A Good Old Fashioned Spawn Skunking

[fishva]

I spent my lunch break fishing today at a local pond.

 

Male and female bass were on their beds together, within 5-10 feet of shore. In addition to the bass, the beds were occupied with lots of bluegill, which I thought was interesting. The bass would tolerate the bluegill for 5-10 minutes at a time before chasing them all off, only to repeat the process again 5-10 minutes later. I'm assuming that the eggs aren't there yet, which would explain why the fish were so tolerant of other things being around? It really was a half-assed effort on their part to keep things off. 'Fine, you can hang out here -- but not for long! Ok, you can come back now'

 

I threw everything I had at them (which wasn't a lot, since I was just bank fishing during my lunch break). Jigs, senkos, and crawfish. I couldn't even get a look, even when literally bouncing things off their noses. It really got to be comical after awhile.

 

It definitely wasn't a loss of a day, as it isn't too often that I get to witness bass behavior with my own eyes. The spawn period makes for some interesting lessons -- and plus, I learned that there are some nice size fish in this new pond I wasn't sure about.

[fishva]

Another day, another story.

 

I hit up the same pond again today, this time with wildly different results. I fished for only 45 minutes, and caught 6 nice bass. Not to mention, they were all my first jig fish (1/2 oz), so I have a new confidence bait for the arsenal.

 

I would have kept fishing, but the last one snapped my new rod. It jumped when I had it right up against the bank, and I was making the transition between moving my hands from the rod to the line. I'm hoping *** has a good warranty policy...

 

Here's the culprit, broken rod dangling from its mouth:

 

 

Same fish, different angle. I literally could not find a way to take this selfie and get the entire fish in the frame.

 

 

 

Some more fish:

 

 

 

 

 

[boostr]

Wow. Nice Hawgs!! Seems like blue and black jigs are the spring colors.

[Siebert Outdoors]

Nice fish.  Congrats!

[fishva]

Nice fish.  Congrats!

 

Thanks! They were your jigs.

[5 Dollar Fishing Game]

Your first post on this thread is exactly my story today! I saw a bed with two bass. One was easily 5 pounds. It literally swam off the bed to the shore and the water was just a few inches deep! I literally hit it in the head with two lures and it swam back to the bed acting afraid of the lure! Also, there were about 6 blue gill all over th bed. The bass would every few minutes open their mouths wide and swim after them into the deep. Not one fish, other than a dink grab the end of my swim bait shad and come out of the water a foot then fall off. :-/

[bass_masster]

Just saw this on reddit, nice bass look healthy too