Swamp Girl

I call houses that are stupidly big "Behold my Glory Homes." In building them, they kill the true glory, i.e. lakes that once teemed with life.

To be frank, I kind of feel like an idiot never having seen a single spawning bed in Maine. @jbmaine, who lives south of me, wrote about once seeing hundreds in his favorite smallmouth lake before the McMansion builders came. I like to think that I'm not failing, but that the bass are simply spawning deeper than I can see. You've seen the bass I catch. They just look thick to me. Not bulging with eggs, but chunky and well fed. The ones that were aggressively feeding were the ones under that line of bushes where I caught eight straight. Here: The water I fish has a lot of cranes, eagles, and ospreys and the water is clear, so the birds can see the bass and the bass must hunker. One of their favorite places to hunker is bushy shorelines. They park under the branches. Since the bushes above abut shallow water, it's my guess that the bass I caught were biding their time under the bushes until the water warms a bit more. @DinkDonkey30, I do think that there's more to the spawn than water temps and that your focus on the length of days is accurate.

I'm out of reactions, so thanks! Switching back and forth helps me learn too.

If Pat, the Bass Professor Part II doesn't know, and if Old Swampy, who lives up north doesn't know, I figure no one knows. Here's the one bass with a bloody fin that I've caught. That's one bloody fin out of nearly 300 bass: With our cool temps and their still chunky bodies, I don't think they've spawned yet. Plus, other than the big girls I've caught at the river outlet, all my big girls have been caught in deep water adjacent to shallow water. I hooked and lost a big girl in just such deep water and I'll be fishing that deep water again tomorrow evening.

I'm not a fast or slow angler. I'm a fast plus slow angler. When I launch, I have fast baits and slow baits rigged and through a fishing session, I'm fishing both. I often catch a bass on a fast or slow bait and immediately switch to a slow or fast bait. If I caught a bass on a fast bait, I'll then cast a slow bait, looking for a less active bass.

@casts_by_fly: Wow! What an answer!!! I marked it as a solution. Thanks to the rest of you too. Here are our high temps for the next four days: 54, 56, 51, 48, 51, 58. And here are our lows: 42, 42, 42, 43, 44, 46. And it'll be cloudy too. If they were about to spawn, I think Mother Nature has brake checked them. How do you know so much, @casts_by_fly? I'm not launching again until Wednesday evening because the north wind won't stop blowing. On Wednesday at 4:00 p.m., the wind shifts from the South. That should help, but with bass, I never know. I know the ponds and bogs I fish perhaps better than any other living angler. Paddling alone in a quiet canoe is so different than roaring across the water. I'm forced to observe, but observation is also in my nature. Even then, with all the data that I've uploaded, which gives me really good hunches, I still don't know when I launch where the bass are and how they'll react. They are constantly in flux and I'm forever paddling around, hoping to stumble on them. I wish I could tell you how many evenings I stumbled upon feeding bass at one particular spot and the every next morning, perhaps eight hours later, they're gone.

Yeah, we're fishing for the same species, but not in the same circumstances. And I agree, the complexity of the puzzle is "pretty neat stuff really."

We don't have bluegills. We're still cool here, with temps in the low forties at night and low to mid-fifties by day. So, I'm thinking the spawn is still happening. I just want a sense of what might signal its end when it does come.

Another exciting telling by @Bluebasser86 with another happy ending!

I have never seen a single spawning bed in Maine, perhaps because I'm so low in my canoe, so I've never seen bass building beds, on beds, or vacating beds. I have seen a rare bass with a bloodied, ragged fin. Just one this year. So, absent such visual information, how do I know when the spawn has ended? I ask because I've spent many hours targeting deeper water adjacent to shallow flats to hook some big girls with some success and I'm wondering when this tactic might be less successful.

@AlabamaSpothunter has always said the same thing about the bass I catch. Heck, yeah! Yeah, I'm a P-I-G. 😉

Jake scores the biggest bass and the biggest bluegill. You better get used to finishing second, Papa. I predict there are many Jake Rules days ahead.

You just nailed what I try to do, Brian, to consider fishing as more than how much a bass weighs. Sure, I treasure the big bass I catch, but no more and perhaps less than some of the other moments. For example, one time a pal and I were on a wilderness lake in northwestern Ontario. A storm roared in and we attempted to paddle back to our island tent before the clouds dumped their load on us. So, we were paddling at ramming speed, heads down and digging into the water, and the raindrops, as big as marbles, were frothing the water and still we paddled to reach the dry tent and then, as the same second, we both stopped and laughed, understanding how ludicrous we were. It was a great laugh, tipping our heads back and roaring, while the rain splattered our cheeks, for it was impossible to be any wetter than we already were, so why hurry? I have so many memories like that, which for some, might not compare to a big bass, but I've caught plenty of big bass.

@Bazoo: You and I fish in such different places. The shorelines of your pond look like your son's cheeks and chin. The shorelines of my ponds look like your beard.

Considering I've done this once in my life, I don't think I can teach anyone how to replicate it. Sorry! To be frank, it was mostly luck. The gentle wind blew me right along that shoreline and for some reason, the bass under those bushes were feeding.

Gosh, Brian, over the decades as a writer, I've received some sweet reviews, but yours might just be my all-time favorite.

Thanks, PDX. Your support means a lot to me because you're the West Coast Swampy and I'm the East Coast PDX.

Anyone caught enough bass with the fuzzy dice lures to justify their cost?

I fished my pal's pond again this morning. It was cool, gray, and foggy when I launched. I was excited to fish the bushy shoreline where I caught 16 bass in 40 minutes on Friday. This shoreline: Working the shoreline much more carefully, I only took six bass off of it, using a wakebait, Whopper Plopper, blue lizard, underspin, and wacky worm. Using different lures was my approach all day. I was happy to catch three bass trolling my underspin with a white and chartreuse Crush City Mayor, as it has caught nothing last Friday morning. It's my number one spring lure and it didn't just catch bass trolling. It also caught this upper-four-to-five-pounder (20.5 inches, which on the length to weight chart is just over five pounds) being cast: In this spot, a little corner with a stream flowing out of the pond where I've caught four big northern lmb this spring: They sit in a little pool right before the current starts. Overall, my average size was excellent, i.e. a lot of bass in the 2.5 to 3.5 range with a few bigger. Here are the best of them: This one had a swell belly: I caught a few smallmouth and this was the best of them. I know, I know, Maine smallmouth are small: The bad news is that my canoe seat broke, so I sat on my tacklebox. I'm going to remove the canoe seat today and attempt to fix it. My fix will be crude, but I don't want to give my canoe to a carpenter and then not have it for X days. If only @Blue Raider Bob were here. Bob can build and fix everything. I caught 29 in all, giving me 273 for 2025. Unless my pace picks up, I won't surpass 2,000 again this year. We had a long, cold winter and tomorrow starts a week-straight of high temps only in the low to high fifties. I caught a five-pounder, but also lost a five-pounder, the first big bass I've lost this year. She came completely out of the water and shook her head. My lure flew free while she swam free. In that moment, she belonged on the cover of an old fishing magazine. She was glorious and I smiled whenever I thought about her. It's right when they win sometimes.

I'm so sad for you, jb, and for all who've seen their Heavens trampled by people who build huge homes to mostly make other people jealous. If I ever build on my Maine pond, it'll be 900 square feet deep in the woods. My pond is inherently protected by its wetlands on three sides. Only one side is solid and nine houses, all 250' back, have been built. None have grass. They're homes in the woods, as they should be.

Wise.

Nah, Brian's burned through all his bad luck. He has a DD waiting for him now.

I told ya one other time how much I appreciate your pics of where you catch your bass. Well, I'm telling ya again!

Thanks, BP. I've tied one on.

So, I'm going to fish that shoreline again tomorrow morning. The Whopper Plopper made a lot of noise churning a foot or two from the bushes, which is why I used it, but tomorrow, I want to try another lure. I'm thinking a T-Rigged blue lizard because that's been a hot lure for me recently, but I'm also thinking about trying a burner worm because it'll make some noise and I've never used one. Maybe a walking bait or bladed jig? Any ideas? It's only about two-three feet deep and there aren't water plants yet.