Swamp Girl

So, you have "a 14 ft Jon Boat with a trolling motor, an anchor, a home made live well, a few rods and reels you could afford with a few baits you like to throw" and all your competitors have are decades on the lake and six figures in glitter boats that bristle with electronics? Well, that ain't fair! Given your knack for bass, Pat, you should be fishing with water wings and string! We're all cheering for you! And right now, I'm coming down a feeder creek to your lake in my canoe, which I've outfitted with homemade torpedoes, just like Kathrine Hepburn on the African Queen, to sink those glitter boats if you need that backup. Seriously, win, lose, or draw, we're your fans and bass brethren.

Fingers crossed!

I love this idea!

I think I've cast at your lurker rock and hooked you briefly. I got footage of you leaping and throwing my hook.

Like @AlabamaSpothunter, I believe that bass do learn lures. Many of you have told stories of how Whopper Ploppers worked until they didn't. So, I'd listen to Professor Pat, who is perhaps the most thoughtful BR angler: A motion of a lure like a fluke is only limited by our creativity. And there are literally hundreds of different flukes, which can be fished weightless and on different jigs that change their motion. I also intentionally keep shifting my baits so that my local bass won't learn this lure and that. Their brains are small and being so, their memory can only hold so much info. My brain is many times bigger and can only hold so much info! As I struggle to remember the names of the lures, bass would struggle too if presented with many lures. As @JHoss noted, a lure like a Senko can also be fished so many different ways and then there are the hundreds of color options. I still fish a Whopper Plopper here and there and still score with them, but I think my sustained success is due to my discipline with them, i.e. using them less and less. It also helps, Whopper-wise, that I'm fishing less fished water.

Heck yeah, he is!

Nope. We all want that. Well, nearly all of us: There is a trout angler down the road. He's the retired editor of perhaps the most beautiful fishing magazine ever published and as such, he's fished pert near everywhere: Iceland, New Zealand, Argentina, etc. He owns some land on a small stream that empties into the sea and that stream has tiny trout in it. He said recently, when asked, what his favorite place to fish in the whole, wide world was and he said that stream for those trout. And I get that, I think. He doesn't have to board a flight and take a connecting flight to a connecting flight to an SUV to a remote lodge to cast, always in the company of others. He can simply don his waders and walk out his back door and be with bright, wild brookies. The desire for bigger, more, and farther is gone in him and I don't pity him. I envy him. If I ever build on my waterfront lot, I might be just like him, happiest to simply walk down to my pond and fish for those bass, which aren't the biggest bass, but big enough and oh-so close. Yeah, I'm a little surprised I didn't fish it last year, but I'd just bought my land and also landed my PB and so I focused on my pond and that PB pond. Plus, it's a tricky bog, wandering every which way with little waterfalls, rocks, beaver lodges, and more weeds than any other place I fish. So, there's current and plenty of cover, but they're still hard to find and they're so strong, which is a real challenge in a lightweight canoe in the midst of all that cover. You sound like @PhishLI now, who has reminded me many times how easy I have it...and I do, up to a point, but last October, when I landed my all-time biggest bag, which was in the mid to upper twenties, I noted in my trip report how I was the only one out there, the only one who launched on that cool, foggy morning, carrying my canoe down a rocky and muddy slope and the only one who paddled upstream for miles to reach those bass. It's not like that spot is a secret. It has a public parking spot, but I've seen how even young men, with the most strength, balance, and energy they'll ever have, pass on the mud, rising at four, the cool, wet mornings, and paddling miles. And if you want the comfort of fishing from a big, comfy, fast boat or even a tricked-out kayak, you're passing too on that river, for the first would be impossible to launch and even if you hired a crane to launch, you'd hit a rock or run aground in a New York minute. Even the kayak would be so hard to launch, weighing what it does. To reach some places, you have to fish with less: less speed, less comfort, and less equipment. Bass can be caught in urban areas. I used to catch fine smallmouth bass in downtown Columbus, Ohio and I've seen videos of guys catching thick largemouth in downtown Chicago. Of course, @softwateronly catches BIG smallmouth in downtown Chicago, as do others. And I've seen videos of good bass fishing in Central Park in NYC. Of course, I don't know your situation.

So many big bass have been caught this winter and spring that I better hit a hot streak if I hope to contribute my fair share. This will work against me: I'm planning to fish a bog that I skipped in 2024. It has few bass, but big bass. It's so weedy and shallow come early June that April and May are my best chances to fish it. You know that I love a busy boat, i.e. lots of bass, but fishing that bog, I'll have a pretty quiet boat. Eight bass was my best trip there ever for numbers and one trip, I caught just one. It's tough to fish, but when I do hook one, there's about a one in three chance it'll be four to six pounds and I expect there are even bigger ones that swim there. Here is one from that pond:

My goodness, you guys sure have wrangled some narwhal whales, just grabbed them by the horns and wrassled them aboard!

@FryDog62: BIG ONES!

I believe in BP. He can do it. He'll say, "I'll fowler that twister, for sure! Those 'nado bass won't escape me!"

Gosh, was ^this^ ever a swing and a miss. Our water is still mostly frozen and ten days from now, it'll still be cold as a glass of water chock full of ice cubes.

Yeah, my fingers get poked and infected. For me, the worst species is white bass. Their dorsal spines are tipped with poison and their gill plates cut like razors. Catch a hundred a day for a few days and my hands were swollen.

Me too! Frogs are hard!!! Whoa. Next week, you'll be posting five-pounders you caught in a tornado. "I don't know why no one ever thought to cast into a tornado," you'll explain. "They are water and suck up all kinds of things, bass included. However, I'm still working on catching tornado bass with a frog."

@bp_fowler: Another beauty for you! Is @Pat Brown selling his mojo on the open market now? Was that a canoe bass or shoreline bass?

I know that frozen feeling! Yeah, I won't be fishing even when it thaws. It'll have to warm some.

I saw a small pond this morning that was half open, so I drove to my pond, but it's still frozen. However, it'll be liquid pretty soon. I won't fish right away. I'll wait until it warms a bit.

Maine is 90% trees, the most of any state, and living on the North Atlantic means we're windy. This means we regularly lose power, sometimes for days. We bought this because it's quiet and powerful. There are a lot of Generacs in my neighborhood. They're noisy and burn a lot of propane. My Honda is quiet and it'll go with me if I move:

I'm a sunfish expert, Alex. What you caught is called a beauty.

I bet. So glad you launched. You won't know until you're there, but across the nation, we're all thinking of you. Praying. Hoping. Wishing.

Me too.

@Pat Brown: Your little boat looks a lot like Alex/@AlabamaSpothunter's boat. You both do so much more with less. @pdxfisher too. And @softwateronly is on the shore! And there are others who catch more with less.

I am such a fan of outdoor writing that puts the reader in the wind and in the moment. And I'm an even bigger fan of a man who launches in March on a sky-spitting day and does the above.

Great line about a great fish.