Swamp Girl

"Finesse" sure muddles me. I think this is because I use spinning rods 99% of the time and throw all my lures with them. I do think that reaction bite is a real thing. Sometimes I'll cast a lure and land it on a bass and the bass immediately hits. It's as if my lure landed in an open mouth. That's a reaction bite because the bass had no time to consider my lure. For about the 57,000th time, I agree with Pat.

That's the fighting spirit! I look forward to reading about your growth. I'm guessing you'll grow at a weed's rate. @DaubsNU1: You really broke it down. Thanks for playing! That's the ticket to fishing well from a canoe. My boat, at 15' 6", is as long as some Lunds, but at 32 pounds, it might as well be made of goose down. So, it's a long, wind-catching feather. The wind will bully you on open water and you have to stand up to the bully, but in the marshes, I have to bend it like Beckham, i.e. "bend" my long canoe around the tightest corners to reach bass. I'm guessing some of the more observant here have noticed that the background in some of my in-the-marsh photos is more land than water. That's because marshes can be more land than water. However, nearly all of the above is fun for me. Well, not counting crossing a wide lake with the wind buffeting me from the side.

You are the funniest fisher at BR. And you catch big fish! Is there causation? We'll see: Tomorrow morning, I'm going fishing dressed as a clown. Then I'm going to watch the video twice before I go fishing again and catch an 8-pounder.

I think I understand.

@MN Fisher: Take a look into my tackle box and you would shudder. You'd be like Marlon Brando in "Apocalypse Now," whispering, "The horror, the horror." 😁

Exactly. A basic kayak can't do what a bass boat does, but it can do some things better. Good luck getting a bass boat in this marsh:

I envy your organization. I jam everything into a pouch. Yeah, I'm pathetic.

I disagree. Your ability to get to the fish is a component of your skill. If you can't decode an FFS screen, you're not as skilled as a basshead who can. If you can't read water from the shore, you're less skilled than a shore angler who can. If you can't paddle a kayak into a twisting swamp, again, you're not as skilled as the paddling fisher who can. And your lack of these skills will affect your ability to catch fish.

Tom, I'm not that far behind you. Fishing from two docked canoes has eased my way in 2024.

No lie: I have bumped many bass and oh, do they scurry! I love to be surprised and ^this^ surprised me, so thanks. Bonus: It makes sense to me! Been there. Me: "There. No, there! Or over there?"

Isn't it amazing how quickly your situation changes from solid to YIKES!?! Yep and yep. You sure understand the advantages of a light boat that has no prop in the water. You're right. I now regret giving myself a 10 for paddling. I'm now a 9. We just never know, do we?

Pat, you have solid insight into fishing from a small, paddled boat. Boat management is the key to landing fish. I will position my boat in a particular place for a planned cast, knowing that if I hook a nice bass, it will pull me into trouble, so I place the boat where there will be less trouble and give me a chance to land it. If my plan goes awry, as it often does, I have to keep my cool and respond on the fly. Last night, this fish reached weeds because there were weeds in every direction and there was no better place to position my boat. It was dusk, but in the weeds, I saw some weeds move and I went for her with my net and guessed correctly. Even in the net, I could barely see her as she was coated in weeds. Nah. You're the gold standard from the shore. 24K.

I stopped buying Z-Man because all you have to do it drop one Z-Man product into your tacklebox instead of the original package and it fuses to your other lures.

How would you rank your fishing ability from the shore, in a canoe or kayak with no electronics, and in a bass boat. Out of 10. SHORE: I began as a shore angler and I still fish occasionally from the shore and catch a few with my feet on the ground, so I'd give myself a 5. No, 6 for the half dozen muskies I've caught from the shore. Even with those muskies, I'm no @Pat Brown. Nowhere near. BASIC CANOE/KAYAK: I'm an excellent paddler and love primitive, sneaky fishing, so I'm a 10. BASS BOAT or TRICKED OUT SMALLER MOTORBOAT: I can't operate a trolling motor or any form of sonar. I could start the engine and launch the boat, as I've trailered boats and run outboards, but that's about it. 2 for being able to launch the boat and start the engine.

Cool!

Mostly how-to-write and how to work with children, but if they wanted a different topic, I'd deliver. I'm not about to take a break from fishing, but I am a little fishing tuckered. I've caught hundreds and hundreds of bass this year, including my personal best, which was equivalent to a southern DD, 3.5 to 4.5-pounders beyond counting, many 44-59-bass mornings and evenings, one 75-bass morning, etc. I've also helped people catch their first bass, their most bass, and their biggest bass. I've got a quality trip planned for this Thursday, which will be rainy, but just now, I don't have bass tugging at me.

With many anglers, your assertion would be mostly wind, but I believe you can, King.

@Fishlegs: Thanks. I'm just an old, primitive angler, sneaking around ponds and bogs, hoping to get lucky on long casts.

@The Baron: One more thing. You mentioned fluoro. I can't cast fluoro as far as mono and braid, so I don't use it. I'd switch to mono instead of braid and 8-lb. mono casts a lot farther than 12-lb. mono. I use mono where they get a look at the lure, like a slow-moving worm. With fast-moving lures, like a Whopper Plopper or underspin, I always use braid.

My pond still has plenty of frogs, but its homes, which are on only one of the four shorelines, are all setback between 100' and 250'. That puts a lot of distance between their herbicides, fertilizers, & septic systems and the pond. @TOXIC posted about Lake Anna in the D.C. area and what development has done to it: E Coli, toxic algae, kids on dialysis, etc. We can love something to death.

So true.

Alex, I wish Maine was all hunky-dory, but I was told by my pal whose pond I fished last night that the frogs are largely gone there and frogs are the canary in the mine. A BR member who lives south of me also reported that his local frogs are gone, the fish are fewer, and they're seeing algae blooms. So, I think nature always has to be protected from us. The frog song where I caught my PB LMB was so loud that it was close to hurting, but that pond has no homes. That's the key.

@TnRiver46: YUM!

I catch an amazing percentage of my bass at the very end of my longest casts. If bass are tucked under heavy cover, you can catch them feet from your boat, but if you're fishing clear, shallow water, as I often do and as @The Baron always does, as he fishes the Canadian Shield, it's best to stay as far from them as your casts allow. I think a lot about bass being here for 3,000,000 years. That's ten times as long as us. So, they've been tweaked and refined for ten times longer than us. They're complex, refined animals, continually moving and constantly wary. Preach it. The senator noted yesterday that I don't park on a spot. I don't even carry an anchor. Heck, I'd be pulling it up two minutes after I'd drop it. FWIW, I had a first yesterday evening. I often see a line in the water as a shallow water bass charges my lure. Well, yesterday, I saw three lines for the first time, i.e. three bass going for my lure. When I reached the spot, the water was sooooooo skinny, but my long cast didn't tip my hand. A couple from yesterday evening. I didn't measure the first one, but the second one was 19.75".

@The Baron, I don't know if you're looking for input, but as a primitive, no-electronics, no-motor angler, I pick my fishing times carefully. I look for as much cloud cover as possible, love fishing rainy days, fish at low-light times (morning and evening), focus on shaded shorelines, and cast as far as I possibly can. I also keep scooting until I find them and keep changing lures until I find what they want. With your zebra mussel, gin-clear water, these tactics/advantages should help you too. Sincerely, The Old Primitive You saw them, so they saw you, thus the longest possible casts.