Swamp Girl

Nice bass, Murph (@Jmurphy87). 13 hours...whoa. Pat (@Pat Brown) just keeps catching and catching and catching. Love that perch, @CastingClinic! Of course, @Bazoo wins the day for taking a kid fishing.

@king fisher: Your gratitude is one of your many fine qualities.

I flit between the five. 1. Yep, I sure want to catch bass. 2. Indeed, as many as possible. 3. For sure. 4. This too. I don't want to launch at a ramp and roar across a lake. I'm a quiet angler. 5. My boy buddy and I will be fishing together again this summer. Last year he caught his first four-pounder. This summer, we're shooting for a five-pounder. Over the decades, I've put dozens of people on fish.

I've caught them shallow, for sure, in one to two feet, but I've also caught them in the deepest parts of ponds. Everyday, they're in a new place. I'll go look for that!

Lawdy, Lawdy, what a trip!

I enjoyed this trip report and commend you for sharing that you used FFS. If you FFS to catch bass, that should be part of every trip report. It's silly to report the color of a lure, but not using FFS. I sure identified with the "swirling wind and current.

Here are three fish to compare with yours. The first is shorter than yours, but with big shoulders. She weighed 6.52 lbs. The second is about the same length as yours at 22.25" and she weighed 6.71 lbs. Note that she's skinny like yours. The last one is also 22.25", but I didn't have a scale aboard, so she wasn't weighed. I'm pretty sure she went between seven and eight pounds since she has shoulders and a belly.

I caught my first Whopper Plopper bass this year, 14 of them on the surface and another four on my Keitech. The best spot was a bitsy bay off the lake with a beaver lodge. That's the pool in the first photo. It was about a foot deep and chock full of mud and zombie weeds, but that's where they were. With the lodge, there were a lot of sticks to catch my line, but I enjoyed steering the bass free of them. I only fished three hours because the wind kicked up, but 18 bass in three hours, while not a typical summer rate, is sure better than what I've been averaging. Things are looking up and the bass are too!

I continue to fish the pond where I caught my PB about three weeks ago, plumbing the depths where I hooked her and fishing the same depth in other areas, but failing. It was windy yesterday so I went up a river to get out of the wind. I was struck by how brown it still it is here. It looks like November and felt like it too yesterday. I managed 11 bass, but also saw an osprey, loon, Canada geese, red-winged blackbirds, and beaver. All the bass were tight to zombie weed shorelines and all were caught on my Keitech, although I did try five other lures: a beaver tail, strolling, Whopper Plopper, jointed Rapala, and squarebill. I'm going fishing again right now to my pond, which is a quantity pond. I need a break from fishing for another PB! After working so hard to catch 11 bass, I hope I fare better in the three hours I'll have this morning. Fingers crossed!

Wow, Dwight, wow!

It's a beauty!

Lots of wisdom in this thread.

Shop local! Great story. Thanks, Eric.

In that second photo, Brian, your four-pounder looks 2' long!

Friends, canoes, whitewater, fishing. You live the good life. Here's Frankie, the singer of "The Good Life," looking at you and wishing he were you: P. S. - Going fishing this afternoon and tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning's trip will be two, quick hours before the wind kicks up. This afternoon's trip will be the pond where I caught my PB.

83 years old and still fishing. Impressive! Your musky has beautiful markings, @DaubsNU1.

@Buzzbaiter's photos are professional-grade. I work with professional photographers all the time, so I know what pro-grade looks like. Beautiful bass, @NorcalBassin!

So true. I've also had good luck with an outflow current.

Woody, we have more than rain and fuzzy photos in common. I also dropped my phone into the lake within minutes of catching my PB.

@Woody B: Your photo looks like one of mine! That's what we get for our mutual love of fishing rainy days.

@pdxfisher: Having read many of your trip reports, I have learned that you are great at finding them.

Yep, that's me. Before I found some bass the last time I was out, the swallows were swirling around me and the red-winged blackbirds were following me, watching me fish, and I was so happy. In the rain and 47 degrees, so happy. Then, when I finally found some bass, I was even happier!

This sounds right. Thanks for the story. I love 'em!

For about my last five fishing trips, I've caught bass in different places. Here are some of the patterns I've used to catch them so far in the Spring of 2024: Tight to rocky shorelines in a foot of water. 80' off-shore in 8' of water. Under shoreline shrubs. In the deepest part of the pond. Along the edges of emergent weeds. What have been your Spring 2024 patterns?

What a sad, little man. Like you, Woody, I want to find my fish. That's my fun, finding them. For about the last five trips in a row, I found them in different places. It's an Easter Egg hunt! I don't want to be a pretty princess with Ye Royal Egg Finder pointing at each egg for me, just so I could say to the court, "Look, I found the most! I win again!" A DD is so arbitrary anyway. It exists because we use a Base 10 system. With a different system, we'd have a different cutoff. Numbers-wise, I use a Base @WRB system. The cutoff is a 17-pounder. I'll never catch one, so I'm happy to catch the bass I do catch.