bank access except around the golf course parts, and I've caught some good ones there up to 5-6 lbs in years past and heard of 8-10's but never seen one there. I would fish it more if it was closer Poplar Tree at Shelby Forest has trail access to most of it as well and no grass to worry about. It too is gated and limited hours to fish. Another option not talked about a lot is Shelby Farms, there are at least 6-7 decent sized ponds with bass there, you just have to hike a little to fish most of them. There is a snot grass issue with most of those too, you just need to fish the right baits to deal with it, it is good for bass but harder for fishermen. Think Flukes, Floating Worms, Frogs, etc.. Also, the park hours are a hindrance here during summer - sunrise to sunset. IMO, most of the bigger TWRA lakes on this list are better fished from a boat, I think you get more bang for your buck on the bank fishing the smaller ponds. Hope that helps you. Also, if you're willing to drive 2 hours, Pickwick around the tailrace can be a great place to bank fish for many species.

I think there is a Johnson Park in C-Ville and one in G-Town, I was at the one in G-Town near Johnson Rd @ Poplar. There are 2 ponds there and both seemed to fish equally. I haven't fished the one in C-Ville before.

I caught an 8.5 out of there on a plain craw splitshot rig a couple of years ago (March 2012, I think), that was actually the last time I'd fished there prior to a couple of weeks ago when I posted a pic here. That was a prespawn female, and as usual for Grove, it was one of just a very few bites that day. I don't see why a Ned Rig wouldn't work. That is a numbers bait IMO, but you can get a nice surprise sometimes on little baits

I fished johnson Rd Park this morning for about an hour and a half, caught 9 or 10, the biggest went about 3.5. All on an eggbeater Saw another Red Fox today too, they are everywhere right now apparently! One other thing, I found a nice looking Livingston Lures Popper today while fishing. Has anyone tried these baits? I haven't tied it on yet but it looks like they got the lip right on it, no need for a file Apparently it is supposed to walk a little too, I guess we'll see. I haven't fished the Daycare pond, that one is pretty overgrown, right? It's been a while since I've driven by there, I didn't realize that was the one you guys were calling daycare pond until now