everythingthatswims

Gorgeous fish

She has already passed on her genetics plenty of times. Her offspring are out there now!

I use Gamakatsu EWG for everything. "Superline" for pitching

Smallmouth caught while fly fishing for bonefish in the Bahamas

Think they wanted a spinnerbait today?

If I was closer to OH I'd be tempted to drive there just for the fishing. It was awesome when they hatched here. I had a largemouth in the 7-8lb range sip a cicada fly like a trout does but she didn't get the hook somehow. I did a lot of fly fishing for carp. The fish would be as close to whatever side of the pond had woods near it, I fished a pond that only has a small bank with trees on it but it seemed like every single fish was there. People who bass fished used small Pop-Rs and said they caught everything just fishing the banks. Bass, crappie, catfish, carp, even stripers were eating the cicadas! Have fun!

Goodness, those fish are tanks!

Did a short kayak float trip today before work (I'm posting this on my break). The largemouth were in all 3 stages of the spawn and overall acting very strange. The smallies however were done with the birds and the bees meaning it's chow time. I landed 13 largemouth and 12 smallies, biggest largemouth was 4.62 on a spook jr, biggest smallmouth was 2.77lbs 18" on a swing impact fat 3.8". 17"

This happens more often than you would expect

Yeah I made sure to stay out of the rib cage

For some reason they do not revive well when caught via arrow. I'm a big fan of eating fish (no bass though), the main reason I set this up and went bowfishing is to learn a little bit so we can load a cooler with some of the darn huge spadefish at a wreck we fish off of NC that just mosey around the boat and don't eat anything ever.

A bow is the only legal way in VA to catch them while they spawn. They will not eat at all when spawning.

Consensus: Flavor is great, but the texture is very strange. Some sort of membrane in between each "flake" of meat that is sort of spongy making the meat a little chewy. I will try a small one next to see if it's any good.

I had never tried bowfishing before, so I picked up a bowfishing arrow, and spooled an old 4000 shimano with 80lb braid which I then jerry rigged on my little brother's old bow by taping it to the stabilizer. I brought the bow in the kayak with me on the river while I bass fished. There was a bit of a learning curve but I figured it out an shot a monster. It weighed just under 11 and a half pounds. Fun stuff, I'll be trying it again depending on how well this fish does as crab cakes.

If I had a house on a lake with a dock I would have so many contraptions under that thing to catch lures that I'd never need to buy any

Here are photos of both sides of this super cool hyperpigmented melanosis fish, caught her today on a wacky senko. Weighed 4.56lbs

Make sure they aren't gizzard shad!

A brown one and a green one

I don't think steelhead are endangered or threatened. Maybe the true wild self-sustaining populations could be considered threatened but depending on how you look at it they are non native so fishing is the only reason we even care about their population status.

I found a ridiculous school of spawning redear when I was bass fishing today, so I went home, got my ultralight, and went back with some worms. There were at least 500 of them in a 30'x30' area, I've never seen anything like it before. In an hour and 15 minutes I caught 27 redear and 17 bluegill, most of the time I was pulling the bait away from the bluegill when I saw them trying to eat it. The redear were surprisingly difficult to catch, nothing like spawning bluegill. They would mouth the bait and spit it before I could set the hook most of the time. I don't think any of them were under 8", most were between 9 and 10", and I did get one that was a hair over the 11" Virginia citation size. This was the coolest looking one I caught And here's the big one 11"

A hair under 13", this fish was out in the middle of nowhere over 60FOW

Gotta hook them before you can lose them, I always look at it that way.

I have been striper fishing a lot lately and when we use live baits, we jig up blueback herring on sabiki rigs. I have killed 2 of them from the sabiki hook going into their brain when it gets them lol

Doesn't sound like luck to me, you knew where a big fish frequented and even though it was difficult to present a bait in that location, you did anyways! Good job that is a gorgeous fish!

And she's a tough one