TnRiver46

Hahahah! Is that thing real???!!!

Those nutria are crazy! I’ve accidentally spooked a few in Alabama and they splashed water everywhere!!! Well I certainly can’t help with where your big bass went, but I bet they’ll be back one day. It is Florida after all!

Forgot about those! I’ve had good luck with them

All they do there is stock the Florida’s and let them breed with regular bass. The big ones are always first generation hybrids (like 99%) they also do it in Kentucky lake, watts bar, fort loudoun, nickajack, pickwick and even Cherokee after they realized it worked

Cabelas and creme make a great cheap paddle tail swimbait

We don’t have any lake records in Tennessee. If it’s a state or world record you have to kill it and submit DNA

Florida makes exceptions to the state regs for tournaments, I saw it in person at Toho. I knew the regs were 14 inch minimum on largemouth and we went to see a weigh in. Lots of 12” fish being weighed in so I asked my cousin what was going on. He said they issue a special exemption for tournaments that allow a fish under the legal limit to be kept

Killin it today @scaleface!

My buddy brought 3 packs of gizzard shad ones to fish a weekend with me. He had zero of them by Saturday evening, fish ate them all! I let him use some of my handpoured no names on Sunday haha

Ok so I guess if that current is raging and you are on the bank, weightless won’t be very effective. But you might be able to let it sink slowly in some eddys. I just looked up the area where those three states come together and realized exactly what you need to do. Go fishing with @scalefaceor at least help him drink rum and hunt big foot

You certainly can. They will also travel up in the water column to bite them, I catch a ton of suspended fish with floating jerkbaits. They don’t get stuck as bad. Remember a jerkbait is full of rattles and split rings, they work in muddy water . Bass can find them

@N Florida Mike, if the otters are around In your small lake, you should see some piles of poo with crawdad shells all in it on the banks. I would thin the small bass herd, that big skinny 21” you got the other day looked starved out. Too many mouths to feed. the otters can clean out a pond like we discussed above (which I think you’ve experienced before), but in a small ecosystem like that they would show themselves occasionally. We see them frequently in the daytime on the small private trout stream that I guide on. They typically live in an undercut bank

Thanks! A friend found her running the streets behind our neighborhood market, never could track down the owner.

I can’t look at a football jig and call it “finesse.” They are big heavy baits that drag bottom and have to be fished on 12# or heavier line, ain’t nothing finesse about it. Drives me crazy when people call everything “finesse” just to move more product. Next thing you know there will be finesse round baitcast reels spooled with 80 lb braid

I’m going with @MGF’s tube jig suggestion. Those things are awesome! I’ve caught more smallmouth on tubes than anything (except maybe plastic worm or live fish). I use them in rip rap. Anything will get stuck in rip rap but you should learn to fish all lures around it anyway. Because fish LOVE rip rap. You can fish tubes weightless if they get stuck too much. I like weightless worms and tubes around rip rap, but my favorite lure for it is a rattle trap followed closely by a curly tail or paddle tail on a jig head . When waves slam rip rap it dislodges stuff that draws in shad and bream, and subsequently bass. also, which part of the country are you fishing? That always helps a little......... pop R works awesome next to rip rap on a summer morning

I’ve got a snow dog myself. Rachel puts a jacket on her like she’s cold. She tries (successfully) to shake it off all day

Good girl kya! I bet she can hear a mouse fart at the bottom of that snowpile with those ears

Well that depends on your definition of baby. I can get any size Hahahah. We will call the live bait adolescent possum the “220” model . The baby ones stay in the pouch for a while, bout like the size of a pinky finger. Then they cling to moms back for a while, by that stage they would be the size of a Zara super spook

same here where im at in Ohio Had many a meal on the camp stove when the power is out. And I’ve got a grill. My power goes out a lot in TN (trees falling)

You’re the silly one if you keep believing them year after year!

Sorry about that topic widening! I studied wildlife science in college and always tend to go “big picture” on habitat discussions Hands off period for bat exclusion here is June and July, but if they are flying around inside your house they will make an exception. Also they hibernate in winter, rarely in a building

I can help with bats! Those are our best paying jobs

Most of the customers are also no strangers to the fields and woods, it’s just very tricky. Sometimes I can’t figure how the raccoon got on the roof, and a field is far more vast than a yard. carrying capacity can indeed be diminished by development and typically is. I’ve also seen development increase carrying capacity, especially houses. There are 100x more skunks in neighborhoods here than in the smoky mountain national park. Why? Food. Humans come with food. Bird feeders, cat food, dog food, garbage, and constantly irrigated lawns full of worms. the species of wildlife that large scale agriculture such as corn and beans in the Midwest effect are mostly amphibians, songbirds, and some game birds . Almost all mammalian species are doing quite well with it.

I’m saying the critters are still there whether you see tracks or not. That’s not a personal attack, I’m always shocked myself at just how many animals live where I wouldn’t think they do. It’s amazing. Snow covers up tracks, are you hiking at night? Also critters can hunker down in the snow. I guarantee a trapper or just a night camera would see/catch tons of wildlife where you think it’s barren. I’ve caught many many many many animals where I saw no tracks. I would estimate one of your cornfields that you say doesn’t support a mouse supports at least two dozen mice. Just ask the guy that owns the land and stores the grain our customers always say they’ve never seen coon tracks or coons in their yard and the raccoons quite literally live in their attic . Usually 5-6 of them im not going to walk into a bank and tell an accountant there’s no money in the bank just because I’m not looking right at it uniform habitat like cornfield is not great for diversity but there’s still a group of species that make a fine living in the flat corn and beans of the Midwest.

I say we get you supplied with some waders and 330 conibears and a lot of steel cable. If you got a problem, that’s how to solve it. Granted you’ll never get rid of them like they used to unless grocery stores and places to work all shut down and fur becomes currency again