Hog Basser

Not in the Arkansas Delta. We have a few gators, never know if they're around or not. I pretty much kill at least one cottonmouth every time I go out. Keep "the judge" handy with 410 shells. The lake I fish is separated from a large bayou by a levee, so gators come and go.

Good article on spawn: https://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/spawn-rolls.html

I wear pants and boots while out in the woods always. Then I get my wife to "tick check" me. She's not as enthusiastic about me "tick checking" her. ☹️

Move South! ?

My biggest problem when i buy non-resident licenses is the constant barrage of emails from those states after I've fished there. I went to Maine two years ago and we stayed on the water, so I bought a license. I still get emails from them all the time. And don't even get me started on Oklahoma, they send me emails at least weekly and I get them in triplicate since my email address at work has changed twice, but I still receive everything that comes to the old addresses.

I store them on peg board hooks. Once I'm ready to take them out to the water, the packaging comes off and they go in my box.

Yep, won't change without action, and a lot of it! Good luck convincing them. The least they could do is have a professional fisheries biologist come out and do an electroshock survey and prove to them they have a problem.

Tell us more about the lake. Public? Private? Who sets the regs? 25 bass to restock a 72 acre lake is WAY too low and the bluegill have taken over for sure. There may be a ton more bass now, but they will never have enough food due to the competition from large gills. There is a lot more information in the lake management section of this site (linked below). But if you can't get buy-in from who controls the lake, it is a lost cause. P.S. I help manage a private 53 acre lake, but I still have a lot to learn. A few options: 1. Aggressive removal of dinks for the dinner plate. Just to keep ours in check, the local biologist advised us to remove 1,000 lbs of bass per year from our lake (your lake would be slightly more). We remove everything in the 10"-15" range unless it is an absolute football-shaped stud. Since already overcrowded, you could probably double that figure easily. 2. Aggressive stocking of bait fish. This may just be a temporary treatment unless it is continual, which makes it costly too. To be honest, the current fish may be too stunted to ever recover, but some could eventually make it better. 3. Stock new bass from different gene pools. I would only do this after 1 and 2 have been implemented for a while, but you will eventually need to supplement the genetics in the water to get better quality fish. 4. Talk to a local fisheries biologist for suggestions and stocking/recovery plan. 5. Wipe out the whole fish population and start over correctly. This is by far not the most popular option, but sometimes it can be the only option. It will take years to grow large bass afterward, but the rewards can be worth it. The problem here is, if it isn't managed correctly, you'll be right back in the same boat (pun intended). Stocking plans vary by your goals and the amount of work you want to do or money you want to spend, it must be researched thoroughly before beginning. https://www.bassresource.com/lake-management/ Also check out the pond boss forum, they are the real pros.

Beer, Copenhagen, Water, and a bag of chips ?

I always tip a guide. I sometimes guide for duck hunting myself and I take clients bass fishing in the afternoon after a hunt if it is warm enough, but those are corporate customers, so there is no tip expected since they are a guest. If I'm hiring out a guide for hunting or fishing, they will get tipped and usually very well. It doesn't matter if it's the owner of the guide service or whoever, it is a service that requires a lot of attention before, during and after your trip to be successful. I cannot comprehend how anyone would justify not tipping a guide for their service. An example is our annual pheasant hunt in SD, there are usually about seven of us and we each pitch in $100 at the end of the trip to tip the guides. One of the guides is the owner's son and others are sons-in-law, etc., but that doesn't make them any less deserving of a tip, they work hard preparing for you and they work hard in the field with you, period. They also take time out of their day to socialize and entertain you when you stay at a lodge like that. Always tip your guide!

I eat bass out of our private lake in the 10-15 inch range because we harvest those to keep the lake population healthy and I don't want to waste them. I don't know why so many think bass isn't that good to eat, I think it's great. We have crappie in there too and keep every one of those. If we have one in the keeping range that looks like a stud (football), I will put it back. My goal is to keep the numbers down so we get good top end growth. That being said, I don't keep much out of larger public lakes, but do on occasion.

Get ya some heavy duty rigs and flippin sticks. Honestly, I fish all types of gear, but lean toward the heavier side. My in-laws are from Newport, which is near there, lots of good fishing on the white and black rivers. Plenty of good big and small lakes around. Try your hand at catfishing too. As for bass gear, lots of things work such as the aforementioned jigs and ole monster (I use both frequently). Lots of decent topwater fishing in the warmer months too. Zara Spooks, whopper ploppers, Pop-Rs, etc. Also use spinner baits a lot and shallow diving cranks. Be prepared to be really hot and really eaten up by mosquitoes, good luck!

My older brother (who I lost back in 2001) who taught me to bass fish. He used to set the hook so hard it would almost flip our small boat (scamp). We went on a fishing trip once on a reservoir that held a lot of 5 pound bass when I was a teenager and he was about 21. The reservoir was loaded with gar as well and I caught one. While trying to get my hook out, the gar twitched and lodged the hook in my finger then twitched again and ripped a nice slice through my finger. He was getting tons of action with the bass, so he just dropped me at the bank to drive myself back to the house to get bandaged up. I hauled it there and back as quick as I could to get back in on the action with him. He is the reason I love to bass fish and I wish I could spend just one more day on the water with him.

I caught some over the last few weeks on spinners here in Arkansas. I've had friends tear them up with spinner baits in the winter, just got to find them.

Ha! We get the creepers at our dock when the ladies are out. I generally start talking to them nicely and asking a bunch of questions (they don't spot me at first usually) and they move on. This is my only problem, when people come by and fish close while we are actually on the dock and/or swimming. Jokes on them though, there are absolutely ZERO bass under my dock, it is a barren wasteland down there. All we have are tiny bluegill for the kids.

Check out the "Fogy" on Siebert Outdoors site - $4 I just ordered a bunch of them. https://siebertoutdoors.com/Fogy_c20.htm

Dangit, I just placed an order last week....

I have a rotation....some years they work better than others and different ones work in different bodies of water better...hard to narrow it all the way down. Rebel Craw Pop-R Zara Spook Siebert Jig and craw trailer Bladed Jig Whopper Plopper Keitech Swing Impact Fat Plastic Worm/Lizard/Brush Hog/etc. Well, hope that covers it! ?

^^This. We remove (or try to) 20 lbs/acre/year as stated on ours and could probably stand to do more to get some really good size trophies. Is that your goal, to have trophy size or just larger bass? If you really want to get technical, contact a fisheries biologist and ask about the electric shock survey. I also weigh and measure my catch (especially ones I remove) and keep a running log to determine overall health of the population. What you do with this is determine the relative weight. There's an article in the lake management section of this site that details that further. Fish Wr Value.docx The attached document sums it up.

I always tell my nephews when they go with me, "you ain't gonna catching anything if your line ain't wet" (while they mess around with their setup). You definitely have to fish to get better. I'm ready to go again soon, maybe tonight!

Check out the pond boss forums....they know what they're talking about over there. Read the articles on here about lake management, there are plenty of them and many by the pond boss. Don't just dump in more food, you're wasting money and not solving any long-term problems. Anything dumped in won't get established and will just be a momentary snack for all your hungry fish. I cannot stress this enough, REMOVE REMOVE REMOVE SMALL BASS AND LARGE GILLS......when you think you've removed enough, remove that many more. You will help your pond this way. Have a fish fry for your friends & family. Managing a pond is non-stop. Biologists recommend removing somewhere in the 16-20 lbs per acre per year from your pond to keep it healthy (barring any other kill events). That's a lot of fish. If you're already overrun, you might have to do more the first year to put it in check. When some ponds get this way, it is easier just to scrap the entire population and start from scratch by building your forage base first, then adding the right amount of bass with good genetics afterward. Good luck! Oh yeah, most biologists recommend not having Crappie in a pond that size due to competition for the forage base. You generally want 30+ acres to entertain crappie. So you might be best off scrapping and starting from scratch.

If you want an expert answer, go check with the guys at Pond Boss Forums.....I'll take a stab and say there was a turnover event that depleted all the oxygen and choked them out. This can easily happen, but I think for turnover to occur, the water must be more than 9' deep. Otherwise, weeds might have died and decaying caused loss of dissolved oxygen. There's also a lot of great articles on this site (many of which come from contributors at Pond Boss) under Fish & Lake Management that could help pinpoint an answer.

This happens to me on a big lake......holiday weekend, no way you're getting your boat in without making people move. This is not a park, but a public ramp only....people treat it more like a park.

We got them down in the bayou next to our fishing lake. And somehow they got into our fishing lake too, either survived in the old ditches that were drained and connected to make the fishing lake or somehow got into it later. I remove them from our fishing lake, but put them back in the bayou when I catch them down there. I put out yo-yo's to get catfish and usually at least half catch bowfins. We put the guts of cleaned fish back in the bayou by our dock, so the bowfin hang out down there for a free meal. They'll tear up a brand new lure real quick.

I live right by the Arkansas river, but wouldn't eat a thing out of it. Whenever we get a hard rain, the city sewage treatment plant runs over into the river. The EPA has fined and mandated the city fix their wastewater issues, our city just excels at kicking the can down the road. And our sewer bills are skyrocketing as a result. Have a private fishing lake on the other side of the state, I keep and eat everything between 10-15 inches (unless it is an absolute football) to keep from getting too many dinks. The local biologist advised us to remove 1000 lbs of bass per year out of it to keep it healthy.