Latest Catch Pics Thread

[Rockhopper]

Unfortunately no pics.  But landed a baker's dozen LMB from the yak on Saturday over the course of 3 hours.  Was forced to leave when the lightning started. Every single one of them caught on the outside weed line to open water and all on a 1/2 oz Dobyn's beast shimmer shad double willow.

[F14A-B]

7 hours ago, Bird said:

Cloudy, light drizzle and breezy so gave a single Colorado blade spinnerbait a try in submerged timber in about 5 ft of water.

 

Caught a decent fish and several more on a Wacky rig " Cola " .

Every fish this morning was tight to cover regardless of cloud cover.

 Cola as in Jackall Flick Shake?

[Bird]

20 hours ago, alonerankin2 said:

 Cola as in Jackall Flick Shake?

Yes.

[Team9nine]

Been 3-1/2 weeks since I last got out, but they hadn’t moved far. Did have to switch up baits though - everything coming on Ned today. Water temps still 86-88 here, so no signs of fall yet. Hoping for one more day out later this week before we roll back to 90 starting Sunday. 
 

 

 

 

 

[CastingClinic]

Had a few hours early yesterday morning but of course I failed to properly set my alarm and almost didn’t have enough time to make a trip worth while.

 

Yesterday was a beautiful FALL day up here.  Cool, dry, and breezy; I wish I had more time.
 

Chatterbait for the win.

 

[TnRiver46]

Had a fairly good evening for numbers last night, no clue how many but more than usual for a 3 hour tour. Tried lots of hard baits but only got bit on tiny fluke and small paddletails (top two pics are of the same fish). Water temp was 78-79 which is typically the yearly maximum where we were upriver

[TnRiver46]

On 8/18/2024 at 12:38 PM, ol'crickety said:

 

 

 

 

Other BR anglers report breaking rods. I've never broken one.

Just when you think you know somebody…….

 

i thought you fished hard??

 

id have to guess I’ve broken a minimum of 50 and I’m 40 years old 

[AndrewJ]

This fish had been gorging himself.  Wish he was longer cause that belly was fat!

 

 

They were liking the crankbait in the clear water.  Flat sided was the key.

 

 

[Swamp Girl]

27 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

Just when you think you know somebody…….

 

i thought you fished hard??

 

id have to guess I’ve broken a minimum of 50 and I’m 40 years old 

 

I fish with telephone poles, which explains why they don't break. 😉

[RenzokukenFisher]

Just had a rad 3 day stint fishing Friday - Sunday with a different spot each day. Weather cooperated nicely the first two days as a cold front was starting to move in but that third day the fish developed a case of lock jaw only picking up a few on a ned rig.

 

The first spot was a major honey hole of mine with low quantity but high quality. It was the day I hooked into a monster but she bent my spinnerbait hook out, darn! Picked up a nice one before it on a double willow spinnerbait.

 

 

The following day I went to a higher elevation 40 acre pond with some hard fighting northern strain Largies. I know these fish well so I decided to target bigger fish with glidebaits and wake baits. Got some decent ones on both with an 5lb 5oz kicker to top it off caught on the rat! Hooked into another 5 or 6 or so on the Swaver but she leveraged the bait on standing timber on the way back to the kayak. Slowly learning these bigger ones.

 

 

The last day I launched at an even higher elevation lake looking to get into some smallies and ended up catching largies and green sunfish instead hahaha. The bite was veryyyy slow but I managed to find them on the rip rap dam using a ned rig. Some big green sunfish hammered it and got a few quality largemouth. I really want to see this place in spring since around summer time its drawn down 30 or 40 feet making it tricky to locate fish w/o electronics I believe.

 

Glad to have had such a dope few outings and learned something each trip. Crazy how these greenback and bronze critters can both make you feel ontop of the world and also humble you like no other in the same day. Good fishing y'all

[BluegillsTightlines]

 

 

Not a giant like the 2 I caught last week, but it still put up a nice fight and gave an aerial display. It actually popped off the hook right at the bank edge so I dove on it like a fumbled football lol.

 

Fumble, recovered by the offense!!

 

Scale went back and forth between 2.24 and 2.33 staying on 2.29 lbs the longest, so I'm calling it 2.29 lbs.

[Fried Lemons]

Got on some cookie cutters despite my best efforts. 2 on a weedless swimbait in the grass, 2 on a line thru one on offshore rock another skipping under docks. Missed 2 more in the grass and one on a ledge. They were chewing, just not the size I was after.

 

 

 

[Swamp Girl]

@ol'crickety catches 19-inchers and she's thrilled.

 

@Fried Lemons catches 19-inchers and he says, "...just not the size I was after."

[MN Fisher]

56 minutes ago, ol'crickety said:

@ol'crickety catches 19-inchers and she's thrilled.

 

@Fried Lemons catches 19-inchers and he says, "...just not the size I was after."

Considering I'm bound to the shore this year, I'm thrilled when I catch 13-inchers.

[Swamp Girl]

6 minutes ago, MN Fisher said:

Considering I'm bound to the shore this year, I'm thrilled when I catch 13-inchers.

 

If I were shore bound too, I'd be catching the same.

[TnRiver46]

1 hour ago, ol'crickety said:

@ol'crickety catches 19-inchers and she's thrilled.

 

@Fried Lemons catches 19-inchers and he says, "...just not the size I was after."

I was thinking the same thing haha. I’d probably write a letter home to mom if I caught those 

[Fishlegs]

Got to fish from a boat for the first time in 2 months. Just been a busy, and hot summer. We started out with temps in the upper 50s, which is rare for us in August. The fishing was hot while the temp was cool. We caught 16 before noon, and only 2 after noon. Nothing big, but the morning was a nice preview of fall. The one below had some nice markings.

 

 

I caught one so small it was hilarious. I felt a strike, pulled back, felt no resistance so I let up. Then I thought I felt the line move so I pulled back again. Again, felt no resistance so I let up. I decided that I must have snagged some grass, or a stick so I reeled in and found the beast below on the hook. 🤣

 

[FishTank]

I can check off another one for the Senko. 

 

 

I'm not sayin a 5in Senko will catch everything in a lake but come on... really. 

[F14A-B]

19 minutes ago, FishTank said:

I can check off another one for the Senko. 

 

 

I'm not sayin a 5in Senko will catch everything in a lake but come on... really. 

Eat that bad boy! 🤣😂🤣

[Aaron_H]

Only been able to get out twice in the last two weeks between work and the thunderstorms, did okay both trips.

 

First cast I hooked into this one on the chatterbait that went 3.55lb

 

Not a bad fish and I was hoping first cast curse wouldn't get me. I caught a handful more, but I did lose a much nicer fish also on the chatterbait right at the bank. Spit it on the jump right at my feet, got a good look at her and she looked ~6lb. Not one of the behemoths that lurks that pond but a sore loss for me when big girls have been slim pickings lately.

 

It was kind of the breaking point for me with my chatterbait setup. I've caught quite a few large fish with a couple over 7lb on it, but I have lost far too many big ones. At first I thought braid to leader was letting them get slack too often on the jump, so I switched to mono. This helped a lot and I landed more big ones than I did with braid, but I was still losing too many. Throwing it on a MH/F graphite rod, but it bends deep into the blank, very moderate for a "fast" rod IMO. Ended up seeing a deal on the Intenza glass on American Legacy for 100 bucks so I figured I'd give glass a shot and see since so many chatterbait anglers swear by it.

 

Today was the first trip since it showed up, and so far I'm not disappointed. I didn't hook into any big ones, biggest only went 2.29lb but I didn't lose any fish, including one that was just baaarely skin hooked. Time will tell if this is the solution for me. Losing fish is part of the game, but hopefully this switch minimizes it.

 

They were busting hard on schooling shad later in the evening, I should've been throwing a small jerkbait into those bait balls and I would've cleaned house, but I left it at home wanting to put time into testing this combo. Alas, still ended the evening with 10, including this chunky little guy on a Rage Bug:

[BluegillsTightlines]

17 hours ago, ol'crickety said:

@ol'crickety catches 19-inchers and she's thrilled.

 

@Fried Lemons catches 19-inchers and he says, "...just not the size I was after."

Right? Lol Nothing wrong with his feelings of course, but a 19" bass thrills me too. That's a nice quality fish in every definition of the book. And anything 20+ for me is the cherry on top.

 

I've caught more 19 and 20 inch bass this year than I ever have before, and it never ceases to amaze me just how big these things are and how much surface area they take up at that size. 

[Swamp Girl]

@Fried Lemons even has the chutzpah to outfish us from a de facto surfboard in bare feet. I'm glad he doesn't post pics of his rods and reels. I fear he's outfishing us with a Snoopy rod and reel. 

 

@Aaron_H: It's good to see you posting again!

[Bluebasser86]

Last Saturday was another stop for the Kansas Kayak Anglers tournament circuit, this time it was a roadrunner format. I thought it was the same as last year's format, but found out a month ago that it wasn't. Instead, this year we were allowed to fish any state lake in Kansas. This threw a major wrench in my plan because our state lakes are mostly terrible and especially the ones close to my area. I had time to prefish a couple of them leading up to the event and settled on Montgomery State Lake near Independence, KS as my destination despite having only ever fished the lake once just 2 weeks before. 

 

I camped near one of the ramps the night before and the "30% chance of storms", turned into wild thunderstorms with torrential downpours, high winds, excessive lightning, even hail, for about 6 hours straight. Everything in my tent was soaked and I got very little sleep. At least the storms had mostly passed by launch and there was only distant flashes by the time first cast came at 6AM. 2 other guys had chosen to fish the lake also but launched from a different ramp so I didn't know who they were. I started fishing right at the ramp and just a few cast into the morning with my bladed jig, I caught a 15.75".

I fished around the cove a little and ended up catching a small limit, which was a surprise for me as my first trip I was averaging about a bite a hour and it wasn't even 7 when I caught my 5th fish. The lake is shallow and dirty with weeds all around it. I had heard lots of fish in the very shallow weeds, so I ran a toad between some cattails and water willows and got one to suck it down. A little better fish at 16.75"

The lake had probably dropped a foot since I fished it the first time 2 weeks ago and a lot of the weeds I'd caught them in then were barely in the water, so I was really struggling. It had become clear that I didn't know the other 2 fishermen on the lake, but they knew each other. I was right across the small lake from them when I swear I heard one of them exclaim to the other "I just caught another 20!" Not what I was wanting to hear. 

 

I needed to make a change because the size had gone way down on the fish. So I took off the now useless frog that I had put on, I tied on a spinnerbait. Not ideal to fish a spinnerbait on a 7' 3" H/F with 65lb braid, but I didn't have high hopes for it in the 90* water anyways. So my second cast, it got slammed and she jumped as high as I've ever seen a fish that size get. Really glad I had a trailer hook because it wasn't hooked great, but I still got the 20.50" fish in the net and on the board.

I caught several more small fish, including a small cull, but nothing like I needed. There is a pretty sizeable creek that I'd caught some fish out of in practice, but the bites I got were in the back. So I cranked the motor on high and ran to the back of the creek. Once I got there, I skipped my Texas rig into a big laid down tree. I hadn't caught anything out of it before, but this time, there was a little pressure when I picked up, and a big head came wallowing out when I set the hook. I kept her up and moving so she couldn't get back in the tree and slid the net under her. That was one of the only bites I got back there, but at 19", it was worth the effort.

I fished around for the next couple hours and didn't catch much. My wife did her normal lunchtime check in that has a history of bringing me luck, and this time was no different. I flipped my T-rig into the grass and got thumped. Had to get off the phone so I could take the pictures of the 17 incher.

I felt like I was close, but I still had a 15.75" I wanted to get rid of. I had some really good bites on the T-rig one lay downs, but they would just whack it and drop it for some reason. In the last 30 minutes, I ran to the same spot I caught my big one and ran a bladed jig across the grass line. I had a big fish load on. I set and she was immediately on the top, shook her head, and came off. That would be the last bite I'd get and proved to be the difference between me and the other guy on the lake that was doing a little better. Turns out they both lived right by the lake and fish it all the time. His buddy that also fishes it all the time, managed a single 10.25" fish, holding up to it's reputation as a lake with big fish that are difficult to catch. 

 

[Swamp Girl]

I don't watch or participate in tourneys, but I sure love reading Clayton's exciting accounts. 

[gim]

31 minutes ago, ol'crickety said:

I don't watch or participate in tourneys, but I sure love reading Clayton's exciting accounts. 

 

I always feel like I'm there when I read his yak tourney stories.  I find the kayak bass fishing tournament scene to be very facsinating in general.