Latest Catch Pics Thread

[Aaron_H]

On 12/7/2024 at 2:11 PM, LrgmouthShad said:

Really messy day of fishing and I made a lot of bad decisions but got lucky with one over 6lbs on a jerkbait. Long fish. About 23”. Windy, cold, rainy. Pardon me if I don’t look more excited, lol. Fun fish to catch

 

Made good enough decisions to connect with an excellent fish! Nice to see you get a big one

[LrgmouthShad]

@Aaron_H there were more there but I decided to call it quits. That spot's a good one because everybody seems to ignore one part of the underwater point. I've caught a lot of fish off that point. That was actually the biggest and makes me hopeful for some better quality. I'm at the point now on Stillhouse where I feel I know where some some bigger fish winter at but not a lot of time to catch them + they are hard to trick in this clear water.

[Choporoz]

Found massive bait school yesterday - over a hundred yards square.   Over 24 foot of water, but Garmin said 5' because the bait was so thick.  Had to play with a number of spoons to get right size and rate of fall.  Funny thing is that smaller spoons got best bass.  Even though the bait was massive - snagged this 8" gizzard retrieving my spoon

[Team9nine]

Nearly 4 inches of rain this week, and now the NW winds and clear skies following the front. Spent 2.5 hours on the water this afternoon, the first hour inside a creek arm hiding from the wind. Searched for crappie but only found carp, so pulled out the bass gear and caught one on jerkbait. Wind finally settled, so looked again for some crappie on the main lake. Only spotted a few, so gave up. Moved to some main lake points during the final 45 minutes and limited out on bass using blade baits. Water 49 deg.

 

 

 

 

[FishTax]

Had a cold NC day with wind so didn't want to mess with the kayak. Hit up @Pat Brown to see if he wanted to try a new pond with me at a city park. Ended up getting our families together which was fun! 

We explored the ponds which feed each other in a chain. Pretty cool place with a variety of cover. I ended up deciding to try a blade bait as a few of you have inspired me but I'd never thrown one. I had a pretty small chartreuse one and threw it for an hour. Slow day and I varies the retrieve, ended up catching one good one on it. Both pics are same fish. 

Felt good to catch one on a new bait in a new place. Now I want to try a larger one on the lake. Looking forward to further exploring these ponds and possibly adding to our rotation of pressured ponds with a few big fish in them!

[LrgmouthShad]

Rather slow day at the ol Stillhousy. I got 2 bites on a jig in timber in pretty quick succession and then nothing. One of these jig fish wrapped me up in a tree and came off. It felt pretty heavy. I beat the skunk at least! 

[thediscochef]

Got into a dinkfest today, caught eight in about an hour and a half. Nothing big. But also the lake was busy and I caught more than anyone. And sometimes that's the real five pounder 

[LrgmouthShad]

Stillhouse was strutting its stuff yesterday. Have to share a couple of pics

[thediscochef]

2 hours ago, LrgmouthShad said:

Stillhouse was strutting its stuff yesterday. Have to share a couple of pics

Man it was a pretty pretty day in Texas yesterday. Today? Today I may as well be in London or Seattle 

[Swamp Girl]

9 hours ago, thediscochef said:

But also the lake was busy and I caught more than anyone.

 

Cool beans, Bud!

[LrgmouthShad]

It was definitely a jiggin weekend. Caught 6 small ones today. 5 on a jig and 1 on a senko. Photo’d four of them. I tried a lot of baits. Even walked a frog. A jig was the deal, at least for dinky bass 😄. 

[LrgmouthShad]

I’d also like to specify. This was no finesse jig. This was a full size living rubber football jig lol. I have a feeling I picked the wrong area

[lunkerboss923]

Green Sunfish were the deal today. Beetle Spins and lite tackle. 

[Swamp Girl]

@lunkerboss923: I caught a pumpkinseed once and caught yellow perch on two trips, but other than the occasional chain pickerel, I just catch bass. There are white perch in all the water I fish, but I've never caught one, even though I wanna. I did catch a pike once.

[TnRiver46]

Went fishing this weekend both days. Went to the lakehouse to grab my wife’s kayak, paddled it across glass slick waters to load it up on the daily driver Honda and go to a different ramp on the same lake where people are catching nice big smallies. Somehow this access point was in a sunny hurricane with the wind blowing the same direction as the current. Two older guys with a huge boat were sitting in the parking lot saying it was too windy, and here I am with a kayak. Well two of my buddies pulled up with a bass tracker so I left the kayak in the parking lot and hopped in with them. Right as we are about to launch, a guy pulls up and asks if we have a scale. He had a 22” 6 lb 10 oz meanmouth and two other really nice smallmouth. Said he had launched at 3 am trying to catch walleye haha. Anyway here’s a pic of that monster 

 

so now we are fishing, but can’t do a thing on the main channel with the wind and current going through same direction. We retreated to a creek arm I knew held small largemouth and caught a bunch of those, better than braving the sunny hurricane

 

so Sunday rolls around and I can’t stop thinking about the potential for PB so I go back to the same spot in the pouring rain, this time the wind isn’t blowing tho. I paddled upstream and broke off a fish , re rigged and found out why I broke off, I was amongst the toothy critters. Got one for the ice box ! 

[AlabamaSpothunter]

I can't imagine catching a 6-7lb Meanmouth......."we're gonna need a bigger boat" comes to mind.     That's about as alpha of predator as it gets 😎

 

eta:  I would have gotten a repro mount of that fish no doubt

 

 

[Swamp Girl]

That meanmouth looks so perfect. Not a nick or a scuff. 

[AlabamaSpothunter]

10 minutes ago, Swamp Girl said:

That meanmouth looks so perfect. Not a nick or a scuff. 

Built like a Swamp Girl Maine fattie 😁

[TnRiver46]

3 hours ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

I can't imagine catching a 6-7lb Meanmouth......."we're gonna need a bigger boat" comes to mind.     That's about as alpha of predator as it gets 😎

 

eta:  I would have gotten a repro mount of that fish no doubt

 

 

He does his own taxidermy and is  mounting that fish and the 7/11. (Skin mounts, not replica)  He’s still waiting on DNA tests for possible record on that larger one from last year. 
 

He let the SMB go but said the govt recommends removing the meanmouth, I assumed since it’s a hybrid it can’t reproduce 🤷🏼 

[N Florida Mike]

First fish of my Christmas break. Caught on a watermelon seed speed worm.

[Fishlegs]

Got to fish below Pickwick dam the other day. The temp was in the 20s the previous night. It had probably warmed into the upper 30s by the time we started fishing. The sun was supposed to come out, but it never happened. It was tolerable, but didn't warm up liked we hoped. The fishing started out as cool as the temps. We had good current. We were drifting 3 mph without the trolling motor. We did a 2 1/2 mile drift and caught nothing. We tried the other side, and only caught one.

 

We went back to the other side again, but all we caught were drum. Hopefully @roadwarrior won't be too disappointed that we don't have pics of those. 🤣

 

Since we were having no luck on the bank, we decided to try fishing along the channel. Turns out that the fish were in the middle of the river. We only caught 3 in the first 5 hours along the banks, but got 6 in the last 2 hours in the middle of the river. Nothing too big, but one solid 3 lb 6 oz smallmouth.

 

 

The most interesting part of the day came as I caught the first fish along the channel. We noticed a boat speeding toward us. While I was reeling I said, "He sees us, right?" He sped right up to us, and turns away at the last second. When he turned we see "Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency" on the side of the boat. I pulled the fish out of the net as he pulled up beside us. I said, "I'll get my license out in just a second." He said, "I don't want to see your license. I want to see the fish." I was confused since it was just a dink smallmouth. I held it up for him, and he said, "No, I want the fish." So I gave it to him. He measured it, and asked me if I wanted it back. I said, "no" so he released it.

 

I thought we were about to get checked by the game warden. Turns out that he was with the TWRA Angler Survey. He asked us several questions about our fishing experience. He wanted to know where we were from, how much our trip cost us (counting gas, meals, etc.), how satisfied we were with our experience, if we'd fished there before, and if we planned to fish there again. It was actually a fun, and interesting experience. We had a nice chat. He seemed like a good guy. He went on his way, and we started catching fish. Too bad he didn't see us when we caught a bigger fish. 🤣

[Swamp Girl]

@Fishlegs: Cool story and beautiful bass!

[AlabamaSpothunter]

@Fishlegs   Great report, and great to hear our tax dollars are being spent to help our fisheries.   

 

That seems like a really good thing especially the question about how much you spent on the trip.    Ultimately at the end of the day, dollars and cents matter the most, and if the powers at be see how big of an economic impact anglers make, they'll be more inclined to listen when we say DON'T SPRAY THE GRASS!  

[TnRiver46]

@AlabamaSpothunter, only a very, very small portion of tax dollars goes to Twra and it’s only a tax from purchasing fishing or hunting gear (see wallop/Breaux and dingell/johnson acts). They are funded almost completely by license sales and boat renewals (which are going up again this year). They were 8 million bucks in the hole last year 

 

and they don’t spray the grass, that is privately contracted out by TVA

 

[Team9nine]

Wasn’t specifically targeting them much yesterday, but ran into one anyway. Hopefully back out after them later today - highs in the mid 60s 😎