Valascus

I got stabbed one time by a catfish...a 19 lbs channel cat. Hurt like crazy. I dislike handling cats due to that. Usually use fish grabbers to deal with 'em after that. I thought I had the big fella pinned down enough for hook removal. He flopped hard and stuck me something fierce. For his transgression...he got eaten!! And he was goooooooooooooooooood...

I think the reason Thatcher asked if you were keeping the bass has to do with suspisions of overpopulation. You said the majority of bass you have been catching have been 12-14 inchers. Are these fish looking skinny or are they well proportioned for their size? My grandparents have a couple farm ponds about the same size as yours and I have been keeping EVERYTHING I catch to try to thin the overall fish population. Too many fish in the ponds has caused stunted growth due to lack of forage. I don't know if I can save these ponds, but I will sure try with the help of the Missouri Dept. of Conservation.

Fry my foot!! The fish I normally catch look like fry next to yours! Still reaching for my goal of 5 lbs this year. gotta wait til I am healled up...then it's on. In regard to your swimbaits Matt...I have a Shimamo Citica Baitcasting reel paired up with a 7' Heavy action BPS extreme rod. I have very little experience with swimbaits and was wondering if that would give me enough power to fish with your 1.3 oz. baby bass swimbaits?

Are you targeting largemouths or smallmouths? The species you are fishing for will make a difference in how you should approach fishing the current. Smallmouths like to suspend in faster currents than largemouths, setting up in good ambush points to snag forage as it rushes to them in the current. Largemouth will suspend in areas where faster moving current meets with slower moving current. LM will suspend on the slower side of the current and pluck baitfish and other forage out of the faster moving current as it goes by their ambush point. Hope this helps.

Nothing wrong with fishing in the rain...in fact fishing in the rain can be fantastic. If you don't have any raingear...I suggest (along with many others on this forum) Cabela's Guidewear.

I caught a 19 lbs channel cat while trolling a spinnerbait under some docks at the Lake of the Ozarks. Fought like crazy and absolutely demolished my spinnerbait. He was tasty...

Location, location, location. And then if I know fish are there and I'm not catching them I blame my partner!

That's what I have been thinking most of the last year or two I have fished there. I will continue to fish there, however. I have been keeping many of the fish I have been catching in order to try to restore order to the ecosystem. I also have been studying pond management and speaking with state conservation authorities on methods to help try to make the ponds fisheries better. If I can improve them slowly but surely I'll have my family and friends will have their own personal honeyholes to go too. Besides...in the area I live in good fishing spots are few and very far between. I can't think of ANY spots off the top of my head within a reasonable distance that carry "quality fish". The Lake of the Ozarks, Tablerock, and Bull Shoals are all too far away for me and planning a trip to them just isn't really in the cards the vast majority of the time. The only other spot is the wildly pressured Busch Wildlife Reservation. Good spots on local rivers are a pretty good drive away from here and require a boat most of the time. So, right now anyway, I make do with what I have and try to improve it anyway I can.

I think it is possible to have a place "owned". I fish two farm ponds on family property in New Haven, MO. I have been fishing these ponds exclusively for bass now for about 12 years. I want to believe that there are bigger fish in there, but I have yet to catch one over about a pound in all these years fishing them (I think the ecosystem in these ponds is shot). i have yet to be skunked at these locations. Why? Cuz i know where the fish are. But I keep going back there and pounding the spots where the big girls may lie. I just constantly think that a big one HAS to be in there. Sometimes after 12 hours of straight fishing in these spots and an absolute ton of dink bass in the livewells lining the banks, I think maybe I do have these spots "owned". I hope not...but maybe I do.

I second that Avid! Dan is one of the nicest gentlemen we have on this forum. I am not a picky guy...I would fish with anybody in the ranks of our fine membership...newbies and veterans alike. I have a lot I could learn from the veterans...and maybe a little thing or two I might be able to teach the newbies.

I will stay on the water for a looooooooooooooooong time. I've started at 6:00am and fished until nightfall. Heh...that's generally why I end up fishing alone. Most of my friends get bored after a few hours...and that's even if they are catching something. If we are getting skunked they give up in about an hour...sissies. : But seriously, I will stay out on the water as long as I possibly can.

I generally stick to whatever is catching fish for me. If I am catching nothing but dinks on a lure I will stick to that same lure or presentation, but just a larger size of it. My best example is, one day I was using a baby bomber firetiger crank and was catching 1 pounders left and right. I got tired of the dinks and whipped out my Rapala DT-6 and almost immediately started catching larger fish...1.5lbs to 2.5lbs range.

It's all about confidence. I believe that every cast I make will produce a strike. There are days when I get skunked and have still fished for 8 hrs straight believing that the next cast will get a strike. Maybe i am just stubborn... ...But that's what it is all about...believing and anticipating the strike your next cast will produce.

My "home lake" is definately not my favorite. It may be close, but it's not a very good fishery. I don't really have a favorite lake yet. Whichever one I happen to catch my first true hog out of will be my favorite!

I'll look into picking one of those up. Might help me get into some deeper water in some of these areas.

I would imagine that would b slightly awkward to fish in. But for guys without boats it would definately be better than nothin.

What in the heck is a belly boat? :-?

It's getting to be that time of year again...yep that time of year when, as Senko77 so aptly put it, it gets to be "1000 million degrees" outside. A lot of fisherman I know, myself included, tend to have problems around this time of year, especially when there is no boat involved and we cannot reach the deeper main channels from the banks. I thought it would be a dandy idea for everyone to post what tends to produce the best for them this time of year. What baits are you using? How are you presenting them? Are you fishing deep water, shallow water, or were they suspending somwhere in between? What cover or structure have you found the bass relating to? Were you able to find a consistent pattern, if so, what was it? I think this could help out a lot of folks who have trouble this time of year. Thanks in advance to everyone! As for me...I usually get to go on about a week long vacation sometime in the dead of summer. Usually to the Lake of the Ozarks. Most of my fishing is done right of the docks or from the banks, rarely do I get a chance to go out in a boat, and even if I do it doesn't have any electronics on it. I usually had better luck catching fish early in the morning off of crankbaits casted paralell to the docks or into (and under if I could) boat slips. As the day marched on I would normally start to switch to deeper presentations such as t-rigged plastics with little to no avail. I haven't had the opportunity for a vacation such as that this summer so I have been limited to fishing smaller bodies of water such as the ponds at Busch Wildlife, my municipalities local pond, and my grandparents farm ponds. I do well at the grandparents ponds using shallow cranks like baby bombers and mann's 1-. They just always seem to catch bass there...no matter what. Every bass I have ever caught out of those ponds is a dink though...usually less than a pound or close to one pound. So I have started keeping everything I catch there. Conditions on these ponds are stained to murky water that is pretty shallow in most areas of the ponds. The deepest areas are obviously closer to the dams at about 10-12ft. I generally find fish relating more to cover than structure on these ponds. Still hunting for the bigger boys there. Busch and the local pond are both wildly different stories. I do ok to sometimes flat out skunked at Busch's lake 6 and lake 28. I usually opt for plastics there using 4" or 5" Chompers Spider Grubs on 1/8 oz. stand-up jig heads or t-rigged plastic lizards. I fish them slowly to moderate speeds in 3' to about 8' of water close to laydowns, weedbeds, or chunk rock. The local pond I almost always get skunked. it doesn't seem to matter what I use there. TONS of pressure, weak fishery, and stained mucky water. But...it's within walking distance...so therefore worth a shot.

For me ANYTIME is a good time. I don't care what time it is or what the conditions are...as long as I am fishing. Can't catch anything if ya ain't fishing.

I don't keep secrets...unless I am on a HIGHLY pressured waters. If you let anyone know that you have caught ANYTHING on pressured waters your spot is gonna be full of people...which is massively annoying...to say the least. Other than that, I have no problem telling other anglers any info they wanna know. Help your angling brethren!

I am really bad with a carolina rig...can't say I have ever caught a thing with it.

Wow...I am really sorry to hear that RR. At least you are still able to fish, but man...that just sounds really rough. Hereditary huh? I don't know how good the stem cell research initiative in the state of Louisiana is, but in my very limited understanding of it some genetic disorders can be treated usin some methods in that field. Could be something worth looking into.

So I had my orthopedic/spine appt. yesterday. And it was all good news. No surgery on the arm, the spine, arm, and pelvis are all healing quickly and correctly. I can drive myself about now, and the best part, I can go fishing. I can't fish for bigger fish, but I have some ultralite gear that I will go after crappie and assorted panfish with. It may not be bass fishing, but at least it's fishing.

Yeah...definately was not fun...in an odd way though I am very grateful. It could have really been a lot worse. I could have ended up a parapalegic...or I could have ended up orphaning my little girl an widowing my wife. When I look at it that way...what's happened to me doesn't really matter. At least I will make a full recovery. What's a little pain anyway...I have a pretty darn good tolerance for it. Heck...I got up and walked out of the building we were working on to my foreman's truck and he took me to the hospital.

Man RR...that sucks. What causes degenerative disc disease? That sounds awful. If the doctor offered surgery, but it wouldn't help with the pain, then what would the said surgery accomplish?