Swamp Girl

Well done, Clayton, and well told.

Yeah, I tend to do that. I'm just thinking that the timing might be just right for extraordinary fishing. This has been the recent weather: Relatively cool Relatively cool Relatively cool Wind and temp shifting while I'm fishing Relatively way warmer I forgot to share that it will be bluebird skies and also that the last couple trips I've fished, I have NOT been catching bass while trolling from one prime spot to another. It makes me wonder if they're suspending in the deeper water. I did have luck fan casting about 50 years off-shore last night.

Thanks, @gimruis. The sky will be clear tonight, but the arriving warm air will only drop the temp to 53 and it will rise rapidly after that. 53 is relatively mild for this time of year at this latitude. So, I expect that bass might be ready to rock. Where would you fish? And what lures would you use? I'm thinking of staying deep and fan casting with a lipless, jerkbait, and spinnerbait. However, I'll also fish the flats and shallows with flukes, spinnerbaits, and surface lures. This is my plan, but I'm wondering if others would use a different plan.

The BR crew has taught me so much about lmbassin' and I'm grateful to all who've helped me. It's fall in Maine. See: The lily pads are still green, but some of the underwater weeds have shut down. The mornings are in the high forties to low fifties and the daytime highs are the high sixties to low seventies. So, I'm going fishing tomorrow morning and because I know winter is coming, each trip now feels more and more precious. I'll be fishing a 400-acre pond that's eleven feet at its deepest. It's mostly rocky bottomed and the lmb/smb are about 50/50. It has a few points, some flats, and lots of shallow water. It has also many boulders below the surface. I don't have any electronics and I will be paddling a canoe. I prefer to catch lmb. @Glenn taught me to be mobile in the fall, so I do fish on the move. When I went yesterday morning, I used a spinner bait, walking bait, and fluke to catch 20. When I fish this pond, most sessions, I typically manage to catch one or two four-or-five-pounders, but in May and June, I was catching 40 to 75 in a morning with two to four four-to-five pounders. I caught my biggest bass yesterday morning quite a ways off shore, but the trip prior to that, I caught my two biggest bass in six inches and one foot of water. That was about ten days ago. What might be key is that the last few days have been relatively cool. When I launch tomorrow, the wind will start to swing from the N and NW to the W and SW and the temperature will be rising. So, the bass might be primed to feed big time with winter coming. There will be a window of near calm as the wind shifts. I'll launch around 5:30 a.m. and quit around 9:30 a.m. How would you fish it? I do know this pond as well as perhaps any person alive, so my focus is on the specifics of weather and season. In short, I know the pond, but I'm not deeply experienced when it comes to catching lmb in the fall.

Well, Tim, given that you wear a fur hat, just about everything furry thing in the woods will be purring like Barry White when they see you.

I fished yesterday morning and evening. Evening fishing is hard for a paddling angler in Maine because our winds don't normally die like they did in the Midwest. However, I had a one hour window, so I took it, fishing from six to seven. Having a canoe waiting for me at my lot makes this possible, as does having the pond being five minutes away. I only took two rods, one with a spinnerbait and the other with a small, chrome Whopper Plopper. The Whopper Plopper didn't trigger a single strike, but I did get six hits with my Dobyns Beast spinnerbait with a chartreuse and white Crush City Mayor. I landed four: 14", 15", 16", and 16.5". Unfortunately, the two I lost were 17" to 17.5". I can confidently assert their lengths because both jumped right beside my canoe, freeing themselves and I measured the four I did land. What was interesting about the session was they weren't tight to the shoreline and they weren't in the lilypad/grass patches twenty yards off shore. They were out in the middle in the deepest water in the pond, which is about eight feet deep. One hit so hard that it hooked itself and did its best to yank my rod from me. It was a little spooky walking back to the car. I heard a stick break and I thought I heard leaves rustling. Probably deer. I saw a couple deer pulling out of the woods. Anyway, I'll post a pic of the shoreline so you can see that it's FALL here. You can see the lily pad/grass patches about 20 yards off shore where I didn't catch bass and also the shoreline where I didn't catch bass. Yeah, they were out deep, probably hunting shad. Now, when I hook a bass in eight feet of largely weedless and woodless water, I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. Imagine playing a bass without having the rough, woodtraps, and weedtraps littering your fairway. In such circumstances, I could catch bass with two-pound test. If they want to jaunt away from my canoe, they can have at it as there's nowhere for them to get me into trouble.

Every time someone posts a fish pic, I too am tugged.

Pat, I owe my very existence to shock therapy. Here's me the day I was "born:"

@Alex from GA, how did you remove it?

@Flushdraw: I also suggest that you watch Glenn's videos. As a former teacher, I admire Glenn's teaching. There's no click baiting as SOOOOO many YouTubers employ and his teaching is clear and concise. I fished yesterday evening and as has happened many times, I heard @Glenn's voice in my head, this time reminding me to cover water in early fall, which I did and that put me on fish.

That's a big pick, @herder. Good numbers too!

It's a Golden shiner forage base. Like I wrote above, they're thicker in May and June. Here are some examples: There's another pond that I fish where the bass are so well-fed that they look photographically distorted. Look at my avatar photo to see such a fish.

Sigh. I didn't even know what BFS is. Google saves the day again.

It's between five and six pounds. I watch fishing videos and am very good at guessing what the weights of the bass they catch before they weigh them.

Ha! Then I'm that excited too...for you! And looking forward to seeing tomorrow's catch!!!

Ha! That's a big bag! That smoke makes the light look a little like an eclipse. So proud of you. So happy for you!

I'm straight braid. I have tried leaders, but they're just one more thing to do.

If the wind does permit evening fishing, then do it. I sure do when it's possible.

I almost titled the trip report, "This one's for you, Gimruis!" No kidding. Yep, the bass at my pal's pond tend to run thin after June. I have caught some thick ones in May and June. The bass at my pond are nearly always thick, although I did catch one skinny one last week.

For a change of pace, here's a numerical trip report: Launched: 5:45 a.m. Left: 9:15 a.m. Wind speed: 2 mph increasing to 8 mph Wind direction: NW Total caught: 20 SMB/LMB breakdown: 12/8 Longest bass: 20.75" Range of SMB: 15" to 17" Build of bass: On the thin side, as they always are at this pond Lures used: Walking bait, fluke, and spinnerbait tipped with a Crush City chartreuse and white Mayor. Each lure caught about the same number. Sky: Started mostly cloudy and ended mostly sunny Temperatures: Lower fifties to sixty degrees Longest bass: Some of the other LMB: One of the SMB:

Dang it! Now I have to buy it.

Maine bass are so fat that swallowing one for an Everglades bass would be like a wine bottle trying to swallow a cork.

@Fishlegs: Beauty! I love to read about anglers protecting the resource. @Team9nine: You are hot, man, after all the heat of the summer. @TnRiver46: That Rage Shad is new to me.

Nah. Those Everglades bass just sit, fan themselves, drink Mint juleps, and laze their days away talking about their gentlemen callers. It takes surviving under ice while the blizzards howl to put true grit in a fish. I once took two feet of rope and tied a two-pound Maine bass to an eight-pound Everglades bass, tail-to-tail. The Maine bass not only won that tug-of-war, but took the eight-pounder water skiing. Backwards water skiing.

I'd rather catch a 23 lb. bag than an eight-pound bass. More excitement in five big bass than one eight-pounder.