Mark Linderman

any body know where i can go fishing in or near Valdosta i am a college student and will be fishing from the bank i have looked everywhere i can think and most ponds i find are private ponds or something along those lines

well one of the main reasons i kept it, is mainly because it hasn't rained much around here lately and because there isn't anything feeding the place water it is beginning to dry up, most of the places the bass could get to at one point they cant get to anymore, limiting the food source in certain areas of the pond which we all know means the smaller fish are scarce bigger fish means more food, i figure for the most part it would make the bass eat all the smaller bass, which means no next generation, and a slow death for this bass, the pond was only 1 acer if that, now it is nearly 2 ponds with maybe 50-75 yards of water in each most of which is in direct sunlight and maybe 2 or 3 feet deep. So release to suffer and die? sounds like suffering to me, and being that this pond is so small on of that size means there is a huge gap in the bass size there wont be a lot of smaller bass thus making the medium size bass nearly non existent it was for this pond an all around better thing, now had i been in a larger pond with a more sufficient food source i would have let it go

thank you and that is why he went straight into the freezer for safe keeping

well finally i had success this weekend the pond is particularly low due to lack of rain, forcing the fish away from the grass and to apparently deeper open water portion of the pond, and in the shaded channel under the bridge. for one reason or another i decided to keep with my watermelon scum frog, first fish at 4.5 lb in the channel and i saw a huge fish traveling through the channel after landing the 4.5 lb, went under a grass bed near the open/ deep area of the pond i casted over the are the fish was into deep water and landed a 11.5 lb (not the fish i was after). So as it turns out every now and aginan working a frog in open water rather than just on grass or structure produces too gotta love it.

i have used heavy jigs to punch the mats it gets down there just doesn't stay down when reeling in it seems to come to the top and ride over the mats my biggest problem i think is color cover v\virtually the entire spectrum except blues purples and reds, except a lipped crank craw,

best thing i have found on some ponds are lizards frogs and super flukes, my brother swears by cotton candy colored lizards on every pond he fishs

here is a picture taken from the island the mat on the bottom left there is the entrance to one side of the channel that goes under the bridge. to the far right just outside of the picture is the open part of the pond that is no deeper than 3'. but this is where i have gotten the most strikes, problem is those dang mats

no creek feeding the place thats the problem. and as far as the grass type goes i have no idea it looks like the natural grass growing in my area it isn't tall just floats on top

dont see how it would matter but normally i start on top and work my way down simply because it seems more natural if a fish is watching it fish in my area don't seem to want to chase a bait up but will case it down for some reason, at least on the river i fish

I am in need of some help i fish a private farm pond, in south georgia, that the owner has sort of let grow up it has large areas of the pond covered by grass mats on top on on side the other side of the pond is rather open but shallow with grass close to the banks it has tractor tires spread through the bottom of the pond but no where in the pond is it any deeper than 5ft. The water is stained but since it is so shallow you can still see the bottom with easy and non-polorized sunglasses. There is an island near one side of the pond that is access able via a bridge which has a large channel between the grass that fish seem to swim through often on the cooler days. I've used everything i can think of Jigs, shallow diving cranks, lipless cranks, swimbaits, super flukes, flukes, worms, lizards in nearly ever color, scumfrogs, rage toads, poppers, and the ever so useless banjo minnow. the problem i am having is getting the bass to bite there are some big ones in there along with some huge catfish, I've gotten two hits off of the scumfrog, one off the lizard, and one off of the shallow crank, landed the two not on the frog, and I've been out there a lot with nothing to show for it. wondering what the fish and where you would think would be the best place to fish, ill post some pictures tomorrow of it.