paul.

smacked 'em around pretty good again today with another 30 plus fish day and more bigguns. i ain't even gonna show my tiny little 5 pounder. check out this monster that dad caught - his biggest ever!!! and i have never been so happy to be outfished. this fish and most of the others came on ragetails. plenty came on the siebert outdoors big o jig too. thanks to Steve and Mike, i am smack in the middle of some of the best hot weather fishing i have ever experienced.

the fish is total top tier as always, but man oh man, that picture is absolute magazine qualiy. i could easily see that photo being published somewhere. btw was the fish blind in one eye or did it just look that way? and what the heck are you talking about "when you get a chance at fish like these"? with you it's the fish that never have a chance.

beautiful Pics!!! hope the rest of your year goes this well.

excellent!!! awesome lunker. WTG Mrs. A-Jay!

the Siebert Outdoors Big O jig comes through again. this time in 5/8 oz. black and blue with a blue sapphire rage craw. 102 degrees. sweat pourin' and hawgs chompin'. when it comes to fishing the nastiest cover you can imagine, i'll put this jig up against any other on the market, regardless of price. there's just nothing better. and with a ragetail along for the ride, it's game over for the fish. bass tested and bass approved. this 9-2 was the best one in today's 36 bass outing with my buddy which also included a 6, a 5, a 4 and multiple 2's and 3's. banner day. thank you Mike and Steve!

another giant! everyone including myself is running out of things to say when you post fish like this. so i'll just say congratulations. you have singlehandedly skewed the perspective of this entire board about what a big bass really looks like.

yep. 8" shad model.

great vid! love the chili peppers music in the background. y'all are wreckin' those fish!

here's a couple of recent bass. the first came on a spook in 20 ft. of water. that was a crazy day. all the fish were suspended in deep trees. they wouldn't touch a plastic, but this little fatty and another one pretty much like it came up and just crushed that super spook. then this evening, my long awaited tackle warehouse package came in and i couldn't wait to try the new swimbaits. they work. i think this one might just be a poor man's triple trout. now that i'm back on the swimbaits, my confidence is at an all time high.

love those dark colored fla. bass. that's a toad for sure.

real good fish for anywhere, but especially outstanding for that far north. congrats!!!

excellent!!! congrats. the more i study on it, the more i am absolutely sure that swimbaits are THE tickets to new PB's. i know you're stoked.

people place too much emphasis on weights. that's a really nice healthy looking fish. i'll take 'em like that all day long.

heckuva day. great catches.

cool catch. bet that was fun on topwater.

mattlures (all matt's stuff is great), castaic catch 22's, spro bbz1 series. one bait that has caught a ton of GIANT fish is a huddleston deluxe. i tried them a few years ago without much success, but i'm gonna give them another shot based on what i've seen on this board. as for paddletails, i always liked reaction innovation's skinny dippers.

heck of of honey hole it sounds like. and that's a great fish for sure. what other swimbaits do you throw besides the hudd?

they look pretty good and are a little cheaper than hudds. the reviews i've read are pretty good too. but i haven't been able to find a lot of stuff on them and i've seen no videos of the action. has anyone had any experience with these? what do you think?

the bad news is that overfished waters will never produce an overabundance of bass. the good news is that the continual harvest of bass in these types of waters is sometimes conducive to the production of a few BIG fish that somehow manage to avoid getting caught. all the lure choices you mentioned are good ones. i'd add topwater, soft plastics, and swimbaits to the list. if you don't mind using live bait that would be a good choice too. and while lure choice is important, when and where you fish is more important.

the tiny bass you saw didn't just materialize in there unless they were just now stocked, which is probably unlikely. more likely is that there are at least some bass in there big enough to spawn. your best answers probably will come from the landowner. ask him/her when the pond was stocked, with what, and how long ago. other info will also be useful such as how many other people fish the pond and do they keep fish.

yeah, it was raining hard to say the least. you can actually see the rain falling in the pic as it was captured by the flash. pretty cool.

it's funny how you can have an almost intimate relationship with a small lake or pond and think you know a lot about it only to find out you really have no idea. i have managed this particular body of water for ages. i have told the story several times about how it was wiped out by floods in 2 consecutive years and i had to start all over last year. i have really tried to get busy and make up for lost time this year by managing with a triple threat forage strategy of bluegill, shiners, and supplemental feeding. i thought i had a pretty good handle on what the biggest fish in there were. i know there is one "pet" fish (i call the bass on the supplemental program pets because that's how they act) that weighs over 7. i know there is one "wild" fish in there that also weighs over 7 which is easily recognizeable by a mark on its side. and then there are plenty of 4's and 5's that i have stocked in there from the river. some of these have become "pets", some have remained wild. well, earler this spring, i caught a glimpse of a special fish - one i had never seen before and had no previous knowlege of. the only thing i could figure was that she was a survivor of the floods. i think i finally caught her tonight. right before the bottom fell out and it started pouring down rain, she decided to eat. definitely a "wild" fish. (she was quite chubby, but not nearly as fat as the pets.) she fell for a swimbait, which is something i've gone back to throwing since i've seen all the monster swimbait catches on here. released after the pic. if all goes well, this fish will probably be a double digit next year. as it was, she was just a shade under 9. there was not a mark on her and not a scar in her mouth. obvious she had not gotten caught in a long, long time. amazing how a nice fish like this can fly under the radar and not even be seen for years in a 2 acre pond. i have always thought that there are a few fish that die of old age without ever having a hook in them. hopefully, this one will get another one of my hooks in her about 3 or 4 years down the road.

i've fished both and had plenty of fun doing both. i am very fortunate to live close to ky lake/tn river. when it is "right" at ky lake, i'd say it's some of the best fishing i've ever experienced. plenty of 50 plus fish days with several 5's and 6's in the bunch. i have never experienced that type of size and numbers mix at ANY private pond or lake i have EVER fished. and if public water fish are supposed to be "educated", these fish never got the memo. last december when the water was high, i cherry-picked one sandbar over the course of the month for hundreds of fish with plenty of good ones in the mix using the same lure the whole month. you'd think they'd learn to leave that xr50 alone but they never did. that said, i have also been fortunate enough to fish several amazing ponds and small private or semi-private lakes. with regards to bass size, there's no comparison. i have 2 teens, a 12, and several 10's and 11's. and i will always feel like these fish have an asterisk beside them because they came from a semi-private lake. i also manage a pond. back when i was really putting the work in, i could fish there on any given day and catch 3 fish over 7 pounds in 5 minutes. once i started supplemental feeding, it was even crazier. big fish, super easy to catch. kinda like hunting for cows in small pature with hand grenades. however, even in this fishing paradise, there were always a few select fish that were super "smart" and incredibly hard to catch. the biggest one of these was over 12 when she died and i felt very fortunate to catch her the few times i did. with regards to bragging, there's 2 kinds. you can either brag on yourself, or the fish. theres the "hey everybody, look at ME, i'm so awesome!" kind. then there's the "hey, look at this awesome FISH!" kind. i'm not a big fan of the first kind regardless of whether we're talking public water or private. i am proud of the big fish that i produce in the pond i manage because i know how much time, effort, and expense went into growing them. but the truth is i just feel blessed for every day i have on the water - ANY water. i fish for personal satisfaction and relaxation, not to prove anything to anyone else.

great picture and real nice bass.

another monster. Steve you have forgotten more about fishing in the past week than i ever knew.