paul.

no offense taken buddy. i didn't think you were being a jerk at all. you expressed your opinion and that's cool. i know you are not the only one who feels that way. you've got nothing to apologize for in my book. you are right - to each his own. good luck to you no matter how you choose to catch 'em.

cool catches man. topwater blowups rock!

pretty good day indeed. way to go man.

first, thanks to everyone for their kind words again. i must admit i'm a bit confused by this. better how? for who? would the fish have weighed more? fought harder? looked prettier? both. i try to fish whatever legal method is going to work best in the given situation to produce fish - preferably big ones. this is the bottom line for me. i try to keep my mind open to all possibilities. i'm not trying to win tournaments or popularity contests. i'm not interested in points for style or degree of difficulty. in fact quite the opposite. i prefer simple over complex. i prefer easy over difficult. i feel that this way i can make the best use of fishing time and maximize results. this is just how i think and how i fish. this might not be the way for everyone and that's cool, but it works for me. i also think matt makes an incredible bait. the detail is stunning. no doubt the best bluegill imitation i've ever seen. and i am going to check into 'em. live ones are not always available when you need 'em. good fishin' to all of y'all.

great job man. congrats to ya. i know you're stoked. really nice healthy looking fish.

y'all are very kind. thanks so much to all of y'all for the nice words. i hope i can get another 1 or 2 before my girls get out of school. if not that's cool, it's still been a good spring. dark moon is monday and hopefully i'm fishin' mon. and tues. , so i'm keepin' my fingers crossed.

i have a HUGE plastic container that holds lots of water. you can get 'em at wal-mart. keep it in the back of my truck. it's my makeshift "livewell". but i don't keep 'em in there long. these 2 fish were both on the same bed and both were acting very "catchable" so i was pretty sure i could get 'em both for pix. after catchin' the first, i put it in the container and went and caught the second. got the pix and released 'em.

bluegills.

managed to catch these 2 off the same bed earlier today before the thunderstorms rolled in here. weighed 5-11 and 7-6. released after a few pix. hope y'all are catchin' some too.

that's just part of fishin' man. you did everything you could and you didn't waste the fish. cheer up man. that kinda stuff just happens every once in a while and there's nothin' you can do about it. you still had a good trip in my book.

man that is absolutely INSANE!!!! giants!!! and in one trip too. what a sack of fish. :o

you're lookin' at this all wrong, see................ this fish is gaining an ounce a week. so at this rate, my calculations indicate this fish will be a 10 pounder by next year. you've only gotta hang on one more year buddy. ;D seriously, a fish that big can gain about a pound in one day with a good meal or 2. if you happen to catch her again after a feeding binge, she might be pushin' 9. . hope you do. congrats again on this fine fish. she obviously likes you.

you're on a roll buddy! keep up the good work. i figure a lot of the fish i catch in the small lakes i frequent are "repeat customers". i know for a fact some of 'em are b/c of unusual markings, scars, and other distinguishing characteristics. i try not to keep 'em out of the water long enough to analyze 'em that closely though. hey, same fish or not, it still counts as a separate catch and that's cool. keep on whackin' 'em buddy. your knockin' on the door of that dd mark. best of luck with more bigguns.

yep, that's the one.

caught this dadonkadonk off a bed today around lunchtime. 11-3 on the digi. once again on "God's swimbait" - the live bluegill. i probably coulda caught this girl last night, but it was getting pretty dark. since i couldn't see, i had to set the hook when i got a bite. you guessed it - i caught the male. he weighed 4-5 pounds probably. he gave me a good tussle, but catchin' him set me back a little with her. > fortunately she was cooperative today. hope y'all are catchin' some too.

i introduced myself and it was so cool to read all the "welcome" responses. i knew then what a great buncha guys and gals this was. but i don't think people woulda been any less kind or treated me differently if i hadn't introduced myself for whatever reason.

that's cool man. i had a real good day with zeros (strike king 3x senkos) today. buncha 1's and 2's in 2-4 ft. of water. i was jerkin' 'em out of the water and sending them to the boat airmail on the hookset with the powerpro. INCOMING!!!!!! ;D glad you had a good day. i can't believe your buddy caught your bed fish though. that wasn't trey was it? how sorry!!!!! ;D lol/jk.

rock on man. them's some good 'uns.

YES SIR!!!! that's what i'm talkin' about buddy. congratulations big time. there's nothin' in all of bassin' like sight fishin' a lunker.

fpb in the house! great job man.

looks like a pretty good trip to me. rock on buddy!

i think is is a very good issue to bring up and discuss trey. for whatever it may be worth, here's my $.02. i think a serious mistake many bassers make is developing what i call an "emotional attachment" to a particular bait, spot, time, pattern or technique. we go out one day and just absolutely slay fish. of course it's human nature to want to go out the next time and try to duplicate what we did given our success. so we do just that. then we leave the lake scratching your head. our "magic bait" isn't so magic anymore. our "can't miss" pattern suddenly misses big time. our "honey hole" suddenly becomes dead water. the highest of fishing highs has suddenly become the lowest of lows. we find ourselves "out of the zone" and just going through the motions, doing all the negative things you described above. before it seemed like we couldn't do anything wrong and now it seems like we can't do anything right. what has happened? more than likely we might have developed an emotional attachment that has come back to bite us big time. the fish have changed but we have not. suppose we took the time to plot our fishing success on a straight line graph (with a straight horizontal line representing whatever we consider an "average" fishing day for us). peaks would represent great periods and valleys would represent bad periods in our fishing. i think that we might be shocked at what we'd find over time. i think we might see that on several occasions a high peak is followed almost immediately by a low valley. i think this could be because we tried to keep on doing what we did a the height of our success and it failed when the fish changed and we didn't. how long we stay in the valley is determined by how quickly we figure out and adjust to whatever changes the fish have made. this happens to all of us trey. don't be discouraged. sometimes the highs just make the lows seem worse. but the good news is the lows make the highs that much sweeter. just make sure you bring an open mind to the lake and you'll be whackin' em again before you know it. success breeds confidence and confidence breeds success. but you also gotta know when you are beating a dead horse and make some changes. hope this helps ya buddy.

yeah buddy! way to go dude. cool rainbow in that first pic.

in any time-limited situation, i want baits that cast far and/or cover lots of water quickly so i can key on what the fish seem to be doing. c-rigs, lipless cranks, and buzzbaits would all be good choices. once you find an area with some fish, you can slow down and fine-tune (if you need to). that's a pretty good strategy for quantity (and quality too occasionally). long gradually tapering points and grass flats are always good areas to try this time of year. here's another thing to consider, but this is more of a strategy for quality rather than quantity. since you are a little farther south than me, i'm gonna assume the bluegill moved in to spawn with the full moon a little while ago (they did in some places here). keying on bluegill beds is a little known and GREAT way to catch a giant this time of year. bluegill beds can be like the buffet line for big sows worn out for spawning looking for a big, quick, and easy meal. often bass hang out on the outskirts of the bream beds, just waiting for a careless or pre-occupied gill to make a mistake. of course another strategy for a biggun is to try and locate late spawners - especially with the dark moon coming up here soon. i know this might seem like a waste of precious time, but it could pay off BIG. plenty that i have read as well as personal experience points to the fact that the bigger fish in the lake tend to spawn either earlier or later than the masses of small to keeper size fish. hope some of this helps.

probably pretty close to that - seriously.