hawgenvy

Some of what you're seeing may be due to the almost universally present wide angle lenses on commonly used video cameras, which exaggerate distance. Most anglers will go right up to the bank after the first few casts.

Nice fish, my friend. Enjoy the memory.

4 pounds, 3 oz.

Congratulations, man! Nice fish! Nice photo, too. Remember to up your PB in your profile!

I tried something new tonight bank fishing a golf course lake. The lake is around 5 foot deep in the middle and most of it has a featureless mud bottom. I speculate that a good portion of the forage for many of the bass are the pale blue tilapia that are so numerous there. I selected a shad pattern deep diving (SK 10XD) crankbait, that rooted to and fro and and dug hard into the bottom leaving in its wake a plume of mud. The big hooks on the bait allowed me to use a heavy rig to bring them in through the shore vegetation. The result was a successful outing, leading to a 5 pounder and a 3-12 in quick succession.

Fished a low-key club tournament on a hot day in the Everglades yesterday. My partner and I managed only 9 keeper bass between us all day (along with the usual mess of dinks, oscars, and mudfish). Somehow we won. Only 6 boats so we barely made back our gas money! Anyway, my first fish was this cute little baby on a Megabass jerkbait.

Amazing bank fishing tonight after heavy rains enticed big females back into the shallows. Caught a dozen big bass in 27 minutes on a big black worm and a blue/black jig and trailer. And that doesn't include several giants that I missed. Unfortunately, I demolished a Dobyns Champion 734 rod that snapped in three places simultaneously when I flipped a 6 pounder up onto the bank.

That's an awesome beast, Norcal! Congratulations. Don't forget to change your PB designation on your profile!

The Shadow knows. There are usually clues, in this case the shadow on my friend Mike's shirt. And his oversized fist. He's holding about a 2-1/2 pounder.

Bank fishing local ponds with my friend Mike has become a Wednesday night ritual. We caught a bunch tonight. Mike was swimming a jig and I was tossing a black 13 inch ribbon tail worm. The highlight was a double header: a four pounder and a five pounder landed simultaneously! I also tried out a new (for me) bait, the beautiful (and expensive) Greenfish Beer Belly Prop bait. A lot of fish ate it but I only landed half of them, probably my error. I might have kept them pinned better with a less stiff rod.

A couple of weeks ago I took two 12 year old girls (my wife's cousin's twin girls) fishing at a local pond. They were novices but it only took 10 minutes of instruction to get them casting out ned rigs on spinning gear. They were bouncing and hopping those neds out in the middle of the pond in no time, and started catching 1-3 pounders like crazy, including some double-headers. All I had to do was to de-hook the bass and take the photos. Big smiles all around. Highly recommended technique for novices. Especially when the fish are biting!

Something about dark skies and light rain ahead of a Florida cold front make bass go crazy for Gambler's 13 inch ribbon tail worms. I caught a nice bunch of 2-3 pounders in the hour before dark tonight and drove home with a smile, amid a lingering scent of Gambler garlic and bass breath.

Slightly off topic: bass are commonly injured when jaw tissues and articulations are torqued during hook removal. If a hook doesn't come out easily, counter pressure adjacent to the entrance site should be used. One should not use pliers like a lever that pivots against the adjacent parts of the jaw, or those adjacent parts will become permanently dislocated or otherwise damaged and may lead to death. The issue is worse in young bass, whose jaws are still delicate.

Lead is particularly toxic to birds (and I don't mean from hunting). Just one split shot eaten by a duck can supposedly kill it, and lead poisoning by fishing weights is reportedly a relatively common cause of aquatic bird deaths. After reading some reports on the matter I have severely limited my use of lead weights, including in jigs, and have been dishing out for tungsten. If any of you can dispute the hazards of lead weights I'd like to hear it, especially given that the use of lead in fishing weights and lures is nearly ubiquitous, except in states that that have banned it.

Went out to bank fish tonight again with my buddy Mike. I nailed some big females, including a hefty 6-1/2, with a Booyah Flex 2 squarebill wiggled over the eelgrass with #17 AbrazX. Man, that little crank is a good bait! Pretty good hooks, too. Mike caught a bunch as well, on a jig.

I assume you are trying to cast to fish that are suspended in ambush mode along the same bank that you are prowling, so that you might ambush those ambushers rather than frighten them away. Typically ponds will have some variety of curvature to them that will enable you to cast to the bank just beyond the fish and subtly wiggle your frog or worm or creature at some angle so as to finesse it into the water's edge to trigger an attack. It is hardly necessary to bring a bait from the bank at 90 degrees -- real frogs and salamanders are hardly geometricians. I bank fish all the time, and I always find ways to traject my cast across an arc of bank so as to reach a nearby opposing shallows. Of course, a retrieve parallel to the shoreline is also a deadly strategy. Vary by experiment the distance to the shore of those retrieves to figure the most productive distance.

Holy cow, Catt! That's incredible! What a payoff, you lucky dog (er...cat)! Awesome. You're the best, man! (I mean your the best, cat!). Anyway, congratulations, et laissez le bon temp rouler avec votre nouveau Ram!

Unless you're using a thick wire hook or throwing massive baits, there's no need for a rod heavier than medium in open water.

I am genetically klutzy and almost always use a bait caster, yet some days I manage to skip a jig/trailer pretty well. The main thing I can add to the discussion is that it is imperative to keep your eye fixed on where you want the lure to end up, otherwise it just won't work.

In So. Florida we use the Secchi disk indoors. At 12 feet Medicare will cover your cataract surgery.

Tried out a brand new paddle tail swimbait tonight, Gambler Baits' "EZ VibeZ" in Ghost Shad color. I was disappointed about the way it was wobbling, nearly flipping over, in spite of a keel-weighted hook. On the other hand, the darn thing worked!

Went out to the pond with my friend Mike tonight to introduce him to the phenomenon of the topwater blowup, and we had great success. The top pic is his very first buzz bait fish. After we caught a few nice ones on the buzz I pulled out a Spook and caught a few more. Then I lost two big ol' girls right at my feet, including one that could have been 6 pounds. Mike finished the day with a final dramatic twilight explosion on his buzzer.

Went out to bank fish at a nearby golf course tonight with my friend Mike, whom I've been mentoring in the art of bass fishing most every Wednesday evening. I try to introduce a new bait or technique each time. Tonight was a lesson on the big ribbon tail worm, which I honestly don't throw that often. But with the rainy, dark and windless conditions, murky water, and the fish loitering in calm shallows, I thought Gambler's 13" ribbon tail in black or green would be the ticket, Texas rigged, inched slowly along the bottom. And it was! We nailed a couple of 5 pounders, and at least a dozen 2-3s in an hour or so of fishing.

Agree, EG. Its not that hard to keep the bass pinned with a barbless jig as long as you keep the pressure on, especially when it jumps.

Sorry, you guys in the frozen north -- I just gotta do another Florida post! That's because I got lucky tonight and caught this 5-4 on a Eco Pro Tungsten Trokar jig fished barbless. This is definitely the biggest bass I've caught barbless. It's great being able to simply lift out the hook and leave the bass unharmed. When you're just fishing for fun it makes a whole lot of sense. Also, it's a good way to practice keeping 'em pinned when they jump.