One. (And do you have one?)

[Swamp Girl]

I caught one bass this morning. I lost a couple that were good-sized, which is easy to do in a bog with obstacles everywhere. I also caught three pickerels.

 

I knew I wouldn't catch much. I never do at this bog. So, why do I go when I have about 20 other good places to fish? Well, I like the puzzle of this bog. I like spinning the combination dial hoping that one day I'll crack the combination. I love the beauty of the place. This morning, I saw a cruising bald eagle hit the brakes, twist its body, and plunge on a fish. At one point, I saw four beavers at once. And I like that this bog holds four, five, and six-pound bass and that they're black. 

 

So, do you have a body of water that you fish and fish and never catch much, but keep trying? If so, why?

 

 

[gim]

22 minutes ago, ol'crickety said:

So, do you have a body of water that you fish and fish and never catch much, but keep trying?

I wouldn't say that I "never" catch anything there, but sometimes it generally is not as good as when I drive a little further.  And that mostly has to do with angling pressure closer to where more people live.  The reason I go do it is because its more convenient.  Sometimes I just don't feel like driving 30-60 minutes one way towing a boat, I'd rather drive 10 or 15 minutes instead.

[TnRiver46]

Almost All of them, because it’s too far to hit the better spots (not enough time or cash)

 

so we fish near the house after work 

[Bird]

That is definitely a beautiful place and would draw me in again and again.

 

I fish this one reservoir that is slam full of cover, lay downs through out the entire lake.

Have never caught a fish over 13" and catching 5 in a day is a chore.

It's 104 acres,  receives very little pressure and is not far from the house.

I may go back again. Idk

[PhishLI]

23 hours ago, ol'crickety said:

So, do you have a body of water that you fish and fish and never catch much, but keep trying? If so, why?

Yes, a few actually, and they all have a few things in common. They're less than a mile from the coast, with some quite close, and they're loaded with bait. Because they're near the salt, a bunch of Osprey, Cormorants, Pelican-ish flying machines, humongous turtles, and Stork-like creatures are constantly culling out juveniles and less wary fish. Poachers, as much as I truly despise these sneaky bastids, do the same. What we're left with, when one can put things together, are decent fish on average. It's rarely a dinkfest, and some really big bass and pickerel swim in all of them. Forever bigs. Ones you'll never forget, and more so because in most cases you've really had to grind it out to find them.

[TOXIC]

Slew, lake, reservoir, creek, oxbow, river, pond, cut, gut, and a few others I am familiar with.  Explain “Bog”.  Makes me think of Europe and peat bogs. 

[Swamp Girl]

10 minutes ago, PhishLI said:

Forever bigs. Ones you'll never forget,

 

Oh, yeah! I too have those fish I'll never forget. I could take you back to the very spot I catch them, show you were I cast, and detail all that followed.

 

Say, Phish, do you think the beavers keep the quantity down and the quality up? Perhaps they interfere with reproduction with all their busy beaverness. Fewer bass would mean more food and more size for the bass that are there. 

[Blue Raider Bob]

1 hour ago, ol'crickety said:

I caught one bass this morning. I lost a couple that were good-sized, which is easy to do in a bog with obstacles everywhere. I also caught three pickerels.

 

I knew I wouldn't catch much. I never do at this bog. So, why do I go when I have about 20 other good places to fish? Well, I like the puzzle of this bog. I like spinning the combination dial hoping that one day I'll crack the combination. I love the beauty of the place. This morning, I saw a cruising bald eagle hit the brakes, twist its body, and plunge on a fish. At one point, I saw four beavers at once. And I like that this bog holds four, five, and six-pound bass and that they're black. 

 

So, do you have a body of water that you fish and fish and never catch much, but keep trying? If so, why?

 

 

Thanks for the pictures! I'm staring in oblivious silence while work productivity plummets! 

I'm daydreaming of clean, uncrowded waters, uncorrupted by jet skis and rude, noisy boaters. I'm dreaming of silent, well placed casts that stir the resident largies in their shadowy lairs. You truly have a paradise in your back yard! Thank you for the extremely pleasant diversion!

[Swamp Girl]

15 minutes ago, TOXIC said:

Slew, lake, reservoir, creek, oxbow, river, pond, cut, gut, and a few others I am familiar with.  Explain “Bog”.  Makes me think of Europe and peat bogs. 

 

A bog is a swamp, shallow and weedy. The small lily pads in the photos will widen and create a mat. There are also other weeds just under the surface.

 

14 minutes ago, Blue Raider Bob said:

You truly have a paradise in your back yard! Thank you for the extremely pleasant diversion!

 

I thought you guys might like to see the bog since I failed to catch fish!

 

15 minutes ago, Blue Raider Bob said:

I'm dreaming of silent, well placed casts

 

At one point,  my canoe practically bumped a bass. I saw the swirl right beside my boat. I was so proud of my sneaky, silent paddling.

[PhishLI]

1 hour ago, ol'crickety said:

Say, Phish, do you think the beavers keep the quantity down and the quality up?

I couldn't say as they're not a feature in my county. There are large muskrats in my local spots, but they don't seem to have much impact. I'd be worried about otters though. They just showed up close to my brother's house in a very good mill pond which is part a river system. He found one floating on its back eating a bass like we'd eat corn on the cob. I'm glad they're not here.

 

1 hour ago, ol'crickety said:

Fewer bass would mean more food and more size for the bass that are there. 

Yes, as long as the lake is fertile and supports large populations of bait fish. All of your fish look well fed, so I imagine that food isn't an issue. Just like anywhere else, but even more so with airborne fishers hovering over super shallow water, it'll come down to time, place, and presentation. The bigger survivors of this ever-present threat know to lock down in cover and rarely chase on calm or bright days. Cover in the form of heavy ripple might motivate them sometimes, maybe, but darkness and low light will open up very aggressive yet short feeding windows where bigger fish are concerned. This always seems to be about 40 minutes here. They gorge, then they're gone. You just need to be there when.

[Kirtley Howe]

47 minutes ago, ol'crickety said:

 

Oh, yeah! I too have those fish I'll never forget. I could take you back to the very spot I catch them, show you were I cast, and detail all that followed.

 

Say, Phish, do you think the beavers keep the quantity down and the quality up? Perhaps they interfere with reproduction with all their busy beaverness. Fewer bass would mean more food and more size for the bass that are there. 

From my experience, beavers improve quality. I have caught some excellent bass in beaver ponds. Also, many of the local small streams that have beaver dams seem to be loaded with native brook trout as well as some quality bass, which would seem to indicate good water quality and good spawning success. It is a shame that I can no longer do the hiking necessary to access those streams. A lot of them were small enough to jump across, some small enough to STEP across, until you got to the dam area. Most were pretty isolated, so perhaps that played a big role in the quality also.

[TnRiver46]

Beavers and bass live in happy harmony 

[Swamp Girl]

21 minutes ago, Kirtley Howe said:

It is a shame that I can no longer do the hiking necessary to access those streams.

 

I feel that ^this^ is coming for me too. Dang it. We'll have our memories, won't we? 

 

22 minutes ago, PhishLI said:

I'd be worried about otters though.

 

Yep, they're fish-eating machines. 

 

22 minutes ago, PhishLI said:

They gorge, then they're gone. You just need to be there when.

 

Yowza! No wonder you haunt those ponds at night.

[Jar11591]

A lake I haven’t fished in a few years is that lake for me. I used to work 5 minutes away from it so I fished it a lot after I got out of work. It was not a numbers lake at all. It was a small very public lake that got absolutely hammered with pressure. But when you got a fish it was usually a good one. I only ever had 2 “good” days on that lake; a morning that produced about a dozen fish in 5-6 hours, and a then a short 2 hour trip in the afternoon that resulted in about 20 fish. They were slamming a weedless frog with reckless abandon in just a few inches of water. But most days are good for 1 or 2 fish. The lake is an enigma. I think about fishing it from time to time still, but I have closer, less pressured lakes now. 

[MIbassyaker]

For the past 10 years or so I've kept track of a little more than 40 bodies of water in my area that I spend time on, and fish in sort of a rotation. I've been recording catch rates and sizes of bass per hour of effort on each one.  Any place where I don't catch bass of some quantity or quality, I have tended to stop visiting.  But of all the places I've been more than once, the one lake where I have the lowest catch rate per hour, and where have been skunked the most often, is also the one with the highest average size -- it's also my second most-visited.

[Swamp Girl]

10 minutes ago, MIbassyaker said:

For the past 10 years or so I've kept track of a little more than 40 bodies of water in my area that I spend time on, and fish in sort of a rotation. I've been recording catch rates and sizes of bass per hour of effort on each one.  Any place where I don't catch bass of some quantity or quality, I have tended to stop visiting.  But of all the places I've been more than once, the one lake where I have the lowest catch rate per hour, and where have been skunked the most often, is also the one with the highest average size -- it's also my second most-visited.

 

That's what this bog is for me! Here are two 2023 fish from it, but the most I've ever caught from it is seven bass and most times, it's one to three:

 

[AlabamaSpothunter]

1 minute ago, ol'crickety said:

 

That's what this bog is for me! Here are two 2023 fish from it, but the most I've ever caught from it is seven bass and most times, it's one to three:

 

That's the place you should keep fishing ?

 

Those are the right type of fish, got the right build to them.   

[DitchPanda]

My local body of water is very much like you describe. It used to be very productive, not any more. To put it into perspective I used to routinely catch 15- 20 bass a trip...last year I'm not sure I broke 10 once. This year so far the best I've done is 3. I have a lake 40 ish minutes from my house that's much better, fished it once for bass this year for 2.5hrs caught 13 and missed or lost half dozen more. Why do I keep beating my head against the wall? 3 reasons: its close, I like the challenge and I get more time to fish.

[txchaser]

I have a couple of places like that, and eventually they paid off. I consider it to be technical fishing, in that the fish get very very picky but if you can get enough clues, it turns from comically hard to comically big. And one beautiful place to fish that really doesn't have many big fish to speak of, but it's like fishing in a photo.

 

An example - regular gill color or light gill color baits get mostly ignored. But black or a very dark green pumpkin immediately started catching monster. Gills are very dark there. Water isn't super clear so it's not supposed to be a big deal, but they appear to be sight feeders. Same place I had a similar result with a small change to a crankbait color. 

 

Another one - you could catch them on a t-rig one day, but they weren't biting right... fish were too small, and sort of lethargic on the pickup. They were suspending about 1 ft off the bottom. Tried a crank at that depth, it was a little better, told me that slightly off the bottom was going to help. 

Bubba shot and a lipless fished like a blade bait gave me immediate big fish and they were smoking it.

 

Often I'll fish these by going to the very best spot I can think of, especially if I get access to multiple kinds of spots without moving the boat. Like I can fish shallow, deep, and down a point, all from the same spot... and I might not move for four hours. 

 

[Swamp Girl]

11 hours ago, txchaser said:

But black or a very dark green pumpkin immediately started catching monster.

 

Ooh, ^this^ intrigues me. It is dark water. You see how black its bass are. I assume they're black to blend with the water so that the raptors can't see them. Maybe dark lures might trigger more bites since their prey are likely black too.

 

Another strange thing about his bog is that there isn't "a good spot." I've caught so few fish that I pretty much remember where I've caught all of them and the pattern is "here and there and yonder." If I were to mark on a map where I've caught bass, there'd be no clusters. I do remember where I haven't caught bass, like a laydown-choked outlet with current (You'd think that would be a great spot, right?), but I keep fishing those spots because I'm ornery. Or stupid. Likely the latter. 

[galyonj]

13 minutes ago, ol'crickety said:

I keep fishing those spots because I'm ornery. Or stupid. Likely the latter. 

 

I'm cribbing this for my answer to the question posed in your OP. lol

[WIGuide]

There's a small lake I go to generally at least a few times a year that had a winter kill a few years back. I would go knowing I wouldn't normally catch many, but what I would catch would be worth it. Those fish that survived the kill had an overabundance of food and less competition so their growth rate went way up. If they weren't big already, they got big quick which made it pretty fun. 

[PhishLI]

13 hours ago, txchaser said:

Often I'll fish these by going to the very best spot I can think of, especially if I get access to multiple kinds of spots without moving the boat. Like I can fish shallow, deep, and down a point, all from the same spot... and I might not move for four hours. 

This is me when my gut tells me I should, which is more often than not. I may bounce a bit until I feel it, but once I do, I'll camp out. This has really paid off in these places. I believe part of this is that lure entry simulates other fish feeding, and over a period of time fish will be drawn closer to the action which is within my range.

[Swamp Girl]

2 hours ago, PhishLI said:

This is me when my gut tells me I should, which is more often than not. I may bounce a bit until I feel it, but once I do, I'll camp out. This has really paid off in these places. I believe part of this is that lure entry simulates other fish feeding, and over a period of time fish will be drawn closer to the action which is within my range.

 

Fascinating. More and more, I think you're the fish whisperer, @PhishLI.

 

3 hours ago, WIGuide said:

There's a small lake I go to generally at least a few times a year that had a winter kill a few years back. I would go knowing I wouldn't normally catch many, but what I would catch would be worth it. Those fish that survived the kill had an overabundance of food and less competition so their growth rate went way up. If they weren't big already, they got big quick which made it pretty fun. 

 

I like the way you think too, @WIGuide. I've mentioned a couple times fishing a POND in Canada, the land of thousands of lakes, and this pond was right beside a logging highway. Strangely, it was full of big pike, partly because everyone ignored a pond on their way to a big lake, but perhaps it was also full of big pike because they ate every small pike that was born since there was no place to hide in such small water. I know this isn't the same as your fish kill pond, but your hypothesis got me thinking. 

[Team9nine]

A slightly different take on the question, but to me, lakes are like people. As individuals, every one is unique and different, and comes with its own story on why that is. I like visiting each one to see how its personality changes from day to day, month to month, or year to year.
 

Like people, some fall out of favor, or I lose touch with them for one reason or another, but I’m always excited when I return to them. It amazes me how two micro lakes that are literally across the street from each other can be worlds apart in their fishing and environmental makeup. I enjoy the stunted dink producers just as much as the semi-empty ‘tough’ fishery that only gives up a few fish every year, albeit quality fish. Many of these lakes I’ve been able to catch the same fish multiple times over a period of years, and it’s just like revisiting an old friend.

 

The best is fishing a new place for the first time - the unknown - and seeing how quick I can assess the personality and structure of the place.