The past 40 days have been quite good.

[gim]

I've posted some of these fish in the local regional thread or the main photo thread.  Since August 19, the bite has been exceptional.  We had a couple of extreme heat waves from mid July to mid August that almost completely shut the bite down, but since then the fishing has been very consistent, and consistently good.  I wouldn't call any of these largemouth "really big" but they're all much better than the average fish here.  And you can see they are packing on weight too.

 

The same pattern has continued to produce during this entire time period, which is a little odd.  Rarely does a specific pattern continue for this long in my neck of the woods.  Its almost exclusively been an aggressive approach with moving lures in shallow weedy areas and around docks.  Cast, retrieve, and they eat it.

[Blue Raider Bob]

19 hours ago, gimruis said:

I've posted some of these fish in the local regional thread or the main photo thread.  Since August 19, the bite has been exceptional.  We had a couple of extreme heat waves from mid July to mid August that almost completely shut the bite down, but since then the fishing has been very consistent, and consistently good.  I wouldn't call any of these largemouth "really big" but they're all much better than the average fish here.  And you can see they are packing on weight too.

 

The same pattern has continued to produce during this entire time period, which is a little odd.  Rarely does a specific pattern continue for this long in my neck of the woods.  Its almost exclusively been an aggressive approach with moving lures in shallow weedy areas and around docks.  Cast, retrieve, and they eat it.

Ya'lls Northern Largemouth are so incredibly fat. Is it the invasive Goby's or have they always been that round? An eighteen inch fish here is lean, at least the ones I catch. Our major forage fishes are the Threadfin and Gizzard Shads, and there are lots of them. 

[gim]

10 minutes ago, Blue Raider Bob said:

Ya'lls Northern Largemouth are so incredibly fat. Is it the invasive Goby's or have they always been that round? An eighteen inch fish here is lean, at least the ones I catch. Our major forage fishes are the Threadfin and Gizzard Shads, and there are lots of them. 

 

No gobies here on inland waters.  Lake Superior has them, but obviously the bass I catch are not from Superior (its way too cold for largies).

 

Primary forage, at least in the lakes I fish for largemouth, are sunfish.  Tons of them, in various sizes.  They eat other things too (obviously) but the small to midsize lakes have an abundance of sunfish for them to eat.

 

Bigger lakes with smallmouth are loaded with perch and crayfish.  Some of them further north also have cisco/tulibee, but I don't think smallmouth feed on them much because of their size.  They are more favored by larger predators like northern pike and muskies.

 

We have skinnier fish in the late spring/early summer but that's because of post-spawn.

[Swamp Girl]

Bob is right. Those are fatties. Well done, @gimruis! I tried to decide which of your fat bass is my favorite, but I couldn't because I'd see a fat one and pick that one and then see another fat one and pick that one and then....

[A-Jay]

There ya go ~

Nicely Done

Congrats 

A-Jay

 

[roadwarrior]