Z71

Pond fishing rules: 1. NEVER tell anyone about your honey hole. 2. You can't lie or put yourself on the spot if you don't stop and talk, keep moving!

Cold weather is definitely tougher and more miserable for me, and harder to catch fish, In summer I never get too hot, because I know how to take a dive! Plus early topwater alway produces a couple for me.

Absolutely true. Pullin my bow back on a big ole buck is another thing that does it for me. Z

For all those in pursuit of big lunkers in deep water structure, I recommend " In Pursuit Of Gaint Bass" by Bill Murphy. Some incredible insight on how he personally caught many double digit bass. You can get it through Amazon.com. A good read. Z

3/14/06 @12:15 pm - 9lb 1oz. on a 5" green pumpkin SENKO.

The best fisherman I ever fished with always said if you're not catching fish you need to be doing something different. If a certain technique, water depth, bait, etc. wasn't working, he would always change baits, tactics, water depths, heck, even bodies of water. Too many people will stick with their confidence bait/technique when its not working. Learn to fish effectively with several different techniques. Learn deep, shallow, and in between. They're in one of the 3 places.

As far as moon phase, I really haven't been able to make any correlation between the moon and being more or less successful. I generally pay more attention to time of year, water temperature and approaching high pressure, (cold fronts). I like to concentrate alot of my time, effort, and days off to the prespawn. I usually start in early March on Santee Cooper and work my way throughout the state, ending up fishing prespawn in several different lakes over a 3 month period. On Santee Cooper everyone will say to fish the full moon in March, thats when the bass will be on bed. Thats true as long as the water temp. is right, but let a cold front move in and the moon doesn't mean squat. Let a high pressure move in, and prespawn bass wil move back out and be harder to catch. I personally try to be on the lake the day or two before an approaching high front. The only thing I know for sure is that fishing is always tougher for me after the high pressure has arrived, especially during the spring.

This topic is interesting, because I usually guess on the weight and turn them loose. I think I will buy myself a nice set of digital scales and throw a pen and notebook in the boat and start actually weighing all the fish I catch. This should interesting as I consider myself to be an average fisherman. The old spring loaded scales I have are only good if you're weighin a sack of rocks. I think thats why I never weigh anything, the accuracy is too poor with the spring scales, so I dont' use them, even if the fish is a good one. I will post my results some time this spring here on the site after I've made several trips.