Swamp Girl

@Woody B keeps the streak alive!!!

Thanks, Andy. Pretty much everything moves my canoe: wind, bass, pickerel, and spinnerbaits!

@LrgmouthShad: Woo-hoo, buddy!!!

I launched again this morning at my pond. I had a Heddon One Knocker Spook, Whopper Plopper, T-Rigged worm, underspin with a blue Mayor, and spinnerbait with an orange crawfish. They all caught fish and I finished with 11 before the wind blew me off the pond. Here's my first bass. And here's a spinnerbait bass. This one was a chunk. The chunk came off this shoreline. "The entree comes with a salad, ma'am." Then I reached a river mouth with an area free of weeds and switched to my Heddon Spook. This spot and this Spook: And a special bass hit it. If you read my trip reports, you know my pond is great for numbers in May and June. And you know that the average size of the bass is good, but you might also remember that I don't catch five, six, or seven-pounders in it. Well, the girl I hooked wasn't a five, six, or seven-pounder, but she could be. She has the mouth to gain that much weight. And she has the frame to hold it. At one point in the fight, I was facing port and she jumped off starboard as she'd run under my canoe. Isn't she beautiful? Note how her jaw juts from her weight and note the size of her tail. I had to position my camera way back to fit her in the frame. She was probably four pounds. Now, I catch a lot of four-pounders and it might seem weird that this paticular four-pounder would thrill me, but again, she has the mouth and frame to be bigger, plus she's in her prime. Fingers crossed she lays a lot of eggs in 2025. On my next cast, a bass exploded on my Spook, but I didn't hook it. On the following cast, I caught this one. Another beauty: I love walking the dog! In 2024, I learned how to catch bass with a spinnerbait and a Spook. Pretty cool, huh? As always, thanks for going fishing with me.

What a fish, @bottom_dollar!

Say, pdx, I've read enough of your trip reports to say that you're a heckuva angler. You are consistent and given how conditions and bass are always in flux, so you have to have a nimble, angling-oriented mind to keep catching them...and you do. You're also a tough hombre, given that you take to big water with your health challenge. You average good-sized bass too. You're not fishing for the gobie-gorged tankers of the Midwest. You're fishing for lean river bass, so a five-pounder is a rare specimen. It's apples and oranges when it comes to river bass and Lake Erie bass. As I wrote earlier, you're one of the BR gang whose great days make me as happy as my best days.

For sure, every boat has its advantages and disadvantages. I used to write a column for Canoe & Kayak magazine called Rides, where I interviewed paddlers who waxed about why they loved their chosen boats. I learned so much from chatting with them. You clearly understand the disadvantages of a canoe. They're the pudgy kid with the pale skin who might as well wear a shirt with a bullseye on it, given that they're targeted again and again by the Wind Bully. The advantage is that they're floating cargo planes. I can foray into the wilderness with two weeks worth of food, tent, sleeping bags, etc. I've only fished from kayaks a few times and I found them cramped, but then I wasn't fishing from platforms that I'd modified to meet my needs, as most fishing kayak anglers have. They can also be lighter than a kayak and even the 26-pound canoes are bigger than kayaks. Of course, if a canoe were modified like most fishing kayaks with all those wonderful accessories, it would never weigh 26 pounds. Advantages and disadvantages.

The Beasts arrived today! I'll be trying them soon. Thanks for the suggestion.

I hail from Washington state and have family in Oregon, so I've seen the gorges you fish. The wind can howl there. The high sides of my canoes and their length means I catch more wind, so I bolt at 10 mph.

@pdxfisher: We fish from small boats, so we have to be attentive to the wind and paying attention, we understand why wind direction prediction is so elusive: The wind is forever shifting. It can blow from N, W, S, and W in the span of a minute.

I got the green light to go fishing again tomorrow morning. It will be a 4 mph south wind when I launch climbing to 10 mph, still from the south, by ten, so I want to be off the water by nine. I'll paddle to the south end of the pond, fish that, and when the wind kicks up, let the wind blow me back to my launch site, while fishing the whole way.

Yeah, it is weird how it varies from lake to lake, but it also can vary, as you know, from hour to hour, which is what I LOVE about bass angling. There's a locked door between us and them and the combination keeps changing. It was appreciated! Thanks, my friend. I found the trip exciting. I cracked the code, then the code was changed, and then I cracked the new code.

I loved recess too, but at my school, there were always two bells, one to begin recess and the other to end it. I heard the second bell, the hated bell.

I knew I only had an hour and a half to fish this morning due to a family obligation and that scared me, for it sometimes takes time to find the bass. I guessed well at first, for I went to a shallow corner of the pond and caught five bass there. I started with this one, a thick 16-inch smallie which I hooked on a Kardashian-garish spinnerbait on the edge of the shallow water. Then I caught this well-shaped, 17-inch lmb on a chrome Whopper Plopper three feet from the shore. The Whopper Plopper then caught this smaller bass. And the spinnerbait scored a thick one. Then I hooked this medium one, giving me five bass in the first half hour. So, I paddled across the pond to my favorite shoreline, expecting more fine fishing, but in 45 minutes, I could only manage this one bass, a skinny 16-incher: It was time to paddle back, so I trolled my spinnerbait and crossing the middle of the pond, discovered where they'd been: DEEP! I hooked this one: I cast to where I'd caught ^this^ one and hooked vthisv one: I hooked one more about 15 inches on the next cast and I made that my final cast, lest I be late. If that dang end-of-recess bell hadn't rung, I would have run up a nice total, but settled for nine, an average of one bass every ten minutes. Oh, yes, I cast a creature bait for the first time. T-Rigged with a tungsten weight. And I couldn't even provoke a bite. Total failure. They wanted my clownish spinnerbait and Kardashian-shiny Whopper Plopper with the big bum. They wouldn't even sniff at finesse.

I love weeds, but that looks unfishable...to me, at least. I think you'd need a crane to get a bass out of there.

Not even King T-Billy is a swimming angler!

Yep, it's a crawdad. Someone just mentioned it and I replied to that. Well, I caught NOTHING on the Hawg. Didn't get a single bite. In 1.5 hours, I caught nine, but they wanted flash, a Whopper Plopper and clownish spinnerbait.

My takeaway is that I am so far behind the BR crew in using the many baits. You not only have favorite creature baits, you have lists of favorites in specific colors. And here I was proud to be trying a creature bait for my first time. Sigh. Fingers crossed I catch one. I'm rigged and ready, but only have 1.5 hours to fish due to other commitments. Off I go!

I've seen those kite surfers. They're incredible. Fingers crossed you've got lots more luck and a kidney coming.

Smart way to fish.

I was planning on using a small weight. Nice to have my choice confirmed. It's gonna sound weird, but I don't think Maine bass relate to docks. I cast at docks, but don't trigger bites. I am pulling more bass out of liedowns. I bought a KVD Strike King Magnum Game Hog in Junebug. I fish the Bronco Bugs a lot, but T-Rigged and on spinnerbaits and underspins.

She's so thick that she doesn't look like your longest bass ever. As you have seen, many of my Maine bass are thick too and that visually shortens them. P. S. - I dream of catching a bass like yours, but unless I can cast all the way to Texas or Florida or Louisiana, I won't. Sigh.

Good to know. I'll be on red alert when the bait falls.

Dang straight, I am, which is one of several reasons why I admire you so much. Your love of Jake is another, as is your joy at dancing with bass.

I'll be casting my first creature baits tomorrow morning. I'll T-Rig them and use a tungsten weight. It'll reach 49 degrees tonight, so the shallows will be cooled and I'm going to start there, in a foot to two feet of water. I'll work deeper if they're not there. I'm always excited to try a new bait. So far in 2024, I caught my first bass strolling, walking the dog, and on a spinnerbait. I'm pretty confident with the creature bait because it'll fish like a soft plastic worm, lizard, or crawfish, which I already use. It'll just be bigger and weirder.