Swamp Girl

Someone needs to change the sign to this: "Please keep and eat five bass under 12". They are delicious!"

They were delicious!

I ate smallies and even muskies in the wilderness. It was either eat them or go hungry.

Thanks, @bowhunter63! I'm fishing again tomorrow morning, but then our weather might shut me down for a week, as everyday, the wind will be double digits and I'd spend more time paddling than catching. Even trolling would be hard. That'll take me to mid-October and there won't be a lot of fishable days after that. Sigh. However, I did catch a LOT of bass in 2024 and I'll use the winter to rest, recover, remember, and smile.

My advice then is to troll. Duct tape a rod to your hands and use a GPS program to keep you trolling for hours while you sleep. P. S. - Duct tape yourself to your seat too. Muskies are powerful.

My advice: Fish with @T-Billy. He has a nose for muskies.

And my hair hasn't seen a brush in weeks, but I am Swamp Girl, after all. 🤣

Andy has the cleanest, most organized boat, which is yet another way that we're opposites, as I have a boat with a wet, weed-streaked floor and my gear scattered everywhere. However, we both catch bass.

Agreed. A humbling here and there keeps us hungry. I've been on water a couple times in my life where the bass were too easy to catch. One time was in Ontario where a cold wind howled for five straight days, which clamped the smallies' jaws. When the cold air finally passed, the smallies fed like fat kids in an unsupervised candy shop. We caught and caught and caught them and then I lay my rod down and simply watched. I did the same thing on the Mississippi River once too. Too much success is the basis of Rod Sterling's Twilight Zone episode where a gambler ends up in a casino where he always wins and mistakes it for Heaven at first:

Now I want to wear a Spidey outfit too when I go fishing!

@bp_fowler: So impressive for a bank fisherman in heavily-fished Ohio. @A-Jay: Beautifully marked bass!

Thanks, Daubs. It was one of my most gratifying sessions this year because I fished for the first 2.5 hours and only caught ten. I couldn't establish a pattern. One came from a beaver lodge. Another from a mid-lake weedline. Another from a weed-choked stream.* And so on. Then I caught another twelve in the final 1.5 hours, picking up the pace and finding two patterns, the first hitting that mid-lake wolf pack for three bass and the second hitting shoreline notches with my spinnerbait for the last nine. *The bass from the stream was the most fun because I miscast and hit a woody bush along the stream's edge. I feared it would stick in the branches, but it plunged through and the bass was directly below it, striking immediately. Those close quarters bass fight especially hard.

You might remember that I think I caught the Maine state record Chain pickerel this summer. This video makes me glad I didn't try for the record.

I know, but I was too busy to cast. Sigh.

@JohnFromLisbon: I love that you bass fish and post from Portugal!

I launched late for me this morning because I'd flown from Sarasota to Maine yesterday and was tuckered, but I needed to be on an empty lake after the hustle of Florida's Gulf Coast. I caught 22. I landed an 18-incher on my fourth cast to a beaver dam (Thanks again, @Glenn!) using a little, chrome Whopper Plopper. I know Glenn has caught many bass from one dam, but that one bass literally beached me on the dam by pulling my canoe. I couldn't find a pattern after that and caught some here and there, but in the final hour, I located a wolf pack in the middle of the pond and landed three and then found some tight to the pond's north shore, catching another nine. I caught nothing small and even the smaller ones were thick with muscle. See two of the smaller ones here: ^This^ bass has the build to be BIG one day. My last two were similar in length and even thicker, but my camera was dead at that point. I actually laughed out loud when I landed the last two. They were crazy thick. I caught longer bass too and my five-bass bag was just over 15 pounds, using my length to weight scale. Here are the longer ones: I know it's not as a big a bag as @gimruis's nor are any of my bass as big as the ones that @DaubsNU1 and @The Baron have recently landed, but when you've spent two of your last three days in airports and on airplanes and the third day in Sarasota traffic and then you're back on your pond wrasslin' bass, there's nothing sweeter. Oh, I also caught two smallmouth. Those hippity-hoppity brownies are also fun. Here's one: And, of course, I took a pretty pic too! My main lure was a Dobyns Beast spinnerbait with a Crush City Mayor in chartreuse and white. Hooray for coming home!

I love seeing my fishing brothers catching big northern bass! Alas, Alex will soon be catching bass that could bully our bass.

I've long wanted to catch a pea!

I'm down to two lures for lmb: popper and spinner bait. I've tried others, but those two are money.

The yellow belly indicates perch. The green indicates lmb. The striping indicates smb. So, it's a perchy slmb

Dang it. Tough days happen to the best of us ...like you.

BIG northern bass!!! So happy for you, Gimruis.

A swamp girl in training!

I'm straight braid 30 lb. test. I fish weeds and wood, catch hundreds of bass, and it never fails me. I only use mono for slow-moving lures like wacky worms.

I'm in Florida right now, but there is no time nor equipment to fish. There is even a big pond with zero no fishing signs right outside my window. Sigh.