I love it when a plan comes together.

[Swamp Girl]

I was looking forward all week to fishing this morning because:

 

It's the last day of Indian Summer, which means it's been warm for six straight days.

 

Foggy morning.

 

Cloudy morning.

 

South wind. 

 

In other words, a perfect morning. I launched in the dark and struggled at first because of the dark and heavy fog. It was hard to see what was what and to read the river channel. I eventually discovered three ways to catch them: 

 

A 6" Depps fat fluke skated like a frog over thick weeds and also wildly twitched in shallow water.

 

Casting my big walking dog lure right down the river channel where it was narrowest and calling bass out of the weeds from both sides.

 

Casting a Yamamoto Zako paddletail on an underspin.

 

I caught 58, but so many were THICK, with about a dozen at 18 to 20 inches. Somehow my camera shifted to the video setting, so six of my bass are on video and I don't know how to load those, so I won't. Plus, there are so many that I captured as photos that I don't need those six beasts. 

 

I felt like I was fishing in an aviary, with eagles soaring, diving, and eating bass in the shallows. There were turkeys gobbling in the woods, sandpipers running over the mud, Great Blue Herons, and even a falcon.

 

My arms and wrists hurt from fighting fish and paddling back in a 9 mph wind. But I'm happy. I'll start with a small bass so you can see that small bass hit my big walking bait too and that even the small ones are fat.

 

 

Now here come the Brunhildas:

 

 

Remember that six of my biggest bass are short videos, but they were similar to the ones above. I caught smaller ones too:

 

 

Even the short ones were thick:

 

 

What a morning. I won't fish for a week or so and I might only fish my pond going forward. It takes a lot out of me to fish like I did this morning, carrying my canoe down a steep bank, launching in the dark, and paddling miles. I fished very well and I'm proud of that. The conditions were tough, with weeds EVERYWHERE, but I don't think I lost a big single bass that I hooked. Now, fishing the walking dog bait meant I missed some strikes, as I always do with a lure that's constantly changing direction. Whew!

 

Oh, yeah, I actually caught only 56 bass, but I caught two beautiful yellow perch that hit my 6" Depps with a 5/0 hook and so I counted them as honorary bass. Here they are:

 

 

[AlabamaSpothunter]

I haven't caught 56 fish over the last half dozen trips out Katie, thank God you're catching enough Bass for all of us on the suck bus 😁

[Swamp Girl]

You're just warming up, Alex, and we northern anglers are about to cool WAY DOWN.

 

Here's the baton: Take it and run, my friend, run!

 

 

Since my year is almost done, it was great to catch some thick fish and good to do so on a difficult body of water. Many times today, I read the water wrong and got stuck on mud flats. And I was picking weeds off my lures all morning long. Plus, it's creepy to launch in the foggy dark all by myself down a gravel road in a gorge. 

[Fishlegs]

56 bass? She's hitting them like Lawrence Taylor!

 

[BrianMDTX]

56…and not a wheelbarrow of dinks, either. That one has a head like a tank! 
 

When it’s on, walkin’ the dog is a fun way to catch bass. 

[Blue Raider Bob]

1 hour ago, Swamp Girl said:

I was looking forward all week to fishing this morning because:

 

It's the last day of Indian Summer, which means it's been warm for six straight days.

 

Foggy morning.

 

Cloudy morning.

 

South wind. 

 

In other words, a perfect morning. I launched in the dark and struggled at first because of the dark and heavy fog. It was hard to see what was what and to read the river channel. I eventually discovered three ways to catch them: 

 

A 6" Depps fat fluke skated like a frog over thick weeds and also wildly twitched in shallow water.

 

Casting my big walking dog lure right down the river channel where it was narrowest and calling bass out of the weeds from both sides.

 

Casting a Yamamoto Zako paddletail on an underspin.

 

I caught 58, but so many were THICK, with about a dozen at 18 to 19 inches. Somehow my camera shifted to the video setting, so six of my bass are on video and I don't know how to load those, so I won't. Plus, there are so many that I captured as photos that I don't need those six beasts. 

 

I felt like I was fishing in an aviary, with eagles soaring, diving, and eating bass in the shallows. There were turkeys gobbling in the woods,, sandpipers running over the mud, Great Blue Herons, and even a falcon.

 

My arms and wrists hurt from fighting fish and paddling back in a 9 mph wind. But I'm happy. I'll start with a small bass so you can see that small bass hit my big walking bait too and that even the small ones are fat.

 

 

Now here come the Brunhildas:

 

 

Remember that six of my biggest bass are short videos, but they were similar to the ones above. I caught smaller ones too:

 

 

Even the short ones were thick:

 

 

What a morning. I won't fish for a week or so and I might only fish my pond going forward. It takes a lot out of me to fish like I did this morning, carrying my canoe down a steep bank, launching in the dark, and paddling miles. I fished very well and I'm proud of that. The conditions were tough, with weeds EVERYWHERE, but I don't think I lost a big single bass that I hooked. Now, fishing the walking dog bait meant I missed some strikes, as I always do with a lure that's constantly changing direction. Whew!

 

Oh, yeah, I actually caught only 56 bass, but I caught two amazing yellow perch that hit my 6" Depps with a 5/0 hook and so I counted them as honorary bass. Here they are:

 

 

EPIC   !!!!!

Kickin' butts and takin' names!

1 hour ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

all of us on the suck bus

I drive that bus Alex!   😐

[Swamp Girl]

I tried to do some screen captures of other Brunhildes, but failed. Oh, well. I'll be more careful with my camera in the future to hopefully keep it from slipping into video mode.  

 

I forgot to share that I caught another double this morning, i.e. two bass at once. The lure was my Yo-Zuri popper. 

 

 

[Fishingmickey]

Beautiful Perch, not to mention the multiude of Basses. Fine work, Swamp gal!

FM

[MN Fisher]

4 hours ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

all of us on the suck bus 

 

2 hours ago, Blue Raider Bob said:

I drive that bus Alex! 

Dude, I OWN the bus...I've been shore bound all season and caught only a few dinks this year.

 

You're making up for the rest of us, Katie - epic fishing.

[Swamp Girl]

7 hours ago, BrianMDTX said:

When it’s on, walkin’ the dog is a fun way to catch bass. 

 

My walking the dog bait (I wish I knew its name.) was perfect for the circumstances. With the river being so shallow, the bass were easy to spook even with my stealthy canoe. So, I needed the longest possible casts and with so many bass tucked under the weeds lining the river channel, I needed a big, noisy lure to pique their curiosity and draw them out. You know those lines in the water that shallow bass moving quickly create? Once, I saw two bass going for my lure, one from each side. You could take every bass I've ever caught walking the dog before today and that number would be smaller than the ones I caught this morning. And I hooked so many from far, far away, but my fiberglass rod and 30 lb. braided line were up to the task. 

 

I wonder how many of you would want to do what I did this morning. It was uncomfortable at times and I'm still hurting from the effort several hours later. To launch the canoe, I had to carefully descend a slope with the canoe over my head. The slope started off with bowling ball-sized rocks and then became slippery mud.

 

The water was cold enough to kill me, so tipping could be lethal and if I tipped, no one was there to help me. Plus, my lightweight canoe tips VERY easily. I entered the canoe with mud caked on my boots, so the water that always comes into my canoe became brown from the mud. Several times, I lost the river channel in the foggy dark and ended up stuck on a muddy flat.

 

I paddled several miles both ways and coming back, I had a 9 mph headwind. The bigger bass had bigger teeth and even though I wore my normal gloves with no fingertips, my fingertips hurt now from all the little lacerations and a couple are swollen and red.

 

I enjoy the challenges, but I note that in such places, I'm nearly always alone, suggesting others don't. I'm 68 and have a few more years of doing such trips, but I feel the day coming when I'll have to walk an easier road. When I exited my canoe at the end of my trip, I carefully moved from my canoe to the slippery bank, staying low, but when I tried to stand, I fell on my can...because I was that stiff. I had to muster my remaining strength to actually stand. 

 

Say, look at this 19.25-incher I caught yesterday morning and contrast her frame with the 18.5 and 19-inchers I caught this morning:

 

[MIbassyaker]

20 hours ago, Swamp Girl said:

Oh, yeah, I actually caught only 56 bass....

 

20 hours ago, AlabamaSpothunter said:

I haven't caught 56 fish over the last half dozen trips....

 

Turns out 56 is exactly the number of bass I caught over my last 9 trips, going back to the beginning of August.  And of those, I can count the number over 18" on 1 hand.

 

I had a slow year, but even at best I don't ever have mornings like this!

 

[Swamp Girl]

1 hour ago, MIbassyaker said:

 

I had a slow year, but even at best I don't ever have mornings like this!

 

And I don't have many mornings like that. Most mornings, I catch one four-pounder. Maybe two. Rarely three. And oftentimes, none. As I wrote, it was a perfect morning to catch bass. The fog and cloud cover expanded the surface bite window and the stable weather had them chomping. This was the special girl. She has quite a mouth:

 

 

My hands still hurt and are still red and swollen. I fished five of the last seven days and old skin is thin. All those little cuts add up.

[Blue Raider Bob]

 

I'm not jealous. I'm always this green!

[Swamp Girl]

18 hours ago, Swamp Girl said:

I wonder how many of you would want to do what I did this morning.

 

Bob, one of your many fine attributes is that you also embrace going yonder. So has @WRB, who has written about portage lakes in Ontario. 

[Functional]

every morning I'm driving to work I think...d**n, Katie is probably out there hammering bass and I have to go babysit adults. 3 days out of the week I'm right. 

[Swamp Girl]

16 hours ago, Functional said:

every morning I'm driving to work I think...d**n, Katie is probably out there hammering bass and I have to go babysit adults. 3 days out of the week I'm right. 

 

Ha! I'm going to fish the little river one morning next week and I might fish my pond mid-day once or twice, but after that, I'm done for the year. Sigh. 

 

I found a couple more bass I caught yesterday morning that are chunky and I semi-succeeded in capturing an image from a video, but the quality is so poor that I'm not going to do any others. The one in the middle is long, but I really like the shorter, footbally bass at the bottom. Not long, but oh-so-thick.

 

[pdxfisher]

What an awesome trip! Thanks for the write up and the beautiful pics. Those bass are getting nice and fat! And those perch are really chunky too!

 

One of the best trips I have ever read!

[Swamp Girl]

16 minutes ago, pdxfisher said:

 

One of the best trips I have ever read!

 

So kind of you, pdx! It was a trip of chunks, but an ugly trip too, as you can see in the backgrounds. I was fishing shallow water between fields of mud, not at all like the lovely water I tend to fish. That's because I was fishing above the dam that leaked the bog, leaving a river and mud. There were so many animal tracks in the mud. I'm guessing the eagles, herons, and I weren't the only ones feasting. Of course, the bass were both predator and prey. 

 

Those perch were cool, huh? I like the bulge in their backs right before their dorsal fins and that they hit 6" lures with 5/0 hooks. At one point, I looked into the water and saw three jumbo perch swimming under my canoe. If I hadn't been so bass-focused, I might have tried to catch them. 

[Swamp Girl]

So, here's an update on this body of water in this thread, which was a bog that became a river when the dam was opened. Now it's neither a bog nor a river: It's a lake. The dam that feeds this former bog and river must have also been opened for when I drove down there today, much of the bog is underwater. By that, I mean the majority of its high, boggy, grassy points are gone. It's 99.9% ice still, but it looks like a different body of water. I'm so excited to fish it to see how it'll fish.