The Baron

Today I got up at 3:30am (aka way too early), to capitalize on the dawn topwater bite. I got zero love on topwater 😕 and in fact had zero bass bites at all in what’s “usually” a great morning spot. So I switched gears and tried dragging a Carolina Rig. Didn’t take long until I had the bass of my dreams pulling drag, which quickly degraded into being about 6-7# pike that snipped me off just as I botched the net job and only had him 1/2 in. A bunch more drags, then I threw a chatterbait and flashy swimmer for a 1/2 hour with no more bites. I was now annoyed at getting up so early for nothing, so decided to stop fishing for a bit and map more of this uncharted lake on my Garmin. I explored a shallow weedy bay with pads at the back and some bits of floating mats, that just screamed frog so I reached for my frog rod only to find I’d left it in the garage in my 4am stupor. I cut my flipping bait off, tied on a frog and after changing frogs 3 times to find one I could walk with a telephone pole of a rod, proceeded to get zero bites despite working the entire bay for an hour. So I switched bays, right to the other end of the lake and frogged a bit more with zero bites. Decided oh well they’re not biting shallow today, so I’ll go dropshot on my secret honey hole… which was part of my original plan for the day… too bad my drop shot rod was also in the garage, right next to my frog rod.🙄 By now it was 8:30am - 3.5 hours of fishing and not a single bass, plus two of the rods I intended to bring were somehow left behind. After questioning just why I was even here and wondering how much I money I could get for all my fishing stuff I started dragging a 10” worm along a weed line… and finally caught a couple. But that was for another 1.5 hour of effort. I think that brought me to plan F or G which was continue learning how to use a Carolina Rig. I managed to catch a few more off the edge of a weedy, gravel hump where the weeds start to fade out from 10-15ft. of water. By then it was 11am and I decided I’d had enough mediocre fishing for one day. Ended up with 6 bass between 1-2.5# for about 6 hours of trying.😒 I didn't get skunked, and it was a beautiful morning, but holy cow I feel like I got my butt kicked. I’ve just started 2 weeks vacation, and I sure do hope the fishing gets better.😬🤞🏻

Hahaha - I had the same thing when I was away too long. Not enough “likes” to catch up in one day. 🙂

If only you weren’t so stubborn, you’d have caught a decent number of fish. 🤪😂👍🏻

Sounds like a great day! We had a similar experience yesterday, Spot-locked on a cast that produced about 10 fish in a matter of maybe 20-30 minutes. 😎 The wind was a struggle for us yesterday. We’d fished probably 2+ hours with not a bite, then were locked over a saddle between two humps that rise to 8-10ft. from 22ft. of water. I’ve been meaning to try a Carolina Rig so decided if we’re catching nothing perhaps now’s the time to try. It was a great way to stay on bottom in the wind and I also learned how much it tells about the bottom as I could feel gravel, small rocks and weeds. Then I caught a fish and that little 1.5# was like a 5lb-er for my satisfaction level and my son as well that we finally shot the skunk.🙂 My son then caught a 3.5# and a smaller one, I caught one more so we were pretty happy to have found some. We moved on and I was telling Wes a spot that prior was the only time I’d even been able to catch multiple fish back to back. Well, we “lucked” into it again and I caught a few quickly on a drop shot worm with the same cast, into about 12ft. of water. Then we switched rods because Wes’ reel was all messed up, so he caught a couple 1.5-2lbers on that spot while I fixed his rod. He was happy to stay with the dropshot so I thought if they’re on bottom, that’s where I need to fish. He was using a paddletail on an owner flashy swimmer, so I made a similar cast and let it sink to bottom before retrieving. Wouldn’t you know it, I got three bites almost back to back. Usually good hooksets on the swimmer, but the first was about 2lb. and lost him at the boat, the second was a really good one. He was pulling hard and when I saw the line coming up I plunged the rod but he wallowed, and was gone. 😢 We floated over “the spot” and the graph shows maybe a rock pile with weeds around it - I’m not really sure what it is, but you can rest assured it’s on my list for that lake! An interesting note, the water in this lake is like green tea which is very unusual for here - black/blue/purple and white are the colours to use, it seems.

My son and I put together a decent bag today. We both caught about 8-10, his mostly with a paddletail minnow on an Owner Flashy Swimmer and one on a spinnerbait. I got a couple bites on a speed worm, one on a spinnerbait but then got into a good frog bite around sparse pads in 3-4ft. of water. My hookup percentage was much higher than usual, possibly because they were choking it (I’d like to think my timing is improving as well). My frog fish included a 3.85# and 4.45# 😎

Hey… how to y’all post so many photos? I get capped at 1mb and have to shrink my photos to be pretty grainy. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Thought the rainy weather yesterday might be good, and it was for my son but we caught mostly small pike. My son had the hot stick catching about a dozen, including his new PB lmb at 3.74# caught on a b&b chatterbait. He caught another that was very long, but skinny and only weighted 3.3#, that one on a flashy swimmer. It seemed the fish wanted moving baits in the middle of the water column in 6-10ft. yesterday. Dad got trampled, I only caught one 2.5er on a frog and a couple small pike so didn’t make the podium for any photos.lol

I would highly recommend going to a baitcaster. A general use 7’-7’6” heavy/fast spooled with 30-40# braid would do much better than spinning gear and still cast a senko well. Baitcasters are not hard to learn and with braid they’re pretty user friendly. With $300 or so to spend, I’d look at a 150 sized Diawa Tatula or a Shimano SLX DC (about $200 USD I think?) and whatever H rod you like that fits the remainder of your budget. I’ve got a couple Lews Speed Stick rods that I bought used when I was still setting up my arsenal, and they seem to offer great value with both still on my deck regularly. Maybe a Lews combo would be a good idea too, I’m just not familiar with Lews reels.

Things I dislike… 1. That our season up here is too short (if September and October could each be about 3 months longer, I’d be very happy). 2. People… pretty much all of them. 3. Any wind over about 10mph 4. Rainy weekends 5. The days when we catch zero bass.

It’s very hot here this week and work is slow, so my young coworker and I did some team building yeaterday morning. 😁 We launched at 4:45am into a creek that leads to a small lake with limited access - leveraging the abilities of my little Bass Tracker 165. Crazy that we could see just fine without needing lights. I caught a 2.5# (-ish) lmb in the shallow weeds where the creek meets the lake, and we saw several others cruising shallow but they weren’t very hungry. There’s a lot of algae clouds already and with very clear water, we could at times spot bass swimming over the light green algae patches. Once we got to the deeper water, I had a pack of 4 nice sized smb follow my little swim jig in, but couldn’t get bit. My partner finally caught one using a white tube on a dropshot before we changed our focus to largemouth. We ended up with about 15 fish over the next 4 hours, all about 2-3# so not a bad morning. I was using a 3/16oz. T-rigged Reaction Innovations Machete worm, but I only had two left and caught the remainder of my 7 fish on the same T-rig with a Berkley PowerBait worm. I really like the RI Machete worms, but durability is poor and I only get 2-3 bites per bait before the tail is gone. I’ve got some Zoom Speed Worms on order to try. We saw an incredible amount of bait in the lake. Hundreds of small bluegill and several times we saw large surface disturbances that were clouds of 1000’s of shiner minnows. Tried to get a pic but it doesn’t even come close to reality - that bait cloud was about 30ft. long. The fish in here are very well fed!

We finally found out @A-Jays secret to catching big smallies - he's drunk! 😆 I keep a few bottles of water on the boat, and will toss in a couple gatorades in a small soft sided cooler for a midday frogging session. But if it’s really hot (that's over 90-ish for me) I'll just fish early morning.

Awesome bass, @A-Jay Great job and congratulations. 😎

I’d recommend an 8:1 ratio on a dedicated frogging reel, spooled with 50# braid if you’re north of the 10# bass line. 65# if you’re south of it.

I definitely like Scum Frogs - they’re a very soft body and have a better than average hookup ratio for me. Good to hear they have great customer service too.

Welcome! I’m just across the pond, in Eastern Ontario.

For me it depends on the bait/hook type and species. For smallmouth, I’ll land about 70/30. For largemouth, my ratio is more like 90/10 - I do love it when that 5/0 gets driven home. But my frog hookup ratio is dismal (<50%) and I’ll lose another 50% of the ones I hook. (I’m working on that, but the learning curve is painfully long).

Yup, our first (and hopefully last - haha) heatwave of the summer just started. Forecast is for 80-85 and feel like over 100 with the humidity. That’s really hard on a Canadian at any time, but especially so early in the summer when daytime highs were still in the 60’s just a couple weeks ago. Our water temps were 70-72 but they’ll be 75 by end of the week. I expect the fishing will get tough, really fast. Our season is so darn short - just opened this past weekend. I’ve got no time for tough fishing. ☹️

The funny thing about Lake Menderchuks (for me, at least) is that finding them and catching that first really good bag produced the peak high. Then you’re back to Google maps trying to find the next one to figure out.

@Bluebasser86 Glad you were there to help and the guy was ok. But really, how hard would it be for the guy in the bass boat to fire up and move out of the way to help a fellow boater in an emergency. 🙄😡

I got out for a couple hours yesterday with my daughter, which is a rare treat (she likes fishing, but all the “conditions” need to be just right). Unfortunately, a slow day but she did catch a 2.5# so that made my Father’s Day… and she was happy too. 😊 I caught one small bass and a kicker rock bass. @IcatchDinks @gimruis 😝

Sounds like a heck of a tussle. I forget which pro referred to spinning gear as a “fairy wand”, back when they started to show up more often at tournaments.

Dang, that’s a heartbreaker @BrianMDTX. Sounds like you did the near impossible getting her out of that tree though, with “fairy wand”. lol

Our bass opener finally arrived yesterday. It felt great to get out. I’d watched a few YouTube videos about speed worms and it intrigued me, so I had a couple packs of Reaction Innovations Machete worms to try. TR with a 3/16oz. tungsten weight and a 5/0 EWG this produced 1/2 doz. fish very quickly, with a 3.1# and a 3.9# in the mix. So I handed that rod to my son and one ate it on the fall on his first cast. I picked up a TR Bandito Bug and caught a couple more bass and a decent pike - odd for one to grab a bottom bait and can’t believe I landed him on straight braid. Our first hour was fire, then the next two were dead but it was still a great opener. 😎 We did have an unusual occurrence. We’d only been fishing 1/2 hour and hit a good spot, landing 4 good bass almost back to back. I then realized a boat that had been stationary at about 100 yards from us was now less than casting distance away (he came from further out in the bay, to almost right along side us). I considered speaking my mind, but he had a couple kids with him. So I just said hi, how are you and cast right up the side of his boat where I’d been casting anyway. He didn’t get the message, but after catching nothing after 5 minutes he looped around right to where we’d been, the whole time within 60ft. of us, as we slowly moved on down the bank. 🙄

Yes, absolutely. I'm in SE Ontario and do very well on white paddletails, on either a jig head/ball head or an Owner Flashy Swimmer underspin.

The second is a Paw Paw Plenty Sparkle (c. 1950's) which were made in Michigan. They're similar enough maybe both are by Paw Paw but I was googling through photos and couldn't find an exact match for the first one. Both are a very nice find, look to be in great shape - possibly repainted? They'll look great in a collection, and I'll bet they get bit too if you wanted to throw them. https://finandflame.com/paw-paw-plenty-sparkle-lure/ https://www.mybaitshop.com/collections/paw-paw