Swamp Girl

[Swamp Girl]

@T-Billy: Tim, I just watched a video about pitching from a seated position and I think I can learn it. My question is this: Below those surface weeds are weeds all the way to the bottom and the bottom is only two to four feet down. Will my lure immediately tangle in weeds and if so, why would a bass still hit it? I caught my fish yesterday hitting the little breaks in the weeds with a surface lure and then getting their heads up and skating them across the top of the water like you taught me.

 

Caveat: I did catch my biggest girl in the old river channel, for I was fishing a dammed river, and the old river channel, while weedy, isn't choked with weeds like the adjoining water. 

[T-Billy]

A flipping rig, aka pegged T-rig, with a snelled straight shank flipping hook will fish through that stuff clean. A beaver style bait would be my first pick. 3/8 or 1/2 oz tungsten weight should work fine.

[Swamp Girl]

Tim, I am always torn between wanting to learn something new and wanting to continue catching bass in the ways that work for me. I read this recently:

 

Quote

With at two-day total of 180.50 inches, Drew Gregory wins the 2024 Yamaha Rightwaters Bassmaster Kayak Series Championship scored by TourneyX.

 

Well, my 3.5-hour total yesterday morning was 92 inches and that was me doing pert near everything wrong: Canoes are antiquated. Spinning gear isn't used for big surface lures. My canoe is just an empty hull: no electronics or camera rigs or motor. And I don't have twenty different rods for twenty different kinds of lures. I'll tie 20 different kinds of lures onto each of my rods. And some of my reels are 40 years old.

 

So, a big part of me shrugs at fishing with different equipment and different lures, thinking, "Why bother? I probably won't catch more."

 

And another part of me wants to continue learning.

 

 

[T-Billy]

1 hour ago, Swamp Girl said:

Tim, I am always torn between wanting to learn something new and wanting to continue catching bass in the ways that work for me. I read this recently:

 

 

Well, my 3.5-hour total yesterday morning was 92 inches and that was me doing pert near everything wrong: Canoes are antiquated. Spinning gear isn't used for big surface lures. My canoe is just an empty hull: no electronics or camera rigs or motor. And I don't have twenty different rods for twenty different kinds of lures. I'll tie 20 different kinds of lures onto each of my rods. And some of my reels are 40 years old.

 

So, a big part of me shrugs at fishing with different equipment and different lures, thinking, "Why bother? I probably won't catch more."

 

And another part of me wants to continue learning.

 

 

I hear ya, and I think we all feel that way to some extent. It's why I fish the way I do. I'm really only interested in chasing big bass at this point, and once I got good at fishing the really gnarly cover, my average size went up considerably, while still catching good numbers. It's also a pattern that holds up from mid 40's in the spring until 38-39 degrees in the late fall. 

 In the end, it's all about having fun and catching 'em the way you wanna catch 'em. After all, we ain't on the pro tour with a big paycheck on the line. 😉

[Swamp Girl]

@T-Billy:

 

I'm glad you understand, Tim. I have learned so much about wrangling LMBs from swamps in the last 2.5 years, so a part of me is learning-exhausted. Time and again, when I don't know what to do, I apply something that one of you said and it generally gets me back to bass catching instead of just bass fishing. I don't know if you remember telling me this a couple years ago, but you told me to pitch my underspins into reeds. I NEVER would have attempted that, given how thick and fibrous reeds are, but the very next time I fished after that, I caught a four-pounder in the reeds and have caught hundreds more bass since then in the reeds.

 

Hooking them is the easy part: Wrenching them out is where the work begins! Again, you advised me to get their heads up and keep them atop the water...and that works. You only have a fraction of second to do that, but if you do, you can yank them out of the jungle.

 

When I fish the jungle, I apply my strength, which is accurate casting to hit the wee open spots. They're in those open spots! I'm sure they're in the weeds too, but time and again, I'm catching those bass deep in the weeds too. How do I know? Because I see the V's coming out of the weeds to where my lure is twitched in an opening. 

 

You know I own a heavy casting rod with 50 or 60 lb. braid, all spooled and ready to pitch. I expect I'll use it someday, but I'm also a little afraid. That fraction of a section I'll have to get them to the surface will be cut in half, I'm guessing. We'll see. 

[T-Billy]

1 hour ago, Swamp Girl said:

You know I own a heavy casting rod with 50 or 60 lb. braid, all spooled and ready to pitch. I expect I'll use it someday, but I'm also a little afraid. That fraction of a section I'll have to get them to the surface will be cut in half, I'm guessing. We'll see. 

Don't sweat it, you'll do fine. Lock that drag down, keep your casts/pitches fairly short, set the hook vertically and winch away.

 Some days they'll be in those openings, or come to them, as you've experienced, others they'll be buried up in the thick stuff in a negative or neutral mood. You can get a reaction bite from those fish by dropping that bait right in their face.